Race Bias Tracks Conception Risk Across the Menstrual Cycle.PDF. Discussion at Mind Hacks.
Psychol Sci. 2009 May 4. [Epub ahead of print]
Navarrete CD, Fessler DM, Fleischman DS, Geyer J.
Although a considerable body of research explores alterations in women's mating-relevant preferences across the menstrual cycle, investigators have yet to examine the potential for the menstrual cycle to influence intergroup attitudes. We examined the effects of changes in conception risk across the menstrual cycle on intergroup bias and found that increased conception risk was positively associated with several measures of race bias. This association was particularly strong when perceived vulnerability to sexual coercion was high. Our findings highlight the potential for hypotheses informed by an evolutionary perspective to generate new knowledge about current social problems-an avenue that may lead to new predictions in the study of intergroup relations.
Women more racist when fertile
Via TGGP:
Replies to Guy White
Guy White is a little bitch with no integrity who likes to pretend he is a master debater but censors comments that point out his errors of fact and reasoning. He prefers to argue against straw men and only allows posts by the dumbest proponents of ideas he disagrees with.
Guy,
You're way too smug for someone who has no idea what he's talking about. Try applying the standards of evidence you demand from "anti-semites" to yourself rather than simply rehashing misinformation you read on blogs, or "reasoning" starting from flawed or incomplete information.
"But how did this stereotype come about? Because blacks were better than whites. Because they look like they are better."
Strength and performance are not measured by appearance -- much less by the subjective impression of some dork on the internet.
"Blacks are known to have thicker skulls and stronger bones. This is the by-product of having higher testosterone"
Not likely.
Wright et al (34) obtained measurements of both growth
hormone and BMD in 16 black and 17 white men. Serum 17bestradiol,
growth hormone concentration and secretion, and BMD
were all greater in blacks than in whites. The authors suggested
that the higher circulating estradiol concentrations in blacks may
have contributed to the greater secretion of growth hormone,
which in turn led to an increase in bone mass. Heaney (35) suggested
that BMC and BMD may be regulated by a “mechanostat,”
which is analogous to a thermostat that regulates temperature.
According to the mechanostat theory, a network of osteocytes
detects bone strain and modulates the activity of remodeling
cells. The mechanostat set point in blacks is lower than that in
whites; ie, the strain needed to trigger bone growth is less in
blacks, giving them denser bones. Heaney speculated that growth
hormone plays a role in establishing the bone mass set point.
Measures of body composition in blacks and whites: a comparative review
DR Wagner, VH Heyward - American journal of clinical nutrition, 2000 - Am Soc Nutrition
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/ajcn;71/6/1392
"It is grotesquely unscientific to suggest that blacks commit more crime because of testosterone, but somehow their testosterone doesn’t produce any positive effects."
Keep the first half of that sentence. There's never been any good evidence racial differences in crime are caused by racial differences in circulating testosterone. This was merely a theory suggested by Rushton. Problems with the theory (which I pointed out to you months ago in a comment you failed to post -- let's see if this one goes through):
- Large, representative US samples show little or no black-white differences in T.
- T is markedly lower in Sub-Saharan Africa than in America and Europe, while the African crime rate is higher.
IQ apparently accounts for more than half the black-white difference in criminality in the US. I suspect variation in genes such as MAOA will eventually be found to account for most of the rest.
Guy White doesn't post the comment, but attempts a response via email. My reply:
Stereotypes come into existence in any number of ways. Many have at least some basis in in reality, but what you've written above is simply retarded.
If I have this right, one of the "stereotypes" you're promoting is that black men are taller than white men, which is of course ass backwards -- white men are taller than black men in the US.
Negroes commonly claim all serial killers and pedophiles are white. This "stereotype" is not "usually true". The kernel of truth is that blacks are merely less overrepresented among serial killers and pedophiles than they are among most other classes of criminal.
The degree to which that's true is an empirical matter, not something to be decided by Guy White "logic". And it's much simpler to just measure strength and performance directly.
One can think of several racial differences that affect appearance but not sports performance. Bodybuilders tan in the belief that darker skin makes muscular relief more apparent. Relative to whites, blacks also tend to store less of their subcutaneous fat on the fronts of their body and more on the back. Blacks have shorter torsos and narrower and shallower chests (as well as smaller lungs), which may make whatever upper body muscle mass they possess look more impressive by contrast. The smaller torso should present an advantage in sprinting, but not in sports like wrestling or weightlifting.
And? Are you seriously this bad at following arguments?
Please shut the fuck up. You don't have the slightest clue what science is.
The excerpt lays out a plausible etiology for greater black bone density. It was not meant to "prove" black men have higher estrogen levels. That fact is not seriously up for debate. Black men have repeatedly and consistently been found to have elevated estrogen levels, here and in Africa, since study commenced in the 1930s.The same can't be said for testosterone levels. If you had done your own research rather than recycling "facts" you got thirdhand (ultimately via Rushton), you would know this.
Again: we're concerned with black-white differences. It's sort of difficult to blame black-white differences in crime on black-white differences in testosterone when the latter are very small, non-existent, or even fairly large in the wrong direction when we look at Africa itself.
Where's your "mainstream source" for this?
Here's the point, you fucking clown: whatever reason Africans have lower T levels than Europeans, the fact remains: they have lower T levels. Since they don't have lower crime rates, this tends to rule out testosterone as the causal agent in black-white differences in crime. Likewise for testosterone causing black-white differences in bone density or other body composition variables which are stable between American blacks and black Africans.
Guy,
You're way too smug for someone who has no idea what he's talking about. Try applying the standards of evidence you demand from "anti-semites" to yourself rather than simply rehashing misinformation you read on blogs, or "reasoning" starting from flawed or incomplete information.
"But how did this stereotype come about? Because blacks were better than whites. Because they look like they are better."
Strength and performance are not measured by appearance -- much less by the subjective impression of some dork on the internet.
"Blacks are known to have thicker skulls and stronger bones. This is the by-product of having higher testosterone"
Not likely.
Wright et al (34) obtained measurements of both growth
hormone and BMD in 16 black and 17 white men. Serum 17bestradiol,
growth hormone concentration and secretion, and BMD
were all greater in blacks than in whites. The authors suggested
that the higher circulating estradiol concentrations in blacks may
have contributed to the greater secretion of growth hormone,
which in turn led to an increase in bone mass. Heaney (35) suggested
that BMC and BMD may be regulated by a “mechanostat,”
which is analogous to a thermostat that regulates temperature.
According to the mechanostat theory, a network of osteocytes
detects bone strain and modulates the activity of remodeling
cells. The mechanostat set point in blacks is lower than that in
whites; ie, the strain needed to trigger bone growth is less in
blacks, giving them denser bones. Heaney speculated that growth
hormone plays a role in establishing the bone mass set point.
Measures of body composition in blacks and whites: a comparative review
DR Wagner, VH Heyward - American journal of clinical nutrition, 2000 - Am Soc Nutrition
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/ajcn;71/6/1392
"It is grotesquely unscientific to suggest that blacks commit more crime because of testosterone, but somehow their testosterone doesn’t produce any positive effects."
Keep the first half of that sentence. There's never been any good evidence racial differences in crime are caused by racial differences in circulating testosterone. This was merely a theory suggested by Rushton. Problems with the theory (which I pointed out to you months ago in a comment you failed to post -- let's see if this one goes through):
- Large, representative US samples show little or no black-white differences in T.
- T is markedly lower in Sub-Saharan Africa than in America and Europe, while the African crime rate is higher.
IQ apparently accounts for more than half the black-white difference in criminality in the US. I suspect variation in genes such as MAOA will eventually be found to account for most of the rest.
Guy White doesn't post the comment, but attempts a response via email. My reply:
2. Stereotypes come about as a result of something being "usually true".
Stereotypes come into existence in any number of ways. Many have at least some basis in in reality, but what you've written above is simply retarded.
If I have this right, one of the "stereotypes" you're promoting is that black men are taller than white men, which is of course ass backwards -- white men are taller than black men in the US.
Negroes commonly claim all serial killers and pedophiles are white. This "stereotype" is not "usually true". The kernel of truth is that blacks are merely less overrepresented among serial killers and pedophiles than they are among most other classes of criminal.
3. Strength and performance could be estimated by looking at the person.
The degree to which that's true is an empirical matter, not something to be decided by Guy White "logic". And it's much simpler to just measure strength and performance directly.
One can think of several racial differences that affect appearance but not sports performance. Bodybuilders tan in the belief that darker skin makes muscular relief more apparent. Relative to whites, blacks also tend to store less of their subcutaneous fat on the fronts of their body and more on the back. Blacks have shorter torsos and narrower and shallower chests (as well as smaller lungs), which may make whatever upper body muscle mass they possess look more impressive by contrast. The smaller torso should present an advantage in sprinting, but not in sports like wrestling or weightlifting.
4. Testosterone does increase bone density.
And? Are you seriously this bad at following arguments?
Please do not cite studies with 15 people. Those aren't scientific.
Please shut the fuck up. You don't have the slightest clue what science is.
The excerpt lays out a plausible etiology for greater black bone density. It was not meant to "prove" black men have higher estrogen levels. That fact is not seriously up for debate. Black men have repeatedly and consistently been found to have elevated estrogen levels, here and in Africa, since study commenced in the 1930s.The same can't be said for testosterone levels. If you had done your own research rather than recycling "facts" you got thirdhand (ultimately via Rushton), you would know this.
5. High-T has been linked to violence.
Again: we're concerned with black-white differences. It's sort of difficult to blame black-white differences in crime on black-white differences in testosterone when the latter are very small, non-existent, or even fairly large in the wrong direction when we look at Africa itself.
6. Africans have less T because many have poor diet.
Where's your "mainstream source" for this?
Here's the point, you fucking clown: whatever reason Africans have lower T levels than Europeans, the fact remains: they have lower T levels. Since they don't have lower crime rates, this tends to rule out testosterone as the causal agent in black-white differences in crime. Likewise for testosterone causing black-white differences in bone density or other body composition variables which are stable between American blacks and black Africans.
Some WWII aviation trivia
Real differences were found in national extraction and possibly in education. The principal extraction in all flyers was Old American, with the rest overwhelmingly Northwest European - British, Irish, Germanic, and Scandinavian, in that order. Four per cent were of Slavic and 1% of Mediterranean descent. Successful combat pilots were significantly more Old American in ancestry than cadets, an Old American being a person whose 4 grandparents were born in the United States. Twenty-two per cent of cadets and 60% of the successful combat pilots were Old American on both sides; on one parental side only, an additional 24% and 15%, respectively. This highly significant difference (p < .01) is hardly attributable to geographic provenience, since 10% more of the combat pilots than of the cadets were from the East coast, where recent immigrants are most numerous. Old Americans may have tended to become pilots rather than bombardiers or navigators. The greater metrical homogeneity of pilots as compared to the latter groups (tables 1 and 4) lends some support to this hypothesis; but even so, with twice as many pilots in the AAF as bombardiers and navigators combined, pilots should resemble cadets in national extraction more closely than they did. If Old Americans actually were more successful in military flying - still an assumption awaiting confirmation in larger samples - were they eliminated less often from training? Had they “sounder” personalities; or do the physical traits associated with flying success occur more often or more strongly among Old Americans? Any one of these possibilities might repay further study.
[Damon. Physique and success in military flying. Am J Phys Anthropol. 1955 Jun;13(2):217-52.]
A truly odd bit of data emanating from the war was the fact that aces (those with five or more air-to-air kills) tended to have blue or light-colored eyes (over tow thirds) [. . .]
[James F. Dunnigan and Albert A. Nofi. Dirty Little Secrets of World War II]
[Damon. Physique and success in military flying. Am J Phys Anthropol. 1955 Jun;13(2):217-52.]
A truly odd bit of data emanating from the war was the fact that aces (those with five or more air-to-air kills) tended to have blue or light-colored eyes (over tow thirds) [. . .]
[James F. Dunnigan and Albert A. Nofi. Dirty Little Secrets of World War II]
Very fine scale genetic structure
European Journal of Human Genetics advance online publication 24 June 2009; doi: 10.1038/ejhg.2009.97
Comparing population structure as inferred from genealogical versus genetic information
Vincenza Colonna et al.
Algorithms for inferring population structure from genetic data (ie, population assignment methods) have shown to effectively recognize genetic clusters in human populations. However, their performance in identifying groups of genealogically related individuals, especially in scanty-differentiated populations, has not been tested empirically thus far. For this study, we had access to both genealogical and genetic data from two closely related, isolated villages in southern Italy. We found that nearly all living individuals were included in a single pedigree, with multiple inbreeding loops. Despite Fst between villages being a low 0.008, genetic clustering analysis identified two clusters roughly corresponding to the two villages. Average kinship between individuals (estimated from genealogies) increased at increasing values of group membership (estimated from the genetic data), showing that the observed genetic clusters represent individuals who are more closely related to each other than to random members of the population. Further, average kinship within clusters and Fst between clusters increases with increasingly stringent membership threshold requirements. We conclude that a limited number of genetic markers is sufficient to detect structuring, and that the results of genetic analyses faithfully mirror the structuring inferred from detailed analyses of population genealogies, even when Fst values are low, as in the case of the two villages. We then estimate the impact of observed levels of population structure on association studies using simulated data.
Keywords:
population structure, genetic isolate, genetic clustering methods, Fst, kinship
Comparing population structure as inferred from genealogical versus genetic information
Vincenza Colonna et al.
Algorithms for inferring population structure from genetic data (ie, population assignment methods) have shown to effectively recognize genetic clusters in human populations. However, their performance in identifying groups of genealogically related individuals, especially in scanty-differentiated populations, has not been tested empirically thus far. For this study, we had access to both genealogical and genetic data from two closely related, isolated villages in southern Italy. We found that nearly all living individuals were included in a single pedigree, with multiple inbreeding loops. Despite Fst between villages being a low 0.008, genetic clustering analysis identified two clusters roughly corresponding to the two villages. Average kinship between individuals (estimated from genealogies) increased at increasing values of group membership (estimated from the genetic data), showing that the observed genetic clusters represent individuals who are more closely related to each other than to random members of the population. Further, average kinship within clusters and Fst between clusters increases with increasingly stringent membership threshold requirements. We conclude that a limited number of genetic markers is sufficient to detect structuring, and that the results of genetic analyses faithfully mirror the structuring inferred from detailed analyses of population genealogies, even when Fst values are low, as in the case of the two villages. We then estimate the impact of observed levels of population structure on association studies using simulated data.
Keywords:
population structure, genetic isolate, genetic clustering methods, Fst, kinship
Carleton Coon on the origin of races
Desmond asked: If you have a moment possibly you could explain Coon's theory of racial origin.
Coon argued the fossil record showed the major races (Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Australoid, Capoid, and Congoid) date back at least as far as Homo erectus. Coon believed these five races transitioned to Homo sapiens independently and at different times, with the mutations responsible for the transition either happening multiple times in the different populations or being spread by peripheral gene flow.
Coon argued the fossil record showed the major races (Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Australoid, Capoid, and Congoid) date back at least as far as Homo erectus. Coon believed these five races transitioned to Homo sapiens independently and at different times, with the mutations responsible for the transition either happening multiple times in the different populations or being spread by peripheral gene flow.
Our races jumped from Homo erecus to Homo Sapiens brain size by saltation. Stated more specifically, the essential difference between Homoerectus and Homosapiens lies in the total area of the cerebral cortex of the brain. The cortex is a thin sheet of nerve cells (neurons) twisted and bent to fit its mostly globular container, the skull. Our races moved from the Homoerectus to the Homosapiens state by a doubling of the number of nerve cells in this sheet. [. . .]In Coon's view:
At least one race of Homo erectus and possibly all five evolved by saltation into Homo sapiens. From available evidence we may surmise that the appropriate threshold was crossed by each race in response to local opportunities, either by its own mutations or by impregnation of its women by Homo sapiens invaders. In such a case the women would transmit to the new generation their own most useful local climatic adaptations.
[Racial Adaptations, pp. 137-139]
When the brain size of Homo erectus increased by a doubling of the cerebral cortex, some of their races got more neurons than their environmental and cultural requirements warranted. The brain sizes of all races rose from about 1,200 cc (in the males) to between 1,450 cc and 1,700 cc, and then fell back to the Homo erectus level or a little higher in the tropics, and to about 1,400 to 1,500 cc in the temperate and polar zones. As far as we know, no Homo erectus are alive today.Coon based his belief that "the Caucasoid [is] the oldest sapiens race" on the Swanscombe and Steinheim skulls.
While the oldest Homo erectus skulls have been found in the tropics, the oldest Homo sapiens come from Europe, where Caucasoids lived during a warm interglacial well over 250,000 years ago. After interruptions, they were followed by the cold-adapted Neanderthals, whose fate is still a mystery. Some say that while the earliest Homo sapiens' vocal apparatus let them speak, Neanderthal's repertoire of semantically useful sounds was limited. The Neanderthals may have become extinct, they may have been absorbed into the Caucasoid ranks, or they may have moved eastward to sire the American Indians, and, in part at least, the Mongoloids.
[Racial Adaptations, p. 149]
Modern humans still responsible for the Aurignacian
According to this analysis:
Journal of Human Evolution Article in Press, Corrected Proof
Shara E. Bailey et al.
Who made the Aurignacian and other early Upper Paleolithic industries?
The Aurignacian is typically taken as a marker of the spread of anatomically modern humans into Europe. However, human remains associated with this industry are frustratingly sparse and often limited to teeth. Some have suggested that Neandertals may, in fact, be responsible for the Aurignacian and the earliest Upper Paleolithic industries. Although dental remains are frequently considered to be taxonomically undiagnostic in this context, recent research shows that Neandertals possess a distinct dental pattern relative to anatomically modern humans. Even so, it is rare to find mandibles or maxillae that preserve all or most of their teeth; and, the probability of correctly identifying individuals represented by only a few teeth or a single tooth is unknown.
We present a Bayesian statistical approach to classifying individuals represented exclusively by teeth into two possible groups. The classification is based on dental trait frequencies and sample sizes for ‘known’ samples of 95 Neandertals and 63 Upper Paleolithic modern humans. In a cross validation test of the known samples, 89% of the Neandertals and 89% of the Upper Paleolithic modern humans were classified correctly. We then classified an ‘unknown’ sample of 52 individuals: 34 associated with Aurignacian or other (non-Châtelperronian) early Upper Paleolithic industries, 15 associated with the Châtelperronian, and three unassociated. Of the 34 early Upper Paleolithic-associated individuals, 29 were assigned to modern humans, which is well within the range expected (95% of the time 26–33) with an 11% misclassification rate for an entirely modern human sample. These results provide some of the strongest evidence that anatomically modern humans made the Aurignacian and other (non-Châtelperronian) early Upper Paleolithic industries.
Keywords: Neandertal; Modern humans; Homo sapiens; Non-metric traits; Dental morphology; Châtelperronian; Bayesian statistics; Classification
Admixture studies
Genetically whiter blacks have lower BMIs: Admixture mapping of 15,280 African Americans identifies obesity susceptibility Loci on chromosomes 5 and X
Genetically blacker blacks have more preterm births: Association of genetic ancestry with preterm delivery and related traits among African American mothers
"Spanish" Cubans are Latin American "white": Admixture estimates for the population of Havana City
A program that claims to improve on Structure: mStruct: Inference of Population Structure in Light of Both Genetic Admixing and Allele Mutations
Another refinement of admixture estimation: Spatial inference of admixture proportions and secondary contact zones
Polak: Spectral graph theory uncovers European genetic ancestry clusters and Dendrogram of European genetic ancestry clusters
Genetically blacker blacks have more preterm births: Association of genetic ancestry with preterm delivery and related traits among African American mothers
"Spanish" Cubans are Latin American "white": Admixture estimates for the population of Havana City
SUBJECTS AND METHODS: According to genealogical information and anthropological traits, 206 subjects were classified as Mulatto, of Spanish decent or of African descent. Seventeen Ancestry Informative Markers, with high difference in frequency between parental populations, were selected to estimate individual and group admixture proportions. The statistical analyses were performed using the ADMIX, ADMIX95 and STRUCTURE 2.1 packages. RESULTS: The results demonstrate a high level of European and African admixture in Mulattos (57-59% European; 41-43% West African). The European contribution was higher in those of Spanish descent (85%) while in those of African descent, the West African contribution ranged between 74% and 76%.
A program that claims to improve on Structure: mStruct: Inference of Population Structure in Light of Both Genetic Admixing and Allele Mutations
Traditional methods for analyzing population structure, such as the Structure program, ignore the influence of the effect of allele mutations between the ancestral and current alleles of genetic markers, which can dramatically influence the accuracy of the structural estimation of current populations. Studying these effects can also reveal additional information about population evolution such as the the divergence time and migration history of admixed populations. We propose mStruct, an admixture of population-specific mixtures of inheritance models, that addresses the task of structure inference and mutation estimation jointly through a hierarchical Bayesian framework, and a variational algorithm for inference. We validated our method on synthetic data, and used it to analyze the HGDP-CEPH cell line panel of microsatellites used in (Rosenberg et al. 2002) and the HGDP SNP data used in (Conrad et al. 2006). A comparison of the structural maps of world populations estimated by mStruct and Structure is presented, and we also report potentially interesting mutation patterns in world populations estimated by mStruct. The mStruct software implementation in C++ is available for download at http://www.sailing.cs.cmu.edu/mstruct.html.
Another refinement of admixture estimation: Spatial inference of admixture proportions and secondary contact zones
Genetic admixture of distinct gene pools is the consequence of complex spatio-temporal processes that could have involved massive migration and local mating during the history of a species. However current methods for estimating individual admixture proportions lack the incorporation of such a piece of information. Here, we extend Bayesian clustering algorithms by including global trend surfaces and spatial autocorrelation in the prior distribution on individual admixture coefficients. We test our algorithm by using spatially explicit and realistic coalescent simulations of colonization followed by secondary contact. By coupling our multiscale spatial analyses with a Bayesian evaluation of model complexity and fit, we show that the algorithm provides a correct description of smooth clinal variation, while still detecting zones of sharp variation when they are present in the data.
Polak: Spectral graph theory uncovers European genetic ancestry clusters and Dendrogram of European genetic ancestry clusters
Nordics aren't Meds
Gracile Northern Caucasoids are gracile Northern Caucasoids -- not exactly surprising in light of ancient and modern genetic data and archaeological evidence:
A.G. Kozintsev. THE “MEDITERRANEANS” OF SOUTHERN SIBERIA AND KAZAKHSTAN, INDO-EUROPEAN MIGRATIONS, AND THE ORIGIN OF THE SCYTHIANS: A MULTIVARIATE CRANIOMETRIC ANALYSIS. Archaeology, Ethnology and Anthropology of Eurasia Volume 36, Issue 4, December 2008, Pages 140-144. doi:10.1016/j.aeae.2009.03.013On the supposed craniometric affinity between Harappa and the Tarim Basin:
The article presents some results of a multivariate analysis of 245 male Eurasian cranial series dating to various periods from the Neolithic to the Early Iron Age. These results contradict the commonly held view that certain comparatively gracile (narrow-faced) Bronze Age populations of Southern Siberia and Kazakhstan were “Mediterranean” in the anthropological sense, i.e. Southern Caucasoid. Craniometry provides no support for the theory that those people migrated to Southern Siberia or Kazakhstan from Southwestern Central Asia, the Near East, or Trans-Caucasia. Populations described as “Mediterranean” (the Okunev people of Tuva, the Yelunino, the Samus, and some Afanasiev and Andronov groups) display craniometric resemblance with the Bronze Age people of Southern Russian and Ukrainian steppes, as well as with certain Late Neolithic and Bronze Age groups of Central and Western Europe. These affinities are apparently caused by migrations of Indo-Europeans (specifically Indo-Iranians) from their European homeland eastward, as far as Eastern Central Asia. The return from Eastern Central Asia to Europe of the descendents of one of these groups during the Early Iron Age was probably the principal cause for the emergence of the Scythians on the historical arena.
Gumu Gou (Qäwrighul), XinjiangThe conclusion:
Han (1986), who measured this series according to a large trait set used by Russian anthropologists, believed that it conformed to a “Proto-European” pattern (a Russian term denoting robust Cro-Magnon-like Caucasoids) and that it was close to Afanasiev and Andronov groups. Solodovnikov and Tur (2003), while agreeing with him in general, noted that this series was more gracile and accordingly more “Mediterranean.” If “Mediterranean” means “Southern Caucasoid,” then the results of distance analysis contradict this view, since the group exhibits no Southern Caucasoid affinities. Generally, the Gumu Gou people show no distinct similarity to any other group. Least distant from them are the Andronov people from eastern, central, and northern Kazakhstan (according to data corrected by Solodovnikov (2006)), whereas those of the Samus and Yelunino are somewhat further. B.E. Hemphill found the Gumu Gou people to be close to the Harappans (Hemphill, Mallory, 2004). However, this result may be incidental, since Hemphill used a limited trait set and a very small comparative database. Also, the measurements of the Gumu Gou series used by him do not match those in the original publication (Han, 1986).
The results of the multivariate statistical analysis disagree with the traditional view that the prehistoric Caucasoids who were not robust (“Proto-European”) were necessarily “Mediterranean” – a view until recently shared by myself (Kozintsev, 2000). This dichotomy takes no account of the Northern Caucasoids, who are simply ignored. Actually, by no means all gracile Caucasoids were of southern descent. Having begun in the southern parts of the Caucasoid realm, the gracilization process (probably not only spontaneous, but also caused by geneflow from the Mediterranean area) eventually spread northward and by the Neolithic had already extended over large areas of Western Europe, which were undoubtedly affected by depigmentation. The role of the narrow-faced, fair-haired people of Central and Western European descent in Indo-European (specifically Indo-Iranian) migrations to the east was no less central than that of the robust “Proto-Europeans” and was definitely more prominent than that of the Southern Caucasoids such as the Mediterraneans. Further research will hopefully help shed light on that role and will thereby contribute to elucidating the multidisciplinary issue of the Indo-European homeland.Ancient DNA evidence agrees:
Our autosomal, Y-chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA analyses reveal that whereas few specimens seem to be related matrilineally or patrilineally, nearly all subjects belong to haplogroup R1a1-M17 which is thought to mark the eastward migration of the early Indo-Europeans. Our results also confirm that at the Bronze and Iron Ages, south Siberia was a region of overwhelmingly predominant European settlement, suggesting an eastward migration of Kurgan people across the Russo-Kazakh steppe. Finally, our data indicate that at the Bronze and Iron Age timeframe, south Siberians were blue (or green)-eyed, fair-skinned and light-haired people and that they might have played a role in the early development of the Tarim Basin civilization.
[Keyser C. et al. Ancient DNA provides new insights into the history of south Siberian Kurgan people. Human Genetics doi:10.1007/s00439-009-0683-0]
Upper Paleolithic Europeans: not fat, not Khoisanoid
re: Peter Frost
"It's impossible to estimate BMI simply from skeletal remains."
Wrong. You can dispute the accuracy of these estimates, but if you are unaware such estimates even exist you probably are not in a good position to do so. Body mass (and stature) can be estimated from skeletal remains with reasonable confidence:
Estimates of male and female European Early Upper Paleolithic and Late Upper Paleolithic height and body mass:
(Source: Hunters of the Ice Age: The biology of Upper Paleolithic people. Am J Phys Anthropol. 2008;Suppl 47:70-99. DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.20950.)
These estimates translate into mean BMIs of 23.2 and 23.3 for Early and Late Upper Paleolithic European female samples, lending little support to the notion that morbid obesity of the sort the better-known "Venus" figurines are commonly assumed to depict was common. Speaking of which:
Mathilda's comment addresses a number of other points, some of which I've explained to Frost before.
"It's impossible to estimate BMI simply from skeletal remains."
Wrong. You can dispute the accuracy of these estimates, but if you are unaware such estimates even exist you probably are not in a good position to do so. Body mass (and stature) can be estimated from skeletal remains with reasonable confidence:
using both “mechanical” methods which rely on the support of body mass by weight-bearing skeletal elements, and “morphometric” methods which reconstruct body mass through direct assessment of body size and shape. A previous comparison of two such techniques, using femoral head breadth (mechanical) and stature and bi-iliac breadth (morphometric), indicated a good general correspondence between them (Ruff et al. [1997] Nature 387:173–176). [. . .] This study incorporates skeletal measures taken from 1,173 Holocene adult individuals, representing diverse geographic origins, body sizes, and body shapes. [. . .] Body masses were calculated using three available femoral head breadth (FH) formulae and the stature/bi-iliac breadth (STBIB) formula, and compared. All methods yielded similar results. [. . .] Since the STBIB method was validated on other samples, and the FH methods produced similar estimates, this argues that either may be applied to skeletal remains with some confidence.
[Human body mass estimation: a comparison of "morphometric" and "mechanical" methods]
Estimates of male and female European Early Upper Paleolithic and Late Upper Paleolithic height and body mass:
(Source: Hunters of the Ice Age: The biology of Upper Paleolithic people. Am J Phys Anthropol. 2008;Suppl 47:70-99. DOI: 10.1002/ajpa.20950.)
These estimates translate into mean BMIs of 23.2 and 23.3 for Early and Late Upper Paleolithic European female samples, lending little support to the notion that morbid obesity of the sort the better-known "Venus" figurines are commonly assumed to depict was common. Speaking of which:
Found throughout Upper Paleolithic Europe, the so-called “Venus figurines”, of which the Willendorf Venus is a famous example, are frequently represented as corpulent or pregnant female figures, though they exist in many shapes and sizes and in small numbers, male. While it may be reasonable, as some scholars have, to interpret the images as an early depiction of obesity, myriad interpretations abound as to the meaning and function of the figurines. Crafted from a variety of materials including stone, ivory, bone and clay, the figurines have been variously considered to be fertility idols, self-representations of pregnancy, mother goddesses or charms among other interpretations [2] L. Mc Dermott, Self-representation in Upper Paleolithic female figurines, Curr Anthropol 37 (1996), pp. 227–276. Full Text via CrossRef[2], [3] and [4].Furthermore:
Obesity is not usually thought to be a hallmark of Upper Paleolithic civilization. Cultural assemblages from this time period are usually regarded by archaeologists as the residue of mobile hunter–gatherer populations. While the figurines are frequently depicted as rotund, obesity is not consonant with a mobile hunter–gatherer lifestyle, where groups would have moved to access seasonally available resources.
[The Venus figurines. doi:10.1016/j.ijcard.2005.11.063]
The generalizations in the textbooks do some violence to the facts. Few of me statuettes represent gross obesity, and some are quite slender (Fig. 1). Even the, first figurines found in the 1890s were classified by Piette into svelte and obese classes (Delporte 1979:73). Half a century ago Passemard (1938) examined all the then-known figurines to see whether they were steatopygous, a description quite popular at that time, and came to the conclusion that most were not. Saccasyn Della Santa (1947:9-13) reviewed the literature on the figurines again, and also concluded that they were not meant to represent steatopygia.Compare: two of the more famous "Venus" figurines vs. a Hottentot woman.
An unpublished statistical study of the variation in body shapes made 22 measurements on each figurine for which both frontal and profile photographs could be found-24 measurable figurines in all. The statuettes sorted into distinct groups of 10 obese (wide hips and thick body), 3 steatopygous (protruding buttocks), and 11 normal (Nelson n.d.).
[Diversity of the Upper Paleolithic "Venus" Figurines and Archeological Mythology. doi: 10.1525/ap3a.1990.2.1.11]
Mathilda's comment addresses a number of other points, some of which I've explained to Frost before.
Ancient Europeans can't have been more advanced
. . . because that might mean modern humans aren't all the same.
Afram genius John McWhorter displays his brilliant powers of reasoning:
Afram genius John McWhorter displays his brilliant powers of reasoning:
We are to take from this that evidence for an artistic mindset - i.e. modern, abstract thought - mysteriously "exploded" into the human endowment at this time. "The Big Bang," some call it, an apparent Great Leap Forward in toolmaking, burial rituals and art among European peoples at this time. Scholars of human evolution have taken a cue from this and supposed that the Big Bang was the result of some genetic mutation that led to humanity of a modern cognitive level.
[. . .] but if this "Big Bang" happened in Europe, then presumably this dramatic mutation did not happen to people beyond Europe. And yet, it is assumed that all human beings are equal in basic mental endowment [. . .]
The Big Bang idea has always seemed peculiar to me, then, in an implication surely none of the scientists intended but which stood there anyway: a Victorian idea that only Europeans became truly civilized while everyone else in the world remained "natives" chanting around cooking pots in forest clearings.
Fine-Scale Population Structure in Humans
Biswas et al. Genome-wide Insights into the Patterns and Determinants of Fine-Scale Population Structure in Humans. The American Journal of Human Genetics, Volume 84, Issue 5, 641-650 15 May 2009 doi:10.1016/j.ajhg.2009.04.015
Studying genomic patterns of human population structure provides important insights into human evolutionary history and the relationship among populations, and it has significant practical implications for disease-gene mapping. Here we describe a principal component (PC)-based approach to studying intracontinental population structure in humans, identify the underlying markers mediating the observed patterns of fine-scale population structure, and infer the predominating evolutionary forces shaping local population structure. We applied this methodology to a data set of 650K SNPs genotyped in 944 unrelated individuals from 52 populations and demonstrate that, although typical PC analyses focus on the top axes of variation, substantial information about population structure is contained in lower-ranked PCs. We identified 18 significant PCs, some of which distinguish individual populations. In addition to visually representing sample clusters in PC biplots, we estimated the set of all SNPs significantly correlated with each of the most informative axes of variation. These polymorphisms, unlike ancestry-informative markers (AIMs), constitute a much larger set of loci that drive genomic signatures of population structure. The genome-wide distribution of these significantly correlated markers can largely be accounted for by the stochastic effects of genetic drift, although significant clustering does occur in genomic regions that have been previously implicated as targets of recent adaptive evolution.Link; supplementary material; press release.
Patrician Racist
(photo credit)
Auster faggotry
[Edit: removed "Mangan" from title. Mangan says he would have posted the comment had it been worded differently, which I can respect.]
Dennis Mangan failed to post the following reply to a comment from Lawrence Auster in this thread. For further background, see here, here, and here. Haley Koch photos here.
"Ironically, at my site today, we've been discussing a white woman with an at least partially erotic fixation on Africa, British TV anthropologist Alice Roberts (see this and this), and here you've been talking about another woman with an at least partially erotic fixation on Africa."
"Ironically", it seems all that's been demonstrated is your own and a disturbing number of your commenters's "partially erotic fixation on Africa".
I happen to have seen the BBC program (a complete waste of time, incidentally). Alice Roberts evinced zero attraction to any African -- though she did seem quite taken with a (muscular/tattooed) white American scientist.
Looking at the Haley Koch photos, I similarly see no evidence the girl is attracted to black men. She seems to be traveling with a (white) boyfriend. If she had any desire to fuck congoids, she wouldn't need to go to Africa to do so (likewise for Alice Roberts -- am lulzing at the dude who divined Roberts' strong desire for Bushman cock from that youtube clip).
--
Mind you, I find the politics these two promote repulsive and I agree a healthy society would generally keep women on shorter leashes. A certain degree of paranoia is probably healthy, but the pathological need to attribute these women's actions to an "erotic fixation on Africa" rests on a fundamentally flawed understanding of the world. More plausibly, these two view Africans as children and/or tokens in a status game.
Dennis Mangan failed to post the following reply to a comment from Lawrence Auster in this thread. For further background, see here, here, and here. Haley Koch photos here.
"Ironically, at my site today, we've been discussing a white woman with an at least partially erotic fixation on Africa, British TV anthropologist Alice Roberts (see this and this), and here you've been talking about another woman with an at least partially erotic fixation on Africa."
"Ironically", it seems all that's been demonstrated is your own and a disturbing number of your commenters's "partially erotic fixation on Africa".
I happen to have seen the BBC program (a complete waste of time, incidentally). Alice Roberts evinced zero attraction to any African -- though she did seem quite taken with a (muscular/tattooed) white American scientist.
Looking at the Haley Koch photos, I similarly see no evidence the girl is attracted to black men. She seems to be traveling with a (white) boyfriend. If she had any desire to fuck congoids, she wouldn't need to go to Africa to do so (likewise for Alice Roberts -- am lulzing at the dude who divined Roberts' strong desire for Bushman cock from that youtube clip).
--
Mind you, I find the politics these two promote repulsive and I agree a healthy society would generally keep women on shorter leashes. A certain degree of paranoia is probably healthy, but the pathological need to attribute these women's actions to an "erotic fixation on Africa" rests on a fundamentally flawed understanding of the world. More plausibly, these two view Africans as children and/or tokens in a status game.
Blue-eyed Siberians
Bouakaze et al. Pigment phenotype and biogeographical ancestry from ancient skeletal remains: inferences from multiplexed autosomal SNP analysis. International Journal of Legal Medicine doi:10.1007/s00414-009-0348-5
The genotype for rs12913832 was obtained for 23 out of the 25 samples, and most had the G/G genotype (n=15), which indicates that at least 60% of ancient specimens were probably blue- or green-eyed individuals. The remaining samples had the A/G (n=5) or A/A (n=3) genotypes, which are predictive of brown eye color phenotype.See Dienekes for more, or read the pdf.
American ethnic history in microcosm
["Riverside" is Berlin, Wisconsin.]
Miriam J. Wells. Ethnicity, Social Stigma, and Resource Mobilization in Rural America: Reexamination of a Midwestern Experience. Ethnohistory, Volume 22, Issue 4 (Autumn, 1975), 319-343.
This article examines the interconnection of ethnicity, social stigma, and resource mobilization in order to improve understanding of the historical development of Euro-American communities. It explores the process through which an economically dependent and ethnically stigmatized Polish immigrant population became incorporated into a small midwestern town. It is argued that: 1) contrary to assimilationist assumptions, ethnic incorporation entailed little homogenization of cultural and associational structures; 2) although ethnic differences were negatively viewed by powerholders, they did not invariably constitute a liability in minority resource mobilization; 3) the rate of assimilation and role of ethnicity vary sharply with historical period and context of activity considered.
[. . .]
The Setting
The community of Riverside is in the rich grain-producing region of south-central Wisconsin. Since the turn of the century its population has hovered around 5000. [. . .]
Riverside was first settled in the mid-1840's by Protestant Americans of British descent from upstate New York and New England. Locally referred to as Yankees, those settlers were drawn primarily by the promise of boom profits from land speculation and the cultivation of wheat. In the nineteenth century, Yankees secured a virtual monopoly on leadership positions in banking, finance, manufacturing, business, politics, newspapers, and the professions.' They established the values and life-style patterns which were to characterize appropriate elite behavior for most of the community's history. Distinguishing the Yankee elite from other townspeople were countless fine gradations, perceptible to the insider, as to dress, house location, leisure-time activities, the quality and style of a buggy, and diet.
The rest of the community was composed of immigrants from the British Isles, Germany, and Poland who arrived later in the century. The arrival of Irish and Welsh settlers was gradual and their numbers relatively few, spanning the years from about 1855 to 1890. They represented a range of occupations from affluent businessmen to manual laborers. Outmigration in the late 1800's, combined with Irish failure to marry and bear children, reduced the proportion of those groups in the total population. Those who remained largely merged with the Anglo-American elite.
Although a few Germans arrived in Riverside before the Civil War, the bulk of German settlement began after peace was declared and continued into the early 1890's.7 German settlers fell into three categories: Old Lutherans from northwestern Germany, who were mostly craftsmen and composed the largest German group to come to Riverside; northeastern Germans, some tradesmen and some farmers, who were generally Lutheran, although over half eventually converted to Methodism; and southern and central German Catholics, who were predominantly farmers. German settlers generally brought skills, some education, and perhaps a nest-egg to launch them in their new lives. Some were able to purchase large tracts of the rich farmland to the south and east of Riverside, both from the government and from Yankees who had tired of farming.
Poles were latecomers to the Riverside area.8 Most came from the part of Poland controlled by the Prussian regime; a few came from Russian Poland. It was not until the late 1860's that substantial numbers of Poles began to settle. Most came in response to advertisements in urban Wisconsin newspapers of available employment in the grain fields and cranberry marshes. Arrivals increased until the mid-1890's, declined between 1895 and 1904, and then increased until 1914. Polish migration ended for the most part with World War I and never again reached its earlier proportions. This was because Polish independence after 125 years of partition decreased desire to emigrate and restrictive quota laws were passed after the war. Numerically, however, Poles had come to constitute a majority in the town. By 1925 a local survey indicated that Riverside's ethnic composition was 70% Polish, 15% German, 10% Irish, and the rest English.9
[. . .]
Culturally, then, integration of the Polish population into Riverside did not require elimination of ethnic distinctiveness. Nevertheless, it did entail learning the protocols of a public etiquette whose outlines were largely established by the Anglo-American elite. This etiquette involved the sharing of conventions of uniformity and complementarity, a public image of community. Briefly, it included first a set of norms of conduct governing behavior in the public sphere. These enjoined public behavior "as if" Riverside were internally homogeneous, harmonious, and differentiated only along lines of individual achievement open to all. Second, it included a self-definition of Riversiders as opposed to outsiders as regular people, hard-working, friendly, conservative, ethical, clean, law-abiding, and optimistic. Within the public context, Poles and Yankees alike were included in an inclusive communal "we."
In addition to this public imagery which guided the management of intra-community differences, the very pattern of social relations served to order and implicitly to encourage diversity while building a sense of shared community membership. The segmentation of activity spheres into public and private contexts served to avoid potential conflict between minority and majority cultural values. The major elements of cultural difference were confined to the private sphere, where they bolstered solidarity. This compartmentalization decreased specific knowledge of cultural differences within the town, facilitating preservation of the public myth of homogeneity. It also muted conflict within the Polish population about the maintenance or abandonment of Polish traditions, since their observance was shielded from the censure of powerholders.
[. . .]
Private statements of Anglo- (and German-) Americans reveal that a strong negative stereotype of Poles continued throughout this period. The public/private segmentation of behavioral contexts and conventions did not entirely shield Polish ethnic distinctiveness from Anglo awareness in this small-town setting. Rather, it provided an additional category for viewing Poles: an inclusive "we" category of "Riversider"/"American" as opposed to the exclusive "they" of "foreigner"/"Pole." That is, contrary to the expectations of the assimilation framework. Polish-Anglo ethnic differences persisted and continued to be evaluated negatively by the powerholders. However, that judgment was not necessarily activated in particular contexts. This study indicates that social interaction may permit a great deal of unstated variation in terms of values and definitions of the situation. Nonconflictive encounters involve complementary expectations as to the proper conduct of interaction, rather than identity of private value systems (Wallace 1961). In this context, since both inclusive and exclusive definitions were available to characterize Poles, the question becomes, why was one definition or the other activated in a particular context of activity or historical period?
During the initial decade or so of contact, the unpleasant foreignness of the Polish immigrants was uppermost in the minds of local Yankees. The local newspaper dwelt on the alcoholic excesses and alleged stupidity of the newcomers. It unceremoniously referred to individuals of Polish background as "Poles" rather than as, e.g., "the Durawa family." Since that period, however, the definition of Poles as ethnics has been confined primarily to the private spheres of both Poles and Yankees.
Leo Despres has suggested that ethnic categories are likely to be activated by groups when they confer advantages in competition for material and social resources (1975:199). Extrapolating from that hypothesis, a dominant group might be expected to activate the stigmatic ethnic identity of a minority when its own members are competing with the minority for resources and when the activated identity might rationalize or motivate preferential access to desiderata by the dominant group. While the stigmatic nature of minority ethnic identity might constitute a liability in some settings, it might also serve positive functions: for example, as an aid in mobilizing minority persons for some form of concerted action. Conceivably there could be contexts or activities for which the advantages of ethnic identification might outweigh its disadvantages, even for a minority like the Poles.
[. . .]
The economic experience of Poles in Riverside was characterized by the limited resources of Polish individuals at the outset and their continuing dependency on non-Poles in employment settings. Despite their humble beginnings, however, by the mid-1930's the Polish population had achieved a solid foothold in the local middle class. This integration was a consequence neither of having gained approval for Polish cultural differences nor of having eliminated them. Nevertheless, if the ethnohistorical evidence is to be believed, awareness of these differences was rarely activated by Poles or non-Poles in economic spheres of activity. In this context it seems that it was not the restrictive or permissive aspects of ethnic identity, but the character of the local economic environment, which determined the form of Polish structural incorporation and mobility. The most important aspect of this environment seems to have been the persisting noncompetitive nature of Polish and non-Polish economic niches.15
[. . .]
In sum, in the economic sphere, Poles were not confined to a single niche where their behavior as a corporate group might have secured control over particular resources." Although they could be said initially to have had similar interests by virtue of their concentration within the lowest socioeconomic stratum, these interests did not coalesce into any form of collective action. This was probably due in part to their separation in various employment contexts and immediate dependence on non-Polish superiors. Polish economic roles were largely complementary to those of non-Poles in this setting, a coincidence that probably encouraged agreement by all groups to downplay stigmatic ethnicity.
It seems likely, then, that Polish economic mobility and the predominantly nonethnic phrasing of intergroup contact were permitted and encouraged by a variety of environmental factors: 1) the succession of economic niches characterized by the functional interdependence and complementary interests of Poles and non-Poles; 2) the existence of social-o:ganizational subsistence buffers within the Polish community; 3) the timely availability of resources from the extra-local environment, including, especially, urban industrial employment to augment local employment opportunities; 4) the periodic vacating of niches by non-Poles; 5) a history of economic prosperity; and 6) the proximity, in terms of resources required, of niches providing progressively more control. In this context, Polish ethnic stigma was neither a serious liability nor a real asset affecting integration into the vertical system of material rewards.
Since the currency of politics is numbers, and since the Poles composed a numerical majority of the town's inhabitants, their ethnic identity was a potential basis for recruiting support to enforce their interests. The continuing dependence of Poles on Yankees in economic and social contexts, the small size of the town, and the overlapping nature of social relations rendered public declaration of Polish ethnic identity a generally costly option, so that this course of action was pursued only around issues of unusual import to Poles. Although non-Poles themselves sought to give ethnic phrasing to conflicts, the advantages of ethnic identity for Poles outweighed its liabilities by virtue of Polish numerical preponderance. Consideration of the context of political activity illustrates this connection between the situational requirements of resource mobilization and the role of ethnic stigma.
In the political arena, Yankees tended to dominate formal positions of power and the definition of public issues well into the twentieth century. Their position was reinforced by an ideology which proclaimed the economic and cultural attainments of Yankees to be the appropriate characteristics of a town leader. Publicly phrased in terms of individual differences rather than ethnic categories, this ideology seems to have been long accepted by Poles as well as non-Poles. In two significant instances, however, Poles challenged Yankee control of political decisions. In both of these challenges both Poles and non-Poles sought to phrase the conflicts in ethnic terms. The first dispute was a cultural conflict over the form and content of elementary education. The second centered on the issue of political office-holding and which group should control positions of political power.
The first episode grew out of the strong undercurrent of anti-immigrant sentiment in the late nineteenth century. In 1890 the Republican Wisconsin state legislature passed the Bennett Law, requiring that English be the predominant language used in every school. [. . .]
Resolution of the issue rested on the question of the numbers of followers which proponents and opponents of the law could muster throughout the state. On a state-wide level, non-English-speaking immigrants, especially Germans, easily outnumbered the pietistic Yankee supporters of the law, and in the next state-wide election soundly defeated Republican candidates (Jensen 1971:124ff.). In Riverside, Missouri Synod German Lutherans joined with Polish Catholics in opposition to the Bennett Law, since it threatened their own German-language parochial school. Local voter turnouts were higher than at any previous election, and the customarily Republican town registered resounding support for the Democratic, anti-Bennett Law slate. It was a clear lesson that when specifically cultural conflicts between Anglo-Americans and non-English-speaking immigrants were brought to the political arena, the latter would win.
In this situation, ethnic categories provided Poles with means of mobilizing members of their group against opponents. Since numbers were the crucial resource in the political arena, the advantage gained by rallying ethnic sentiment outweighed any disadvantage from heightened Anglo-American censure. Nevertheless, the intergroup tensions and hostility engendered by this incident persisted for many years, and their memory served as a deterrent to repeated public use of ethnic categories.
The second conflict centered on the election of a Pole to the highest local office of mayor. Prior to the crucial election of 1929, local political offices had been dominated almost exclusively by Anglo-Americans and an occasional wealthy German. Several Poles who had attained the requisite financial credentials through their business enterprises had served as aldermen of Polish wards over the previous decade, but the Anglo and German conviction (unstated but strongly held) that a Pole was unsuited to the highest political office of the town went unchallenged. The election of 1929 raised the question not simply of whose definition of the situation would prevail but, more important, of who should control positions of formal political power.
Poles themselves had long accepted the Yankee's low assessment of their qualifications for public leadership. Polish residents recall their parents' distress at the suggestion that a Polish woman be "first lady" of the town. World War I and the years thereafter, however, played a pivotal role in altering Polish attitudes toward the legitimacy of their own claims to political power. Scores of young Polish-Americans enlisted. When they returned from the war, they felt that, as patriots, they had a claim to political representation. Exposure to contexts outside Riverside convinced many that it was high time that Poles assumed their rightful roles as spokespeople for the town's majority. The candidacy of Stanley Zatkowsky for mayor, in 1929, crystallized this conviction.
Also during this period, wartime economic expansion had brought dramatic financial success to a number of individuals in the Polish community, enabling them to engage in upper-middle-class consumption and recreational patterns formerly confined locally to Protestant-Americans. It is significant that the candidate for mayor was a wealthy entrepreneur who had made a small fortune in the construction industry. He did not conform to the stereotype of the poor, loutish Pole and was well able to give positive recognition to the Polish group.
According to local papers, the election was the most bitter in Riverside's history. No one could remain neutral. Polish candidates emerged for almost every local office and hitched their stars to the fate of Zatkowsky. An opposing slate of Yankees and Germans aligned themselves with the aristocratic Yankee businessman who opposed Zatkowsky. Poles claimed that as Polish-Americans they had a right to equal representation in local government. Yankees raised the specter of the Polish stereotype to encompass Zatkowsky's defeat.
The outcome of the election was a sweep for the Polish candidates. Two years later, Zatkowsky was reelected and the percentage of Poles in local positions increased. After this period, local office-holding clearly reflects the numerical preponderance of Poles in Riverside. Yankees refer to the period as the one in which "the town went to the Poles," the era in which the "city fathers (the mayor and aldermen) were no longer the city fathers (the most respected men in town)." While this difference in private assessments of the legitimacy of Polish claims to public resources persists even today, the Polish domination of political positions is firmly established.
This sequence of events challenges the assimilationist presumption that integration into established communities proceeds steadily and in a unilinear fashion according to length of exposure to a dominant society. In this instance, one form of structural pluralism persisted with little alteration until actions of the subordinate group forced its change. This sudden integration into a vertical system of rewards indicates the dependence of assimilation on variables outside those of cultural difference, social stigma, and length of contact. It points to the necessity of examining the manner in which ethnic identity is made relevant to particular settings in particular periods of history.19
This case provides some insight into the sorts of contexts in which a subordinate group can afford to make its stigmatized ethnicity a public issue. Briefly, this would seem to occur 1) when ethnic categories serve as a means of mobilizing the subordinate group, and 2) when the means of ensuring victory in that context are within the grasp of the collective resources of the group plus its available allies. More generalized surfacing of stigmatic ethnic identification would presumably require more insulation of the subordinate group from the dominant society than was the case in Riverside. It is important to note here that neither segment was successful in forcing its view of Polish ethnicity on the private spheres of the other. The success of Poles in achieving their goals in these encounters was not a consequence of their having convinced Yankees of the legitimacy of their claims, of a convergence of values and definitions.
Conclusion
This article has examined the relations between the genesis and maintenance of ethnic boundaries, the organization of intergroup relations, and competition for environmental resources in a small midwestern town. It has explored the process through which an ethnically stigmatized and largely dependent immigrant population achieved integration into an established system of rewards. While the surface appearance of this multi-ethnic community, together with its shared public imagery, would seem to support the contention that incorporation required elimination of ethnic differences, in-depth investigation indicates otherwise.
While many have attempted to understand communities as normative wholes whose consensus is perpetuated through socialization (Lewis 1951; Banfield 1958; Redfield 1930), this emphasis on internal balance and uniformly shared values is not helpful in understanding social relationships in this town. Social integration in Riverside involved organizing the variety of value orientations and participation patterns, rather than creating uniformity of sentiment and association. The organization of activity into public and private contexts minimized the liability of stigmatic ethnicity without removing it from local consciousness. The etiquette of public behavior provided an inclusive definition of all townspeople and enjoined downplaying intracommunity differences based on ethnicity. This etiquette made possible complementary behavioral and attitudinal expectations among people with considerable private divergence in value systems and activity. Explicitly, ethnic behavior was largely confined to private contexts of interaction within the ethnic populations, thus reducing community-wide knowledge of and confrontation with ethnic differences. Contrary to some expectations (Gordon 1964:233-265) lack of intimate primary relations between ethnic populations did not promote hostile intergroup contact. Rather, a striking degree of compartmentalization coexisted with accommodating intergroup attitudes. The assimilation paradigm does not adequately describe the course of interethnic contact in this setting. Cultural homogenization occurred primarily in the development of public protocols of belief and behavior. This happened relatively early and followed a pattern of Anglo-conformity. Major ethnic cultural differences persisted in the private sphere, however, and the very organization of intergroup relations was based on the separation of ethnic collectivities.
This example illustrates the value of distinguishing between ethnicity as the objective cultural space that exists between two populations and as the subjective identification of self or others. It is apparent that the two may vary independently and that the strength and inclusiveness of the boundaries delineating an ethnic group may fluctuate not only with the situation examined but with the aspect of ethnicity (association, culture, identification) considered. Moreover, as Barth (1969) suggested, the structural separation of ethnic boundaries may persist while their cultural content is altered considerably.
Ethnic categories are only one of a number of categories available to guide social interaction. They are neither necessarily relevant nor necessarily conflictive in a particular instance. Understanding of the factors affecting the use of ethnic categories and the fluctuation of ethnic boundaries must rest on an examination over time of the environmental context and the perceived interests of different segments of the population. This study supports the contention that groups are likely to activate ethnic categories when a competitive advantage results.
The relative importance of the variable of ethnic stigma in affecting resource mobilization, and hence socioeconomic mobility, must be sought in a particular context of activity. In the economic sphere it was found that not ethnic stigma but the economic conditions prevailing in the region of settlement for the generations following arrival determined the form of Polish structural incorporation. The requirements of resource mobilization in the political arena, however, gave ethnic identity a greater potential asset and was employed in two significant instances to ensure prevalence of Polish interests.
Introduction of the temporal dimension is crucial to the understanding of ethnic processes. Ethnic backgrounds constitute a pool of distinguishing features that are not unimportant simply because they appear uninfluential at a particular juncture in history or in a given sphere of activity. They may continue as a potential base for organization and identification and be mobilized as the foundation for an ethnic action group when conditions render such a strategy advantageous. This realization directs attention away from the cultural characteristics of groups in contact, toward examination of situational fluctuation and the possibility of the revitalization of ethnic boundaries, their public reappearance as an important basis for organizing intergroup relations. This understanding also highlights the possibility of rapid acceleration of a particular facet of assimilation, in this case integration into the structure of political rewards, at a given juncture in history.
Miriam J. Wells. Ethnicity, Social Stigma, and Resource Mobilization in Rural America: Reexamination of a Midwestern Experience. Ethnohistory, Volume 22, Issue 4 (Autumn, 1975), 319-343.
This article examines the interconnection of ethnicity, social stigma, and resource mobilization in order to improve understanding of the historical development of Euro-American communities. It explores the process through which an economically dependent and ethnically stigmatized Polish immigrant population became incorporated into a small midwestern town. It is argued that: 1) contrary to assimilationist assumptions, ethnic incorporation entailed little homogenization of cultural and associational structures; 2) although ethnic differences were negatively viewed by powerholders, they did not invariably constitute a liability in minority resource mobilization; 3) the rate of assimilation and role of ethnicity vary sharply with historical period and context of activity considered.
[. . .]
The Setting
The community of Riverside is in the rich grain-producing region of south-central Wisconsin. Since the turn of the century its population has hovered around 5000. [. . .]
Riverside was first settled in the mid-1840's by Protestant Americans of British descent from upstate New York and New England. Locally referred to as Yankees, those settlers were drawn primarily by the promise of boom profits from land speculation and the cultivation of wheat. In the nineteenth century, Yankees secured a virtual monopoly on leadership positions in banking, finance, manufacturing, business, politics, newspapers, and the professions.' They established the values and life-style patterns which were to characterize appropriate elite behavior for most of the community's history. Distinguishing the Yankee elite from other townspeople were countless fine gradations, perceptible to the insider, as to dress, house location, leisure-time activities, the quality and style of a buggy, and diet.
The rest of the community was composed of immigrants from the British Isles, Germany, and Poland who arrived later in the century. The arrival of Irish and Welsh settlers was gradual and their numbers relatively few, spanning the years from about 1855 to 1890. They represented a range of occupations from affluent businessmen to manual laborers. Outmigration in the late 1800's, combined with Irish failure to marry and bear children, reduced the proportion of those groups in the total population. Those who remained largely merged with the Anglo-American elite.
Although a few Germans arrived in Riverside before the Civil War, the bulk of German settlement began after peace was declared and continued into the early 1890's.7 German settlers fell into three categories: Old Lutherans from northwestern Germany, who were mostly craftsmen and composed the largest German group to come to Riverside; northeastern Germans, some tradesmen and some farmers, who were generally Lutheran, although over half eventually converted to Methodism; and southern and central German Catholics, who were predominantly farmers. German settlers generally brought skills, some education, and perhaps a nest-egg to launch them in their new lives. Some were able to purchase large tracts of the rich farmland to the south and east of Riverside, both from the government and from Yankees who had tired of farming.
Poles were latecomers to the Riverside area.8 Most came from the part of Poland controlled by the Prussian regime; a few came from Russian Poland. It was not until the late 1860's that substantial numbers of Poles began to settle. Most came in response to advertisements in urban Wisconsin newspapers of available employment in the grain fields and cranberry marshes. Arrivals increased until the mid-1890's, declined between 1895 and 1904, and then increased until 1914. Polish migration ended for the most part with World War I and never again reached its earlier proportions. This was because Polish independence after 125 years of partition decreased desire to emigrate and restrictive quota laws were passed after the war. Numerically, however, Poles had come to constitute a majority in the town. By 1925 a local survey indicated that Riverside's ethnic composition was 70% Polish, 15% German, 10% Irish, and the rest English.9
[. . .]
Culturally, then, integration of the Polish population into Riverside did not require elimination of ethnic distinctiveness. Nevertheless, it did entail learning the protocols of a public etiquette whose outlines were largely established by the Anglo-American elite. This etiquette involved the sharing of conventions of uniformity and complementarity, a public image of community. Briefly, it included first a set of norms of conduct governing behavior in the public sphere. These enjoined public behavior "as if" Riverside were internally homogeneous, harmonious, and differentiated only along lines of individual achievement open to all. Second, it included a self-definition of Riversiders as opposed to outsiders as regular people, hard-working, friendly, conservative, ethical, clean, law-abiding, and optimistic. Within the public context, Poles and Yankees alike were included in an inclusive communal "we."
In addition to this public imagery which guided the management of intra-community differences, the very pattern of social relations served to order and implicitly to encourage diversity while building a sense of shared community membership. The segmentation of activity spheres into public and private contexts served to avoid potential conflict between minority and majority cultural values. The major elements of cultural difference were confined to the private sphere, where they bolstered solidarity. This compartmentalization decreased specific knowledge of cultural differences within the town, facilitating preservation of the public myth of homogeneity. It also muted conflict within the Polish population about the maintenance or abandonment of Polish traditions, since their observance was shielded from the censure of powerholders.
[. . .]
Private statements of Anglo- (and German-) Americans reveal that a strong negative stereotype of Poles continued throughout this period. The public/private segmentation of behavioral contexts and conventions did not entirely shield Polish ethnic distinctiveness from Anglo awareness in this small-town setting. Rather, it provided an additional category for viewing Poles: an inclusive "we" category of "Riversider"/"American" as opposed to the exclusive "they" of "foreigner"/"Pole." That is, contrary to the expectations of the assimilation framework. Polish-Anglo ethnic differences persisted and continued to be evaluated negatively by the powerholders. However, that judgment was not necessarily activated in particular contexts. This study indicates that social interaction may permit a great deal of unstated variation in terms of values and definitions of the situation. Nonconflictive encounters involve complementary expectations as to the proper conduct of interaction, rather than identity of private value systems (Wallace 1961). In this context, since both inclusive and exclusive definitions were available to characterize Poles, the question becomes, why was one definition or the other activated in a particular context of activity or historical period?
During the initial decade or so of contact, the unpleasant foreignness of the Polish immigrants was uppermost in the minds of local Yankees. The local newspaper dwelt on the alcoholic excesses and alleged stupidity of the newcomers. It unceremoniously referred to individuals of Polish background as "Poles" rather than as, e.g., "the Durawa family." Since that period, however, the definition of Poles as ethnics has been confined primarily to the private spheres of both Poles and Yankees.
Leo Despres has suggested that ethnic categories are likely to be activated by groups when they confer advantages in competition for material and social resources (1975:199). Extrapolating from that hypothesis, a dominant group might be expected to activate the stigmatic ethnic identity of a minority when its own members are competing with the minority for resources and when the activated identity might rationalize or motivate preferential access to desiderata by the dominant group. While the stigmatic nature of minority ethnic identity might constitute a liability in some settings, it might also serve positive functions: for example, as an aid in mobilizing minority persons for some form of concerted action. Conceivably there could be contexts or activities for which the advantages of ethnic identification might outweigh its disadvantages, even for a minority like the Poles.
[. . .]
The economic experience of Poles in Riverside was characterized by the limited resources of Polish individuals at the outset and their continuing dependency on non-Poles in employment settings. Despite their humble beginnings, however, by the mid-1930's the Polish population had achieved a solid foothold in the local middle class. This integration was a consequence neither of having gained approval for Polish cultural differences nor of having eliminated them. Nevertheless, if the ethnohistorical evidence is to be believed, awareness of these differences was rarely activated by Poles or non-Poles in economic spheres of activity. In this context it seems that it was not the restrictive or permissive aspects of ethnic identity, but the character of the local economic environment, which determined the form of Polish structural incorporation and mobility. The most important aspect of this environment seems to have been the persisting noncompetitive nature of Polish and non-Polish economic niches.15
[. . .]
In sum, in the economic sphere, Poles were not confined to a single niche where their behavior as a corporate group might have secured control over particular resources." Although they could be said initially to have had similar interests by virtue of their concentration within the lowest socioeconomic stratum, these interests did not coalesce into any form of collective action. This was probably due in part to their separation in various employment contexts and immediate dependence on non-Polish superiors. Polish economic roles were largely complementary to those of non-Poles in this setting, a coincidence that probably encouraged agreement by all groups to downplay stigmatic ethnicity.
It seems likely, then, that Polish economic mobility and the predominantly nonethnic phrasing of intergroup contact were permitted and encouraged by a variety of environmental factors: 1) the succession of economic niches characterized by the functional interdependence and complementary interests of Poles and non-Poles; 2) the existence of social-o:ganizational subsistence buffers within the Polish community; 3) the timely availability of resources from the extra-local environment, including, especially, urban industrial employment to augment local employment opportunities; 4) the periodic vacating of niches by non-Poles; 5) a history of economic prosperity; and 6) the proximity, in terms of resources required, of niches providing progressively more control. In this context, Polish ethnic stigma was neither a serious liability nor a real asset affecting integration into the vertical system of material rewards.
Since the currency of politics is numbers, and since the Poles composed a numerical majority of the town's inhabitants, their ethnic identity was a potential basis for recruiting support to enforce their interests. The continuing dependence of Poles on Yankees in economic and social contexts, the small size of the town, and the overlapping nature of social relations rendered public declaration of Polish ethnic identity a generally costly option, so that this course of action was pursued only around issues of unusual import to Poles. Although non-Poles themselves sought to give ethnic phrasing to conflicts, the advantages of ethnic identity for Poles outweighed its liabilities by virtue of Polish numerical preponderance. Consideration of the context of political activity illustrates this connection between the situational requirements of resource mobilization and the role of ethnic stigma.
In the political arena, Yankees tended to dominate formal positions of power and the definition of public issues well into the twentieth century. Their position was reinforced by an ideology which proclaimed the economic and cultural attainments of Yankees to be the appropriate characteristics of a town leader. Publicly phrased in terms of individual differences rather than ethnic categories, this ideology seems to have been long accepted by Poles as well as non-Poles. In two significant instances, however, Poles challenged Yankee control of political decisions. In both of these challenges both Poles and non-Poles sought to phrase the conflicts in ethnic terms. The first dispute was a cultural conflict over the form and content of elementary education. The second centered on the issue of political office-holding and which group should control positions of political power.
The first episode grew out of the strong undercurrent of anti-immigrant sentiment in the late nineteenth century. In 1890 the Republican Wisconsin state legislature passed the Bennett Law, requiring that English be the predominant language used in every school. [. . .]
Resolution of the issue rested on the question of the numbers of followers which proponents and opponents of the law could muster throughout the state. On a state-wide level, non-English-speaking immigrants, especially Germans, easily outnumbered the pietistic Yankee supporters of the law, and in the next state-wide election soundly defeated Republican candidates (Jensen 1971:124ff.). In Riverside, Missouri Synod German Lutherans joined with Polish Catholics in opposition to the Bennett Law, since it threatened their own German-language parochial school. Local voter turnouts were higher than at any previous election, and the customarily Republican town registered resounding support for the Democratic, anti-Bennett Law slate. It was a clear lesson that when specifically cultural conflicts between Anglo-Americans and non-English-speaking immigrants were brought to the political arena, the latter would win.
In this situation, ethnic categories provided Poles with means of mobilizing members of their group against opponents. Since numbers were the crucial resource in the political arena, the advantage gained by rallying ethnic sentiment outweighed any disadvantage from heightened Anglo-American censure. Nevertheless, the intergroup tensions and hostility engendered by this incident persisted for many years, and their memory served as a deterrent to repeated public use of ethnic categories.
The second conflict centered on the election of a Pole to the highest local office of mayor. Prior to the crucial election of 1929, local political offices had been dominated almost exclusively by Anglo-Americans and an occasional wealthy German. Several Poles who had attained the requisite financial credentials through their business enterprises had served as aldermen of Polish wards over the previous decade, but the Anglo and German conviction (unstated but strongly held) that a Pole was unsuited to the highest political office of the town went unchallenged. The election of 1929 raised the question not simply of whose definition of the situation would prevail but, more important, of who should control positions of formal political power.
Poles themselves had long accepted the Yankee's low assessment of their qualifications for public leadership. Polish residents recall their parents' distress at the suggestion that a Polish woman be "first lady" of the town. World War I and the years thereafter, however, played a pivotal role in altering Polish attitudes toward the legitimacy of their own claims to political power. Scores of young Polish-Americans enlisted. When they returned from the war, they felt that, as patriots, they had a claim to political representation. Exposure to contexts outside Riverside convinced many that it was high time that Poles assumed their rightful roles as spokespeople for the town's majority. The candidacy of Stanley Zatkowsky for mayor, in 1929, crystallized this conviction.
Also during this period, wartime economic expansion had brought dramatic financial success to a number of individuals in the Polish community, enabling them to engage in upper-middle-class consumption and recreational patterns formerly confined locally to Protestant-Americans. It is significant that the candidate for mayor was a wealthy entrepreneur who had made a small fortune in the construction industry. He did not conform to the stereotype of the poor, loutish Pole and was well able to give positive recognition to the Polish group.
According to local papers, the election was the most bitter in Riverside's history. No one could remain neutral. Polish candidates emerged for almost every local office and hitched their stars to the fate of Zatkowsky. An opposing slate of Yankees and Germans aligned themselves with the aristocratic Yankee businessman who opposed Zatkowsky. Poles claimed that as Polish-Americans they had a right to equal representation in local government. Yankees raised the specter of the Polish stereotype to encompass Zatkowsky's defeat.
The outcome of the election was a sweep for the Polish candidates. Two years later, Zatkowsky was reelected and the percentage of Poles in local positions increased. After this period, local office-holding clearly reflects the numerical preponderance of Poles in Riverside. Yankees refer to the period as the one in which "the town went to the Poles," the era in which the "city fathers (the mayor and aldermen) were no longer the city fathers (the most respected men in town)." While this difference in private assessments of the legitimacy of Polish claims to public resources persists even today, the Polish domination of political positions is firmly established.
This sequence of events challenges the assimilationist presumption that integration into established communities proceeds steadily and in a unilinear fashion according to length of exposure to a dominant society. In this instance, one form of structural pluralism persisted with little alteration until actions of the subordinate group forced its change. This sudden integration into a vertical system of rewards indicates the dependence of assimilation on variables outside those of cultural difference, social stigma, and length of contact. It points to the necessity of examining the manner in which ethnic identity is made relevant to particular settings in particular periods of history.19
This case provides some insight into the sorts of contexts in which a subordinate group can afford to make its stigmatized ethnicity a public issue. Briefly, this would seem to occur 1) when ethnic categories serve as a means of mobilizing the subordinate group, and 2) when the means of ensuring victory in that context are within the grasp of the collective resources of the group plus its available allies. More generalized surfacing of stigmatic ethnic identification would presumably require more insulation of the subordinate group from the dominant society than was the case in Riverside. It is important to note here that neither segment was successful in forcing its view of Polish ethnicity on the private spheres of the other. The success of Poles in achieving their goals in these encounters was not a consequence of their having convinced Yankees of the legitimacy of their claims, of a convergence of values and definitions.
Conclusion
This article has examined the relations between the genesis and maintenance of ethnic boundaries, the organization of intergroup relations, and competition for environmental resources in a small midwestern town. It has explored the process through which an ethnically stigmatized and largely dependent immigrant population achieved integration into an established system of rewards. While the surface appearance of this multi-ethnic community, together with its shared public imagery, would seem to support the contention that incorporation required elimination of ethnic differences, in-depth investigation indicates otherwise.
While many have attempted to understand communities as normative wholes whose consensus is perpetuated through socialization (Lewis 1951; Banfield 1958; Redfield 1930), this emphasis on internal balance and uniformly shared values is not helpful in understanding social relationships in this town. Social integration in Riverside involved organizing the variety of value orientations and participation patterns, rather than creating uniformity of sentiment and association. The organization of activity into public and private contexts minimized the liability of stigmatic ethnicity without removing it from local consciousness. The etiquette of public behavior provided an inclusive definition of all townspeople and enjoined downplaying intracommunity differences based on ethnicity. This etiquette made possible complementary behavioral and attitudinal expectations among people with considerable private divergence in value systems and activity. Explicitly, ethnic behavior was largely confined to private contexts of interaction within the ethnic populations, thus reducing community-wide knowledge of and confrontation with ethnic differences. Contrary to some expectations (Gordon 1964:233-265) lack of intimate primary relations between ethnic populations did not promote hostile intergroup contact. Rather, a striking degree of compartmentalization coexisted with accommodating intergroup attitudes. The assimilation paradigm does not adequately describe the course of interethnic contact in this setting. Cultural homogenization occurred primarily in the development of public protocols of belief and behavior. This happened relatively early and followed a pattern of Anglo-conformity. Major ethnic cultural differences persisted in the private sphere, however, and the very organization of intergroup relations was based on the separation of ethnic collectivities.
This example illustrates the value of distinguishing between ethnicity as the objective cultural space that exists between two populations and as the subjective identification of self or others. It is apparent that the two may vary independently and that the strength and inclusiveness of the boundaries delineating an ethnic group may fluctuate not only with the situation examined but with the aspect of ethnicity (association, culture, identification) considered. Moreover, as Barth (1969) suggested, the structural separation of ethnic boundaries may persist while their cultural content is altered considerably.
Ethnic categories are only one of a number of categories available to guide social interaction. They are neither necessarily relevant nor necessarily conflictive in a particular instance. Understanding of the factors affecting the use of ethnic categories and the fluctuation of ethnic boundaries must rest on an examination over time of the environmental context and the perceived interests of different segments of the population. This study supports the contention that groups are likely to activate ethnic categories when a competitive advantage results.
The relative importance of the variable of ethnic stigma in affecting resource mobilization, and hence socioeconomic mobility, must be sought in a particular context of activity. In the economic sphere it was found that not ethnic stigma but the economic conditions prevailing in the region of settlement for the generations following arrival determined the form of Polish structural incorporation. The requirements of resource mobilization in the political arena, however, gave ethnic identity a greater potential asset and was employed in two significant instances to ensure prevalence of Polish interests.
Introduction of the temporal dimension is crucial to the understanding of ethnic processes. Ethnic backgrounds constitute a pool of distinguishing features that are not unimportant simply because they appear uninfluential at a particular juncture in history or in a given sphere of activity. They may continue as a potential base for organization and identification and be mobilized as the foundation for an ethnic action group when conditions render such a strategy advantageous. This realization directs attention away from the cultural characteristics of groups in contact, toward examination of situational fluctuation and the possibility of the revitalization of ethnic boundaries, their public reappearance as an important basis for organizing intergroup relations. This understanding also highlights the possibility of rapid acceleration of a particular facet of assimilation, in this case integration into the structure of political rewards, at a given juncture in history.
Racial/ethnic differences in male pattern baldness
The following entry from Polak showed up in my feed reader, though Polak seems to have removed it from his site.Recent positive selection and male pattern baldnessI'm not terribly interested in quantitative differences here, but some qualitative ethnic differences in hairlines jump out at the observant. The straight-across hairline can add a vaguely disturbing note to already less-than-aesthetic Jewish physiognomies.
[This study] shows that recent selection has apparently pushed up the risk of baldness in Europeans, although obviously it's a lot more complex than that. The authors focus on the HapMap cohorts (Chinese, Japanese, Yoruba from Nigeria and Utah European Americans), which is a bit of a shame, because it would've been great to see the results for a variety of European groups. By the way, no subscription or payment is required for this one...
Axel M. Hillmer et al, Recent positive selection of a human androgen receptor/ectodysplasin A2 receptor haplotype and its relationship to male pattern baldness, Human Genetics, Published online: 17 April 2009, doi: 10.1007/s00439-009-0668-z
More:
The Mediterranean or Latin development of pattern baldness involves recession of the frontal hairline and the development of vertex baldness. These two regions of hair loss expand and coalesce into the extensive type V pattern.
The Semitic (Jewish, Arabian) presentation of pattern alopecia involves progressive recession of the frontal hairline but there is no associated thinning on the vertex according to Ebling.
The Nordic presentation with a central lock of surviving hair was noted by Norwood in the development of his classification system. Ebling suggested the five stage system for Nordic races as shown below.
References (from the first site linked above):Human balding occurs in several patterns. These sometimes occur together or separately and occur at different frequencies. Some noteworthy patterns are: (A) Double point, forehead recession, widow’s peak; (B) Monk’s spot (usually A and B occur together; they are common in many European countries); (C) Line-of-march, common in the Mediterranean countries (e.g., Albert Einstein); (D) Single point forehead recession, common among Orientals (e.g., Mao Tse-tung).
* Norwood OT. Male pattern baldness: classification and incidence. South Med J. 1975 Nov;68(11):1359-65.
* Hamilton JB. Patterned loss of hair in man: types and incidence. Ana N Y Acad Dermatol 1951:53;708-28
* Camacho F, Montagna W. Trichology. Diseases of the pilosebaceous follicle. S. Karger Publishers Inc. Farmington, USA. 1998. ISBN: 3-8055-6672-7
* Norwood OT. Hair Transplant Surgery. Charles C Thomas Publishers, Springfield IL, USA, 1973. ISBN 0-398-02892-3
More research linking IQ and health
Brainy men may be healthier men:
A new study of 3654 Vietnam War veterans finds that men with lower IQs are more likely to suffer from dozens of health problems – from hernias, to ear inflammation, to cataracts – compared with those showing greater intelligence.I also found Geoffrey Miller's conceptualization of general intelligence useful:
This offers tantalising – yet preliminary – evidence that health and intelligence are the result of common genetic factors, and that low intelligence may be an indication of harmful genetic mutations. [. . .]
Journal reference: Intelligence (DOI: 10.1016/j.intell.2009.03.008)
Even within my own field, evolutionary psychologists tend to misunderstand general intelligence as a psychological adaptation in its own right, often misconstruing it as a specific mental organ, module, brain area, or faculty. However, it is not viewed that way by most intelligence researchers who, instead, regard general intelligence as an individual-differences construct—like the constructs “health,” “beauty,” or “status.” Health is not a bodily organ; it is an abstract construct or “latent variable” that emerges when one statistically analyzes the functional efficiencies of many different organs. Because good genes, diet, and exercise tend to produce good hearts, lungs, and antibodies, the vital efficiencies of circulatory, pulmonary, and immune systems tend to positively correlate, yielding a general “health” factor. Likewise, beauty is not a single sexual ornament like a peacock’s tail; it is a latent variable that emerges when one analyzes the attractiveness of many different sexual ornaments throughout the face and body (such as eyes, lips, skin, hair, chest, buttocks, and legs, plus general skin quality, hair condition, muscle tone, and optimal amount and distribution of fat). Similarly, general intelligence is not a mental organ, but a latent variable that emerges when one analyzes the functional efficiencies of many different mental organs (such as memory, language ability, social perceptiveness, speed at learning practical skills, and musical aptitude). ...
Estimate of archaic admixture in Europeans and Asians
Interesting results.
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msp096
Detecting ancient admixture and estimating demographic parameters in multiple human populations
Jeffrey D. Wall, Kirk E. Lohmueller and Vincent Plagnol
We analyze patterns of genetic variation in extant human polymorphism data from the NIEHS SNPs project to estimate human demographic parameters. We update our previous work by considering a larger data set (more genes and more populations), and by explicitly estimating the amount of putative admixture between modern humans and archaic human groups (e.g., Neandertals, Homo erectus, H. floresiensis). We find evidence for this ancient admixture in European, East Asian and West African samples, suggesting that admixture between diverged hominin groups may be a general feature of recent human evolution.
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/msp096v1
We estimate admixture proportions of 14 % (95% CI: 8 – 20 %) in the European-American sample and 1.5% (95% CI: 0.5 – 2.5 %) in the East Asian sample. In both cases, the relative log-likelihood for a = 0 (i.e., no ancient admixture) is significantly lower than the maximum likelihood (likelihood-ratio test, p < 10-3) , which provides additional evidence (along with the S* results in the previous paragraph) that ancient admixture occurred. The estimates of admixture rates in Europeans are consistent with estimates of Neandertal admixture obtained from analyses of Neandertal DNA (Serre et al. 2004; Noonan et al. 2006), [. . .] Unlike previous studies, we incorporated admixture between archaic and modern humans as an additional demographic parameter to be co-estimated. Interestingly, we could exclude no admixture (i.e., exclude a = 0) in both of the non-African populations studied. [. . .]MBE Advance Access published online on May 6, 2009
We estimate low levels of ancient admixture in East Asia, perhaps with either Asian Homo erectus or H. floresiensis. [. . .] For simulations under our best-fit model, approximately 6% of loci have at least some archaic ancestry (i.e., have at least one sequence that inherited DNA from the archaic Asian population). [. . .]
Our signal of ancient admixture (as measured by S*) is strongest in the West African samples, though the spotty fossil record in sub-Saharan Africa makes it difficult to speculate about potential source populations or the times and locations of admixture. This said, there was thought to be a substantial amount of hominin taxonomic diversity within Africa during the Pleistocene. We note that our simple two-population model does not allow for any population structure within continental groups, and there may be a substantial amount of unsampled population structure within Africa (e.g., between West Africans and pygmies or San, cf. Wall et al. 2008) that serves as a confounding factor. The observation that all (three) populations studied seem to have evidence for ancient admixture suggests that ancient population structure may be a common feature of all contemporary human populations, and this ancient structure may predate the initial expansion of modern humans out of Africa. Future work that estimates the lengths of the putative chunks of sequence inherited from archaic populations may help to estimate the timing of ancient admixture events.
Molecular Biology and Evolution, doi:10.1093/molbev/msp096
Detecting ancient admixture and estimating demographic parameters in multiple human populations
Jeffrey D. Wall, Kirk E. Lohmueller and Vincent Plagnol
We analyze patterns of genetic variation in extant human polymorphism data from the NIEHS SNPs project to estimate human demographic parameters. We update our previous work by considering a larger data set (more genes and more populations), and by explicitly estimating the amount of putative admixture between modern humans and archaic human groups (e.g., Neandertals, Homo erectus, H. floresiensis). We find evidence for this ancient admixture in European, East Asian and West African samples, suggesting that admixture between diverged hominin groups may be a general feature of recent human evolution.
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/msp096v1
More on Tishkoff et al.
Regarding the recently published African genetic structure paper.
(1) The following bit of asininity from Afro-Jew Roy King made it into a news story:
The truth, of course, is that the theories and classifications of early European physical anthropologists are remarkably consistent with the latest genetic data.
People like King also have European colonialists to thank for initiating the study and categorization of African languages.
(2) This comment from "argiedude" (posting as "wolcupitol") is worth reading. The "greater genetic diversity" of Africans is well-established, but the number of clusters reported in this study for Africa vs. the rest of the world is not evidence of such -- the number of clusters is somewhat arbitrary and influenced by sample selection.
(1) The following bit of asininity from Afro-Jew Roy King made it into a news story:
The "landmark study" should erase any vestiges of colonial-era thinking that Africa is one unit, said Roy King, a Stanford University associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences.Wait, weren't we supposed to be blaming evil colonialist whiteys for creating "racialist" theories which made distinctions among Africans?
"No longer can we see Africa as just this homogeneous population," said King, who has studied African migration patterns but was not part of the new paper.
The truth, of course, is that the theories and classifications of early European physical anthropologists are remarkably consistent with the latest genetic data.
People like King also have European colonialists to thank for initiating the study and categorization of African languages.
(2) This comment from "argiedude" (posting as "wolcupitol") is worth reading. The "greater genetic diversity" of Africans is well-established, but the number of clusters reported in this study for Africa vs. the rest of the world is not evidence of such -- the number of clusters is somewhat arbitrary and influenced by sample selection.
Basques: not a genetic isolate
European Journal of Human Genetics advance online publication 6 May 2009; doi: 10.1038/ejhg.2009.69
Isolated populations as treasure troves in genetic epidemiology: the case of the Basques
Paolo Garagnani et al.
The Basques are a culturally isolated population, living across the western border between France and Spain and speaking a non-Indo-European language. They show outlier allele frequencies in the ABO, RH, and HLA loci. To test whether Basques are a genetic isolate with the features that would make them good candidates in genetic association studies, we genotyped 123 SNPs in a 1-Mb region in chromosome 22 in Basque samples from France and Spain, as well as in samples from northern and southern Spain, and in three North African samples. Both Basque samples showed similar levels of heterozygosity to the other populations, and the decay of linkage disequilibrium with physical distance was not different between Basques and non-Basques. Thus, Basques do not show the genetic properties expected in population isolates.
Keywords: Basques, linkage disequilibrium, genetic isolates
link
Isolated populations as treasure troves in genetic epidemiology: the case of the Basques
Paolo Garagnani et al.
The Basques are a culturally isolated population, living across the western border between France and Spain and speaking a non-Indo-European language. They show outlier allele frequencies in the ABO, RH, and HLA loci. To test whether Basques are a genetic isolate with the features that would make them good candidates in genetic association studies, we genotyped 123 SNPs in a 1-Mb region in chromosome 22 in Basque samples from France and Spain, as well as in samples from northern and southern Spain, and in three North African samples. Both Basque samples showed similar levels of heterozygosity to the other populations, and the decay of linkage disequilibrium with physical distance was not different between Basques and non-Basques. Thus, Basques do not show the genetic properties expected in population isolates.
Keywords: Basques, linkage disequilibrium, genetic isolates
link
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