Don’t trust an archaeologist about genetics, don’t trust a geneticist about archaeology
Who to trust? That is the question when you don’t know very much (all of us). Trust is precious, and to some extent sacred. That’s why I can flip out when I realize after the fact that someone more informed than me in field X sampled biased…
I believe in the blank slate!
Well, not really…but in some ways close enough judged against the initial reference point of where I started on certain questions. Dienekes contends:
This will help us understand both: the ancestors of non-Africans did not come forth fully forme…
I believe in the blank slate!
Well, not really…but in some ways close enough judged against the initial reference point of where I started on certain questions. Dienekes contends:
This will help us understand both: the ancestors of non-Africans did not come forth fully forme…
I believe in the blank slate!
Well, not really…but in some ways close enough judged against the initial reference point of where I started on certain questions. Dienekes contends:
This will help us understand both: the ancestors of non-Africans did not come forth fully forme…
There may be no gene which is essential for our humanity
The always informative Ann Gibbons has a piece in Slate, The Neanderthal in My Family Tree. There is almost nothing new for regular readers of this weblog, but it’s rather awesome that Slate is now publishing stuff like this. Many people are simp…
Beauty is objective & subjective
On occasion it is useful to outline definitions and frameworks. One thing that I often hear (i.e., I am constantly told) is that beauty is a subjective, and culturally defined, construct. In particular it is common for me to listen to explanations of &…
The real end of science
Fifteen years ago John Horgan wrote The End Of Science: Facing The Limits Of Knowledge In The Twilight Of The Scientific Age. I remain skeptical as to the specific details of this book, but Carl’s write-up in The New York Times of a new paper in …
The Others, in black and white
New Scientist has a piece up, Europeans did not inherit pale skins from Neanderthals, based on a paper I blogged last month. One thing that I hadn’t though about in detail…how did anatomically modern humans of various shades perceive Neand…
Humanity isn’t, it becomes
John Hawks prompts to reemphasize an aspect of my thinking which has undergone a revolution over the past 10 years. I pointed to it in my post on the Khoe-San. In short, the common anatomically modern human ancestors of Khoe-San and non-Khoe-San may n…
The brambly bush of humanity
Over at Haldane’s Sieve there are more than preprints posted, there are commentaries from the authors as well. For example, for The genetic prehistory of southern Africa, the first author, Dr. Joseph K. Pickrell, has a extended comment up.
But oc…
Who tolerates anti-American preaching from Muslims?
Obviously the news over the past week has been filled with the events in the Middle East, and the broader Muslim world, in reaction to an anti-Muslim film. I think the most eloquent commentary is from The Onion (NSFW!!!), No One Murdered Because Of Thi…
Predicting someone’s face: look at their parents
A few years ago there was a paper out which illustrated that standard Galtonian method of regression of offspring upon parents still predicted height far better than the most modern genomic techniques. The issue is that height is a quantitative trait w…
A genetic map of Italy
Since the Ralph & Coop paper on IBD patterns across Europe I’ve been keen to see what gets uncovered about Italy. Recall, if you will, that in that paper the authors noted that Italy in particular of European nations exhibits a lot of deep po…
Pedophiles: born that way?
Gawker published a piece on the neurological problems which might result in pedophilia, and naturally a lot of shock and disgust was triggered. The piece is titled Born This Way: Sympathy and Science for Those Who Want to Have Sex with Children. This i…
A little ADMIXTURE on Uygurs
Prompted by a comment below I decided to “quick & dirty” double-check whether the Uygurs’ East Asian ancestry was more Han or Japanese in affinity. My recollection was that it was more shifted toward sub-Siberian populations, such…
The pruned tree
Dienekes Pontikos has a long post up on how reticulation within phylogenetic trees may distort our perception of human natural history when we force the data into a more conventional tree (i.e., bifurcation after bifurcation). The concrete reason for t…
Not all genes are created the same
The map to the right shows the frequencies of HGDP populations on SLC45A2, which is a locus that has been implicated in skin color variation in humans. It’s for the SNP rs16891982, and I yanked the figure from IrisPlex: A sensitive DNA tool for a…
Europeans got less shaded in stages
The Pith: the evolution of lighter skin is complex, and seems to have occurred in stages. The current European phenotype may date to the end of the last Ice Age.
A new paper in Molecular Biology and Evolution, The timing of pigmentation lightening in E…
Eat smarter, don’t work out harder?
There have been several recent studies reemphasizing diet over exercise (timely because Americans are kind of fat, on average). A new piece in The New York Times looking at the Hadza of Tanzania, who are hunter-gatherers, seems to reiterate this point,…
Genes & geography – the great correlation
A paper is out in PLoS Genetics which attempts to formalize the relationship between genes and geography, A Quantitative Comparison of the Similarity between Genes and Geography in Worldwide Human Populations. They found a reasonable correlation, but …