Comments on Evo and Proud: A detour through Europe?

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So... were the Clovisolutrean settlers of the new ...

2013-05-24T17:25:17.222-04:00

So... were the Clovisolutrean settlers of the new world, bronze or white? If they took the steppe-tundra route, we'd have to assume bronze. But if they crossed water (Solutreans had boats), perhaps skirting the edge of a winter transatlantic icepack, maybe white Clovisolutreans hit North America first...

...which would explain numerous Native American legends, of their ancestors encountering the prior inhabitants of the land -- "white giants" -- some described as blue eyed or red headed.

But then...who are middle easterners and south asi...

2013-04-23T15:59:56.755-04:00

But then...who are middle easterners and south asians descended from? they seem to cluster closer to europeans than modern east asians do in principal component analyses.

Second point. One could speculate that the Danish ...

2012-11-15T16:30:25.742-05:00

Second point. One could speculate that the Danish contributed the traits that made England's invention of the modern world possible. The US too, the Puritans who went to New England were disproportionately from East Anglia, the most Danish part of England.

First point, no. The original skin color in Sub Sa...

2012-11-15T16:15:35.538-05:00

First point, no. The original skin color in Sub Saharan Africa can be seen in surviving hunter gatherer peoples. The Bushmen who are known to be basal to all other populations of modern humans are far lighter than Black Africans. (Peter's ideas about why Black Africans are so dark here).

Cromagnons got lighter but prior to 19,000 years ago no humans were white.

As the pigmentation mutations that lighten Europea...

2012-11-15T06:22:31.573-05:00

As the pigmentation mutations that lighten Europeans and Asians are different and not shared. If Asians only separated 20kya in France that implies that there ancestors the Cromagnons were as dark as Negroes up to that time.

Sean the vikings did not only invade England they also made conquest in France, North Africa and over round headed slavs in Russia.

'Anglo Saxons' did very little real fight...

2012-11-13T12:33:11.608-05:00

'Anglo Saxons' did very little real fighting Bishop Wulfstan complained Saxon lords often looked on and did nothing as their wife and daughters were gang raped by Vikings.

The Viking age was caused by a special situation that forced Danish men to be aggressive; female infantide caused an excess of males in their society, there was a youth bulge disproportionately made up of young men.

Remember that the eastern 'English' suffering Viking attacks were to a great extent ethnically Danish. The 'Anglo Saxon' Jutes (Jutland) the Angles (Angeln) via Fresia. 'Saxon' England,

Denmark is the most tender minded minded country in the world; more accepting of homosexuality (Vikings had sex with one another on the longboats BTW) than any other state, homosexuality was legalised in 1933, the age of consent is 15, first country to legalize same sex unions. It goes overboard on sustainable energy "the Danish Government has set a goal of running the entire country on renewables by 2050. What makes Denmark's announcement even more unusual is that it has won support from across the country's political spectrum" Here.

Denmark scraps fat tax after it emerges people were travelling across the border in search of cheaper unhealthy snacks Nanny state.

A modern Viking Danish protester: 'No one would care if a Palestinian was hit with a rifle' "While volunteering for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in the West Bank over the past six weeks, Ias says he has witnessed "a process of ethnic cleansing that has been going on since the start of the occupation".

The Danish psyche is as far from being sympathetic to Nazi ideals as it is possible to get.

QUOTE="But Finnish men look like hard bastard...

2012-11-11T20:41:30.918-05:00

QUOTE="But Finnish men look like hard bastards Compare a Finnish war hero to a Danish war hero (the only one, Denmark surrendered after 2 hours). Finns (and Baltic) men's faces seem to show less sign of sexual selection of women. That makes me think the Baltic peoples have retained some of the face shape from 25,000-21,000-BP"

If Danes cant fight please explain the viking age. Perhaps they just realized the Nazis made better masters than the Soviets.

"I have no clue why this "inference"...

2012-11-06T13:41:04.416-05:00

"I have no clue why this "inference" is given by him superior status to actual mtdna from bones that were actually buried in the ground at that time."

Anon,

The study by Melchior et al. was based on mtDNA from bones.

I think the link on Rose's fruit fly experimen...

2012-11-04T18:03:22.344-05:00

I think the link on Rose's fruit fly experiment suggests there would be drastic changes, again Natural Selection Cuts Broad Swath Through Fruit Fly Genome "In addition, soft sweeps could explain the apparent speed of human evolution, because they work on the genetic variation already present in a population, without having to wait for a novel mutation to arise."

Peter is maintaining his hypothesis, I would note the vitamin D evidence seemed to refute his ideas, but lo and behold he has already seen off the vitamin D objection.

The best thing to have is a good theory, not a bunch of bien pensant supporters. We shall see.

If Euro HG mtDNA was in the earliest farmers and d...

2012-11-04T17:14:23.487-05:00

If Euro HG mtDNA was in the earliest farmers and disappeared over the next thousand years, is it really so difficult to believe that other DNA (which evolves far more rapidly) could alter drastically?

Firstly, about this comment of Peter's that "the sharp genetic divide was not between late hunter/fisher/gatherers and early farmers" it is based on a paper which states "A high frequency of Hg U lineages , especially U5, has been inferred for pre-Neolithic Europeans based on modern mtDNA data, with Hg U5 being fairly specific to Europe.". I have no clue why this "inference" is given by him superior status to actual mtdna from bones that were actually buried in the ground at that time.

Secondly, as far as I am aware, yes it is. The largely neutral autosome is not going to evolve to match more closely the Middle Eastern genome by natural selection. It's not going to happen.

A selective story is dubious but believable for mtDNA. It's not plausible at all for the autosome. We're not talking introgressing variants or selective sweeps here.

I don't think you'll find anyone who believes a selective story is plausible, or that the increased similarities could evolve by chance or drift. I have never seen any genome blogger or published paper ever remotely suggest that selection or drift is a plausible explanation at all.

The first key idea is that evolution optimizes fun...

2012-11-04T14:19:32.590-05:00

The first key idea is that evolution optimizes function. It makes things ... It magnifies the rare changes that improve things (G.Cochran)

I have faith in Gregory Cochran. It is strange indeed for the author of a book about the EXPLOSION in selection during the last last 10,000 years to, in effect, argue that very transition to agriculture didn't involve a process of picking up hyper-marginal genes and running with them, thereby transforming the genome of the hunter gatherers beyond all recognition.

You know. Magnifying 'the rare changes that improve things'. And being necessarily extremely rare during hunter gatherer times (when they were not adaptive), it would be possible for these rare genes to happen to be present in the samples of adna from hunter gatherer times that we have. But them not being there, in the relatively few samples we have, is far from proof that they were alien to Europe.

Citing (Melchior et al., 2010), Peter's rejoinder to Cochran was "So the sharp genetic divide was not between late hunter/fisher/gatherers and early farmers. It was between the earliest farmers and groups that had been farming for at least a millennium. The evidence points to natural selection and not to population replacement."

mtDNA is selected very very slowly (many still claim it's not selected at all). If Euro HG mtDNA was in the earliest farmers and disappeared over the next thousand years, is it really so difficult to believe that other DNA (which evolves far more rapidly) could alter drastically?

Breeding fruit flys for simple longevity there were changes in all sorts of genes found:here. The myriad challenges of agriculture would have transformed the genome.

The Pontic-Caspian steppe is at the eastern edge of the west European plain; why would anyone be surprised at European hair and eye color genes being in the Kurgan homeland, Nuristan, or Manchuria by the Neolithic.

White skin has nothing to do with vitamin D and/or agricultue, it appeared between 19,000 and 11,000 years ago in ancestral Europeans only. Moreover many Europeans have weak features, to the extent that their faces are too small for their teeth, and we know this was true 13,000 years ago, so it wasn't caused by reduced need for chewing with an agricultural diet.

It is hand waving to ignore these salient facts and point to the discrepancy between the pre agricultural and the current European genomes.

Feminine women would be more impacted by female hormones, and reproductive system cancers are caused by such hormones right? Europe has the highest rates of breast and ovarian cancer, and Denmark has the highest of all.

Scroll up a bit on this page to linked study 'Comprehensive candidate gene study highlights UGT1A and BNC2 as new genes determining continuous skin color variation in Europeans. ' that says "We identified two new skin color genes: genetic variants in UGT1A were significantly associated with hue and variants in BNC2 were significantly associated with saturation" Also linked above on this page is the study 'Ovarian cancer-associated polymorphisms in the BNC2 gene among women with endometriosis.'

Now do you see.

:shrugs: your faith is perhaps admirable, but loo...

2012-11-04T05:13:45.151-05:00

:shrugs:

your faith is perhaps admirable, but looking at adna directly, and particularly at the pigmentation mutations there, will give us irrefutable information about gene flow to Europe, and the timing of pigmentation changes. More so than cobbling together a bunch of random studies that you feel support your favored theory. shame you don't have any interest.

I'll take your word for it. The mtDNA has been...

2012-11-03T18:33:26.797-04:00

I'll take your word for it.
The mtDNA has been further called into question just last week. Though I don't know about genetics, the markers across the entire autosome from adna, it will prove no more reliable.

I know this because what is being said about white skin, vitamin D and craniofacial form is nonsense (and about vitamin D, I do know). Thats what was meant by saying 'The lack of a plausible evolutionary explanation for phenomena which are anomalous for a hypothesis is only inconclusive while the science is not well understood. Once we do understand, then it's no longer tenable to make hand waving assumptions about some future discovery which will transform the field and resolve all the anomalies. The hypothesis has to be abandoned.'

Read post again, more carefully, here's Peter ...

2012-11-03T15:54:31.571-04:00

Read post again, more carefully, here's Peter arguing against (total) replacement at Cochran and Harpending's blog

I'm not talking about mtdna evidence, for which a selective argument may be plausible. These are markers across the entire autosome from adna.

http://dienekes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/ancient-dna-from-neolithic-sweden.html

http://dienekes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/mesolithic-iberians-la-brana-arintero.html

http://dienekes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/first-look-at-genome-of-tyrolean-iceman.html

These are all subsequent to that whole discussion between Peter and Greg. Read up if you're not aware.

You have to consider this in light of the latest evidence...

Particularly of interest to you would be that the more narrow faced Western Europeans show less "paleolithic" (apparently) ancestry than the wider faced Eastern Europeans.

determinants of serum vitamin D levels The vitami...

2012-11-03T13:14:31.173-04:00

determinants of serum vitamin D levels

The vitamin D-agriculture /replacement hypothesis would posit a time frame for the European specific skin lightening alleles of around 7000 years ago at the earliest.. But the date for the for the European specific skin lightening alleles is actually 19,000 to 11,000 years ago. Peter 's theory that the white skin of today's Europeans evolved in a period of intense sexual selection (in Europe) that occurred 20,000-15,000 BP, had very little to support it at first. The vitamin D hypothesis is finished, the mtDNA case for replacement was badly weakened by the above study. The timing of skeletal changes (such as impacted teeth), along with the skin lightening gene dates converge on one conclusion. A bad theory does not get studies flying to its aid from every quarter.

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Redness enhances perceived aggression, dominance and attractiveness in men's faces.

Comprehensive candidate gene study highlights UGT1A and BNC2 as new genes determining continuous skin color variation in Europeans. "We identified two new skin color genes: genetic variants in UGT1A were significantly associated with hue and variants in BNC2 were significantly associated with saturation"

UGT1A polymorphisms in a Swedish cohort and a human diversity panel, and the relation to bilirubin plasma levels in males and females. "Testing for the association of genotype and total bilirubin levels (nonfasting) in plasma disclosed that homozygous carriers of the TA allele, irrespective of haplotype combinations, had increased levels of bilirubin compared with noncarriers, but a gender-associated difference was observed."

Ovarian cancer-associated polymorphisms in the BNC2 gene among women with endometriosis.

Anon, study cited in your second comment has circ...

2012-11-03T13:08:51.660-04:00

Anon, study cited in your second comment has circumstantial 'key arguments'. Read post again, more carefully, here's Peter arguing against (total) replacement at Cochran and Harpending's blog

The lack of a plausible ' evolutionary' explanation for phenomena which are anomalous for a hypothesis is only inconclusive while the science is not well understood. Once we do understand, then it's no longer tenable to make hand waving assumptions about some future discovery which will transform the field and resolve all the anomalies. The hypothesis has to be abandoned.

For example at one time interstellar travel was plausible, but now we know that it would require humans to spend hundreds of years on spaceships. Nothing we might discover about physics can change the brute facts about light speed or human lifespan. Genetic replacement is a hypotheses that is coming under pressure. It's questionable whether an informed person would still be at all confident whether its assumptions are correct.

There is only one non sexual selection explanation for impacted wisdom teeth and less robust facial features: reduced biting stress with agricultural diet. But Magdelenian girl is 13,000-15,000 years old. So what caused those who replaced Europeans to alter very quickly and look like the people they 'replaced.' Drift doesn't work that fast, so it seems the 'Replacement ' camp must argue there was some kind of selection, but instead of putting up or shutting up, they are adroitly reticent. Evasive even.

The relationship of white skin to vitamin D synthesis is a field where the important factors are already well understood. It's now known what the determinants of serum vitamin D levels are. For a significant proportion of the fair skinned, UVB exposure does not raise serum vitamin D above a (supposedly insufficient) baseline. Genetic factors which are inversely correlated with how pigmented skin is are the primary determinants of serum vitamin D levels. In other words, when exposed to sun, very light skinned Europeans get less vitamin D in serum than darker people, not more. Bogh found this, but he used UVB lamps, so his findings were not a rock solid indication of how things work in the real world. ' The determinants of serum vitamin D levels in participants in a melanoma case-control study living in a temperate climate.' supports Bogh's finding in a relevant real world solar exposure context. It's the replacement hypothesis enthusiasts who are using evolutionary explanation based 'reasoning', they're the ones working back from a cherished theory, all the while ignoring we what we actually know about real modern Europeans in relation to vitamin D.

Peter, you say 30-20000 circa europeans where eura...

2012-11-03T10:41:25.625-04:00

Peter, you say 30-20000 circa europeans where eurasians. OK, it is consistent with the statuettes showing peper-hairs and bushman style buttock of the venuses, along with the almond shape eyes, inherited from the bushman, who are the first asians, so to speak, but
1) does that imply a de-asianisation of the later post glacial-europeans, while east eurasians, i.e, today's asians, retained these characters?

2) Is there any reason west eurasians woold loose asian characters like the epicanthic fold, while east-asians retained or even amplified them. Sexual selection?

3) In this case, the Cro-magnon being more asianized than modern europeans, did they have an epicanthic fold or did they have lost it already?

Peter, Have you heard about these more recent dis...

2012-11-02T21:18:25.241-04:00

Peter,

Have you heard about these more recent discoveries:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/new-evidence-suggests-stone-age-hunters-from-europe-discovered-america-7447152.html

"New archaeological evidence suggests that America was first discovered by Stone Age people from Europe – 10,000 years before the Siberian-originating ancestors of the American Indians set foot in the New World."

"The similarity between other later east coast US and European Stone Age stone tool technologies has been noted before. But all the US European-style tools, unearthed before the discovery or dating of the recently found or dated US east coast sites, were from around 15,000 years ago - long after Stone Age Europeans (the Solutrean cultures of France and Iberia) had ceased making such artefacts. Most archaeologists had therefore rejected any possibility of a connection. But the newly-discovered and recently-dated early Maryland and other US east coast Stone Age tools are from between 26,000 and 19,000 years ago - and are therefore contemporary with the virtually identical western European material."

"Another key argument for Stanford and Bradley’s proposal is the complete absence of any human activity in north-east Siberia and Alaska prior to around 15,500 years ago. If the Maryland and other east coast people of 26,000 to 19,000 years ago had come from Asia, not Europe, early material, dating from before 19,000 years ago, should have turned up in those two northern areas, but none have been found."

"Some genetic markers for Stone Age western Europeans simply don’t exist in north- east Asia – but they do in tiny quantities among some north American Indian groups. Scientific tests on ancient DNA extracted from 8000 year old skeletons from Florida have revealed a high level of a key probable European-originating genetic marker. There are also a tiny number of isolated Native American groups whose languages appear not to be related in any way to Asian-originating American Indian peoples."

When compared against present day populations, the...

2012-11-02T18:43:24.584-04:00

When compared against present day populations, the ancient dna samples which have been recovered and are believed to be hunter-gatherers plot significantly more European than any existing Northern Europeans on a European-Middle Eastern ascertained axis. They don't seem particularly Amerind like (they're much more Middle Eastern like than Amerind like or Asian like).

Now, how much replacement is a point of contention - even the "high counters" of replacement still vacillate between near total replacement and 9/10s of ancestry being paleolithic in some North Eastern European populations (with 50%ish replacement as typical for Western Europe)... There is no way to be sure at the moment.

We also do not have any Middle Eastern adna samples yet, which would be a useful reference...

But it's hard to see why a lack of any evolutionary explanation for replacement has that much relevance in this context. I mean, there is adna. It is more Northern European (hyper Northern European) than present day populations, who are more Middle Eastern like. So I don't really see how the lack of an evolutionary explanation matters. As we get more adna, we will understand the extent and directions of gene flow better (whether they were only into Europe or also out of Europe).

Anon asked, 'So where do modern Europeans come...

2012-11-02T18:03:33.790-04:00

Anon asked, 'So where do modern Europeans come from then?'

Like the post says, they came from "southwestern France. This “beachhead” was the most southerly and resource-rich portion of the Eurasian steppe-tundra (Mellars, 1985)
Southwestern France is where Magdalenian Girl was found. She had the earliest known case of impacted wisdom teeth. That was caused by the face getting smaller due to sexual selection for less robust facial features.

According to this "midline diastema [a gap between two front teeth] is twice as common in blacks" [while] "it seems clear that Class II problems are most prevalent in whites of northern European descent (for instance, 25% of children in Denmark are reported to be Class II)."

West Europe had more resources and population density; sexual selection had most effect there. Look at the narrow faces with small delicate facial features (causing crowded teeth) that are commonest in West Europe. Cochran and Harpending still haven't proposed any selection pressure as the cause of the putative replacing population waves of agriculturists and/or IndoEuropeans acquiring such delicate features in the blnk of an evolutionary eye.

(My sister described my nose as like 'a butterknife'. I had 3 premolars removed when I was 12 but at 48 I still got a cyst on an impacted wisdom tooth and the irrupted neighbor, that required an operation to remove both. And without a beard my features do look very unmasculine as more than one girl has told me).

When I was young I had very pale skin -'the pint of milk' a workmate dubbed me-. Cochran & Harpending say the 'simplest explaination' for white skin in Europe is vitamin D. That is total stupidity.

IoM report on vitamin D says:
"A recent study of 182 individuals in Denmark, screened in January and February and selected to reflect wide ranges of baseline 25OHD levels and skin pigmentation, found that the increase in 25OHD levels after UVB exposure was inversely correlated with skin pigmentation as well as with baseline 25OHD (Bogh et al., 2010)."

The determinants of serum vitamin D levels in participants in a melanoma case-control study living in a temperate climate. is conclusive; light skin pigmentaion came about for reasons that had nothing to do with vitamin D.

So where do modern Europeans come from then? The M...

2012-11-02T15:50:03.780-04:00

So where do modern Europeans come from then? The Middle East, Caucasus, Central Asia, etc.?

This is a point of contention, right? I believe Greg Cochran has argued for multiple waves of complete replacement, while you, Peter, disagree with that view.

Could early American history (i.e. the European discovery and colonization of the New World) have been a replay of what had happened thousands of years before in Europe? That is, European agriculturalists replaced Amerindian hunter-gatherers in America, just as the hunter-gatherer ancestors of the Amerindians that were living in Europe were replaced by the agricultural ancestors of modern Europeans that arrived from the Mideast or wherever.

Here’s a very thorough and illuminating study into...

2012-11-01T05:48:47.553-04:00

Here’s a very thorough and illuminating study into digit ratio hera.ugr.es/doi/15009579.pdf

There is little variance in Polish male fitness, as judged by their tight gradient digit ratios. Or, to put it another way, Poland is filled with beta males and not too many omegas or alpha male cads. Poland is a place where female monogamy is favored. The fact that Polish men also have relatively high digit ratios suggests that the men are, like their women, more favorable to monogamy.

Now compare that to Finns. Finnish men have a lot of variance in digit ratio, and a very low (masculinized) overall ratio. We can then surmise that Finland is filled with a wide variety of men (relative to their population), from omegas to betas to alphas, who are, nonetheless, more masculine than men from most other ethnic backgrounds. Finnish women would be open to alpha cad flings, cheating and using betas as emotional tampons. Presumably, some Finnish men would be glad to oblige. Both sexes would be less disposed to monogamy.

That is, at least, what a digit ratio hypothesis into sexual behavior differences would tell us. Is it true?

Polish women in Poland were much more open to “beta male game” than American women are. Polish girls love being courted in the traditional sense, don´t play “I’m the princess, here” games, and were inclined to long term relationships. They really are sweeter, more feminine and less interested in short term flings than women from other backgrounds.

And both our experiences with Polish chicks corroborate digit ratio analysis; the high overall digit ratio and low intrasex digit ratio variance of Polish girls predisposes them to LTRs and preferring the company of more attentive, “traditional” men.

My hypothesis then, based on digit ratio analysis, is that in countries where the women have a high overall digit ratio (longer index finger than ring finger) and a low intrasex variance in digit ratio (where most women and men have pretty much the same digit ratio), monogamy will be the preferred relationship norm of the women and aloof alpha male game will need to be distilled with a heavy dose of beta provider game. If my digit ratio hypothesis is correct, he will find Finnish girls to be very similar to coastal city American girls, and very different from Polish girls.

Iain, The usual explanation is that Amerindians h...

2012-10-31T23:05:24.074-04:00

Iain,

The usual explanation is that Amerindians have a shallower time depth than subSaharan Africans, so they haven't had enough time to evolve a darker skin at tropical latitudes.

I don't think that's the whole story though. Another factor is that the dynamics of sexual selection are the reverse of what happened in Ice Age Europe. I discuss this point at greater length in the following article:

http://137.140.1.71/jsec/articles/volume2/issue4/NEEPSfrost.pdf

Sean,

Perhaps. It's late at night, and I don't really follow you.

It seems odd to me that a population with substant...

2012-10-31T18:05:44.579-04:00

It seems odd to me that a population with substantial input from a (presumably dark) ancestral Saami type, has a higher rate of blue eyes than Norwegians, and at the same the women have relatively masculine faces, when compared to Norwegian women.

Ainu didn't get beards till after sexual selection had shrunk the jaws, beards are for making the jaw look bigger. (The 'valid information' paper in full text)

Finally some improved knowledge of haplogroup R1a1 (Y-DNA) (?)