Monthly Archives: June 2018

After reading the section on Rome in War! What Is It Good For?: Conflict and the Progress of Civilization from Primates to Robots, I realized I had changed my mind over the past 10 years on the issue of differences in wealth in the past. Following the treatment in A Farewell to Alms: A Brief […]

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It has long been asserted that South Asia may make average strides economically, but it is still in absolute terms the locus of most of the world’s grinding poverty. This may not be true much longer. In particular, some estimates now suggest that India is no longer the world’s “leader” in extreme poverty in absolute … Continue reading “The decline in South Asian poverty”

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It has long been asserted that South Asia may make average strides economically, but it is still in absolute terms the locus of most of the world’s grinding poverty. This may not be true much longer. In particular, some estimates now suggest that India is no longer the world’s “leader” in extreme poverty in absolute … Continue reading “The decline in South Asian poverty”

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On this week’s podcast on “Isolated Populations” I mentioned offhand to Spencer that I believe it is a bit ridiculous to bracket a host of Southeast Asian populations as “Negritos,” as if they were an amorphous and homogeneous substratum over which the diversity of modern South and Southeast Asian agriculturalists were overlain.There was almost certainly […]

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Just a reminder that for the rest June Helix DNA kits with the cost of an Insitome app. Buy Regional Ancestry, Metabolism, or Neanderthal, and start your lifelong DNA journey with Helix for just $29.99! A great gift idea.That means for the cost of an a…

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Harlan Ellison has died. I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream is one of the most disturbing things I have ever read. Over 20 years after reading I still remember how appalled I felt as I finished the last sentence. Ellison was a powerful writer. Some of his innovations have become cliche (e.g., Ellison […]

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This week Spencer and Razib discuss the genetic and cultural importance of isolated and unique populations.

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Ati woman from the PhilippinesHui Chinese Muslim manTrue genetic isolation is hard to pull off. Human populations tend to mix when they are in close proximity.Consider the Hui people. These are Muslims who live across China and speak the local Chinese …

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Please keep the other posts on topic. Use this for talking about whatever you want to talk about.

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Just an update on the South Asian Genotype Project.
It seems Brahmins from Maharashtra are like Brahmins from South India. Brahmins from Gujarat are like Brahmins from North India.

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I’ve put another update on the South Asian Genotype Project. If you’ve contributed since March check it out. Again, if you are interested: send me a 23andMe, Ancestry, MyHeritage, Family Tree DNA raw genotype file to contactgnxp -at- gmail.com. In the subject please put: “South Asian Genotype Project” The state/province your family is from Ethnolinguistic group If […]

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Like an Old Testament prophet of yore Graham Coop has been prophesying that cryptic population stratification may be a major confounder in analyses for as long as I’ve known him with any degree of familiarity. So it’s no surprise he’s an author on one of two preprints which have rocked the genomics world: Reduced signal […]

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Reading Thomas Childer’s The Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany reminds me a lot of reading The Red Flag: A History of Communism. These strange and extreme ideological systems seem likely to be eternally marginalized…until they aren’t. The dream of revolution is a fantasy until it isn’t. The rot within these societies, their anomie and […]

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I recently read John Keay’s Midnight’s Descendants: A History of South Asia since Partition. No particular reason. But I’ve read earlier books on the history of India and China and I sort of wanted to fill a hole in my knowledge. I would recommend if you don’t know much about this period and place. It’s probably […]

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A few days ago a minor controversy about the cultural context of human sacrifice in Mesoamerica cropped. A writer at Science, wrote a piece, Feeding the gods: Hundreds of skulls reveal massive scale of human sacrifice in Aztec capital. The article was good. But it elicited some emotional responses from readers. As one sees in […]

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I recently read John Keay’s Midnight’s Descendants: A History of South Asia since Partition. Like his earlier books on the history of India and China, this is a work written by a journalist, not an area specialist (though Keay seems to take a particular interest in South Asia judging by his oeuvre). To be frank … Continue reading “Midnight’s Descendants: A History of South Asia since Partition”

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Recently Vox had a really bad piece up, How a pseudopenis-packing hyena smashes the patriarchy’s assumptions: Lessons from female spotted hyenas for the #MeToo era. The first thing you’ll notice is the crass inverse naturalistic fallacy that seems to be operating here. That is, you think of a state you’d find desirable (in this case, “matriarchy”), […]

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Of the books, I own Elements of Evolutionary Genetics is one I consult frequently because of its range and comprehensiveness. The authors, Brian Charlesworth and Deborah Charleswencyclopedican encyclopediac knowledge of the literature. To truly understand the evolutionary process in all its texture and nuance it is important to absorb a fair amount of theory, and Elements […]

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Irish CoffeeThe “Irish coffee” is a a delicious concoction. Coffee, alcohol, and dairy. What more can you ask for? Man does not live on bread and water alone. Cafes and bars are thick on the ground in large cities, but also grace country roads. Coffee …

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I try to limit the shilling, but since readers of this weblog know what this means: Helix has a sale on kits until the end of the month. The three Insitome products can be purchased for app-only cost ($29.99) as an entrance into the ecosystem. In other words, for $29.99 you can get millions of markers […]

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Razib Khan