The gray moral world of the Greeks
Listening to the Ancient Greece Declassified podcast on The Iliad was very interesting. As some readers know, I came across Greek mythology as a child. Though I began with Bulfinch’s Mythology, I did not stop there. Soon enough I moved beyond the juvenile material, and read darker, more violent and sexual material that to be […]
Genetics stories in India Today
4500-year-old DNA from Rakhigarhi reveals evidence that will unsettle Hindutva nationalists: The ‘petrous bone’ is an inelegant but useful chunk of the human skull — basically it protects your inner ear. But that’s not all it protects. In recent years, genetic scientists working to extract DNA from ancient skeletons have discovered that, thanks to the … Continue reading “Genetics stories in India Today“
Fading to white by 2050
When our current attorney general, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III, was going through hearings there was an incident where he held his Eurasian granddaughter in his lap, and some people in the media made some off-color remarks. This was to be expected since Jeff Sessions is a white southern male of a certain age. And his […]
The passing
In 1998 Bill Clinton stated: Today, largely because of immigration, there is no majority race in Hawaii or Houston or New York City. Within five years, there will be no majority race in our largest state, California. In a little more than 50 years, there will be no majority race in the United States. No … Continue reading “The passing”
On the genetics of Bengal and Southeast Asia
Over at my other weblog, genetics post some readers might have an interest in. I think in the near future I’ll be talking more about the genetics of Southeast Asians and how they were influenced by Indians. Long story short: there’s a significant Indian genetic impact in many areas of Southeast Asia that can’t be … Continue reading “On the genetics of Bengal and Southeast Asia”
Tibeto-Burmans in Bengal, and Indians in ancient Malaya
Thanks to the Singapore Genome Variation Project, and some data from Lynn Jorde‘s lab, I added some Tibetans and Malays for a pooled data set of East, Southeast, and some South Asians. The marker density was 70,000. I was curious to explore the various contributions of ancestry from eastern Eurasians into northeast South Asia. The Tibetans, […]
The dual engines of modern science
A few years ago Armand Leroi wrote The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science. Some people immediately made a critique that actually, science, as we understand it, is really the creation of early modern Europe. That Aristotle and his fellow Ancients, or physicians and astronomers of early medieval Islam, or the scholastics of the high Middle […]
The Limits of My Language are the Limits of My Stupidity
I think about this quote from1984 literally every day: “Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed […]
Open Thread
Please keep the other posts on topic. Use this for talking about whatever you want to talk about.
Cave bears live on in brown bears, and were vegetarians (what!?!?!)
Unless you’ve been asleep you are aware of another megafauna ancient DNA discover, Partial genomic survival of cave bears in living brown bears: Although many large mammal species went extinct at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, their DNA may persist due to past episodes of interspecies admixture. However, direct empirical evidence of the persistence […]
Cave bears live on in brown bears, and were vegetarians (what!?!?!)
Unless you’ve been asleep you are aware of another megafauna ancient DNA discover, Partial genomic survival of cave bears in living brown bears: Although many large mammal species went extinct at the end of the Pleistocene epoch, their DNA may persist due to past episodes of interspecies admixture. However, direct empirical evidence of the persistence […]
Open Thread, 08/27/2018
DNAGeeks is dropping prices and offering free shipping on the phone microscopes for the rest of August. We’ll be putting the scopes on sale until the stock is cleared. As I’m reading Imperial China 900–1800, I’m still thinking most of the readers of this weblog would benefit from doing so as well. There’s just so much within […]
A plague of pastoralists
There are many reasons to read Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa. One of them is to know, understand, and express wonderment, at what the Tutsis of Central Africa achieved in the five years before and after the year 2000. What they did was […]
Western Asians are Western
“Woke” minorities, especially East, South, & Southeast Asian ones, have a misguided attitude towards undoing colonialism. In most cases, they’ve totally internalized Western values and are often hostile to traditional ones, only seeking to guard things like food and music. pic.twitter.com/0tje676nxb — ahnqir (@ahnqir) April 30, 2018 The above diagram really hits at something important. … Continue reading “Western Asians are Western”
The Fall of Gondolin and the transformation of Tolkien’s world
In a little over a week, The Fall of Gondolin will be released. This is on the heels of the publication of Beren and Lúthien last year, and The Children of Húrin in 2007. I notice that both of these two books are “Kindle Deals” right now, so they are probably anticipating that getting more […]
There could be 100 million genotyping kits sold by January 1st 2020
The figure to the right is from the comment David Mittelman and I wrote for Genome Biology, Consumer genomics will change your life, whether you get tested or not. The original numbers are from ISOGG, which does a great job collating information from a variety of sources. When final revisions for the comment were due, […]
The coming genetic invasion of history, and the rage to come
About ten years ago I reviewed Bryan Sykes’ book Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland. It was what it was, a product of the Y/mtDNA era. Therefore, there were a fair amount of conclusions which in hindsight turn out to be wrong. Sykes, and other genetic historians, such as Stephen […]
Hominins are still having sex, caught in flagrante delicto
Assuming you haven’t been sleeping under a rock, you have probably heard that a Nature paper came out on an F1 Neanderthal-Denisovan hybrid. The major new science in my opinion from the results of the genome itself is to be found in the figure above. It confirms that there was a lot of population turnover among Neanderthals, […]
Crazy Rich Asians is not social work
I have not watched Crazy Rich Asians. Perhaps I will for my cultural edification. Unlike some people, I don’t care too much about “representation.” This isn’t for ideological reasons…I just have weak group identity/identification, and on an implicit level, I probably think I’m a unique enough person that no other is going to “represent” me … Continue reading “Crazy Rich Asians is not social work”
General laws of macroevolution from phylogenetics
I’ve been following the Evolution 2018 Meeting in Montpelier on Twitter. A lot of the stuff is interesting, though over my head. In biology, I began with a fascination with natural history. What we might term macroevolution today. I was that kid carrying out The Dinosaur Heresies when I was nine. But aside from the […]