Razib Khan

Month: July 2018

  • Japan as a natural cultural experiment

    History of Japan is a good survey for anyone curious about the topic because it is short enough to not be intimidating (this was a complaint from friends who I recommended read The Making of Modern Japan), but dense enough to actually be much more informative than a Wikipedia entry. Unlike many surveys of Japanese history, it…

  • How the fall of the Roman state and persistence of Roman culture led to the modern world

    The above map is from a new preprint, The Origins of WEIRD Psychology. If you don’t know, WEIRD refers to “western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic.” And, it focuses on the problem that so much of psychological research has been done through surveys and experiments on university students, who tend to be from the more…

  • The Genetics of China, Han & Beyond

    Spencer and Razib discuss the history, genetics, and scientific future of China and the Han people.

  • The Insight show notes: Episode 29, The Genetics of China, Han & Beyond

    This week Razib and Spencer discussed the genetics and history of China on The Insight (iTunes, Stitcher and Google Play).Chinese history looms large in the podcast, and there are many books one can read on the topic. In particular, John King Fairbank’…

  • History and genetics of the Han

    About 20 percent of the world’s population lives in the People’s Republic of China.Taking their name from the Han dynasty of ancient China, they are the core ethnicity of the People’s Republic of China: making up about 90% of the total population. When…

  • On the semiotics of secularism and nakedness of village atheism in the culture war

    Listening to the lovely bells of Winchester, one of our great mediaeval cathedrals. So much nicer than the aggressive-sounding “Allahu Akhbar.” Or is that just my cultural upbringing? pic.twitter.com/TpCkq9EGpw — Richard Dawkins (@RichardDawkins) July 16, 2018 One of the great celebrity “village atheists” of our day, Richard Dawkins, has “stepped in it” again by eliciting…

  • The new African “multi-regionalism” & pan-Neanderthalism

    We live in times when our understanding of the origin and diversification of modern humans is undergoing great change. More concretely, our understanding of what it means to be human is transforming. The terms are overused, but perhaps it could be called a “revolution” or “paradigm shift” between the year 2000 and today. At the…

  • Open Thread, 07/17/2018

    History of Japan: Revised Edition. As I said, a pretty good and short history. Recommended. CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing scissors are less accurate than we thought, but there are fixes. I know the focus is on human genetics. And rightly so. But this isn’t going to be as much of an issue in animal and plant…

  • A “carvaka” perspective historicity of myth and religion

    A comment thread below discussed the issues relating to the historicity of Jesus, Muhammad, and Hindu figures such as Ram and Krishna. The assertion is that while Jesus and Muhammad are historical figures, Ram and Krishna are mythological. To some extent, this is a religiously fraught topic. People from Abrahamic backgrounds are wont to dismiss…

  • Open Thread

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

  • India vs. China, genetically diverse vs. homogeneous

    About 36% of the world’s population are citizens of the Peoples’ Republic of China and the Republic of India. Including the other nations of South Asia (Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc.), 43% of the population lives in China and/or South Asia. But, as David Reich mentions in Who We Are and How We Got Here China is…

  • Tutorial to run supervised admixture analyses

    ID Dai Gujrati Lithuanians Sardinian Tamil razib_23andMe 0.14 0.26 0.02 0.00 0.58 razib_ancestry 0.14 0.26 0.02 0.00 0.58 razib_ftdna 0.14 0.26 0.02 0.00 0.57 razib_daughter 0.05 0.14 0.29 0.18 0.34 razib_son 0.07 0.17 0.28 0.19 0.30 razib_son_2 0.06 0.19 0.29 0.19 0.27 razib_wife 0.00 0.07 0.55 0.38 0.00 This is a follow-up to my earlier…

  • Running your own analyses

    For the technically inclined people here: Tutorial To Run PCA, Admixture, Treemix And Pairwise Fst In One Command.

  • The Insight show notes: episode 28, Violence & Warfare

    Scottish cavalry charging during the Battle of WaterlooThis week Razib and Spencer discussed violence and warfare on The Insight (iTunes, Stitcher and Google Play).Spencer’s book, Pandora’s Seed, was mentioned. As was John Horgan’s The End of War and S…

  • Tutorial to run PCA, Admixture, Treemix and pairwise Fst in one command

    Today on Twitter I stated that “if the average person knew how to run PCA with plink and visualize with R they wouldn’t need to ask me anything.” What I meant by this is that the average person often asks me “Razib, is population X closer to population Y than Z?” To answer this sort…

  • Violence and Warfare!

    Spencer and Razib discuss the history, psychology, and biology of violence and warfare, from Rousseau to Hobbes.

  • Drawing on the slate of human nature

    Some of you have been reading me since 2002. Therefore, you’ve seen a lot of changes in my interests (and to a lesser extent, my life…no more cat pictures because my cats died). Whereas today I incessantly flog Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human…

  • How Donald Trump is like Marxism and Psychoanalysis

    Recently my Twitter and Facebook timelines have been littered with references to this story: Man, 92, Allegedly Beaten With a Brick & Told ‘Go Back to Mexico’ by a Mom in Front of Her Child. Terrible. It was posted on Twitter, and Facebook, as evidence that Donald Trump’s America was horrible. Some of the Twitter…

  • Ancient Ancestral South “Indians” may have roots in Southeast Asia

    Namrata Kalsi: back migration of South East Asian ancestors to South Asia during LGM. #SMBE2018 — Charleston Chiang (@CharlestonCWKC) July 11, 2018 At the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution conference in Japan there is a presentation which reports evidence for gene flow from Pleistocene Southeast Asians into South Asia. I have long suggested this…

  • Open Thread

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

Razib Khan