Month: September 2018
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Season 2, Episode 1: The Legacy of L. L. Cavalli-Sforza
L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, 1922–2018This week on The Insight (Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and Google Play) we discussed the life and legacy of L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, who died on August 31st, 2018. See the Stanford obit. From John Hawks, The man who tried to cat…
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The Legacy of Cavalli-Sforza
This week, Razib and Spencer review the legacy of the late L. L. Cavalli-Sforza. Show notes: https://pxlme.me/sMSUF9il
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The Munda as upland rice cultivators
I’m reading Ben Keirnan’s Viet Nam: A History from Earliest Times to the Present. I picked it up mostly because over half the book does not consist of the history of the Vietnam War (a major failing I’ve noticed with books which are histories of Vietnam, as opposed to histories of Vietnamese-American relations). The section…
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This is a trial run (I hope!)
Early Pleistocene enamel proteome sequences from Dmanisi resolve Stephanorhinus phylogeny: Ancient DNA (aDNA) sequencing has enabled unprecedented reconstruction of speciation, migration, and admixture events for extinct taxa. Outside the permafrost, however, irreversible aDNA post-mortem degradation has so far limited aDNA recovery within the ~0.5 million years (Ma) time range. Tandem mass spectrometry (MS)-based collagen type…
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The Muslim intrusion into India was probably inevitable
Taking after Edward Gibbon it is often stated in some histories that the Islamicization of Europe was probably prevented by the defeat of the Muslim armies coming up from Spain by Charles Martel at the Battle of Tours. This is probably wrong for several reasons. First, with hindsight, it seems clear that people like to…
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Open Thread
Please keep the other posts on topic. Use this for talking about whatever you want to talk about.
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The education the people of Tianzhu
Someone on Twitter mentioned that there were references to Shakespeare in the recent ruling to decriminalize homosexuality in India. This is reflective of the fact that some of the ambition to create “a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect” did succeed. The…
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Open Thread, 9/09/2018
DNAGeeks is now promoting some “helix” themed polos. If you click through, you’ll see a 25% discount code. Listened to Carl Zha and Nathan Myers‘ podcasts. About China and the Silk Road. The podcast Two for Tea with Iona Italia and Helen Pluckrose has an interview with my friend Sarah Haider. Zha pointed me to…
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Ancient Indian Genetics At ASHG
At ASHG next Monday Niraj Rai will be presenting this poster, Reconstructing the peopling of old world south Asia: From modern to ancient genomes. South Asia was one of the first geographic regions to be peopled by modern humans after their African exodus. Today, the diverse ethnic groups of South Asia comprise an array of…
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Perhaps India is not special in resisting Islamicization
I have posted my thoughts as to why India, unlike Iran or Central Asia, resisted total Islamicization, before. It seems to be a phenomenon that demands an explanation. And yet does it? As I read F. W. Motte’s Imperial China 900-1800 I am struck by Han civilization’s resilience and absorptive capacity. What does that remind…
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China: is national greatness deep rooted, or proximal?
A recommendation from The Scholar’s Stage has finally pushed me to complete Imperial China 900–1800, a book which I first began reading over ten years ago. Like The Fall of Rome: And the End of Civilization this may be a work I read again and again. Unlike The Fall of Rome Imperial China is not tightly argued.…
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My interview of James F. Crow in 2006
Since the death of L. L. Cavalli-Sforza I’ve been thinking about the great scientists who have passed on. Last fall, I mentioned that Mel Green had died. There was a marginal personal connection there. I had the privilege to talk to Green at length about sundry issues, often nonscientific. He was someone who been doing science…
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Culture can be more powerful than biology
An interview with the author of I Should Have Honor: A Memoir of Hope and Pride in Pakistan. It’s a difficult listen. Basically illustrates how in some “traditional” cultures women are treated like disposable and fungible property. As a geneticist and a father, one thing about “honor killing” that always strikes me is that it…
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Complementarity in the 21st century
The late Gordon R. Dickson wrote a series of books in a (mostly) future history termed The Childe Cycle. I’ve read a substantial number of the books in this series, and it’s rather uneven. On the whole, I would say that the earlier books are better than the later works. Dickson died before he could…
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Open Thread
Please keep the other posts on topic. Use this for talking about whatever you want to talk about.
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No more “science cheerleaders”
The Guardian has a weird portion of their valedictory to their closing down of their science blogging network: But nevertheless, the end of the science blog network comes at a time when, perhaps more than ever, there is a need for strong, critical, evidence-based science journalism. We find ourselves in a moment in history that…
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Open Thread, 09/02/2018
John Hawks’ write-up, The man who tried to catalog humanity: Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza chased Darwin’s dream of a tree of humankind, is worth reading in full. With some hindsight, it’s pretty clear that L. L. Cavalli-Sforza was way ahead of his time in terms of ambition and vision. But he was also someone who paid…
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The Quran as a collective human enterprise
When people ask about my religion I usually just say I’m an atheist and I have no religion. If they continue, I usually give them what they want, and state my parents are Muslim, or I am from a Muslim background (most of the time the people asking for what it’s worth are themselves Muslims,…
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L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, 1922-2018
I assume many readers of this weblog have had the same experience as me, curling up with the unabridged The History and Geography of Human Genes. Twenty years ago there was really nothing much beyond this for those interested in the intersection between genes and history. Today things are much changed. Obviously, much of this…
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Takeaways from the golden age of Indian population genetics
There are lots of strange takes on the India Today piece, 4500-year-old DNA from Rakhigarhi reveals evidence that will unsettle Hindutva nationalists. I’m friendly with the author and saw an early draft. So I’m going to address a few things. The genetic results are becoming more and more clear. A scaffold is building and becoming…