Racial Elements in France (after Montandon)

The four principle elements in France, according to 19th century French anthropologist G. Montandon. Top left: 'Teutonic' type (Conte d'Andlau); top right: 'Alpine' type (E. Herriot); bottom left: 'Mediterranean' type (F. Mauriac); bottom right: 'Jewish' type (L. Blum).

People and Populace

One of the main conceptual distinctions that we need to make when dealing with the inhabitants of a country is between a People, as opposed to a Populace.

A human population deserves the name of a People, when its individual members (a) believe themselves to be part of the People, (b) believe in word and deed that all other members of the population are part of the People, (c) believe that all non-members are not part of the People.

A population that does not meet the above criteria can be termed a Populace.

Criterion (a) is that of self-definition. For example, most members of the population of Greece say "I am Greek".

Criterion (b) is that of acceptance.of others. Someone might say "I am Greek", but he must be accepted as such by other members of the population, i.e., other Greeks. This acceptance must be both in word and in deed. That is, if one accepts someone as Greek, but does not behave towards them as to other Greeks in general, then he does not really accept them as members of the Greek people.

Criterion (c) is that of exclusivity, or "either-or". A People consists of its members only.

Peoples are formed in diverse ways. But, their main characteristic is that the genetic elements participating in them are fused sufficiently so as to create sufficient internal consistency (a,b) and differentiation (c) from other people.

Populaces are formed when diverse population elements come to live together. These may evolve into Peoples, as for example the Spanish and Native Americans did in many Latin American countries. But, they may not, as in Turks and their Balkan subjects.

Peoples can also degenerate into Populaces, for example, through non-assimilated immigration, or through ideology and religion (as in e.g., the Protestant-Catholic divide in many European nations).

It is interesting to note that Peoples dominate the Old World, while Populaces dominate the New World. When the Old World was culturally dominant, the nations of the New World tried to become Peoples by integrating their genetic components (melting-pot ideology, ideology of mestizaje, etc.) and distancing themselves from Old Europe through revolution and critique of the "old ways".

The ascendancy of US power, coupled with the continuing disintegration of the main population component of the US (i.e., the "whites") that was once close to becoming a People (although never quite achieving it), has signified an ideological turn of the tide which may end up (if unchecked) transforming the Peoples of the Old World into Populaces.

Linkage disequilibrium in human populations

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 10.1073/pnas.1031521100

Linkage disequilibrium in human populations

Christine Lonjou et al.

Whereas the human linkage map appears on limited evidence to be constant over populations, maps of linkage disequilibrium (LD) vary among populations that differ in gene history. The greatest difference is between populations of sub-Saharan origin and populations remotely derived from Africa after a major bottleneck that reduced their heterozygosity and altered their Malecot parameters, increasing the intercept M that reflects association in founders and decreasing the exponential decline {varepsilon}. Variation among populations within this ethnic dichotomy is much smaller. These observations validate use of a cosmopolitan LD map based on a sizeable sample representing a large population reliably typed for markers at high density. Then an LD map for a region or isolate within an ethnic group may be created by fitting the sample LD to the cosmopolitan map, estimating Malecot parameters simultaneously. The cosmopolitan map scaled by {varepsilon} recovers 95% of the information that a local map at the same density gives and therefore more than the information in a low-resolution local map. Relative to a Eurasian cosmopolitan map the scaling factors are estimated to be 0.82 for isolates of European descent, 1.53 for Yorubans, and 1.74 for African Americans. These observations are consistent with a common bottleneck (perhaps but not necessarily speciation) {approx}173,500 years ago, if the bottleneck associated with migration out of Africa was 100,000 years ago. Eurasian populations (especially isolates with numerous cases) are efficient for genome scans, and populations of recent African origin (such as African Americans) are efficient for identification of causal polymorphisms within a candidate sequence.

Source (PDF)

Six Population Elements in Living Caucasoids

1. Mediterranean (distributed mainly around the Mediterranean coast). Associated with non-Sub-Saharan NRY haplogroup E(x3a) (HG21 in Jobling/Tyler-Smith).
2. Near Eastern (found from Europe to India south of the steppe). Associated with NRY haplogroup J (HG9 in J/T-S).
3. Central (centered in Central-South-Eastern Europe). Associated perhaps with NRY haplogroup Y(xA,C,D,E,F1,J,K) (clades of HG2 in J/T-S)
4. Western (widely distributed, surviving in greatest strength in Western Europe). Associated tih NRY haplogroup P(xR1a) (HG1 and HG22 in J/T-S).
5. Eastern (from Europe, especially Eastern Europe to Central Asia and all the way to India). Associated with NRY haplogroup R1a1 (HG3 in J/T-S).
6. Northeastern (in the northeastern quadrant of Europe into Siberia). Associated with NRY haplogroup N (HG12 and HG16 in J/T-S)

Caucasoid racial history consists of the amalgamation of these six population components. To a much lesser extent, the Sub-Saharan African and Turco-Mongolian population elements have played a role in the formation of the Caucasoid peoples in certain localities.

Update. I estimate that Greeks are about 1/4 Med, 1/4 NE, 1/4 W, 1/8 E, 1/8 C. The convergence of these elements during prehistory and their fusion in the South Balkans sparked off the beginning of Greek racial history.

PBS and "Is Race for Real?"

Is Race for Real? The arguments against the reality of race are based on (a) an extreme view of what the race concept actually meant to most people historically, (b) a misrepresentation of modern scientific facts, (c) social consequences of the race concept, which have nothing to do with its biological reality. I plan to write a series of blog entries on the arguments presented in the PBS Series.

Nordicism Revisited

I have uploaded a new pdf version of A. James Gregor's Nordicism Revisted:

http://www.geocities.com/dienekesp/nordicismrevisited.html

Badarians

Evidence of the Early Penetration of Negroes into Prehistoric Egypt

Eugen Strouhal

The Journal of African History, Vol. 12, No. 1. (1971), pp. 1-9.

"In Nubia, according to the analysis of physical anthropology, the original Europoid (Caucasoid) stock of the population was several times overrun by Negroid waves, flowing from the South. Negroes and Negroids penetrated to Egypt only sporadically, and their frequency, uneven according to time, place and the diagnostical knowledge of the investigator, has been estimated as 1 to 5 per cent. An increase in the number of Negroes was observed only in the New Kingdom, in connexion with the expansion of Egyptian domination to the south. From that time onwards, they were pictured as symbols of the south. The perfect portrayal of their morphological features shows that the Egyptian artists knew them very well."

"By the individual analysis of nasal measurements and indices of the first Badarian series in comparison with the mixed Europoid-Negroid series from Wadi Qitna in Nubia (fourth-fifth century AD), with the Europoid series from Manfalout in Upper Egypt (Ptolemaic period) and with a series of recent Nilotes, I came to the conclusion that the distribution of the Badarian skulls extends from the Europoid to the Negroid range."

"Of the total 117 skulls, 15 were found to be markedly Europoid, 9 of these were of the gracile Mediterranean type, 6 were of very robust structure reminiscent of the North African Cromagnon type. Eight skulls were clearly Negroid... We may conclude that the share of both components was nearly the same, with some overweight to the Europoid side."

"In some of the Badarian crania hair was preserved, thanks to good conditions in the desert sand. In the first series, according to the descriptions of the excavators, they were curly in 6 cases, wavy in 33 cases and straight in 10 cases. They were black in 16 samples, dark brown in 11, brown in 12, light brown in 1 and grey in 11 cases."

M1 is not a Sub-Saharan African marker

The Nordic supremacist author of Refuting Racial Myths makes the claim that mtDNA haplogroup M1 is a Sub-Saharan African marker:

"Considering the foregoing, it should come as no surprise that Richards et al. (2000) detected Ethiopian mtDNA haplogroup M1 in Greece. Other sub-Saharan haplogroups are found in Greece's neighbors. "

M1 occurs both in Eastern Africa and the Near East. The authors of the most recent study do not take it to be an indicator of Sub-Saharan ancestry.

Note, that M1 is the only candidate of a potentially Sub-Saharan African marker that occurs in Greeks, at a frequency of 0.8%. Now that it is confirmed that M1 is not necessarily a Sub-Saharan African marker, the confirmed frequency of maternal Sub-Saharan African influence in the Greek population is 0%. No paternal Sub-Saharan African influence in the Greek population has ever been detected.

Hence, at present there exists no modern genetic evidence for the presence of Sub-Saharan African genetic influence in the modern Greek population.

Sub-Saharan African influence is low in most European populations, ranging from none (as in Greeks) to ~2% (in Iberia). A sample of white Americans had 0.7% Sub-Saharan African influence (and 3.2% Amerindian).

For various Western European populations there is a varying proportion of Sub-Saharan African influence, 0.2% in English, 0.35% in North Germans, 0.7% in the French, 1.45% in Galicians, 1.1% in Northern Portuguese, to 4.3% in South Portuguese. Sicilians, often thought as being significantly mixed due to the island's history have only 0.3% detectible Sub-Saharan African ancestry, according to a recent extensive study [1].

I note that while the author of Refuting Racial Myths wants to promote the idea that Southern Europeans are more racially mixed than northern Europeans, he purposefully avoids listing the frequency of reported Sub-Saharan African markers in Greeks (=0%), since this contradicts his theory.

I sincerely hope that he will come to his senses.

[1] Annals of Human Genetics. Volume 67 Issue 1 Page 42 - January 2003. V. Romano et. al. Autosomal Microsatellite and mtDNA Genetic Analysis in Sicily (Italy)

PS: I have no problem with Sub-Saharan ancestry. It's not unlikely that some time in the future Sub-Saharan African markers may be detected in Greeks at low frequencies. We will just have to see. However, it is quite annoying to see how the evidence is twisted in the service of racial supremacism.

Am. J. Hum. Genet., 72:1058-1064, 2003
0002-9297/2003/7204-0030$15.00
© 2003 by The American Society of Human Genetics. All rights reserved.

"Two haplogroups, (pre-HV)1 and M1, have a distribution that spans the Red Sea. Haplogroup (pre-HV)1 occurs widely throughout the Near East, reaching highest frequency in Arabia, but is also common in Ethiopia and Somalia (Watson et al. 1997; Richards et al. 2000). Given its close phylogenetic relationship with other Eurasian clusters, this haplogroup probably originated in the Near East and spread later into eastern Africa. Haplogroup M1, however, has been assigned an African origin, despite the facts that (i) all other basal branches of haplogroup M are restricted to South Asia, East Asia, and Australasia, and (ii) the diversity of M in Asia is greater than in Africa (Quintana-Murci et al. 1999). It is restricted to the Near East and north and eastern Africa, concentrated in Somalia and Ethiopia (Watson et al. 1997). It is therefore unclear whether any particular M1 sequence type in the Near East arrived recently from Africa; an Asian origin with back-migration to Africa is possible."

"Our estimates of sub-Saharan African ancestry in the Near East are, therefore, based on haplogroup L1-L3A lineages, but we show also the distribution of these other clusters present both in the Near East and East Africa. "

Source (requires access)

Egyptian Heads from the 4th Dynasty

Reserve heads in limestone from the Fourth Dynasty, probably during the reign of Khufu, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Notice the large eyes, prominence of the smooth oval face compared to the low forehead, fine straight nose, full non-everted lips. Only in the slightly bulging parietals does this head deviate from the Mediterranean type, although in profile view (not shown) it is apparent that it is dolichomorphic.

These two faces are only a few of the countless examples of the racial type of the Ancient Egyptians.

Seligman on the Mediterranean race

Presidential Address. Anthropology and Psychology: A Study of Some Points of Contact.
C. G. Seligman
The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 54. (Jan. - Jun., 1924), p. 30.

"Whatever conclusions we may come to concerning the above, it must, I think, be recognized that the Mediterranean race has actually more achievement to its credit than any other, since it is responsible for by far the greater part of Mediterranean civilization, certainly before 1000 B.C. (and probably much later), and so shaped not only the Aegaean cultures, but those of Western as well as the greater part of Eastern Mediterranean lands, while the culture of their near relatives, the Hamitic pre-dynastic Egyptians, formed the basis of that of Egypt."

On Some Classes of Race Thinkers

There are people who believe that there are races, and people who don't.

Of the ones who believe that there are races, there are those who want to protect their continued existence (race protectionists), those who do not care one way or another, and want no action to be taken (race passivists), and those who want to see the fusion of races (race fusionists) either because of anticipated benefits through heterosis, or as an antidote to racism.

Race protectionists fall into different categories. There are the old-style racists who are appalled by the idea of interracial mating. The remainder are divided into race evolutionists who appreciate the existence of semi-distinct group as a means for further biological and cultural evolution. There are the cognitive elitists who don't want high average IQ races to be "compromised" by fusion with low average IQ races. Finally, there are the racial aestheticists, who have an attachment to a particular racial phenotype and do not want it to disappear through race mixture.

Race passivists may be race naturalists who want intermarriage or lack thereof to happen "naturally", with neither race isolation or mixture actively promoted. The race individualists want the same, but because they promote the individual, and deny that individuals should have allegiences to collective entities such as races. Race passivists also differ in the perceptions of what the outcome of passivity will be. Some think that the polemics of race protectionists are exaggerated, since assortative mating will ensure the continued existence of races on a global scale. Others think that the races will fuse, but do not think that this is either a negative (as the protectionists do), or positive development (as the fusionists do).

Finally, race fusionists want to see the fusion of races. There is a cognitive elitist tendency here, whereby the intermarriage of genetically privileged elements across racial lines is encouraged. There is also a moralist tendency, which sees the existence of races or racially-biased sexual preferences as racist, and thinks that race fusion will be the cure for racism.

A Couple of Russian Racial Types

A couple (not complete) of the racial types proposed by V.V. Bunak as being involved in the composition of the Russian people.

The Valdaic type corresponds according to Bunak to the race orientale of Deniker (Biasutti's razza baltica) from which it is distinguished by a somewhat more elevated stature (cm. 167-168) and dolichoprosopy.

Bunak also proposes that a pigemented Northern Pontic race, including various types contributes to the Russian people. He considers it as the northeastern branch of the Mediterranean Race.

What Caused the Iron Age?

Clayton E. Cramer, What Caused the Iron Age? (pdf, 16 pages)

Y chromosomes and Click Languages

Curr Biol 2003 Mar 18;13(6):464-73 Related Articles, Links
Click here to read
African Y Chromosome and mtDNA Divergence Provides Insight into the History of Click Languages.

Knight A, Underhill PA, Mortensen HM, Zhivotovsky LA, Lin AA, Henn BM, Louis D, Ruhlen M, Mountain JL.

Department of Anthropological Sciences, Stanford University, 94305, Stanford, CA, USA

BACKGROUND: About 30 languages of southern Africa, spoken by Khwe and San, are characterized by a repertoire of click consonants and phonetic accompaniments. The Jumid R:'hoansi (!Kung) San carry multiple deeply coalescing gene lineages. The deep genetic diversity of the San parallels the diversity among the languages they speak. Intriguingly, the language of the Hadzabe of eastern Africa, although not closely related to any other language, shares click consonants and accompaniments with languages of Khwe and San.RESULTS: We present original Y chromosome and mtDNA variation of Hadzabe and other ethnic groups of Tanzania and Y chromosome variation of San and peoples of the central African forests: Biaka, Mbuti, and Lisongo. In the context of comparable published data for other African populations, analyses of each of these independently inherited DNA segments indicate that click-speaking Hadzabe and Jumid R:'hoansi are separated by genetic distance as great or greater than that between any other pair of African populations. Phylogenetic tree topology indicates a basal separation of the ancient ancestors of these click-speaking peoples. That genetic divergence does not appear to be the result of recent gene flow from neighboring groups.CONCLUSIONS: The deep genetic divergence among click-speaking peoples of Africa and mounting linguistic evidence suggest that click consonants date to early in the history of modern humans. At least two explanations remain viable. Clicks may have persisted for tens of thousands of years, independently in multiple populations, as a neutral trait. Alternatively, clicks may have been retained, because they confer an advantage during hunting in certain environments.

Source (requires access)

Hippocrates' Fame

Nature 405, 993 (2000) © Macmillan Publishers Ltd.

Did Greeks beat Chinese on blood circulation ...

Sir – I was drawn to read P.-L. Chau's letter about the Chinese discovering blood circulation1 by the provocative title "Chinese beat Harvey on blood flow" on the contents page. Chau quoted science historian Joseph Needham2 as saying that, in the medical treatise Su Wên (part of The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine), "Chhi Po says that 'the flow in the tract and channel runs on and on, and never stops; a ceaseless movement in an annular circuit...'. Clearly the circulation of the blood and chhi was standard doctrine [in the second century BC]".

But who is Chhi Po? According to Paul Unschuld3, a medical historian and authority on Chinese medicine, Chhi Po or Qí Bó, the most important interlocutor of the Yellow Emperor in The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine, is none other than Hippocrates.

Qí Bó is a man who has no historical background in Chinese history or mythology. This fact, together with the Hàn-period pronunciation of his name, allows speculation that the fame of the Greek physician reached China two centuries after his death — to the extent that he is quoted as a living authority in medical textbooks of the time.

Tsung O. Cheng
Department of Medicine, The George Washington University Medical Center, 2150 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington DC, USA

HLA Polymorphisms in Balkans

The following study confirms the biological closeness of Balkan populations, in contrast to a study [pdf]) by Arnaiz-Villena that is being paraded around the Internet by Afrocentrics to prove the "Sub-Saharan" origin of the Greeks. Note, that the exact same marker used in the Arnaiz-Villena study was also studied.

Tissue Antigens
Volume 60 Issue 6 Page 496 - December 2002

HLA polymorphism in Bulgarians defined by high-resolution typing methods in comparison with other populations
M. Ivanova 1 , E. Rozemuller 2 , N. Tyufekchiev 3 , A. Michailova 1 , M. Tilanus 2 , E. Naumova 1

Abstract: In the present study we analyzed for the first time HLA class I and class II polymorphisms defined by high-resolution typing methods in the Bulgarian population. Comparisons with other populations of common historical background were performed. Most HLA-A, -B, -DRB alleles and haplotypes observed in the Bulgarian population are also common in Europe. Alleles and haplotypes considered as Mediterranean are relatively frequent in the Bulgarian population. Observation of Oriental alleles confirms the contribution of Asians to the genetic diversity of Bulgarians. The use of high-resolution typing methods allowed to identify allele variants rare for Europeans that were correlated to specific population groups. Phylogenetic and correspondence analyses showed that Bulgarians are more closely related to Macedonians, Greeks, and Romanians than to other European populations and Middle Eastern people living near the Mediterranean. The HLA-A,-B,-DRB1 allele and haplotype diversity defined by high-resolution DNA methods confirm that the Bulgarian population is characterized by features of southern European anthropological type with some influence of additional ethnic groups. Implementation of high-resolution typing methods allows a significantly wider spectrum of HLA variation to be detected, including rare alleles and haplotypes, and further clarifies the origin of Bulgarians.

Dark-Haired English Aristocracy?

Charles E. Woodruff, in Expansion of Races, 1909, Chapter VIII reports the results of a study by Havelock Ellis of portraits of the National Portrait Gallery in London. An index is caluclated for the relevant prevalence of blonds and brunets for different occupational classes, by the formula 100*BLONDS/BRUNETS. If blonds and brunets were equally represented, then the index would have a value of 100.

There is a range of variation from 233 (blonds 2.33x the frequency of brunets) for Political Reformers and Agitators, to 33 (brunets 3.03x the frequency of blonds) for Actors and Actresses.

The null hypothesis in this case would be that blonds and brunets occur at the frequency found in the general population. Coon, in Races of Europe notes that blonds are more important than brunets in the British Isles. It is difficult to assess the meaning of these terms without a standard scale.

The 95% confidence interval for brunets among Political Reformers for the binomial distribution is (expressed as % blonds) [45.7, 88.1]. For Actors and Actresses it is [7.3, 52.4]. These may be statistically significant depending on the actual percentage of blonds in the British Isles.

The largest occupational class in this study is for the Hereditary Aristocracy, with 149 samples. The index of blondness is 82, i.e., 45% blonds. The confidence interval is [36.8, 53.3].

Brunets may indeed be over-represented in the English aristocracy. The sample is hardly sufficient to make a case for it though. One can safely conclude though that the idea that blonds are more than the brunets among aristocrats is false.

Hair Color of the Proto-Slavs?

Colour and Race

John Beddoe

The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vol. 35. (Jul. - Dec., 1905), p 226.

Of these, the most important and interesting is the case of the Czechs in Bohemia and Moravia. Here we have a region with masses and blotches of dark hue, yet surrounded north, south, west, and east by lighter-coloured tracts.

...

That this is no new thing: Ibn Fozlan, an Arabian traveller, noted nearly 1,000 years ago, the black hair of the Bohemians. This peculiarity would hardly have struck a southron's eye, had it not been in contrast to the hair of their neighbours. And in a medieval German publication, wherein four nations are potrayed as female figures, while Germania is blond and Italia is dark, Sclavinia is represented as distinctly swarthier than Gallia. The Czechs being as it were the vanguard of Slav invasion, would very naturally be present to the mind of the artist, as the nearest and most familiar representatives of a Slavonic race.

The Dark-Haired Germanic Nobility

[Houston Stewart Chamberlain was a proponent of the superiority of the Teutons. Frank H. Hankins deals with him extensively in his book, not failing to note how Chamberlain had to part company with other Blondists, admitting that the supposed prevalence of blondism in the Germanic aristocracy was actually false: dark hair was most common.]

Frank H. Hankins

The Racial Basis of Civilization : A critique of the Nordic doctrine, New York & London, Alfred A. Knopf, 1931, p. 72

But there are other "limitations". Virchow had made much of the doctrine dear to the heart of all Blondists from Gobineau to Madison Grant, that the aristocracy of Europe was everywhere of the tall fair-haired type. Chamberlain finds this doctrine out of harmony with the facts. He accused Virchow of being blinded by political prejudice in failing to note "the prevalence of dark color among the members of the most genuine old Germanic nobility. In England this is quite striking. Tall, spare-built figures, long skulls, long countenances ... genealogies which go back to the Norman period, in short, genuine Teutons in physique and history - but black hair." He notes the same in Germany among the old nobility. He finds the poets frequently speak of dark hair as a characteristic of the nobility even in the north of Germany. Indeed, the inhabitants of the German Tyrol, who have been declared to "represent the true type of the primeval Teuton," have dark or black hair. In short, "the most genuine sons of this (Teutonic) race may be black-haired."

The Neolithic Invasion of Europe

[An interesting study which is expected in September]

The Neolithic Invasion of Europe
Martin Richards 1

1 Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences, University of Huddersfield, Queensgate, Huddersfield HD1 3DH, HD1 3DH United Kingdom

Author e-mail information:
Martin Richards - M.B.Richards@hud.ac.uk

Who are Europeans? Both prehistoric archaeology and, subsequently, classical population genetics have attempted to trace the ancestry of modern Europeans back to the first appearance of agriculture in the continent; however, the question has remained controversial. Classical population geneticists attributed the major pattern in the European gene pool to the demographic impact of Neolithic farmers dispersing from the Near East, but archaeological research has failed to uncover substantial evidence for the population growth that is supposed to have driven this process. Recently, molecular approaches, using non-recombining genetic marker systems, have introduced a chronological dimension by both allowing the tracing of lineages back through time and dating using the molecular clock. Both mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome analyses have indicated a contribution of Neolithic Near Eastern lineages to the gene pool of modern Europeans of around a quarter or less. This suggests that dispersals bringing the Neolithic to Europe may have been demographically minor and that contact and assimilation had an important role.

Expected online publication date for the Annual Review of Anthropology Volume 32 is September 16, 2003. Please see

http://www.annualreviews.org/catalog/pub_dates.asp for revised estimates.

Ancient Barriers to Gene Flow in Basques

DNA polymorphisms detect ancient barriers to gene flow in Basques

M. Iriondo et al.

(to appear in American Journal of Physical Anthropology)

Abstract

This work features the first district-by-district analysis of all provinces in the Iberian Peninsula with an autochthonous Basque population, and indicates the existence of genetic heterogeneity. The populations cluster in three groups arising from processes of genetic drift which probably occurred in pre-Mesolithic times, and were probably those which repopulated the southern areas of the Basque Country after the Last Glacial Maximum. It seems that from that period onwards, the population settled in three major groups (West Basques, Central Basques, and East Basques), along geographical axes which appear substantial in the maintaining of each population unit. This genetic structure is probably reflected in other aspects such as the existence of ancient tribes and the dialects of the Basque language, the boundaries of which may be related at origin and which are quite similar to those detected in this work. Our results indicate that the populations of the Basque Country are genetically close to other neighboring populations, such as that of Aragon, which may indicate an outgoing gene flow from the Basque area down the River Ebro towards the Mediterranean seaboard. While our short tandem repeat data suggest that population structure within the Basques dates back to the Mesolithic, our findings are also consistent with the hypothesis that patterns of modern European genetic diversity have been shaped mainly during the Neolithic. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2003. © 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Source (requires access)

Measuring Reproductive Success

Reproductive success: Which meaning?

E. Crognier

Abstract

The theory of kin selection (the part played by behavior in the changes of mean inclusive fitness) induced many human sociobiologists to think that since behavior was involved in the increase in fitness, this last entity could apply to the individual. Approximated by the individual's lifetime reproductive success, this measure became the keyword of studies linking social and cultural behavior to biological adaptive processes. To be commonly applicable to human populations, it had to be simplified to represent the number of offspring reaching sexual maturity and most existing studies are based on this definition. The current trend, however, seems to consider that, like inbreeding, reproductive success takes its signification in the depth of successive generations. These diverse measures were tested in two traditional populations, Berber and Aymara, and show that finding a satisfactory evaluation of reproductive success is a problem that is still far from a solution. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 15:352-360, 2003. © 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Source (requires access)

How to measure reproductive success?

Beverly I. Strassmann et al.

Abstract

To date there have been few empirical comparisons between alternative methods for measuring reproductive success (RS). We consider the pros and cons of alternative measures of RS to provide guidance for the design of field studies in human behavioral ecology. We compare cross-sectional measures that count offspring alive at the time of the interview and retrospective measures that require data on offspring age at death or censoring. We consider analyses that include adult women (yielding age-specific estimates of RS) as well as analyses restricted to postreproductive women (yielding data on lifetime RS). These methods are applied to reproductive data for the Dogon of Mali, West Africa. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 15:361-369, 2003. © 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Source (requires access)

The Racial Basis of Civilization : A Critique of the Nordic Doctrine

I am reading Frank H. Hankins' 1931 critique of Nordicism: The Racial Basis of Civilization: A Critique of the Nordic doctrine. A truly valuable work for anyone interested in the development of racist thinking in northern Europe. I list the table of contents, and I will be reviewing the material in this book in a series of posts.

CONTENTS

PART I - A CRITICAL HISTORY

I Introduction
II Aryanism
III Gobinism
IV Teutonism
V Anthropo-Sociology or Social Selectionism
VI Celticism and Gallicism
VII Anglo-Saxonism and Nordicism in America

PART II - CONCEPT AND SOCIAL ROLE OF RACE

I Introduction
II Concept of Race
III Are there Pure Races?
IV Are Race and Nation Identifiable?
V Political Significance of Race
VI The Problem of Race Mixture
VIII Are Racial Characteristics Unchanging?
IX Changes in the Hereditary Constitution of a Population
X Race and Cultural Opportunity
XI Conclusion

INDEX

Icelanders Not Genetically Homogeneous

Annals of Human Genetics
Volume 67 Issue 1 Page 5 - January 2003

Genetic Heterogeneity of Icelanders
E. Árnason*

Summary

Recently statements have been made about a special 'genetic homogeneity' of the Icelanders that are at variance with earlier work on blood groups and allozymes. To validate these claims an extensive reanalysis was undertaken of mtDNA variation by examining primary data from original sources on 26 European populations. The results show that Icelanders are among the most genetically heterogeneous Europeans by the mean number of nucleotide differences as well as by estimates of parameters of the neutral theory. The distribution of pairwise differences in general has the same shape as European populations and shows no evidence of bottlenecks of numbers in Iceland. The allelic frequency distribution of Iceland is relatively even with a large number of haplotypes at polymorphic frequencies contrasting with other countries. This is a signature of admixture during the founding or history of Iceland. Assumptions of models used to simulate number of haplotypes at sampling saturation for comparing populations are violated to different degrees by various countries. Anomalies identified in data in previous reports on Icelandic mtDNA variation appear to be due to errors in publicly accessible databases. This study demonstrates the importance of basing analyses on primary data so that errors are not propagated. Claims about special genetic homogeneity of Icelanders are not supported by evidence.

Source (requires access)

Monasticism and Evolution

Monasticism is one of the phenomena of Christian life that has been of undoubtable evolutionary significance. From late antiquity until today, with varying intensity, a segment of the population chose not to reproduce - with the exception of those monks who decided to break their vows. To this we must add, at least for the Western church, the celibate priesthood.

Let's think what effect this had on the population. Monastic life probably attracted various types of people:

1. Social misfits of various sorts. E.g., simpletons would often be entrusted to a monastery. Latent homosexuals would choose monastic life over marriage. Rowdy girls would be made into nuns, etc.
   
2. Mystics. Obviously, monasticism attracts deeply religious persons who are willing to give up the world for an ideal.
   
3. Intellectuals. At least in Western Europe, monasteries were the only place that valued scholarship and education. In the Eastern Roman Empire there was both religious and secular scholarship.
   
4. Opportunists. Life in the medieval world was tough for many people. The monastery gave shelter, food, protection from feudals lords, and ample leisure to those who chose it.
   

Thus, it is fairly obvious that monasticism negatively selected for the types of individuals listed above. It would be interesting to speculate how monasticism (and its decline) affected society for each of them:

1. The absence of social misfits probably increased social cohesion. Conversely, social misfits today don't usually choose the monastic outlet and may cause more problems for society. An interesting idea is that the apparent superior sexual license of the West may be due to people with strong sexual appetites did not go to the monastery and were thus positively selected.
2. The separation of mystics probably increased the "rationalists" in (non-monastic) society. It would be tempting to attribute the re-emergence of science to this negative selection against mystics. However, many rationalists and scientists had a religious background, or were mystics themselves. Mysticism and reason can often co-exist in the same individual, e.g., Newton.
3. Monasticism negatively affected the presence of intellectuals in (non-monastic) society. This was most strongly seen in the Western Empire and the Germanic world. Of course, secular intellectualism resurfaced after the Rennaissance. But one can't fail to notice a strong anti-intellectual strand in much of post-Rennaissance civilization, e.g., in the Protestant simplification of Christianity, "love of nature" and anti-technology feeling, the "mad scientist" stereotype, etc.
4. If opportunists of the sort that I've described went to the monastery, then hard-working "honest" people were probably positively selected. The decline of monasticism had the opposite effect.

To assess the evolutionary effect of monasticism, it will be necessary to gather data on its prevalence in various historical periods, as well as on the demography of monks and nuns throughout the ages.

The Evolution of Beauty

Attractiveness. Beauty seems like something that has an obvious selective advantage. We are attracted to beautiful people, hence we are most likely to have sex with them (or choose them as our reproductive partners) hence beautiful people are expected to have more children.

Health. Humans also find healthy-looking people to be beautiful, hence one expects that genetic predisposition to illnesses would be weeded out, not just because they killed their bearers, but also because they made them less attractive to potential mates.

Fertility. Many of the elements of beauty, e.g., low waist-hip ratio in women, are also signs of fertility. Inasmuch as beautiful people do tend to possess these features, they are also expected to be more fertile; yet another reason why beauty ought to increase.

Are there factors working against beauty? At first, I couldn't think of any, but I've managed to come up with such a list.

Supermodel Syndrome. Supermodels often claim that men are too afraid to approach them. It is conceivable that people might not try to obtain what they believe to be unattainable, although I'm not sure how powerful a selective force this is.

Jealousy. Beautiful people are attractive. Hence, they are in demand and may be more likely to be unfaithful. Hence, they may be perceived as potentially risky mate choices ("What if he runs away with one of all these women that like him?")

Female protection. Child-birth is a risky business, especially for women. It is conceivable that men may have avoided getting their prettiest wives pregnant too often, for fear of losing them.

Elite Dissolution. Since beauty is a good, it probably tends to be concentrated more in the higher social strata; powerful people can choose beautiful mates. But elites are unstable and are dissolved through revolution, migration, or war.

Elite Feminization. Powerful men tend to marry beautiful women. The most beautiful women are the most feminine ones. This probably results in a trend towards feminization of the elite - which may facilitate its dissolution through internal or external pressure.

It would certainly be interesting to objectively compare different ethnic groups, social groups, and races in terms of beauty. That could be done by asking a large and varied panel of judges rate randomly chosen members of different populations. It could also be done by direct measurement of things that are known to be considered beautiful, such as Waist-to-Hip ratio in different groups.

PS1: I have some ideas as to the role that race has played in the evolution of beauty. I strongly suspect that races are at least partially the result of the (probably unconscious) esthetic striving of populations. A racial ideal emerges as a reference point that identifies a population, distinguishing it from foreigners; as such it becomes desirable and is positively selected, furthering its presence in the population in a feedback loop.

PS2: The correlation (positive or negative) between beauty and intelligence needs to be investigated as well. There may be a common factor between the two, inasmuch as they are both influenced by health (in the general sense). There may also be some negative dependence, although more thought and empirical data has to be put into this matter.

More Helen

After writing my previous entry about Woflgang Petersen's Troy and the unfortunate choice of actress to protray Helen, I stumbled upon a TV mini series that premieres next weekend on the USA Network, Helen of Troy, starring Sienna Guillory.

Arguably, a better, and slightly more believable choice for Helen. But, the producers couldn't help but screw up a 2,800-year-old classic by introducing this interesting plot "update":

and Helen’s subsequent rape by Agamemnon in public while the Greeks mercilessly kill much of the people of Troy and enslave most of the few remaining survivors.

Of course, Helen was not raped by Agamemnon, but in this version, it appears that the Greek leader is set up as a villain. The original Trojan War storyline apparently didn't have the Hollywood "punch" that would make it digestible for classically-challenged audiences in early 21st century USA.

One should have expected as much though from people whose informative site informs us that the story of the Trojan Horse was first recorded by Virgil in the Augustan era!

The classical world has not fared well in English language films and TV. A notable exception is Andrei Konchalovsky's 1997 Odyssey (but then Konchalovsky is Russian-born and educated). I suspect that the upcoming crop of Greek-based projects will be more like Gladiator ("Rome was founded as a Republic"), i.e., really spectacular pieces embedded in the fictional Ancient World that Western audiences have gotten used to. It's really a pity.

Irreplaceable losses in Baghdad

The human loss of thousands of Iraqi civilians, as well as thousands of Iraqi conscripted soldiers is the most immediate negative result of the invasion and conquest of Iraq. But, an even greater tragedy has occurred in the tragic loss of irreplaceable antiquities, whose preservation apparently is not a primary 'objective' of the coalition.

Museum's treasures left to the mercy of looters :

"US generals reject plea to protect priceless artefacts from vandals

Jonathan Steele in Baghdad
Monday April 14, 2003
The Guardian

US army commanders have rejected a new plea by desperate officials of the Iraq Museum to protect the country's archeological treasures from looters.
Despite worldwide media coverage at the weekend of the waves of vandalism and plunder last week, no tanks or troops were visible there yesterday. "

US blamed for failure to stop sacking of museum:

"US blamed for failure to stop sacking of museum
By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles and David Keys, Archaeology Correspondent
14 April 2003

The United States was fiercely criticised around the world yesterday for its failure to protect Baghdad's Iraq National Museum where, under the noses of US troops, looters stole or destroyed priceless artefacts up to 7,000 years old.

Not a single pot or display case remained intact, according to witnesses, after a 48-hour rampage at the museum – perhaps the world's greatest repository of Mesopotamian culture. US forces intervened only once, for half an hour, before leaving and allowing the looters to continue."

Pentagon Was Told Of Risk to Museums:

"U.S. Urged to Save Iraq's Historic Artifacts

By Guy Gugliotta
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 14, 2003; Page A19

In the months leading up to the Iraq war, U.S. scholars repeatedly urged the Defense Department to protect Iraq's priceless archaeological heritage from looters, and warned specifically that the National Museum of Antiquities was the single most important site in the country.

...

The possibilities are almost infinite. Iraq is the home of ancient Mesopotamia and has a cultural heritage that extends for thousands of years and encompasses the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Chaldeans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Parthians, Sassanids and Muslims, to name only the best-known civilizations.

"There are thousands of unique items," said Boston University archaeologist Paul Zimansky. "If somebody walks off with those things, we'll never see them again. It is a disaster of major proportions." "

The Face that launched a thousand ships?

Diane Kruger (a.k.a. as Diane Heidkrueger), a German model-turned-actress has apparently been chosen to protray Helen in (fellow German) Woflgang Petersen's upcoming Troy. According to Petersen:

"She has to be believable as the face that launched 1,000 ships and caused the Greeks to go against Troy," Petersen said of whomever plays Helen. "She has to be that beautiful."

In my personal opinion, she's as far removed from the Greek esthetic norm as one could find. Helen of Troy was described as brown-haired, with large eyes, rich curly hair, concurrent eyebrows (!), and white as snow. Ancient Greeks prized the beauty of women with ovoid faces, and low foreheads. Ancient Greek women were also significantly narrower-faced than their male counterparts.

mtDNA of white Americans

Am. J. Hum. Genet., 72:804-811, 2003

"All nine major European haplogroups [note: H I J K T U V W X] were observed in our sample and did not differ significantly from a previous study of a similar North American control population (Torroni et al. 1994) (table 2). In addition, a nearly identical percentage of individuals (8.2% in control subjects and 8.5% in patients with PD) did not fit into these nine predefined haplogroups and were classified as "others." This group most likely consists of rare European haplogroups (e.g., R or Z) or the historical admixture known to exist in the North American white population (Finnila et al. 2000; Richards et al. 2000)."

[Note that R and Z mentioned in the article as examples of rare European haplogroups occur at a combined frequency of <1% in white Europeans (Am. J. Hum. Genet., 67:1251-1276, 2000).]

The Occidental Quarterly

The Occidental Quarterly defines itself as a "A Journal of Western Thought and Opinion" on its main page, but in the title of that document is defined as "A Journal of Nationalist Thought and Opinion". To complicate matters even more, in the META tags, it's defined as "he Occidental Quarterly is a Journal of National Thought and Opinion". It's a weird publication with occasional learned contributions co-existing side by side with those of the racialist fringe, and a hefty dose of polite racial supremacism.

Here is the TOC of the latest issue:

Editor's Note

Sociobiology and the End of Racial Egalitarianism

Articles

The Importance of Spearman’s g as a Psychometric, Social, and Educational Construct
Harrison Kane and Chris Brand

Pan-European Genetic Interests: Ethno-States, Kinship Preservation, and the End of Politics
Michael Rienzi

Social Darwinism: The Development of an Intellectual Mood
Louis Andrews

Racial Difference in Intelligence: The Evolution of One Person's Views
Lawrence Auster

Book Reviews

The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Reviewed by Jared Taylor

The Outline of Sanity, Economism and the National Prospect, and The Free Press
Reviewed by Sam Francis

The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wycliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund and Intelligence, Race and Genetics: Conversations with Arthur R. Jensen
Reviewed by Kevin Lamb

At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America
Reviewed by Dwight D. Murphey

Cannibalism Gene

Gene Expression tipped me off on this article which found a genetic signature for cannibalism. Apparently, the "cannibal gene", so to speak, was selected because it conferred resistance against prion diseases. I don't have access to the full study yet, but I will keep an eye for it.

Balancing Selection at the Prion Protein Gene Consistent with Prehistoric Kurulike Epidemics

Simon Mead et al.

Science 10.1126/science.1083320

News Story (Yahoo)
News Story (Reuters)
News Story (New Scientist)

Article Source

Evolution and Expansion of Modern Humans

Features of Evolution and Expansion of Modern Humans, Inferred from Genomewide Microsatellite Markers

Lev A. Zhivotovsky, Noah A. Rosenberg, and Marcus W. Feldman

(To appear in The American Journal of Human Genetics, May 2003)

Abstract

We study data on variation in 52 worldwide populations at 377 autosomal short tandem repeat loci, to infer a demographic history of human populations. Variation at di-, tri-, and tetranucleotide repeat loci is distributed differently, although each class of markers exhibits a decrease of within-population genetic variation in the following order: sub-Saharan Africa, Eurasia, East Asia, Oceania, and America. There is a similar decrease in the frequency of private alleles. With multidimensional scaling, populations belonging to the same major geographic region cluster together, and some regions permit a finer resolution of populations. When a stepwise mutation model is used, a population tree based on TD estimates of divergence time suggests that the branches leading to the present sub-Saharan African populations of hunter-gatherers were the first to diverge from a common ancestral population (∼71–142 thousand years ago). The branches corresponding to sub-Saharan African farming populations and those that left Africa diverge next, with subsequent splits of branches for Eurasia, Oceania, East Asia, and America. African hunter-gatherer populations and populations of Oceania and America exhibit no statistically significant signature of growth. The features of population subdivision and growth are discussed in the context of the ancient expansion of modern humans.

Source (requires access)

Organized Violence

I recently read an entry in A Voyage to Arcturus that dealt with the problem of how the West came to acquire "superiority in applying organized violence". An excerpt:

Blunt assertions of Western cultural superiority are considered impolite these days, but alternative explanations are much worse: 1) Westerners are inherently more violent (an extreme-left belief) or 2) Westerners are just more superior people, period (an extreme-right belief).

I think that there are more factors that need to be considered to explain how the West, or any other culture, ends up dominating others. I name them as potential factors.

1. Tendency to Violence
2. Will to Dominate (Competitiveness)
3. Cognitive Ability
4. Physical Ability
5. Superior Weapons
6. Superior Organization

It would be interesting to see how these factors apply in specific instances of dominance, e.g., Alexander's campaign, Roman Empire, Arab expansions, New World colonization, etc. I'll probably spend some time thinking about this.

DYS19 and YAP Polymorphisms

Allele Variation of DYS19 and Y-Alu Insertion (YAP) Polymorphisms in Basques:
An Insight into the Peopling of Europe and the Mediterranean Region

R. Calderón et al.

Human Biology 75.1 (2003) 117-127

Abstract:

Two Y-chromosome DNA polymorphisms, the DYS19 microsatellite and the YAP (at locus DYS287), were tested in males from two autochthonous Basque populations from France and northern Navarre (Spain). The results are compared to those obtained for the same genetic markers in 32 populations from Europe, northern Africa, and western Asia. The high predominance of the DYS19*11 (190-base-pair) allele in Basques indicates that their genetic diversity for microsatellite DYS19 is around half that observed in Europeans, North Africans, and western Asians. The Y-Alu insertion (YAP+) was not detected in the Basque samples. This study attempts to throw some light on the importance of historically recent migratory movements, the main corridors of gene flow, and demographic sizes and their variations in shaping gene frequency patterns in contemporary human populations, particularly in the Mediterranean region. Historical processes may have had more significant effects on the genetic make-up of current human populations than those of prehistoric times.

Source (requires access)

Apolipoprotein Polymorphisms in Bulgarians

Horvath, Anelia et al.

Five Polymorphisms of the Apolipoprotein B Gene in Healthy Bulgarians

Human Biology
Volume 75, Number 1, February 2003

Abstract:

Five APOB polymorphisms (I/D in the promoter region, XbaI [codon 2488], MspI [codon 3611], EcoRI [codon 4154], and 3 ´ VNTRs) were studied in a population sample of 147 healthy normolipemic Bulgarians. For all biallelic loci, the observed genotype distributions do not deviate from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. In Bulgaria the insertion allele and the MspI+ allele of APOB presented the highest allelic frequencies (0.793 ± 0.024 and 0.959 ± 0.012, respectively) among the European population groups studied so far. The allele frequencies of the other two biallelic polymorphisms (XbaI and EcoRI) found in the Bulgarian population are similar to those previously described in other Caucasian populations. Analysis of the 3 ´ VNTR polymorphism revealed 11 different alleles. Like studies in other Caucasian populations, this study found bimodal allele-size distribution and a high level of heterozygosity. The frequency of allele *31 (0.162 ± 0.022) among Bulgarians is higher than that of any other European population group studied so far. Genetic distances between Bulgarians and each of six populations from southeastern Europe for which 3 ´ VNTR allele frequencies are available showed an increase in the order: Albanians < Greeks < Slovaks < Croatians < Serbians < Hungarians. The major differences in the allele-size distributions are in the frequencies of alleles *31, *39, and *47.

Source (requires access)

Admixture in Colombians

Rodas, Clemencia et al.

Mitochondrial DNA Studies Show Asymmetrical Amerindian Admixture in Afro-Colombian and Mestizo Populations

Human Biology
Volume 75, Number 1, February 2003

Abstract:

The origin of the African populations that arrived on the Colombian coasts at the time of the Spanish conquest and their subsequent settlement throughout the country and interaction with Amerindian and Spanish populations are features that can be analyzed through the study of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) markers. For this purpose, the present study investigates the admixture between these populations by analyzing the markers defining the main (A, B, C, D) and minor (X) founder haplogroups in Native Americans, the principal African haplogroup (L), and additional generic markers present in Caucasian (I, J, K, H, T, U, V, W) and minor African lineages (L3). As part of an interdisciplinary research program (the Expedición Humana, furthered by the Universidad Javeriana and directed by J.E. Bernal V.), 159 Afro-Colombians from five populations in which they are the majority and 91 urban Mestizos were studied. No Amerindian haplogroups (A-D, X) were detected in 81% of the Afro-Colombians. In those samples with Amerindian lineages (average 18.8%, with a range from 10% to 43%), haplogroup B predominated. When analyzed for the presence of African haplotypes, Afro-Colombians showed an overall frequency of 35.8% for haplogroup L mtDNAs, although with broad differences between populations. A few Afro-Colombian samples (1.9%) had mutations that have not been described before, and might therefore be considered as previously unsampled African variants or as new mutations arising in the American continent. Conversely, in Mestizos less than 22% of their mtDNAs belonged to non-Amerindian lineages, of which most were likely to be West Eurasian in origin. Haplogroup L mtDNAs were found in only one Mestizo (1.1%), indicating that, if present, admixture with African women would bring in other, rarer African lineages. On the other hand, in an accompanying paper (Keyeux et al. 2002) we have shown that Amerindians from Colombia have experienced little or no matrilineal admixture with Caucasians or Africans. Taken together, these results are evidence of different patterns of past ethnic admixture among Africans, Amerindians, and Spaniards in the geographic region now encompassing Colombia, which is also reflected in much of the region's cultural diversity.

Source (requires access)

Admixture in Hispanics

Bertoni, Bernardo et al.

Admixture in Hispanics: Distribution of Ancestral Population Contributions in the United States

Human Biology
Volume 75, Number 1, February 2003

Abstract:

The effect of gene flow on Hispanic populations from different geographic regions of the United States was analyzed using six autosomal DNA markers (LDLR, GYPA, HBGG,D7S8, GC, and HLA-DQA). By region of sampling, the Hispanic populations showed different ancestry contributions, from a trihybrid structure with European, Native American, and African contributions (California, Nevada, Florida, New Jersey, and Virginia) to a dihybrid structure with European and American contributions (Southwest population) or European and African contributions (Pennsylvania and Southeast population). These findings allowed us to define two regional groups, the West and the East. In the former, Native American contributions ranged from 35.58% to 57.87%; in the East region the values ranged from 0% to 21.27%. An African influence was similar in both regions, ranging from 0% to 17.11%, with a tendency of increasing in the East region. These data reflect the different origins of the Hispanic populations that led to the present ones. In the West, Hispanics are mostly of Mexican origin, and in the East, they are predominantly of Cuban and Puerto Rican origin.

Source (requires access)

Clustering of Global Variation on Cranial Traits

The following study analyzed global variation in 20 distinct cranial traits in more than seventy global populations. The main patterns of segregation of the major races, found from genetic markers is repeated for these cranial traits.

An interesting thing to note is that Predynastic Egyptians (Naqada, 5,000-4,000BP), 26th-30th dynasty Egyptians (Gizeh), Kerma Nubians (12th-13th dynasty), and Early Christian date Nubians are all unambiguously similar to members of the European/North African/South Asian cluster and distinct from Sub-Saharan Africans.

This confirms the earlier work by C. Loring Brace on craniometric data which again grouped Egyptians with other Caucasoids and not with Sub-Saharan Africans.

Characterization of biological diversity through analysis of discrete cranial traits

Tsunehiko Hanihara et al.

(to appear in American Journal of Physical Anthroopology)

Abstract

In the present study, the frequency distributions of 20 discrete cranial traits in 70 major human populations from around the world were analyzed. The principal-coordinate and neighbor-joining analyses of Smith's mean measure of divergence (MMD), based on trait frequencies, indicate that 1) the clustering pattern is similar to those based on classic genetic markers, DNA polymorphisms, and craniometrics; 2) significant interregional separation and intraregional diversity are present in Subsaharan Africans; 3) clinal relationships exist among regional groups; 4) intraregional discontinuity exists in some populations inhabiting peripheral or isolated areas. For example, the Ainu are the most distinct outliers of the East Asian populations. These patterns suggest that founder effects, genetic drift, isolation, and population structure are the primary causes of regional variation in discrete cranial traits. Our results are compatible with a single origin for modern humans as well as the multiregional model, similar to the results of Relethford and Harpending ([[1994]] Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 95:249-270). The results presented here provide additional measures of the morphological variation and diversification of modern human populations. Am J Phys Anthropol, 2003. © 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

Neighbor Joining Tree of 70 world populations based on 20 distinct cranial traits

Source (requires access)

Eye-colour, ethnic origin or family size?

Eye-colour, ethnic origin or family size?

Rim, Y

Personality & Individual Differences. Vol 4(1), 1983, pp. 101-102

Abstract
Investigated personality and cognitive differences of male students according to their self-reported eye color, ethnic origin, family size, and birth order. It was hypothesized that light-eyed Ss would be more successful in cognitive tests and more emotionally stable than dark-eyed Ss. 144 Sephardi (Eastern origin) and 180 Ashkenazi (Western origin) Jewish males aged 20-26 yrs served as Ss. Results show that ethnic origin accounted for the variance on cognitive performance and neuroticism and also for environmental variables such as family size and birth order. It is concluded that eye color should be studied in the context of other social-psychological variables.

Hair Color, Personality and the Observer

Hair color, personality, and the observer

Lawson, E D

Psychological Reports. Vol. 28(1), Feb 1971, pp. 311-312

Abstract
Investigated stereotypes associated with hair color. 79 male and 161 female undergraduates completed semantic differential scales on 7 categories of hair-color person. Dark men clearly preferred brunette women; blond men were equally divided in preference for blondes and brunettes; blond, brunette, and red-headed women clearly preferred dark men; and artificial blondes preferred dark and blonde men. Other comparisons were made within sex and between hair-color groups. Results indicate: (a) stereotypes based on hair color are widely held, (b) different stereotypes exist on the basis of the hair color and sex of the respondent, and (c) 4 of the 6 hair-color categories gave the highest scores to their own group.

Sex Differences in Physical Attractiveness Preferences

Sex differences in physical attractiveness preferences

Feinman, Saul; Gill, George W

Journal of Social Psychology. Vol 105(1), Jun 1978, pp. 43-52

Abstract
Investigated the validity of stereotyped beliefs about sex differences in preferences for opposite sex coloration. The likes and dislikes of 482 female and 549 male Caucasian college students for eye color, hair color, and complexion color of the opposite sex were investigated by means of sexual selection questionnaire. Results indicate sex differences in both likes and dislikes for all 3 features. Males indicated somewhat greater preference for lighter female coloration, while females indicated somewhat greater preference for darker male coloration. These results are discussed in terms of the "kernel of truth" hypothesis of stereotyping, and the possible relationship to earlier research on semantic meanings of color and gender words. Special attention was paid to the aversion of both sexes to redheads, and to the implications for understanding the predominance of Black male/White female couplings in Black-White interracial marriage in America.

Psychopathology and Dark Haired, Light Eyed Females

Dark hair and light eyes in female college students: A potential biologic marker for liability to psychopathology

Cohen, David B

Journal of Abnormal Psychology. Vol 87(4), Aug 1978, pp. 455-458

Abstract
Informal observation suggested that dark-haired/light-eyed females (target group) might have a higher liability to psychopathology. Questionnaire data obtained from 8 large undergraduate classes during a 4-yr period yielded consistently higher percentages of target group individuals reporting hospitalization of 1st-degree relatives and of self. Speculations about the role of organicity in left-handedness suggested that there might be a link to the factor of eye/hair color. A combination of target characteristics and pure (nonfamilial) left-handedness in females was associated with an extraordinarily high percentage of reports of significant hospitalization for self and 1st-degree relatives, suggesting the synergistic effect of a hypothetical organicity factor marked by 2 sets of traits.

Hair/Eye Color and Stuttering

Association of hair and eye color with handedness and stuttering

Christensen, John M; Sacco, Pat R

Journal of Fluency Disorders. Vol 14(1), Feb 1989, pp. 37-45

Abstract
Examined the relationship among handedness, hair and eye color, and stuttering. A survey of 199 7-57 yr old stutterers asked questions about handedness, original hair color, gender, and age. 49 Ss had blond hair; 69 Ss had blue eyes. Results indicate that stutterers were more non-right-handed than nonstutterers. For this group of stutterers, disfluency severity was greater among those with blond hair and blue eyes. Stuttering severity was also related to gender, with a greater percentage of males being rated as severe, while a larger percentage of the females were identified as being very severe. It is suggested that the observed findings may be due to the influence of testosterone and hypopigmentation factors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2002 APA, all rights reserved)

The Classical Origin of Psychoanalysis

Ancient templates: The classical origins of psychoanalysis

Buckley, Peter

American Journal of Psychotherapy. Vol 55(4), 2001, pp. 451-459

Abstract

This article discusses the classical origins of psychoanalysis. B. Simon (1978) demonstrated the presence of 3 main models of mind in ancient Greece, elements of which remain in contemporary psychotherapeutic and psychiatric practice. The first of these conceptual models Simon labeled the poetic (mainly Homeric), in which there is no clear idea of mental structure and mental illness is viewed as something 'sent' by wrathful gods from outside the individual. The second model is the Hippocratic, the comparatively unmodified ancestor of the current biomedical model. The third model, and the one germane to this essay, is the Platonic or philosophical model. The radical revolution of 18th century romanticism provided the forum for object relations theory in psychoanalysis through its emphasis on individual subjectivity, the centrality of emotional experience, and the potential transmuting power of the relationship between self and object. The classical ego-psychological model of psychoanalysis, like so much of our intellectual worldview has its origins in the extraordinary innovations and advances in human thought that the ancient Greeks wrought.

Race and Reproductively Isolated population

There seems to be a confusion between race and "inbred population", or "reproductively isolated population". For example, Steve Sailer defines race as follows:

A racial group is an extended family that is inbred to some degree.

It's true that relative inbreeding (within the race) is a necessary condition for a race to exist. But, it is not sufficient as we will show by means of examples.

Example #1. The Amish are an inbred population. Occasionally foreigners marry into the Amish population, but not often. The Amish are a population that is inbred not to some degree, but to a great degree. Are they a race? Of course not. They are simply a genetic isolate within the Caucasoid race. The same is true for the Samaritans, a genetic isolate of about 650 members in Syria and Lebanon. The Samaritans are also a genetic isolate within the Caucasoid race.

It was recently proven that Caucasoids, Mongoloids, Negroids, Australoids and Amerindians could be distinguished from one another with an objective test. That is because these groups are inbred populations that have had enough time to evolve group specific genetic profiles. That is what makes a race.

Consider the example of a hypothetical island on which 500 Swedish and 500 Nigerian settlers intermix to form a hybrid population. After a few generations of interbreeding, the population will remain what it is: a racially mixed population. Its individuals will be random assortments of genes in the parental gene pools. But, they won't be a race distinct from others in the sense that Caucasoids and Mongoloids are distinct. Over time, this inbred population may also develop into a race, as it evolves separately from the rest of mankind and develops its own genetic profile.

These examples should caution us against using "reproductively isolated group", or "partially inbred extended family" as synonyms for race.

Evolution of Altruism

The evolution of altruism, i.e., of helping others at cost to oneself seems like a paradox from the evolutionary perspective. Some extreme examples: altruists don't have children in order to help others (e.g., Mother Theresa), or get themselves killed (e.g., countless anonymous soldiers) before reproducing.

If there is a genetic predisposition to altruism, then it seems (at first glance) that it couldn't have been selected for. There is a constant selection pressure against altruism, and this would limit its frequency in any population if there are no other positive selective forces present.

But, of course there are such positive selective forces:

Altruists make good parents and have more children than egoists. Parenting involves investment of one's time, energy, and money for the sake of one's offspring. Children of altruistic parents are thus probably more likely to be successful adults, and altruists probably have larger families, because they like giving, and have a higher tolerance for it than egoists.

The above is of course a hypothesis that needs empirical validation. But, if altruists do indeed take better care of their children, and/or have a psychological tolerance for more children, then the 'altruism' gene would be positively selected, since altruists' children are more likely to be altruists.

This theory also predicts that the altruism tendency is expected to be found in higher frequencies in places where "taking care of one's children" is more difficult, e.g., because of scarcity of resources, or more time consuming, e.g., in civilized societies where children become independent later in life.

A possible objection to this theory is that it promotes altruism towards one's descendants, not altruism in general. That is true, but if there is a genetic predisposition for altruism in general, it would nonetheless be selected for via its expression towards one's descendants.

Related Discussion at gnxp.com

Extrema of Human Pigmentation

Morbidity Mortality Paradox of Greek Australians

Asia Pac J Clin Nutr 2002;11 Suppl 3:S569-75

Morbidity mortality paradox of 1st generation Greek Australians.

Kouris-Blazos A.

There is evidence in Australia that 1st generation Greek Australians (GA), despite their high prevalence of cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors (e.g. obesity, diabetes, hyperlipidaemia, smoking, hypertension, sedentary lifestyles) continue to display more than 35% lower mortality from CVD and overall mortality compared with the Australian-born after at least 30 years in Australia. This has been called a 'morbidity mortality paradox' or 'Greek-migrant paradox'. Retrospective data from elderly Greek migrants participating in the International Union of Nutrition Sciences Food Habits in Later Life (FHILL) study suggests that diets changed on migration due to the: (i) lack of familiar foods in the new environment; (ii) abundant and cheap animal foods (iii) memories of hunger before migration; and (iv) status ascribed to energy dense foods (animal foods, white bread and sweets) and 'plumpness' as a sign of affluence and plant foods (legumes, vegetable dishes, grainy bread) and 'thinness' as a sign of poverty. This apparently resulted in traditional foods (e.g. olive oil) being replaced with 'new' foods (e.g. butter), 'traditional' plant dishes being made more energy dense, larger serves of animal foods, sweets and fats being consumed, and increased frequency of celebratory feasts. This shift in food pattern contributed to significant weight gain in GA. Despite these potentially adverse changes, data from Greece in the 1960s (seven countries study) and from Australia in the 1990s (FHILL study) has shown that Greek migrants have continued to eat large serves of putatively protective foods (leafy vegetables, onions, garlic, tomatoes, capsicum, lemon juice, herbs, legumes, fish) prepared according to Greek cuisine (e.g. vegetables stewed in oil). Furthermore, GA were found to return to the traditional Greek food pattern with advancing years. We suspect that these factors may explain why GA have recently been found to have over double the circulating concentrations of antioxidant carotenoids, especially lutein, compared with Australians of Anglo-Celtic ancestry. This in turn may have helped to make the CVD risk factors 'benign' and reduce the risk of death. This raises the question whether specific dietary guidelines need to be developed for recent migrants to Australia, encouraging them to retain the best of their traditional cultures and include the best of the mainstream culture.

PMID: 12492649 [PubMed - in process]

Eye Color and Alcoholism

Eye color predicts alcohol use in two archival samples

Jonathan F. Bassett and James M. Dabbs Jr.,

Department of Psychology, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA 30303-3083, USA

Personality and Individual Differences
Volume 31, Issue 4 , 5 September 2001, Pages 535-539

Abstract

The present study used data from two archival samples to test the hypothesis, derived from Worthy, M. (1999), Eye colour: a key to human and animal behaviour. Lincoln, Nebraska: to Exel (originally published 1974) that light-eyed individuals would be more likely than dark-eyed individuals to abuse alcohol. Sample 1 consisted of 10,860 Caucasian male prison inmates, and Sample 2 consisted of 1862 Caucasian women respondents in a national survey. In both samples, individuals with light eyes had consumed significantly more alcohol than individuals with dark eyes. These results are consistent with previous findings that dark-eyed people exhibit more physiological arousal and more sensitivity to some medications than light-eyed people. The results may indicate that greater sensitivity to alcohol in dark-eyed individuals prevents them from drinking the large quantities of alcohol needed for development of physical dependence. Alternatively, greater behavioral inhibition may motivate light-eyed individuals to engage in alcohol consumption to achieve harm avoidance.

Source

Human Diversity: Our Genes Tell Where We Live

I summarize the main conclusions of Laurent Excoffier's article [it references and interprets [7] heavily]

1. Clustering of individuals from diverse populations around the globe, without any a priori knowledge of their ancestry assigns them to five distinct continental clusters

2. All persons of say Sub-Saharan African ancestry are recognized as such. Thus, the five clusters are clearly separable. While small numbers of individuals are found to belong to more than one cluster, the clusters themselves are clear-cut.

3. Population substructure is not detected in West Eurasians (incl. Indians), or East Asians. The essential unity of the Caucasoid and Mongoloid races is affirmed. Population subtracture, in the form of clear subclusters is detected in Sub-Saharan Africans. Again, early anthropological insights into the clear divisions between Bantu Negroids, San Bushmen, and two Pygmy groups.

4. Excoffier attacks the race concept by claiming that it postulated that individuals belonging to the same race are significantly more similar to each other than they are to members of other races. But that is a strawman argument. Races are defined by noting the differences between humans. Clearly, humans of different races all have hands, feet, legs, eyes, hearts, sex organs, etc. The greater part of our human genetic makeup is shared among races because we are all human. But, part of our genetic makeup is distinct among races, because the races are divisions of Homo Sapiens Sapiens that have accumulated distinct patterns of genetic makeup to the effect that they are now clearly separable.

Human diversity: our genes tell where we live

Excoffier L., Curr Biol. 2003 Feb 18;13(4):R134-6.

Summary

"A detailed genetic analysis of more than a thousand human subjects clusters them into five groups corresponding to major geographical regions. This new study shows that self-reported ancestry is a good predictor of one's genetic make-up."

...

Figure 1. Geographical location of the 52 population samples studied by Rosenberg et al. [7].

...

"Also interesting is the observation that with two clusters, individuals found in populations from Africa, Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and the Indian sub-Continent (mainly Pakistani populations) present a large majority of their genes as coming from the same population, whereas genes from the other hypothetical population are at a majority in individuals from East-Asia, Oceania and the Americas. This first division of the world (Figure 1, barrier 1) is at odds with previous results where a first split has often been observed between sub-Saharan Africans and non-Africans [11, 12 and 13]."

"Assuming that three populations are present (K = 3) leads to a split of individuals found in sub-Saharan Africa from those found in Europe, North-Africa, the Middle East and Pakistan (Figure 1, barrier 2). With K = 4, a cluster of Asiatic and Oceanian individuals separates from Amerindians (Figure 1, barrier 3). With K = 5, an Oceanian cluster appears (Figure 1, barrier 4), and we are left with the pleasant picture of a world divided into genetic clusters that closely correspond to five geographic regions: sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia, Oceania, the Americas and the rest, comprising Europe, North Africa and West Asia. With K = 6, a new genetic cluster made up essentially of individuals from a single Pakistani population emerges, showing that with the invocation of further clusters, single pop-ulations with peculiar allele frequencies stand out, probably because of isolation and founder effects."

"It thus seems that these five groups do correspond to major subdivisions of the human population. Rosenberg et al. [7] then attempted to examine further the internal genetic structure of these subdivisions. Sub-Saharan Africa presents clear additional levels of subdivisions, in keeping with previous results [14]. Amerindian populations also present substantial subdivisions corresponding to the five sampled populations. The other regions present less clear subdivisions, in the sense that the recovered populations do not correspond to collections of individuals found at the same location, or that individuals have genes originating from several clusters."

...

"The main conclusion of this work is that there is a very good agreement between the geographic and genetic assignment of individuals. The five major genetic clusters do correspond to five geographic regions. In other words, sampled sub-Saharan Africans are `all' genetically sub-Saharan Africans and native Amerindians are `all' genetically Amerindians. It would be highly misleading to conclude that Rosenberg et al. [7] have just rediscovered five basic races. The concept of race indeed assumes that members of a race are much more similar to each other than they are from members of other races: this is not what is found here. On the contrary, this study estimates that, if you consider two genes from two individuals in the same geographic region, they are on average only 4% more similar than two genes drawn from individuals belonging to different regions."

[7] N.A. Rosenberg, J.K. Pritchard, J.L. Weber, H.M. Cann, K.K. Kidd, L.A. Zhivotovsky and M.W. Feldman, Genetic structure of human populations. Science 298 (2002), pp. 2381–2385.

Source

Classifying Humans

Classifying humans

Francesc Calafell

Nature Genetics, volume 33 no. 4 pp 435 - 436

"Recent papers have shown the feasibility of classifying humans into categorical populations from their genotypes. How can this be reconciled with the claim that human races are biologically meaningless, and what are the implications for medical genetics projects?"

"Recent papers in Science (1) and the American Journal of Human Genetics (2) have shown that genetic polymorphisms can be used to predict the population of origin of an individual. In both reports a large number of polymorphisms were genotyped in population samples from around the world, and a model-based clustering method (3) was used by the authors to ascertain how many distinct populations can be found in the global sample and estimate the probability that an individual belongs to one of these populations."

"The algorithm used by the authors strips each sample of its original, self-reported population label and finds the groups of individuals that seem to cluster. Although the designers of the clustering method stated that these groups may not always have a clear biological interpretation (3), in both studies individuals in each group tended to fall into categories that corresponded to principal geographical (continental) divisions. At first glance, stating that the continental ancestry of each human can be identified seems to rehabilitate the discredited notion that humans can be classified typologically. Understanding what these studies really mean, however, requires a closer examination."

[Actually, nothing the author says in the remainder of the article actually undermines the notion that humans can indeed be classified typologically.]

(1) Rosenberg, N.A. et al. Science 298, 2381-2385 (2002).
(2) Bamshad, M.J. et al. Am. J. Hum. Genet. 72, 578-589 (2003).
(3) Pritchard, J.K., Stephens, M. & Donnelly, P. Genetics 155, 945-959 (2000).

Source (requires access)

Europoids

Renato Biasutti, Le razze ei popoli della terra, 2nd ed., vol. 1, p. 408-409 (tr. by Dienekes Pontikos):

Branch of the EUROPOIDS

Depigmentation, to a notable degree, of the skin, and, in some forms, of the pilous system and the eyes; fine and straight, wavy, or curly hair; medium or abdundant hair growth; variable stature with great prevalence of proportions of intermediate form; cranium of varying form with glabellar-superciliary relief in the adult male; retreated malars of reduced volume; nose with salient root and spine, on the facial plane, and weakly expanded nostrils; orthognathous facial profile, prominent chin. Strong sexual dimorphism.

[Biasutti divides the Europoids to the Pre-Europid stock, (H. s. protoeuropaeus, Biasutti), which includes the Ainu and Uralic subraces, the Lappid stock (H.s. lappo, Erxleben 1777), which includes the Lapponic race and the Europid stock]

Europid stock (H. s. europaeus Linnaeus 1758)

Color, stature and cephalic index with the same variations as in the Branch [=Europoids]; non-extreme proportions of the body, with relatively short arm and wide pelvis; well-developed musculature; head of moderate size; great total reduction of the masticatory apparatus and the dental arch; salient, thin nose, with high root, close to the level of the forehead; medium to thin lips, well-developed chin.

[The Europid stock includes eight (8) races, according to Biasutti:

1. Mediterranean (incl. Berber, Paleosardinian, Litoral subraces)
2. Nordic, or North European (incl. Dalic, Finnic, Irish subraces)
3. Iranian, or Oriental (incl. Assyroid and Libyan subraces)
4. Indian (incl. peninsular Indian subrace)
5. Alpine (incl. Georgian subrace)
6. Baltic, or East Baltic (incl. Preslavic, Carpathic subraces)
7. Adriatic, or Dinaric (incl. Padanian, Noric subraces)
8. Pamirian, or Anatolian-Pamirian (incl. Armenoid subrace)

European Admixture in African Americans

Y Chromosome STR Haplotypes and the Genetic Structure of U.S. Populations of African, European, and Hispanic Ancestry

Genome Research Vol. 13, Issue 4, 624-634, April 2003

Manfred Kayser et al.,

Abstract To investigate geographic structure within U.S. ethnic populations, we analyzed 1705 haplotypes on the basis of 9 short tandem repeat (STR) loci on the Y-chromosome from 9-11 groups each of African-Americans, European-Americans, and Hispanics. There were no significant differences in the distribution of Y-STR haplotypes among African-American groups, whereas European-American and Hispanic groups did exhibit significant geographic heterogeneity. However, the significant heterogeneity resulted from one sample; removal of that sample in each case eliminated the significant heterogeneity. Multidimensional scaling analysis of RST values indicated that African-American groups formed a distinct cluster, whereas there was some intermingling of European-American and Hispanic groups. MtDNA data exist for many of these same groups; estimates of the European-American genetic contribution to the African-American gene pool were 27.5%-33.6% for the Y-STR haplotypes and 9%-15.4% for the mtDNA types. The lack of significant geographic heterogeneity among Y-STR and mtDNA haplotypes in U.S ethnic groups means that forensic DNA databases do not need to be constructed for separate geographic regions of the U.S. Moreover, absence of significant geographic heterogeneity for these two loci means that regional variation in disease susceptibility within ethnic groups is more likely to reflect cultural/environmental factors, rather than any underlying genetic heterogeneity.

...

Sufficient information does exist, however, to permit estimates of the European-American genetic contribution to African-Americans. Previous studies based on nuclear loci have generally found ~20% European genetic contribution to African-American populations (Reed 1969; Chakraborty et al. 1992; Parra et al. 1998; Destro-Bisol et al. 1999; Collins-Schramm et al. 2002), in agreement with our estimate (averaged for mtDNA and the Y-chromosome) of 18%-24%. Our results indicate substantially higher contribution of European-American Y-chromosome (27.5%-33.6%) than mtDNA (9.0%-15.4%) to African-Americans, also in agreement with previous studies (Parra et al. 1998, 2001). Presumably, this disparity in admixture estimates for the Y-chromosome versus mtDNA reflects the greater genetic contribution of European-American men than women to African-Americans during the slavery period. However, there is currently an increasing trend toward more marriages between African-American men and European-American women; census data indicate that in 1960 there were 25,000 marriages involving African-American men and European-American women and 26,000 marriages involving African-American women and European-American men, whereas in 1992, there were 163,000 marriages involving African-American men and European-American women and 83,000 marriages involving African-American women and European-American men (source, U.S. Census Bureau, http://www.census.gov/population/socdemo/race/interractab1.txt). In our study, on the basis of self-reported ancestry, the offspring of marriages between African-Americans and European-Americans would generally be assigned as African-Americans rather than European-Americans. Hence, if this trend continues, the disparity between mtDNA and Y-chromosome-based estimates of the European genetic contribution to African-Americans may eventually diminish or even reverse direction.

...

[Interesting]:

In contrast to the African-American groups, the European-American and Hispanic groups do show significant geographic heterogeneity. However, in both cases, this is due to the influence of one group, as removal of that one group reduces the heterogeneity in the remaining groups to statistically insignificant levels. For both European-Americans and Hispanics, it is the Texas group that accounts for the significant geographic heterogeneity. Why this is the case is not obvious; among European-American groups, the Texas group has a low amount of haplotype diversity (but not the lowest) and the lowest MPSD (Table 1), suggesting possibly a lower amount of genetic variation for the Y-chromosome for this group. However, among Hispanic groups, the Texas group does not stand out in terms of either haplotype diversity or MPSD, although this group is quite differentiated in the MDS plot (Fig. 2). Moreover, mtDNA analyses of these same samples do not indicate any differences between these groups and other European-American and Hispanic groups, respectively (Melton et al. 2001). The most likely explanation would appear to be that the significant heterogeneity attributable to the European-American and Hispanic Texans reflects chance rather than any true biological differences; analyses of additional samples from Texas would be required to test this hypothesis.

Source (requires access)

Greeks Praise "Black Spark, White Fire"?

Mr. Poe writes that:

Previously, Black Spark had aroused nothing but praise from Greeks -- specialists and non-specialists alike. Archaeologist Theodore Spyropoulos -- who has done 30 years of field work directly related to the prehistoric Greek cultures discussed in Black Spark, White Fire -- strongly endorses the book and believes it glorifies Greece rather than defaming it.

It is entirely possible that Greeks, specialists and non-specialists alike might praise "Black Spark, White Fire". Since it is a book about Greece, at least as much as it is about Egypt, it would be a good move to have it translated into Greek, so that we may obtain a more objective picture of how Greeks feel about such a book.

The works of Martin Bernal, on which Black Spark, White Fire is largely based, have not been met with praise in Greece. Indeed, as I have hinted before, they, as well as Afrocentrism in general, are dismissed as being part of US racial politics, rather than objective investigations into Eastern Mediterranean history.

Incidentally, Theodore Spyropoulos, the only Greek whom Mr. Poe submits as a supporter of his book, has not made (to my knowledge) any direct judgement or review of the book. Black Spark, White Fire involves much more than the question of whether the hill of Amphion is a pyramid or not, and whether it was built by Egyptians, or not.

Perhaps Greeks will one day come out with praise for Black Spark, White Fire. A Greek's praise would certainly look great in the back cover of the book, which contains at present the praise of: Molefi Kete Asante, author of Afrocentricity: The theory of Social Change, Martin bernal, author of Black Athena: The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization (The Fabrication of Ancient Greece 1785-1985) , and Armstrong Williams.

John Scotus Eriugena

John Scotus Eriugena (from Orthodox Christianity in the British Isles)

Some Excerpts:

John Scotus Eriugena stands as a remarkable figure in the spiritual history of the Christian West. His native Ireland was insula sanctorum — the "Isle of the Saints," where Orthodox Christianity, planted by Saint Pádraig in the fifth century, had taken such root that it had created an entire monastic culture and produced countless thousands of glorified saints. By the ninth century, however, the Apostolic and Patristic Tradition of glorification which had transformed Ireland was coming under an attack which would ultimately prove more devastating than those of the Vikings who were by now violently raiding monastic settlements along the Irish coasts.

In the Carolingian Frankish kingdoms of Western Europe, a new and very different form of Christianity was taking shape as a result of the Franks' desire to distance themselves from the centre of Orthodox Christianity at Constantinople-New Rome: the Franks, rejecting the East Romans as "Greeks" and "heretics" in the infamous Libri Carolini and at synods in Frankfort and Aachen, created a new Franco-Latin church based largely upon excesses in the theology of Augustine of Hippo and an ecclesial polity founded on feudalism. Over the following centuries, this Franco-Latin faith would come entirely to supplant Orthodox Christianity in the West, by take-over (the Patriarchate of Rome in the 11th century) and invasion (the Norman Conquests of 1066 and 1170). Yet in the mid-ninth century, Orthodoxy was far from appearing as a lost cause in the West: the Frankish innovations were opposed by Irish monastic foundations throughout the continent as well as (with the exception of during the Schism of Pope Nicholas I) by the Patriarchate of Old Rome itself, especially after the Eighth Oecumenical Synod of 879.

It is during this period that we find the Irishman, John Scotus Eriugena, coming among the Franks as schoolmaster at the court of Charles the Bald, the grandson of Charlemagne himself, and presenting to them the theology of the Irish monastic tradition within which he was raised. In order to defend the spiritual experience of glorification (theosis), he turned naturally to the East, reading as much as possible of the Greek-speaking Fathers.[1] Indeed, despite the prejudices of the Frankish society in which he found himself, "all his sympathies were with the East."[2] An "enthusiastic student of Byzantine Christianity,"[3] Eriugena dedicated himself to "finding the authentic Christian truth in Greek sources."[4] Inevitably, though, his approach and his teaching brought him into conflict with Franco-Latin scholastic theologians, and he ended up being condemned for his "heretical" views.

The Real Theological Division

The Real Theological Division (from Orthodox Christianity in the British Isles)

Some Excerpts:

Many of those interested in Celtic Christianity have tended to speak of a conflict between the theology and spiritual life of the Celts and the Anglo-Roman Church...

The truth of the matter is that there was no such conflict. The Celts, Old English, and Romans of Western Europe shared one Faith — the Apostolic and Patristic Orthodox Faith. And they held this Faith in common with the Romans of Eastern Europe and the Middle East, the lands from which the Faith had first emerged and in which it had been defended by the Fathers of the Church at the great Oecumenical ("Empire-wide") Synods.

...

In the Carolingian Frankish kingdoms of Western Europe, a new and very different Christianity was developed, based on certain excesses in the theology of Augustine of Hippo and an ecclesial polity founded on feudalism. (The differences between this new form of Christianity and Orthodox Christianity are profound enough that we may speak of the formation of a new "religion.")

At first, this new faith was limited to the Franks, and opposed vigorously by the Orthodox Western Romans (including the Bishop of Rome) as well as the Celtic monasteries located throughout the continent. But in the 11th century, with the first Frankish Popes, Rome succumbed to this Franco-Augustinian faith. After splitting from the Eastern Churches in 1054, the Papacy blessed a series of military efforts — the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, the Anglo-Norman Conquest of Ireland in 1170, the Crusades in the 12th and early 13th centuries — to convert all of Europe to this form of Christianity.

The Christian East, by the grace of God, and in spite of the terrible sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders in 1204, was able to resist the Franco-Latin incursions. The various Orthodox Churches of the West, however, were not spared. One by one they fell to the Franks, and to their successors, the Normans — conquerors who brought with them a faith they called "Roman Catholic," but which was neither Roman (the true Romans having been subjugated by the Franks) nor Catholic (for they had abandoned the universal Faith of the Apostolic and Patristic Church).