January 31, 2004
Income of US Race/Hispanic Origin Groups
Per capita Income:
Non-Hispanic White $26,128
Asian or Pacific Islander $24,131
Black $15,441
Hispanic $13,487
Household Income:
Asian or Pacific Islander $52,626
Non-Hispanic White: $46,900
Hispanic $33,103
Black $29,026
As you can see, White-Asian and Black-Hispanic order is reversed depending on which type of income measure is used.
http://www.census.gov/prod/2003pubs/p60-221.pdf
January 30, 2004
Black or White Calculator
Try the new Black/White calculator. It gives you the probability that you are Caucasoid or Negroid based on seven simple anthropometric measurements.
AncestryByDNA 2.5
AncestryByDNA 2.5 has been released and the website has been redesigned
January 28, 2004
Representation of Racial Groups on TV
Hispanics Make Strides on TV, Near total Absence of Asian Americans this Fall on TV
...
Hispanics have made great strides in representation on screen and in behind the scenes employment at ABC, NBC, CBS and Fox, but Asian-Americans still lag at all the networks, despite some improvements, the group said.
"The new Fall shows are stunning in the near total absence of (Asian-Americans) in any role of significance," said Karen Narasaki, chair of the Asian Pacific American Media Coalition.
...
January 27, 2004
Median Personal Income of Asian Americans and others
Asian Indians 26000
Japanese 26000
Whites 23640
Filipinos 23000
Chinese 20000
Pacific Islanders 19100
Blacks 16300
Koreans 16300
Cambodian Hmong Laotian 16000
Vietnamese 16000
Hispanics 14400
Native Americans 14500
http://www.asian-nation.org/demographics.shtml
MIT Race Statistics
Undergraduates: 4,112. American: 3,812
Graduates: 6,228. American: 3,986
Faculty: 974 (no statistics about foreign nationals, as far as I could see; presumably most are American)
Percentage of White Americans and Asian Americans:
Undergraduate: White American (48.6%) Asian American (30.6%)
Graduate: White American (76.5%) Asian American (16.4%)
Faculty: (85.5%) Asian American (10.3%)
http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena/org/f/facts/enrollment.shtml
http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena/org/f/facts/international.shtml
http://www.mit.edu/afs/athena/org/f/facts/faculty.shtml
Human Subspecies
By the way, if you read the article I pointed to earlier (about Neanderthals being a different species), don't forget to take a look at Table 3 where generalized distances between human populations and between subspecies of other primates are listed. You will see that morphometric differences within human populations are certainly comparable with those between subspecies in other primates. It is unfortunate that today we have the means to fully resolve the infraspecific taxonomy of Homo Sapiens, yet the notion that such a taxonomy is possible remains a taboo. If only Coon were alive today:
the snake of racial consciousness had raised its head out of the Central European bulrushes, largely through the cult leadership of Franz Boas. His devotees leaked introspection into our curricula, turning both physical and social anthropology into political forums... as.... the Boasian doctrine spread, expeditions, research and publications gradually ceased to be funded by the elite and well-to-do. Public money had to be sought and the subjects had to meet the public's taste... Anthropology is fragmented and in the public domain. [CS Coon, Adventures and Discoveries, 1981; quoted in Wolpoff and Caspari, Race and Human Evolution, 1997]
January 26, 2004
The Race FAQ
"Nevertheless, when the taxonomic term is used consistently across species, it’s difficult to see any justification for the common assertion that human races are merely ‘social constructs.’ The motivation behind the assertion is a positive one, but denying biological realities at the outset is unlikely to lead to productive social dialogue on coping with human differences."
Skull Details Suggest Neanderthals Were Not Humans
Ever since their discovery in the 19th century, Neanderthals have been like the uncomfortably odd relatives who show up at a family reunion. Should they be seated with the closest kin, sent to the back of the room with the distant cousins or tossed out as rank interlopers, despite a family resemblance?
In short, were the now-extinct Neanderthals of Europe full members of the modern human species, a subspecies or an entirely different species? The answer has implications for the ancestry of modern Europeans: whether some Neanderthal blood could flow in their veins.
Although many scientists think Neanderthals were a subspecies, which could have interbred with Homo sapiens, new research appears to confirm the more widely held view that Neanderthals and modern humans were significantly different, enough to qualify as separate species.
The findings were based on detailed measurements of variations in the skulls of modern humans and Neanderthals as well as 12 existing species of nonhuman primates. The research team, led by Dr. Katerina Harvati, a paleoanthropologist at New York University, reported its results yesterday in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"What we are really saying is that Neanderthals did not contribute to the ancestry of modern Europeans," Dr. Harvati said in an interview.
The research lends strong support for the single-origin theory of modern human evolution, one of two models that have split anthropology into warring camps. This theory holds that modern Homo sapiens is a new species that arose relatively recently in Africa — more than 100,000 years ago — and spread out to replace indigenous archaic populations around the world. Neanderthals were one such group, a separate species that did not breed with the newcomers before it vanished.
The opposing regional-continuity theory holds that the new migrants from Africa bred at least to some extent with the archaic populations they encountered, perhaps accounting for some superficial differences among people today in different regions. In this view, Neanderthals were a subspecies and at least partly ancestral to modern Europeans.
Dr. Eric Delson, a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History and Lehman College, both in New York City, said the new research was a mathematically rigorous approach to the question of Neanderthal-human relationships. "It's a very convincing piece of work," Dr. Delson said.
But not convincing enough, it seems, to put the controversy to rest.
"This research will not change many minds," said Dr. Erik Trinkaus, a specialist in Neanderthal studies at Washington University in St. Louis. His research has suggested that there was some interbreeding.
"We have known for a long time what these fossils look like," Dr. Trinkaus continued. "We know that Neanderthals are distinctive, but this research doesn't address their underlying biology."
In the new research, Dr. Harvati and her colleagues, Dr. Stephen R. Frost of the New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury and Dr. Kieran P. McNulty of Baylor University in Waco, Tex., used a technique known as geometric morphometrics to measure the degree of variation between and among living primate species, including chimpanzees, gorillas, baboons, monkeys and humans.
The researchers focused their analysis on the same 15 "landmarks" on the cranium and face of each specimen. They were examined in 3-D to determine even the finest variations in shapes.
The purpose, Dr. Harvati said, "was to devise a quantitative method to determine what degree of difference justified classifying specimens as different species."
The differences measured between modern humans and Neanderthals were found to be significantly greater than those found between subspecies or populations of the other species studied. The two living species of chimpanzees, for example, appear to be more closely related to each other than Neanderthals are to humans, the scientists concluded.
In a statement about the findings, Dr. Harvati said the research provided "the most concrete evidence to date that Neanderthals are indeed a separate species within the genus Homo."
Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 10.1073/pnas.0308085100
Neanderthal taxonomy reconsidered: Implications of 3D primate models of intra- and interspecific differences
Katerina Harvati et al.
The taxonomic status of Neanderthals lies at the center of the modern human origins debate. Proponents of the single-origin model often view this group as a distinct species with little or no contribution to the evolution of modern humans. Adherents to the regional continuity model consider Neanderthals a subspecies or population of Homo sapiens, which contributed significantly to the evolution of early modern Europeans. Paleontologists generally agree that fossil species should be equivalent to extant ones in the amount of their morphological variation. Recognition of fossil species therefore hinges on analogy to living species. A previous study by one of the authors and recent work by other researchers [Schillachi, M. A. & Froelich, J. W. (2001) Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 115, 157-166] have supported specific status for Neanderthals based on analogy to chimpanzees and Sulawesi macaques, respectively. However, these taxa may not be the most appropriate models for Pleistocene humans. Here we test the hypothesis that Neanderthals represent a subspecies of H. sapiens by comparing the degree of their morphological differentiation from modern humans to that found within and between 12 species of extant primates. The model taxa comprised >1,000 specimens, including phylogenetic (modern humans and African apes) and ecological (eight papionin taxa) models for Pleistocene humans. Morphological distances between model taxon pairs were compared to the distances between Neanderthals and modern humans obtained by using a randomization technique. Results strongly support a specific distinction for Neanderthals.
January 24, 2004
Big Chill Killed Off the Neanderthals
It is possibly the longest-running murder mystery of them all. What, or even who, killed humankind's nearest relatives, the Neanderthals who once roamed Europe before dying out almost 30,000 years ago?
Suspects have ranged from the climate to humans themselves, and the mystery has deeply divided experts. Now 30 scientists have come together to publish the most definitive answer yet to this enigma.
They say Neanderthals simply did not have the technological know-how to survive the increasingly harsh winters. And intriguingly, rather than being Neanderthal killers, the original human settlers of Europe almost suffered the same fate.
...
The archaeological evidence strongly suggests that both hominids coexisted in southern Europe for thousands of years, but competed for ever diminishing resources. And that might have been the end for both Homo sapiens and Neanderthals but for the arrival of the technologically advanced Gravettians.
The Gravettians appeared in eastern Europe 29,000 to 30,000 years ago complete with flash new tools, such as javelin-like throwing spears and fishing nets, which allowed them to catch a greater range of prey.
January 22, 2004
Three Stages of Racially-Induced Ethnolysis
I have coined ethnolysis as a blanket term for the dissolution of an ethnic group. One way that ethnolysis can occur is through racial intermixture, i.e., the genetic dissolution of a people by means of a racially foreign element (*)
Examples of racially-incuced ethnolysis is the creation of the Latin American nations, whereby the Native American people were ethnolyzed via the European colonists, the destruction of the pre-Aryan cultures in parts of India, or the pre-Celtic cultures in the British Isles. In these cases, the racially foreign element achieved its goal by the possession of greater strength. There are also cases where the dominant group was ethnolyzed by the subordinate one, as in e.g., the Lombard element in parts of Italy, the Bulgar element in Bulgaria, or the Spanish element in parts of America. The last example also illustrates that sometimes two ethnic groups (Spaniards/Americans) ethnolyze each other.
I suspect that there are three stages in racially induced ethnolysis. In Stage I, the balance of power/numbers is in favor of one of the two groups, which shrugs off the presence of the other as an inconvenience. Europe is probably in this stage with respect to its racially foreign population, similar to the Roman past where the early penetration of the racially foreign northern element was not checked initially, with the result being the downfall of the Western Empire.
In Stage II, maximum tension between the groups is reached, often resulting in violent conflict. An example of this is White-Black relations in the United States in the 19th and 20th century, or the struggle between Russians and Tatars. It is possible at this stage for the group undergoing ethnolysis to strike back and preserve its identity. Examples of this include the Christians of the Balkan peninsula who survived the Ottoman occupation.
In many other cases though ethnolysis is not halted at Stage II, but rather proceeds to Stage III which is also the terminal condition. We need to look no further than the history books for examples of countless peoples who no longer exist in a cultural-genetic sense, having been ethnolyzed at some point in the past by racial intermixture.
(*) I use "racially foreign" in the sense of genetically distant, rather than the stricter sense of belonging to a different human subspecies.
Estonian IQ
Journal of Biosocial Science (2004), :1-6
DOI 10.1017/S0021932003006503
THE GROWTH OF IQ AMONG ESTONIAN SCHOOLCHILDREN FROM AGES 7 TO 19
HELLE PULLMANN et al.
Abstract
The Standard Progressive Matrices test was standardized in Estonia on a representative sample of 4874 schoolchildren aged from 7 to 19 years. When the IQ of Estonian children was expressed in relation to British and Icelandic norms, both demonstrated a similar sigmoid relationship. The youngest Estonian group scored higher than the British and Icelandic norms: after first grade, the score fell below 100 and remained lower until age 12, and after that age it increased above the mean level of these two comparison countries. The difference between the junior school children and the secondary school children may be due to schooling, sampling error or different trajectories of intellectual maturation in different populations. Systematic differences in the growth pattern suggest that the development of intellectual capacities proceeds at different rates and the maturation process can take longer in some populations than in others.
January 20, 2004
E-mail address change
Notice e-mail address change on the right.
January 19, 2004
Physical Anthropology of Cyprus
Abstract of AAPA 2004 Meeting
Interregional gene flow in the eastern
Mediterranean: A Cypriot melting
pot?
N.K. Harper, Department of Anthropology
and Ethnic Studies, University of Nevada-
Las Vegas.
Classical archaeological interpretations
of population change in Cyprus cite the
wholesale migration of Mycenean Greeks
into the eastern Mediterranean fleeing
Doric invasions. Previous research into
the relative biological relationships of
Cypriot populations has shown evidence of
sharp change in craniofacial morphology
toward the end of the Bronze Age (circa.
1050 BC) exhibiting strong regionalism
within the island (Harper and Moore-
Jansen 2003, Harper 2003). For this study
the cranial measurements of 384 individuals
from 14 sites from Cyprus, Greece,
Crete, Anatolia, the Levant and Egypt are
used to address the question of admixture
within Cyprus during and after the
Bronze Age. RMET 5.0 (Relethford and
Blangero, 1990) is used to test minimum
genetic differentiation and relative biological
distance and MANTEL 3.1 is used
to test the effect of geographic and temporal
distances in relation to the estimated
biological distance. Preliminary results
show regional variation within Cyprus
during the Bronze Age (FST = 0.022) and
suggest that specific populations (Enkomi,
Melia) remain relatively isolated while
other populations within Cyprus
(Kourion-Bamboula, Lapithos) share close
affinity with western Anatolian and Greek
mainland populations, with possible gene
flow from Egypt. These results contradict
the assumption that Enkomi was a cosmopolitan
center harboring multiple populations
and raises intriguing questions
concerning the importance of Egyptian
groups within Cyprus. The post-Bronze
period exhibits a lower overall FST (.003)
suggesting higher admixture specifically
with Levantine and Greek groups. The
results for the post-Bronze period are
consistent with the advent of large-scale
trade and colonization by Greek and
Phoenician groups.
Link to book of abstracts (pdf)
January 15, 2004
Greeks not Romans invented the Barrel Vault
Archaeology Volume 57 Number 1, January/February 2004
CREDIT THE GREEKS!
Architectural historians have long credited the Romans with inventing the aboveground barrel vault, but a recent discovery at the site of Morgantina shows that the innovation goes back to the third century B.C. and may have originated in Hellenistic Sicily.
A collapsed vaulted room was revealed during excavations at the ancient Greek settlement last summer. Constructed of a parallel series of interlocking hollow terra-cotta tubes encased in mortar, the vault in the Baths of Aphrodite is known to antedate the Roman capture of Morgantina in 211 B.C., making it apparently the earliest freestanding, aboveground barrel vault yet known. Sandra Lucore, who directed the room excavation, calls the interlocking-tube construction system "interesting and awkward." Such interlocking vault construction may have provided an important transition between earlier underground masonry vaults and later aboveground concrete vaults seen at sites like Pompeii, according to Malcolm Bell III, codirector of the Morgantina excavations.--KRISTIN M. ROMEY
January 14, 2004
Immigration and Unemployment
A link to a recent exchange on the matter of the benefits and drawbacks of immigration for the employment situation in the technology sector.
In summary, it is sometimes stated that since smart immigrants create jobs in the technology sector, their presence is a net benefit. However, I differentiate between the job-creating section of immigrants (the research-oriented/business-savvy portion) and the rank-and-file.
If the members of an ethnic group X create C(X) jobs, but take N(X) jobs then their contribution is positive if C(X)-N(X) is positive. Otherwise, their contribution is negative for the native population, since they take up more jobs than they create.
A government is responsible for the welfare of its citizens. Therefore, it is the government's business to cut back on N(X) in a smart way, retaining the job-creating portion of X and discarding the rank-and-file and replacing it with its own citizens.
However, if companies have to hire natives with higher pay, then many of them will be in a tight spot and will have to adjust or shut down. This will however be a temporary phenomenon as the successful companies who make the transition will replace the cheap foreign workforce with increased automation.
January 12, 2004
Y Chromosomes in Chile
American Journal of Physical Anthropology (to appear)
DYS19 and DYS199 loci in a Chilean population of mixed ancestry
L. Cifuentes et al.
Abstract
The current Chilean population originated from admixture between aboriginal populations (Amerindians) and Spanish conquerors of European origin. Consequently, the unions that gave rise to the Chilean population were chiefly between Spanish males and aboriginal females, and not the converse. To test the hypothesis that the Y chromosome of the Chilean population is mainly of Spanish origin, while the other chromosomes are from mixed (European and aboriginal) origin, we studied the DYS19 and DYS199 loci in two samples. One sample was obtained from a high socioeconomic stratum, while a second sample was from a low stratum. We studied male blood donors (N = 187) from Santiago, the capital of the country. Subjects were typed for the autosomal ABO and Rh (locus D) blood groups, and for the Y-linked DYS19 and the DYS199 loci, reported as Y-chromosome haplotypes. The aboriginal admixture was estimated for each genetic marker. The percentage of aboriginal admixture was 38.17% for the ABO system and 31.28% for the Rh system in the low socioeconomic stratum and 19.22% and 22.5%, respectively, in the high stratum. Y-chromosome haplotype frequencies constructed from the DYS19 and DYS199 loci demonstrated that the main haplotypes were DYS19*14/DYS199 C, as is often the case with many European populations, and DYS19*13/DYS199 C. The aboriginal admixture from Y-haplotype frequencies was estimated to be 15.83% in the low socioeconomic stratum and 6.91% in the high stratum. These values are lower than the values found using autosomal genetic markers, and are consistent with the historical background of the population studied. This study highlights the population genetic consequences of the asymmetric pattern of genome admixture between two ancestral populations (European and Amerindian).
January 08, 2004
Selection on Human mtDNA
American Journal of Human Genetics (to appear)
Comparative Genomics and the Evolution of Human Mitochondrial DNA: Assessing the Effects of Selection
J. L. Elson et al.
Abstract
This article provides evidence that selection has been a significant force during the evolution of the human mitochondrial genome. Both gene-by-gene and whole-genome approaches were used here to assess selection in the 560 mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) coding-region sequences that were used previously for reduced-median-network analysis. The results of the present analyses were complex, in that the action of selection was not indicated by all tests, but this is not surprising, in view of the characteristics and limitations of the different analytical methods. Despite these limitations, there is evidence for both gene-specific and lineage-specific variation in selection. Whole-genome sliding-window approaches indicated a lack of selection in large-scale segments of the coding region. In other tests, we analyzed the ratio of nonsynonymous-to-synonymous substitutions in the 13 protein-encoding mtDNA genes. The most straightforward interpretation of those results is that negative selection has acted on the mtDNA during evolution. Single-gene analyses indicated significant departures from neutrality in the CO1, ND4, and ND6 genes, although the data also suggested the possible operation of positive selection on the AT6 gene. Finally, our results and those of other investigators do not support a simple model in which climatic adaptation has been a major force during human mtDNA evolution.
January 07, 2004
Race and Language in Prehistory
RACE and LANGUAGE in PREHISTORY
VINCENT M SARICH
I argue here that all the available data on Homo sapiens (molecular, morphological, linguistic, cultural) are most readily interpreted within the framework of a phylogenetic tree that links extant human populations over a time span of no more than the last 15,000 to 20,000 years. This is not to suggest that some ur-population speaking an ur-language lived in a geographically restricted Garden of Eden 15,000 years ago, expanding out of there to lead to what we have today. Instead, the scenario envisioned here goes to quite the other extreme in envisioning our "Garden of Eden" as the entire inhabited world of that period. I suggest that as recently as perhaps 15,000 years ago the human population was something very close to "panmictic" at all levels, and that most of the interpopulational differences we observe today, and in the recent past, have accumulated since then. The proposed "panmixis" is seen as driven by the last of the glacial pulsations which would have necessitated recurrent large-scale movements of populations, not only in areas "directly" affected by the glaciers themselves, but also in those that suffered the secondary effects of shifting climatic zones and major sea level changes. It thus must have been essentially world-wide, and only after populations began to settle down in more-or-less their current areas could regional differentiation leading have begun again. Thus we would have had episodic, glacial cycle driven, regional (racial) differentiation subsequent to the expansion of Homo out of Africa, and concomitant episodic obliteration ("panmixis") of most or all of the regionality. We then simply appear to be living in one of those episodes of regional differentiation, with ours beginning with the last glacial retreat. These episodes of developing regionality would have been characterized by differential retention of portions of the existing variation (which would have been, just as today, substantial but basically intrapopulational) plus in situ developments. The degrees of past regionality achieved would, then, presumably, have been strongly correlated with the lengths of the glacial/interglacial cycles involved, and thus potentially much greater than that present today.
January 04, 2004
"Discordant" Clines
One of the argument against the existence of race is that of "discordant clines". This argument goes as follows: if you look at feature A, say "skin color", then you'll tend to group people in a certain way, e.g., northern vs. southern. If you look at feature B, say "frequency of blood group B", then you'll tend to group them in another way, e.g., eastern vs. western. If you look at genes for sickle-cell trait, or lactase intolerance, etc. you get an entirely different grouping. Since all these traits don't "go together", then there's no reality in race: it all depends on what you choose to look at, it's all subjective!
There is some truth in this argument. The reason it fails however is because it assumes that race is valid only if all traits are distributed in a concordant manner, i.e., if we had a "light-skinned, low-B, no sickle-cell trait, lactase tolerant" and a "dark-skinned, high-B, sickle-cell trait, lactase intolerant" race.
In reality there are both concordant and discordant clines in trait distribution. This is simply due to the stochastic nature of human variation and the different ecological adaptations of individual populations within broader racial groups. However, it is the fact that populations within the same race tend to match in more traits than they don't that allows us to discover the existence of races in the first place.
As an example, consider three cars: a blue Audi, a red Audi and a red Ferrari. If we say that the Audis belong to one "race" of cars, and the Ferrari belongs to another, then the argument could be raised that the red Audi and the Ferrari are more similar in their color to each other than to the blue Audi. But, if we study a great number of traits we discover that the blue Audi is in fact more similar to the red one, because it agrees with it in more traits than with the Ferrari. Simply put, the existence of multiple concordant clines is unlikely to have occurred by chance or identical selection pressures: it speaks of racial affinity.
To test this, I took a well-known craniometric dataset originally by W. W. Howells and (using ~1400 male crania from 28 populations) calculated one big array CLOSER[i,j,k]. Each entry in this array indicates on how many (out of a total of 45) cranial metric traits population i is closer to population j than to population k.
Each entry can be at most equal to 45: this means that i is closer to j in every trait, when compared to k: perfect concordance. A number ~22-23 means that there are as many concordant as there are discordant clines.
It is difficult to present all these numbers (I might organize these results in a better form later on), but I'll give some examples. For starters, let's take the Europoid populations of Oslo as i and Medieval Zalavar in Hungary as j and look at the number of traits in which these are closer to each other than to the 26 remaining populations: these range between 25 (for Berg in Austria) to 42 for the San Bushmen.
What does this mean? It means that Oslo agrees with Zalavar in 25 traits and with Berg in the remaining 20 traits. But, Oslo agrees with Zalavar in 42 traits and with the San Bushmen in 3 traits. It is clear that even though some discordant traits exist, we can safely classify Oslo/Zalavar and the San as different races.
Or let's take the population of Hainan (China) and Hokkaido (Japan) and repeat this experiment: the numbers now range between 19 (for Kyushu, in Japan) and 41 (for the Andamanese). Hokkaido agrees with Hainan in 19 traits as opposed to 26 for Kyushu. But it agrees with Hainan in 41 traits as opposed to 4 with the Andamanese. Again, we can place Hainan and Hokkaido in one race and the Andamanese in another.
This simple experiment illustrates the fallacy of the discordant clines argument: certainly discordant clines exist, but it is the excess of concordant clines over discordant ones which allows us to determine racial affinity.
PS: This simple analysis could be improved by taking into account the interdependence of traits and the degree of agreement or disagreement. But, it suffices as is to demonstrate the simplistic logic behind the discordant clines argument.
January 03, 2004
Multivariate Craniometric Analysis of Taiwan Aboriginals
Anthropological Science
Vol. 111 (2003) , No. 3 pp.293-332
Taiwan Aboriginals and Peoples of the Pacific-Asia Region: Multivariate Craniometric Comparisons
Michael Pietrusewsky et al.
Abstract Stepwise discriminant function analysis and Mahalanobis’s generalized distance are applied to twenty-nine cranial measurements recorded in 2,531 male crania representing five Taiwan aboriginal cranial series and fifty prehistoric, modern, and near modern human groups. The Taiwan aboriginal cranial series include modern samples of Atayal, Bunun, Pazeh, Babuza, and archaeological human remains from the Shi San Hang site (ca 1800-500 BP). The comparative cranial series represent East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Guinea, island Melanesia, Polynesia, and Micronesia. The results of two separate analyses, one using five and the other using fifty-five groups, are presented. A relatively close connection between the Babuza, Pazeh, and Shi San Hang aboriginal cranial series is observed while the Atayal and Bunun series remain relatively well differentiated. Connections between Taiwan aboriginal groups and cranial series from Polynesia suggest that Taiwan’s aboriginal inhabitants may have been the ancestral source of these inhabitants of Remote Oceania. Similarly, these results suggest that the ultimate source of Taiwan’s prehistoric and modern aboriginal groups may be among the early inhabitants of eastern (Northeast or Southeast) Asia. The results of the present craniometric analysis are compared with other lines of evidence which have been used to examine the affinities and origins of Taiwan’s aboriginal peoples.
Genetics of Iris Color
Genetics, Vol. 165, 2071-2083, December 2003.
Sequences Associated With Human Iris Pigmentation
Tony Frudakis et al.
Abstract
To determine whether and how common polymorphisms are associated with natural distributions of iris colors, we surveyed 851 individuals of mainly European descent at 335 SNP loci in 13 pigmentation genes and 419 other SNPs distributed throughout the genome and known or thought to be informative for certain elements of population structure. We identified numerous SNPs, haplotypes, and diplotypes (diploid pairs of haplotypes) within the OCA2, MYO5A, TYRP1, AIM, DCT, and TYR genes and the CYP1A2-15q22-ter, CYP1B1-2p21, CYP2C8-10q23, CYP2C9-10q24, and MAOA-Xp11.4 regions as significantly associated with iris colors. Half of the associated SNPs were located on chromosome 15, which corresponds with results that others have previously obtained from linkage analysis. We identified 5 additional genes (ASIP, MC1R, POMC, and SILV) and one additional region (GSTT2-22q11.23) with haplotype and/or diplotypes, but not individual SNP alleles associated with iris colors. For most of the genes, multilocus gene-wise genotype sequences were more strongly associated with iris colors than were haplotypes or SNP alleles. Diplotypes for these genes explain 15% of iris color variation. Apart from representing the first comprehensive candidate gene study for variable iris pigmentation and constituting a first step toward developing a classification model for the inference of iris color from DNA, our results suggest that cryptic population structure might serve as a leverage tool for complex trait gene mapping if genomes are screened with the appropriate ancestry informative markers.
...
Genotypes for these 754 candidate SNPs were scored for 851 European-derived individuals of self-reported iris colors (292 blue, 100 green, 186 hazel, and 273 brown). Before screening these genotypes for association with iris colors, we used the 73 nonxenobiotic metabolism AIMs to determine BGA admixture proportions for each sample and we tested for correlation between BGA admixture and iris colors. This test showed that each of our 851 Caucasian samples was of majority Indo-European BGA, and although 58% of the samples were of significant (>4%) non-Indo-European BGA admixture, there was no correlation among low levels (<33%) of East Asian, sub-Saharan African, or Native American admixture and iris colors. For more extensively admixed individuals, we observed no correlation between higher levels (>33% but <50%) of Native American admixture and iris colors, although there was a weak association between higher levels of East Asian and sub-Saharan African admixture and darker iris colors (data not shown).
January 01, 2004
Two failures of Spearman's hypothesis
Intelligence
doi:10.1016/j.intell.2003.09.001
Two failures of Spearman's hypothesis: The GATB in Holland and the JAT in South Africa
Willemijn Roorda et al.
Abstract
Spearman's hypothesis states that the differences between Blacks and Whites in psychometric IQ are attributable to a fundamental difference in general intelligence (g). To investigate this hypothesis, Jensen devised the method of correlated vectors. This method involves calculating the correlation between the factor loadings of the subtest and the observed differences in means. Although the hypothesis concerns U.S. populations, Jensen's test has also been used to investigate other groups. The aim of the present paper is to test Spearman's hypothesis in a published Dutch and a published South African data set. Both data sets were previously analyzed by Jensen's method, and the results were interpreted in support of Spearman's hypothesis. In this paper, we reanalyzed both data sets by Multigroup Confirmatory Factor Analysis (MGCFA). We find that the hypothesis of factorial invariance, which implies that the same construct is measured in the groups, must be rejected. This greatly complicates any comparison of the group with respect to the test scores and makes it impossible to determine the role, if any, of g in explaining the observed differences in psychometric IQ. This conclusion runs counter to the conclusion that Spearman's hypothesis is supported in these data sets.