Re: Could our big brains come from Neanderthals?

Let's be serious. Anything that is said in regard to race that it
outside of the PC backyard will be considered racist; even if the
conclusions have all of the scientific support in the world.
______________________________________________________________________________
John Roth wrote:
Lee Olsen wrote:
John Roth wrote:
pete wrote:
on 10 Nov 2006 15:14:20 -0800, Lee Olsen <paleocity@xxxxxxxxxxx> sez:

Jois wrote:
"Spanish Paranoia" <laparanoia@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message


[...]

Doesn't this say that 30% of the human population has inferior
brains?

No, if I have Roth's explanation right (and I probably don't :-), and
what the article is actually saying,

"Lahn and his coauthors suggest that the haplogroup might have made
Homo sapiens better able to adapt to the Eurasian environments that
Neandertals had occupied long before modern newcomers arrived."

See my comment elsewhere in this topic on this one.


People were moving out of Africa before AMH came in contact with
Neanderthals - they don't have the D allele?

Right.

The conclusion here must be that despite the association with brain
development, variation in this gene (short of microcephalic pathology)
does not have a significant effect on overall intellectual function.

The only feasible conclusion is that we don't know. Given the high
rate of spread, it's got to be doing something. It might not be
brain function; after all microcephalin is expressed in several other
tissues. But I wouldn't bet on it.

I think what Pete is saying is that because Africans don't have it, it
can't have anything to do with "intelectual" function or else Africans
would have it, equal as they are. So in that sense it is feasible that
we do know what it isn't.

Um. In another post I said that the race question is back
on the front burner, and there are two hidden assumptions
in here that are going to have to be resolved.

First, sub-Saharan Africans are the _most_ diverse group
of people on the planet. Saying that "Africans" don't have
it presupposes that the DNA samples tested were large
enough and representative enough that the result is
trustworthy, rather than simply intriguing. They weren't.
Financial, time and presumably other constraints limited
the panel to 90+ samples, carefully chosen to be
representative of existing diversity worldwide. Even so,
that leaves less than 10 to cover all of Africa. I know of
one person on a mailing list that's convinced that is totally
insufficient, on statistical grounds.

Further, there's no evidence that "it" is the only way. There's
something incredibly strange about the Bantu migration.
For centuries, the Arabs had been supplying the slave markets
with sub-Saharan Africans; then the Bantu migration happened.
Under their leader, Chaka, they almost fought the British to a
standstill in South Africa, and might have changed the final outcome
of that conflict if Chaka hadn't been assasinated by a half-brother.

Second, the bald statement above presupposes that there
are no systematic differences between sub-Saharan Africans
and others. There is a large body of hard research that says
that simply isn't true. What is true is that there was a deliberate
decision in the early 20th century on the part of several very
reputable anthropologists to bury their heads in the sand over
the race issue; they systematically attacked anyone who
challenged that. Then it became an article of faith later.
That had the easily predictable result of leaving the field
free for the racists. "All that is necessary for evil to triumph
is for good men to do nothing". Accepting truth is the first
step toward developing an appropriately moral policy.



...But hey, remember the guy who used to post here who was convinced
that autism/Asperger's was due to a Hn gene? Within that idea is the
notion that genes from Hn might change behaviour, but not overall
intellectual ability. That's not out of the question, but it would
be difficult to tease out, I would guess.

That was before I rejoined. As a possibility it's not ruled
out, but that's mostly because we don't know the actual
genetic basis of any of the autism-spectrum disorders.
In other words, I consider it a piece of wild hand-waving.


What does this mean in terms of
race?

Nothing as far as Hss, it might have something to do with Neandertals
being the same species as us.

And would this give Klein's theory of the great leap that occurred in
the AMH a great leap forward?

No, I thought that at first also, but the advantage was only claimed
for "Eurasian environments." This makes sense because the 10% of
Europens that don't have the special D are not enviromentally
challenged, but probably came more recently from a warmer or an African
type environment. Roth said 100% D in Native Americans. This also is
OK, because their ancestors spent more time farther north (developing
shoveled incisors and such), weeding out the non-Ds, thus finally
ending up in the Americas at 100%.

I would guess if this haplogroup distribution is as they say, it
must be pretty much non-existent in Australian aborigines. I'm
not aware of any suggestion that the Aa's are particularly mentally
deficient. Australia continues to refute Klein's theory, and
he seems to have failed to address it at all, that I'm aware.
It would seem he must reject the accepted dates for Australian
occupation...

Since I'm not sure what Klein's theory you're refering to, I
can't comment on that. What I will say is that the last three

http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2002/may1/klein-51.html
Neutral Mutation Hypothesis @ 50,000 kya.


weeks or so seems to have completely rehabilitated multi-regionalism,
which puts the entire race question back on the front burner,
where a lot of people can get third degree burns if they're not
careful how they handle it (and possibly if they are).

WRT the Australian aborigine question: I understand it's a
very sensitive issue in Australia. It might even be more
sensitive than the Native American question is here in the
States, hard as that is for me to believe. Before making any
pronouncements on that, I'd be very careful to read the
literature on settlement waves. I'm under the impression
that it's more complex than one settlement at an early
date.

More than one early? I missed that, got a citation?

Unfortunately not. Lots of stuff goes across my computer
screen, but since I'm not an academic I don't have the
highly tuned crossreference files that can turn up the
citations on demand. If it didn't stick in my synapses, then
I don't have it. That's why I qualified it by saying "impression".
You might start with Dieneke's anthropology blog. Most of
what he posts is on DNA studies of various populations.

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/

John Roth



John Roth



--
==========================================================================
vincent@triumf[munge].ca Pete Vincent
Disclaimer: all I know I learned from reading Usenet.

.

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