Tag: David Reich

What’s in the Air

photog Book Reviews, Current Events, My Fiction, OCF, photog's Corner, Reviews, Science Fiction / Fantasy, SF&F Book Reviews, The Honeymooners, TV Reviews , , , , , ,

This week the Autumnal Equinox occurs and marks the point where the scales tip in the direction of night over day.  It’s subtle.  We still are enjoying days that have 80-degree temperatures, bright sun and the sound of cicadas and crickets.  But all the summer flowers are dead or dying.  The butterflies are almost all gone as are the hummingbirds.  The frogs still croak at night but their rhythm has slowed to a crawl and their hearts aren’t in it.

In a couple of weeks, the wolfbane will bloom and the short days will give way to frosty nights and the windows will close and the meals will feature oatmeal for lunch and soups for dinner.  And I’ll have to send for the guy who tunes up the heating system (may the Fire god Agni protect our dear furnace).

So indoor activities become more important.  I’ve been reading another book on the ancient DNA results.  It is very trendily named, “Who We Are and How We Got Here” by David Reich.  It has many of the results I have previously read but it made some further clarifications or conclusions.  I also watched a YouTube video that Reich was in.  In this video he made a very interesting assertion.  He said words to the effect that it probably isn’t the case that the Neanderthals and Denisovans went extinct.  Basically, they were reabsorbed in the various successive waves of migration from Africa and the Middle East northward after the last Ice Age.  He is of the opinion that the 2-4% Neanderthal genetic content of non-African humans is probably much higher, more like 10-20%.  And a similar case exists for the Denisovans.  And there may even be other intermediate species or races that we haven’t identified especially where DNA doesn’t survive as well.

Also, he clearly stated that Native Americans are a combination of about 1/3 ancient Siberian (sort of a proto-European group) and two thirds East Asian (e.g., Chinese, Korean, Japanese) ancestry that crossed the Bering Land Bridge in three waves.  There is a hint that a small relict population that includes some Australasian traits (e.g., Australian aborigine, New Guinean) exists in the Amazon rainforest but when and how they got there is unknown.

So, there is all this amazing information including the clarification of how the Yamnaya people from the space between the Black and Caspian Seas used the domestication of the horse and invention of the wagon to expand out and replace most of the inhabitants of Europe and Iran and half the inhabitants of India while spreading their language (Prot-Indo-European) to half of Eurasia and subsequently the world.

But the discouraging part of the book is how much hand-wringing Reich does about the fact that these ancient people weren’t feminists and how the conquerors managed to spread their DNA by having children with the lion’s share of the women of the conquered people.  And then we get the genetics of slavery.  Which is a similar story.  In fact, there is a whole chapter called Genomics of Inequality.  And then there is one called The Genomics of Race and Identity.  So, there is a whole lot of hand-wringing.  Oh well.  There is a lot of interesting results.  You just have to read between the whines.

I’m also reading Hans G. Schantz’s book “The Wise of Heart.”  It’s a reimagining of the Scopes’ Monkey Trial with biological sexuality standing in for Darwinian evolution in an environment where transgender activists have passed laws against stating biological reality.  I’m about a third of the way through and I can see he has carefully studied the courtroom nuances that such a legal confrontation would involve.  I’ll provide a full review when I finish.

And finally, now that the summer has ended, I hope to begin watching and reviewing the classic 39 episodes of “The Honeymooners,” the 1950’s sit-com that Jackie Gleason created.  I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for this show.  I believe it is the greatest contribution that Brooklyn ever made to western civilization (well, except for, maybe, ringalevio).

And of course, I’m continuing with my outlining of the universe for my epic sf series (WHATEVERITSCALLED).  Believe it or not musing over it actually provides measurable progress in making the choices I need, in order to provide scope and direction to the plot choices I want built into the “world.”  One thing’s for sure.  No xenomorphs in my universe.  Ridley Scott stole that monster from “Voyage of the Space Beagle” but even though that book was terrible it still gave the xenomorph a better showcase.

So, lots of good stuff going on.  Stay tuned.

Who We Are and How We Got Here; Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Past by David Reich – A Book Review

photog Book Reviews, Reviews , , , , ,

This review is a companion piece to my earlier review of Gregory Cochran’s “The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution.” These two books lay out step by step how the new tool of ancient DNA isolation has allowed geneticists to turn museum fossils into an amazingly detailed history of the inter-relations between and movements of, the various branches of the human species as it emerged out of Africa 50,000 to 150,000 years ago and went on to settle the planet.

It is truly remarkable how comparing DNA sequences between modern and ancient humans has allowed these researchers to answer historical mysteries such as who were the first Indo-European speakers (the Yamnaya) and where did they live (the Russian Steppe). We can determine if the Native Americans are essentially the direct descendants of the ancestors of the East Asians or were there some other components involved. We can find out where the blond hair and blue eyes of the Northern Europeans came from. We can even find out how many concubines Genghis Kahn must have had. In this day in age, we’re even able to have our DNA tested by the likes of this Aberdeen DNA testing company for various reasons, more often than not people use it for paternity evidence and health implications, although it can also be used to find one’s heritage and link our bloodline to past eras.

So, this book is full of facts to satisfy our curiosity about where we all came from. But there is another dimension to this book that is also interesting. David Reich is an academic scientist. He interacts constantly with the very politically correct denizens of the social sciences. He describes his run-ins with anthropologists and bio-ethicists who accuse him of racism for identifying various biological traits with specific human races. Even though these traits such as sickle-cell anemia are widely known to reside almost exclusively in one racial group or another, these academics were so conditioned to reject the concept of physical race differences that even mentioning them in the context of biomedical research was the equivalent of heresy.

To his credit, Reich recognizes the intellectual weakness inherent in this response but it is obvious by the compromises he will commit to assuage the discomfort of his colleagues that he feels more comfortable himself being on the “side of the angels.” For instance, after his research clearly showed that the present population of India is the result of the Yamnaya invading from the north and mixing in with the earlier inhabitants he allowed the feelings of his Indian colleagues to force him to rename these groups Ancestral North Indians and Ancestral South Indians.

And Reich is much harsher toward those on the right who speculate about natural selection at work in the differences measured between present day groups. He is obviously unwilling to assume a neutral position along the spectrum of opinion on human biodiversity and feels more comfortable aligning himself at least in spirit with those whose opinions about human racial differences fly in the face of his own research.

So, Reich’s book is both fascinating and aggravating at one and the same time. I imagine virtue signaling is the price he thinks he has to pay to get this book accepted by the academic community and then New York Times Book Review.

My recommendation is to read this book. But be sure to read Cochran’s book along with it to see an opinion that isn’t captured in an orbit around the black hole that is Modern Academia.