Brit-Am Anthropology and DNA Update (7 December, 2014, 15 Kislev, 5775)
Important Note: The articles and views quoted below DO NOTÂ necessarily reflect our own views. They are presented in the public interest on the off-chance that some aspect of them may prove even partially correct or otherwise lead to right information or even just show us how some of the "experts" are thinking at present.
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Contents:
1. Interesting pictures on race
2. DNA Accuracy
3. Australian Aborigines Represent MOST Populations of the Earth!
4. Ashkenazi Jewish Women All from North Italian Converts??
5. Jewish R1a from the Middle East? [though previous studies related it to the Wends of Germany].
6. Cleanliness May Really Be Next To Godliness: New Study Finds Dirty Living And Working Conditions Lead To Lying And Cheating
Disgust leads people to lie and cheat; cleanliness promotes ethical behavior
7. Unattractive Men Look Better to Women on the Pill by Stephanie Pappas
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1. Interesting pictures on race
There Are Only 3 Races On The Earth: Part 2 - Where The "Anglo-Saxons" Came From
https://sites.google.com/site/themysteryofperfection/topics-marriage-divorce/interracial-marriage/there-are-only-3-races-on-the-earth-part-2---where-the-anglo-saxons-came-from
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2. DNA Accuracy
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jan/14/science/la-sci-india-australia-migration-20130115
In 2008, for example, an analysis of 3,000 Europeans found that their DNA could predict the places they came from to within several hundred kilometers.
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3. Australian Aborigines Represent MOST Populations of the Earth!
http://www.dnaconsultants.com/_blog/DNA_Consultants_Blog/post/Aboriginal_Australian_History_Finally_Resolved
Some mysteries pointed out about Aboriginal Australian DNA by the authors include:
--The Aboriginal population contains a lot of diversity, including specimens of most of the world's haplogroups, male and female
--Related populations suggested are hunger-gatherers from Nepal and the Philippines, Great Andamanese and Onge from the Andaman Islands, Highland Papua New Guineans and certain peoples from India
--It was previously unclear whether Aboriginals resulted from a single dispersal out of Africa or multiple-dispersal model
--The role of hybridization with other archaic peoples was also not clear.
The new study finds that Aboriginals have an amount of admixture with Neanderthals and Denisovans comparable to Europeans and Asians, although they have more Denisovan DNA than other people. "This admixture may have occurred in Melanesia or, alternative, in Eurasia during the early migration wave" (97).
Comments
Angel Du Pree commented on 15-Nov-2013 12:58 PM
Back in the seventies I took an anthropology course at the University of Florida. One of the professors had postulated that the Australian aborigines may have had ancestry with the Ainu people off the coast of Japan. Though the Ainu are light skinned he pointed out the fact that both tend to have a similar head shape, notably their foreheads. He showed us a map of ocean currents and one of them led directly from the Ainu sown to Australia. Has this been totally debunked? Have there been any genetic comparisons done?
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4. Ashkenazi Jewish Women All from North Italian Converts??
European Ancestry of Ashkenazi Jews
http://racialreality.blogspot.co.il/2014/03/european-ancestry-of-ashkenazi-jews.html
MARCH 8, 2014
According to a new genetic study, Ashkenazi Jews are mostly European on their maternal side, and that admixture comes from Western and Central Europe when diaspora males from the Levant arrived first in Rome and found wives among local Italian women who converted to Judaism. They then migrated further west and north and acquired other European admixture in the same way, before finally heading east. Intermixing slowed after that because they have very little Slavic or Turkic (Khazar) admixture. Their paternal side remains mostly Near Eastern. This all fits well with findings from anthropology some 75 years ago.
Overall, it seems that at least 80% of Ashkenazi maternal ancestry is due to the assimilation of mtDNAs indigenous to Europe, most likely through conversion. The phylogenetic nesting patterns suggest that the most frequent of the Ashkenazi mtDNA lineages were assimilated in Western Europe, ~2 ka or slightly earlier. Some in particular, including N1b2, M1a1b, K1a9 and perhaps even the major K1a1b1, point to a north Mediterranean source. It seems likely that the major founders were the result of the earliest and presumably most profound wave of founder effects, from the Mediterranean northwards into central Europe, and that most of the minor founders were assimilated in west/central Europe within the last 1,500 years. The sharing of rarer lineages with Eastern European populations may indicate further assimilation in some cases, but can often be explained by exchange via intermarriage in the reverse direction.
The Ashkenazim therefore resemble Jewish communities in Eastern Africa and India, and possibly also others across the Near East, Caucasus and Central Asia, which also carry a substantial fraction of maternal lineages from their 'host' communities. Despite widely differing interpretations of autosomal data, these results in fact fit well with genome-wide studies, which imply a significant European component, with particularly close relationships to Italians. As might be expected from the autosomal picture, Y-chromosome studies generally show the opposite trend to mtDNA (with a predominantly Near Eastern source) with the exception of the large fraction of European ancestry seen in Ashkenazi Levites.
Evidence for haplotype sharing with non-Ashkenazi Jews for each of the three main haplogroup K founders may imply a partial common ancestry in Mediterranean Europe for Ashkenazi and Spanish-exile Sephardic Jews, but may also, at least in part, be due to subsequent gene flow, especially into Bulgaria and Turkey, both of which witnessed substantial immigration from Ashkenazi communities in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Gene flow could have been substantial in some cases, ongoing intermarriage is likely when these communities began living in closer proximity after the Spanish exile. A partial common ancestry for all European Jews, both Ashkenazi and Sephardic, is again strongly supported by the autosomal results.
Jewish communities were already spread across the Graeco-Roman and Persian world >2,000 years ago. It is thought that a substantial Jewish community was present in Rome from at least the mid-second century BCE, maintaining links to Jerusalem and numbering 30,000-50,000 by the first half of the first century CE. By the end of the first millennium CE, Ashkenazi communities were historically visible along the Rhine valley in Germany. After the wave of expulsions in Western Europe during the fifteenth century, they began to disperse once more, into Eastern Europe.
These analyses suggest that the first major wave of assimilation probably took place in Mediterranean Europe, most likely in the Italian peninsula ~2 ka, with substantial further assimilation of minor founders in west/central Europe. There is less evidence for assimilation in Eastern Europe, and almost none for a source in the North Caucasus/Chuvashia, as would be predicted by the Khazar hypothesis, rather, the results show strong genetic continuities between west and east European Ashkenazi communities, albeit with gradual clines of frequency of founders between east and west.
http://s1.zetaboards.com/anthroscape/single/?p=1237274&t=5302028
The result was very clear-cut, the authors say: As reported online today in Nature Communications, more than 80% of Ashkenazi mtDNAs had their origins thousands of years ago in Western Europe, during or before Biblical times, and in some cases even before farming came to that part of the continent some 7500 years ago. The closest matches were with mtDNAs from people who today live in and around Italy. The results imply that the Jews can trace their heritage to women who had lived in Europe at that time. Very few Ashkenazi mtDNAs could be traced to the Middle East.
Costa et al. "A substantial prehistoric European ancestry amongst Ashkenazi maternal lineages". Nature Communications, 2013.
The Jews have been left to the end because they do not as a whole fit into any single racial classification heretofore outlined. Historically the Jews of the Biblical period in Palestine were a Semitic-speaking people composed of various Mediterranean strains which had blended together at the time of the formation of the Jewish nation. These Mediterranean strains must have included a small Mediterranean type comparable to the present Yemeni Arabs; a taller, longer-faced strain with a tendency to nasal convexity, as is found among Irano-Afghan peoples today; and a straight-nosed, presumably Atlanto-Mediterranean element contributed by the Philistines.
The Jews began their expansion from Palestine as early as the time of the Babylonian Captivity; at this time they settled Mesopotamia in large numbers, and from there began an expansion into central Asia of which colonies still remain. In the Hellenistic period they migrated into Asia Minor and the Black Sea region, as well as into Egypt; these emigrants became Hellenistic Jews. Under the Romans they settled in Italy, France, and Spain, with especial concentrations in Spain and in the cities of the Rhineland. The Jews expelled from Spain in 1492 and during previous expulsions became the Sephardim, whose descendants are to be found in various countries bordering on the Mediterranean, especially Morocco, the Salonika region of what is now Greece, and Turkey. The Rhineland Jews, persecuted at the time of the First Crusade, moved eastward into Poland, the Ukraine and other central European countries, and met there and absorbed a group of Hellenistic Jews moving westward, among whom were some who had lived among the Turkish Khazars in the Crimea and elsewhere. The two groups blended and the Germanic speech of the more numerous western element prevailed. The modern Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim are the descendants of this amalgamated body. Racially they preserve to a large measure their Mediterranean character, altered partly by Alpine admixture which has in many cases produced Dinaricization. This Alpine, as well as some Nordic, admixture was probably obtained largely in France and Germany before their departure eastward. The most persistent Palestinian Mediterranean traits which the Jews preserve is a narrowness of the face. The Jewish facial expression, by which many Jews may be distinguished, is a cultural and not a genetic character.
Carleton Coon. The Races of Europe. New York: MacMillan, 1939.
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5. Jewish R1a from the Middle East? [though previous studies related it to the Wends of Germany].
Phylogenetic applications of whole Y-chromosome sequences and the Near Eastern origin of Ashkenazi Levites
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2013/131217/ncomms3928/abs/ncomms3928.html
Siiri Rootsi,1, 15,
Doron M. Behar,1, 2, 15,
Phylogenetic applications of whole Y-chromosome sequences and the Near Eastern origin of Ashkenazi Levites
Abstract
Previous Y-chromosome studies have demonstrated that Ashkenazi Levites, members of a paternally inherited Jewish priestly caste, display a distinctive founder event within R1a, the most prevalent Y-chromosome haplogroup in Eastern Europe. Here we report the analysis of 16 whole R1 sequences and show that a set of 19 unique nucleotide substitutions defines the Ashkenazi R1a lineage. While our survey of one of these, M582, in 2,834 R1a samples reveals its absence in 922 Eastern Europeans, we show it is present in all sampled R1a Ashkenazi Levites, as well as in 33.8% of other R1a Ashkenazi Jewish males and 5.9% of 303 R1a Near Eastern males, where it shows considerably higher diversity. Moreover, the M582 lineage also occurs at low frequencies in non-Ashkenazi Jewish populations. In contrast to the previously suggested Eastern European origin for Ashkenazi Levites, the current data are indicative of a geographic source of the Levite founder lineage in the Near East and its likely presence among pre-Diaspora Hebrews.
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6. Cleanliness May Really Be Next To Godliness: New Study Finds Dirty Living And Working Conditions Lead To Lying And Cheating
Disgust leads people to lie and cheat; cleanliness promotes ethical behavior
Jeff Falk - Rice University
http://news.rice.edu/2014/11/13/rice-u-study-disgust-leads-people-to-lie-and-cheat-cleanliness-promotes-ethical-behavior/
HOUSTON Â While feelings of disgust can increase behaviors like lying and cheating, cleanliness can help people return to ethical behavior, according to a recent study by marketing experts at Rice University, Pennsylvania State University and Arizona State University. The study highlights the powerful impact emotions have on individual decision-making.
'As an emotion, disgust is designed as a protection,' said Vikas Mittal, the J. Hugh Liedtke Professor of Marketing at Rice's Jones Graduate School of Business. 'When people feel disgusted, they tend to remove themselves from a situation. The instinct is to protect oneself. People become focused on 'self' and they're less likely to think about other people. Small cheating starts to occur: If I'm disgusted and more focused on myself and I need to lie a little bit to gain a small advantage, I'll do that. That's the underlying mechanism.'
In turn, the researchers found that cleansing behaviors actually mitigate the self-serving effects of disgust. 'If you can create conditions where people's disgust is mitigated, you should not see this (unethical) effect,' Mittal said. 'One way to mitigate disgust is to make people think about something clean. If you can make people think of cleaning products, for example, Kleenex or Windex - the emotion of disgust is mitigated, so the likelihood of cheating also goes away. People don't know it, but these small emotions are constantly affecting them.'
Vikas co-authored the paper with Karen Page Winterich, an associate professor of marketing at Penn State's Smeal College of Business, and Andrea Morales, a professor of marketing at Arizona State's W.P. Carey School of Business. It will be published in the journal Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.
The researchers conducted three randomized experiments evoking disgust through various means. The study involved 600 participants around the United States; both genders were equally represented. In one experiment, participants evaluated consumer products such as antidiarrheal medicine, diapers, feminine care pads, cat litter and adult incontinence products. In another, participants wrote essays about their most disgusting memory. In the third, participants watched a disgusting toilet scene from the movie 'Trainspotting.' Once effectively disgusted, participants engaged in experiments that judged their willingness to lie and cheat for financial gain. Mittal and colleagues found that people who experienced disgust consistently engaged in self-interested behaviors at a significantly higher rate than those who did not.
In another set of experiments, after inducing the state of disgust on participants, the researchers then had them evaluate cleansing products, such as disinfectants, household cleaners and body washes. Those who evaluated the cleansing products did not engage in deceptive behaviors any more than those in the neutral emotion condition.
The findings should help managers and organizational leaders understand the impact, both ethical and unethical, of emotions on decision-making, Mittal said.
'At the basic level, if you have environments that are cleaner, if you have workplaces that are cleaner, people should be less likely to feel disgusted,' Mittal said. 'If there is less likelihood to feel disgusted, there will be a lower likelihood that people need to be self-focused and there will be a higher likelihood for people to cooperate with each other.'
Mittal said the deeper meaning of the study's finding is that these powerful emotions can be triggered by various innocuous-sounding things when people are reading the newspaper or listening to the radio. 'What we found is that unless you ask people, they often don't know they're feeling disgusted,' Mittal said. 'Small things can trigger specific emotions, which can deeply affect people's decision-making. The question is how to make people more self-aware and more thoughtful about the decision-making process.'
Mittal mentioned Warren Buffett as an example of a smart decision-maker who avoids paying too much attention to the news. 'If you're making important decisions, how do you create an environment that is less emotionally cluttered so you can become progressively more thoughtful?'
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7. Unattractive Men Look Better to Women on the Pill
http://www.livescience.com/48781-women-pill-men-attraction-satisfaction.html
by Stephanie Pappas, Live Science Contributor  |  November 17, 2014 03:02pm ET
Extracts:
Picking a partner while on the Pill might have lasting ramifications on marital satisfaction, new research finds.
The new findings show that women who start or stop hormonal contraception during a relationship tend to experience a drop in sexual satisfaction, according to the new study, published today (Nov. 17) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
But even odder, women in the study who got together with their future husbands while taking hormonal birth control and who later stop using the medication also become less satisfied with their marriages, but only if their husbands were less attractive than average. If hubby was a hottie, women became more satisfied after stopping the hormones, the study showed.
The effect may occur because the progesterone and estrogen in hormonal birth control affect women's fertility, and thus what they are looking for in a mate, according to the study. Previous studies have found that women prefer more masculine-looking partners when they are ovulating. The theory, which is still controversial, is that masculine men have good genes, which would benefit a woman's offspring if she were to get pregnant.
That finding suggests that women who are having natural menstrual cycles are more intrigued by good looks, and thus get a satisfaction boost after stopping the pill if their husband is good-looking, Russell said. In contrast, a woman who married a less-attractive man and who then stopped the pill might become generally more interested in handsome faces, only to find herself disappointed by her husband's, Russell added.
"Previous research suggests that estrogen partially accounts for women's preferences for specific qualities in their partners, and [hormonal contraceptives] vary in the amount of estrogen they contain," Russell said. "It's possible that the effects we found may be stronger or weaker depending on the amount of estrogen in a particular formulation."
Hormonal contraception is very popular in the United States. According to the Guttmacher Institute, 17 percent of all women ages 15 to 44 were on the birth control pill as of 2010. Another 5 percent or so used hormone injections, a hormonal patch or a vaginal ring as birth control.