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Y'know what really grinds my gears?

Started by Link Prime, 12 April, 2014, 01:47:44 PM

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Spikes

Being a bit of a mixture is the norm. Anyone 'pure' would be a bit tired-looking to say the least...

Sorry, Herr Hitler, but that's how it is.



Hawkmumbler

Quote from: Spikes on 22 February, 2016, 10:13:38 PM
Being a bit of a mixture is the norm. Anyone 'pure' would be a bit tired-looking to say the least...

Sorry, Herr Hitler, but that's how it is.
Plus, ya know, inbreeding.

Big_Dave

Quote from: JayzusB.Christ on 22 February, 2016, 01:16:42 PM
People who bang on and on about their Viking / Celtic / Saxon or whatever the fuck ancestors, as if you can define who you are by just vaguely tracing back your family tree and stopping when you get to something that sounds cool.

To these people I say: I don't care about these long-dead tribes- who are YOU?  The answer, generally speaking, is a nasty little racist.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22530134-300-ancient-invaders-transformed-britain-but-not-its-dna/

THEY came, they saw, they conquered. But while the Romans, Vikings and Normans ruled Britain for many years, none left their genetic calling cards behind in the DNA of today's mainland Caucasian population. That's the message from the most comprehensive analysis yet of the genetic make-up of the white British population.

The only invaders that left a lasting legacy are the Anglo-Saxons. As well as giving us the English language, the Anglo-Saxons, whose influx began around AD 450, account for 10 to 40 per cent of the DNA in half of modern-day Britons.

The analysis also springs some surprises. There was no single Celtic population outside the Anglo-Saxon dominated areas, but instead a large number of genetically distinct populations (see map below).

The DNA signatures of people in the neighbouring counties of Devon and Cornwall are more different than between northern England and Scotland. And there are also unexpectedly stark differences between inhabitants in the north and south of the Welsh county of Pembrokeshire.

The only appreciable genetic input from the Vikings is in the Orkney Islands, which were part of Norway for 600 years. Viking DNA accounts for 25 per cent of today's Orcadian DNA.

The team found that the genetic profiles of the participants formed 17 distinct clusters. When they mapped this information based on where the participants lived they were surprised to see the clusters mapped almost exactly to geographical location.

The largest cluster accounted for half the participants and occupies almost the whole of eastern and southern England and most of the Midlands. This turned out to be the genetic legacy of the Anglo-Saxon invasions.

Even so, at least 60 per cent of the DNA in the cluster had survived from earlier migrants (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature14230).

In fact, all 17 clusters are dominated by DNA from settlers that arrived prior to the Anglo-Saxons. By comparing the clusters with genomes from modern-day continental Europe, the team was able to piece together the general migration pattern that took place.

The first wave of arrivals crossed by land bridges, when sea levels were so low that Britain was attached to what is now northern Germany. This wave was dominated by people with genomes most similar to modern-day inhabitants of northern Germany and Belgium.

In parallel, migrants from the west coast of France were arriving by boat. Traces of the combined DNA from all these three pioneer settlers forms the basis for the genetic-make up of all white Britons.

Given the cultural significance of the Roman, Viking and Norman invasions, it's surprising they didn't leave greater genetic legacy. For the Romans and Normans, that may be because they were ruling elites who didn't intermarry with the natives.

Before the Romans came, Britain was a highly Balkanised cluster of culturally and genetically isolated tribal enclaves.

Starting in AD 43, the Romans dissolved many of these barriers in what is now southern and eastern England – partly through building roads. That same area was subsequently occupied by the Anglo-Saxons from AD 450 onwards.

Only in the west and north of Britain did the tribes manage to hold on to their isolation, including genetic isolation from the Anglo-Saxons.

Are some regions of Britain inbred?

No. Although some groups are more genetically distinct, they are only subtly so, with a huge amount of commonality across all British Caucasians. It is easier for differences to accumulate and linger in smaller populations, says Donnelly, whereas they become diluted in larger groups.

TordelBack

#1038
I would treat any current interpretation of population origins from DNA with the deepest caution. It's a field that is constantly changing, and the methodologies and datasets used are far from straightforward.  The ascribing of specific haplotypes to cultures and groups that aren't really understood or even demonstrated historically or archaeologically (e.g. "the Celts") is a particular bugbear.

I'm sure that everything will come out in the wash eventually, and it is a field of incomparable promise for understanding the past, but for now my reservations about the science combines with an instinctive negative reaction to its casual use to define identity, born in part of a suspicion about motivations. All too close to measuring skulls and claiming racial primacy in any one region, a laughable practice that filled entire libraries in the first half of the 20th C.

TordelBack

#1039
And just to contradict myself, one of my favourite things is the role of archaeology in undermining trite national narratives. So many times you see early hominids in Europe being cited as 'our ancestors', as if the modern inhabitants of Britain are somehow specially descended from the h.heidelbergensis at Boxgrove despite the 500K years, glacials, stadials and interstadials, depopulations and repopulations that have followed, never mind the questionable evolutionary connection. DNA offers even more subversive excitement in this line, with the suggestion that those cave-daubing Upr Paleololithic 'Europeans' responsible for the First Flowering of Western Art™, their noble paint-splattered Caucasian brows furrowed with foreknowledge of their descendants' transformation in unbroken line into Leonardo and Monet, have no genetic connection to modern Europeans at all - and that the DNA legacy of those Ice Age survivors is only present in Native American and East Asia populations, modern whitey largely being of several separate Levantine/Turkish origins entirely. 

Take this with all the caveats above, but enjoy for a moment the possibility that the cultural touchstones that fill French and German Museums were essentially looted from the sacred places of 'native' Europeans by the children of middle eastern immigrants.

The Legendary Shark

#1040
Quote from: Tordelback on 23 February, 2016, 05:28:15 AM
I would treat any current interpretation of population origins from DNA with the deepest caution. It's a field that is constantly changing, and the methodologies and datasets used are far from straightforward.  The ascribing of specific haplotypes to cultures and groups that aren't really understood or even demonstrated historically or archaeologically (e.g. "the Celts") is a particular bugbear.

I'm sure that everything will come out in the wash eventually, and it is a field of incomparable promise for understanding the past, but for now my reservations about the science combines with an instinctive negative reaction to its casual use to define identity, born in part of a suspicion about motivations. All too close to measuring skulls and claiming racial primacy in any one region, a laughable practice that filled entire libraries in the first half of the 20th C.

I agree. Eugenics never really went away, it just changed its name. For example, the American Eugenics Society, formed in 1921, now peddles its ideas under the benign-sounding Society for Biodemography and Social Biology and the Eugenics Education Society founded in 1907, and which later changed its name to the British Eugenics Society, now trades as the entirely respectable sounding moniker of The Galton Institute.
[move]~~~^~~~~~~~[/move]




sheridan

Quote from: Ghost MacRoth on 22 February, 2016, 04:14:26 PMPangean surely? ;)
My favourite nationality!

Quote from: SuperSurfer on 22 February, 2016, 04:29:48 PMSo my native American roots are of no interest round here?
Speaking personally I'd say it's interesting if you were you brought up in a native american culture.  For myself, I have bits of paper saying that my ancestors came from all over the place, but I never met them so it doesn't actually make any difference where they were born.


Quote from: radiator on 22 February, 2016, 05:10:52 PMI've actually asked some friends here about this very thing and all I get is blank stares - they don't see how its different to how I say it!They also are seemingly oblivious to how they pronounce Graham as 'Grem' or 'Gram'.


Pronouncing 'mirror' as 'mirrr' also.

Jim_Campbell

Stupidly Busy Letterer: Samples. | Blog
Less-Awesome-Artist: Scribbles.

Proudhuff

DDT did a job on me

Something Fishy

I saw that research a while ago and was not surprised that Cornwall and Devon had remained distant over the course of history.  The tamar really was the border to England and the Cornish remained a different people.

Hawkmumbler


Dandontdare

Quote from: Hawkmonger on 23 February, 2016, 03:57:23 PM
Quote from: Proudhuff on 23 February, 2016, 02:01:13 PM
'Cheers' as 'Chairs' very Edin Uni
'There' as 'Thur'. Very Bolton uni.  :lol:

At our work we have regular "Air & Share" meetings where staff reps sit down with senior managers to feed back grumblings and pass on news - or "Urr & Shurr" meetings according to our Boltonian rep.

SuperSurfer

Quote from: sheridan on 23 February, 2016, 12:58:06 PM
Quote from: SuperSurfer on 22 February, 2016, 04:29:48 PMSo my native American roots are of no interest round here?
Speaking personally I'd say it's interesting if you were you brought up in a native american culture.  For myself, I have bits of paper saying that my ancestors came from all over the place, but I never met them so it doesn't actually make any difference where they were born.
Actually, the closest I've been to a native American is in my imagination when as kids we would unwittingly play genocide (Cowboys and Indians) and I was usually on the wrong side (Cowboys).

I only made that comment about roots as it seemed that years ago almost every other American star (well, some) would in interviews claim to have native American ancestry. I would assume that was to increase their perceived cool factor. But now I think about it, attempts to eradicate the native Americans weren't that long ago so no doubt some people can trace their roots back to them.

If an ethnic/cultural group has been virtually eradicated and someone is aware of being a descendant of that group and sees that as part of their make-up and pays tribute to it, whether they grew up in that culture or not – is that a bad thing?

Different of course to a white supremacist-type harking back to imagined Viking or whatever roots and using that to justify their racism. Not even sure if that is the kind of thing they get up to, mind you.

I was curious about the term 'African-American'. Looking online I see comments of the civil rights movement in the US. Jesse Jackson in calling for use of 'African-American': "Every ethic group in this country has a reference to some land base, some historical cultural base."

A complicated subject that I know nothing of, but am mildly curious of, having grown up in the inner cities surrounded by people from all sorts of different backgrounds, which most defined themselves according to.

Tjm86

Quote from: SuperSurfer on 23 February, 2016, 05:39:51 PM
A complicated subject that I know nothing of, but am mildly curious of, having grown up in the inner cities surrounded by people from all sorts of different backgrounds, which most defined themselves according to.

I keep upsetting my mother on this score.  I don't like to define myself as English since I tend to associate that with the likes of the bullingdon club, the royal family, aristocracy, Imperial domination and the associated post colonial mess etc.  This starts off all sorts of disagreements, some of which I would agree with. 

I also tend to upset the Welsh language teachers in school since I find some aspects of the drive on the Welsh language similarly offensive.  My daughters are both born and bred in Wales but are considered lesser class in some circles because they don't speak Welsh.  My wife comes from an English speaking region although her brother in law was raised in a Welsh speaking region and is Welsh first language the rest of her family does not speak the language despite being similarly raised in the country.  We also live in the same predominantly English speaking region.

I guess my point, somewhat poorly articulated, is that cultural identity is insanely complex at any level.  It is the thought of cultural superiority that is most pernicious.  Perhaps being raised as a scaley brat might have something to do with my lack of appropriate cultural identity and odd views on the subject.

Anyway, rant over!

Hawkmumbler

I like to refer to myself as a human being with a slight drink problem, stunning good looks and the inability to get on with racist, homophobis fuck nuggets. Because thats what deffines who I am, not where I was born or what nationality my gret great great great aount thrice removed was.