Does race exist?

Yes they do. About 20% more Neanderthal DNA than Europeans. There is also Denisovan DNA as well in the mix.

Researchers also have found a peculiar pattern in non-Africans: People in China, Japan and other East Asian countries have about 20 percent more Neanderthal DNA than do Europeans.

Last year, Sriram Sankararaman, a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard Medical School, and his colleagues proposed that natural selection was responsible for the difference. Most Neanderthal genes probably had modestly bad effects on the health of our ancestors, Dr. Sankararaman and other researchers have found. People who inherited a Neanderthal version of any given gene would have had fewer children on average than people with the human version.

As a result, Neanderthal DNA became progressively rarer in living humans. Dr. Sankararaman and his colleagues proposed that it disappeared faster in Europeans than in Asians. The early Asian population was small, the researchers suggested, and natural selection eliminates harmful genes more slowly in small groups than in large populations. Today, smaller ethnic groups, like Ashkenazi Jews and the Amish, can have unusually high rates of certain genetic disorders.

Joshua M. Akey, a geneticist at the University of Washington, and the graduate student Benjamin Vernot recently set out to test this hypothesis. They took advantage of the fact that only some parts of our genome have a strong influence on health. Other parts — so-called neutral regions — are less important.

A mutation in a neutral region won’t affect our odds of having children and therefore won't be eliminated by natural selection. If Dr. Sankararaman’s hypothesis were correct, you would expect Europeans to have lost more harmful Neanderthal DNA than neutral DNA. In fact, the scientists did not find this difference in the DNA of living Europeans.

Dr. Akey and Mr. Vernot then tested out other possible explanations for the comparative abundance of Neanderthal DNA in Asians. The theory that made the most sense was that Asians inherited additional Neanderthal DNA at a later time.

In this scenario, the ancestors of Asians and Europeans split, the early Asians migrated east, and there they had a second encounter with Neanderthals. Dr. Akey and Mr. Vernot reported their findings in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

Dr. Lohmueller and the graduate student Bernard Y. Kim approached the same genetic question, but from a different direction. They constructed a computer model of Europeans and Asians, simulating their reproduction and evolution over time. They added some Neanderthal DNA to the ancestral population and then watched as Europeans and Asian populations diverged genetically.

The scientists ran the model many times over, trying out a range of likely conditions. But no matter which variation they tried, they couldn’t find one explaining why Asians today have extra Neanderthal DNA.

But when they ran a model that included a second interbreeding, another “pulse” of Neanderthal genes into the Asian population, the researchers had better luck. “We find that the two-pulse model can fit the data really well,” Dr. Lohmueller said. He and Mr. Kim published their results in a separate paper in the American Journal of Human Genetics.

Dr. Akey is pleased that the two studies reached the same conclusion. “Together, they tell the same story, just from different perspectives,” he said.

Dr. Sankararaman agreed that the new research cast doubt on his proposal that natural selection stripped Neanderthal DNA from Europeans more quickly than from Asians. “The analysis from both papers gives strong support to the two-pulse model in Asians,” he said.

But the two-pulse hypothesis also poses a puzzle of its own.

If Neanderthals became extinct 40,000 years ago, they may have disappeared before Europeans and Asian populations genetically diverged. How could there have been Neanderthals left to interbreed with Asians a second time?

It is conceivable that the extinction of the Neanderthals happened later in Asia. If that is true, there might yet be more recent Neanderthal fossils waiting to be discovered there.

Or perhaps Asians interbred with some other group of humans that had interbred with Neanderthals and carried much of their DNA. Later, that group disappeared.​

That other group was more than likely Denisovan groups that were present in Asia.

We must also consider the fact that Neanderthal DNA has not always been beneficial..

The researchers discovered that about 20 percent of the Neanderthal genome could be found in modern humans. Although the majority of genes inherited from Neanderthals apparently do not do anything remarkably different from their modern-human counterparts, "some of the genes are beneficial," said Vernot, who, along with Akey, detailed these findings online Jan. 29 in the journal Science.

For instance, they found "evidence that both Europeans and East Asians have inherited genes having something to do with the skin," Vernot told LiveScience. "That makes sense — skin is an important organ, protecting against pathogens, protecting against ultraviolet light."

An independent team involving evolutionary geneticist David Reich at Harvard Medical School and his colleagues found mutations inherited from Neanderthals were most often in genes related to keratin, a component of skin and hair. These genetic changes may have helped modern humans adapt to chillier environments outside Africa.

[...]

Both research groups also found that some regions of the modern-human genome are devoid of Neanderthal DNA, including areas involving the testes and the X chromosome. This suggests certain Neanderthal mutations were incompatible with modern humans and were removed during evolution, perhaps because they reduced fertility, both research teams said. Reich's group also identified Neanderthal-linked gene variants associated with the risk of diseases such as lupus,Type 2 diabetes and Crohn's disease (a chronic inflammatory bowel disease).

Although 20 percent might sound like a lot of mingling happened between Neanderthals and the ancestors of modern humans, it could have resulted from as few as 300 mating events, Vernot said.

The research team's computer simulations of modern-human intermingling with Neanderthals suggest about 40 percent of the Neanderthal genome may actually survive within modern human genomes. "We just identified 20 percent is all," Vernot said.

To identify the other 20 percent or so of Neanderthal genome hidden within modern humans, the scientists estimate they would need about 1,000 individuals from any given modern-human population — for instance, Europeans — to find nearly all the Neanderthal DNA present there.

However, identifying Neanderthal DNA will be challenging. "Because we're so similar to Neanderthals, there could be many, many regions that are virtually identical, with no differences that we can tell apart," Vernot said.​

I think there was a belief that modern humans migrated out of Africa in one wave, but we now know that there have been numerous migration events. And we also know that there were other distinct hominid species that had migrated out of Africa much earlier and that modern humans obviously interbred with them. There will be others. Probably within Africa itself and certainly out of Africa also.

 

No, not the same strands. Not everyone has the same strands of Neanderthal DNA in them. For example, you can have two non related French people with Neanderthal DNA but they will not have the same strand or the same Neanderthal DNA.

Possibly. I don't think anyone really knows for sure. Asia also had Neanderthal populations, as well as that of other hominids. Time will tell what they find or what turns up.

There are obviously still undiscovered hominids, be it in Africa and elsewhere. Just need to find their remains.

There wasn't a lot of interbreeding. But there is evidence that it was not during just one period or event. There were many waves of migration out of Africa and we know that our ancestors encountered numerous hominids. Time will tell.

 

Which is bizarre when you consider that everyone's ancestral tree is so mixed to begin with. You might share a culture with someone else, but you won't be the same race. If we were to take your argument seriously, then it would mean that the Irish, Scottish, English, French, Germans are all different and distinct races. Because their ancestry is not shared, nor were their cultures remotely similar (and many would argue they are still vastly different).

Biologically, one could never make the distinction you are trying to make in this thread.

I mean you do realise that "Europeans" do not share the same ancestry, yes? Neither do Asians, Africans, Melanesian's, South Americans, North Americans and so on and so forth. If we were to take you seriously, it would mean that each group with a shared ancestry, which would mean community groups that are long established, are a different race.

 

The Yiddish/Hebrew word goy has almost always been used as an insult to people who are not members of the Jewish community. This includes Christians, Muslims, Baha'i and members of other religions. But it also refers to people of Jewish ancestry who have abandoned the faith, especially those who have assimilated into the larger non-Jewish society. (In my observation the ultimate test is the observation of Passover. That one day makes you Jewish for the rest of the year.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

)

Perhaps 150 years ago. In the USA, the only people who have "pure" African blood are the recent immigrants from Africa--but even their female ancestors had been raped by non-Africans, especially Semitic (or mixed-ancestry) Muslims from North Africa and Mesopotamia.

Good example. We all celebrate him as our first black President, but his mother is of more-or-less pure European ancestry, while his African father is guaranteed to have European and/or Arab ancestors. This makes him less than 50% "black."

A high school student of European ancestry whom I knew in the 1960s (when this anecdote was a lot more believable than it would be today) wore an Afro hairstyle and mimicked the speech and other mannerisms of the Afro-American kids in his school. Everyone accepted him as an Afro-American.

Considering that his sister went to the same school, and she is (as they say) "as white as the Queen's hiney" this was remarkable.

My point is that today "race" doesn't seem to have much to do with DNA--or, amazingly, even skin color.

 

Sorry that I didn't elaborate; I thought it was obvious. It only works that way if you come from a Jewish family. Or, depending on the particular Jewish community, just a Jewish mother.

I'm amazed. Back in Los Angeles it was quite common for Jewish people to invite Gentiles to their homes for the Seder.

Indeed. It's been said that Judaism is a religion of laws, not doctrines. You don't have to believe in God, so long as you perform the right rituals.

 

Well no they did not.

Are you even aware of the history, be it ancient and more recent, of Europe in general? Do you understand human evolution?

They do not share an ancestry in the manner that you are arguing in this thread..

Racial hierarchies are cultural, not scientific. While every group has genetic characteristics—and sometimes flaws—that are more common than in other groups, not everyone in the group will share them. The Afrikaners, much more than South Africa's other ethnic groups, are prone to porphyria variegata, the blood disorder depicted in the film The Madness of King George. It turns the urine purple and can incite temporary insanity. Almost all the South African cases of this disease can be traced to a single Dutch couple who married in Capetown in 1688. Being an Afrikaner is not a risk factor; being a descendant of this couple is.

Not only is race or ethnicity a poor predictor of most genetic traits, it is very hard to define. Many people think they can easily tell an Asian from a European, but, says Paabo, ''If we start walking east from Europe, when do we start saying people are Asian? Or if we walk up the Nile Valley, when do we say people are African? There are no sharp distinctions.''

Cavalli-Sforza has probably spent more time trying to classify human groups by genetic analysis than anyone else. In his massive book The History and Geography of Human Genes, he groups people into geographic and evolutionary clusters--but, he writes, ''At no level can clusters be identified with races.'' Indeed, ''minor changes in the genes or methods used shift some populations from one cluster to the other.''

Geneticist Steve Jones makes this point by looking at blood. ''We would have a very different view of human race if we diagnosed it from blood groups, with an unlikely alliance between the Armenians and the Nigerians, who could jointly despise the...people of Australia and Peru,'' who generally lack type-B blood, Jones writes in The Language of Genes. ''When gene geography is used to look at overall patterns of variation,'' he writes, ''color does not say much about what lies under the skin.''

Not only is our concept of race arbitrary, but it is based on a relatively insignificant difference between people. Skin pigment, eye shape, and hair type are all determined by genes. Indeed, as the human genome is mapped, geneticists might be able to reconstruct what mummies or other ancient people looked like. But the physical ''stereotypes'' of race, writes Cavalli-Sforza, ''reflect superficial differences.'' For example, light skin color is needed in northern climates for the sun's ultra- violet light to penetrate into the body and transform vitamin D into a usable form. This mutation may well have arisen at different times, in different ancestral groups, on different points along the DNA. That's true for cystic fibrosis, which occurs almost exclusively in people of European descent but is caused by several different mutations.

In other words, ''white people'' do not share a common genetic heritage; instead, they come from different lineages that migrated from Africa and Asia. Such mixing is true for every race. ''All living humans go back to one common ancestor in Africa,'' explains Paabo. ''But if you look at any history subsequent to that,'' then every group is a blend of shallower pedigrees. So, he says, ''I might be closer in my DNA to an African than to another European in the street.'' Genetics, he concludes, ''should be the last nail in the coffin for racism.''​

You are arguing from a standpoint of a racist. And a white supremacist racist at that.

Germanokelten? Do you think this is a white supremacist site?

Wait, did you just provide a link to a white supremacist John R. Baker?

And you think this is some form of information that is valid on this site? Baker did not even believe that the great civilisations around the world were civilisations, such as the Mayan, Aztecs or even the great ancient African civilisations. The man was, to put it bluntly, a racist loon. His book on race literally tried to classify human beings like animals, people of different colours being different sub-species, which we know is scientifically wrong. And this is what you are recommending we read?

Did you post that as a joke?

Because if you are seriously going to argue that, or along those lines, then I have to tell you that your argument in this thread is not scientific. It wouldn't even qualify as being pseudoscience. I mean, you went past woo and are now solidly in the trashcan.

 

I'm sorry, would you rather I use smaller words?

You are the one claiming that race exists. And you have done so repeatedly. You have also repeatedly argued for difference between races. You have been provided with more than enough information which correctly concludes that there is no such thing as "race".

Your concept of shared ancestry, more to the point, your argument for shared ancestry as a concept of race is not supported by science. For example:

This is factually wrong.

The Welsh were found to be genetically closer to the first hunter gatherers who arrived in the UK after the last Ice Age.

In fact, people from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are distinct separate genetic clusters.

The study found that people’s ancestral contributions varied considerably across Britain, with people from areas of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland emerging as separate genetic clusters, providing a scientific basis to the idea of regional identity for the first time.

The population of the Orkney Isles was found to be the most genetically distinct, with 25% of DNA coming from Norwegian ancestors who invaded the islands in the 9th century.

The Welsh also showed striking differences to the rest of Britain, and scientists concluded that their DNA most closely resembles that of the earliest hunter-gatherers to have arrived when Britain became habitable again after the Ice Age.

Surprisingly, the study showed no genetic basis for a single “Celtic” group, with people living in Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and Cornwall being among the most different form each other genetically.

“The Celtic regions one might have expected to be genetically similar, but they’re among the most different in our study,” said Mark Robinson, an archaeologist from the Oxford University Museum of Natural History and a co-author. “It’s stressing their genetic difference, it’s not saying there aren’t cultural similarities.”

[...]

The analysis shows that despite the momentous historical impact on British civilisation of the Roman, Viking and Norman invasions, none of these events did much to alter the basic biological makeup of people living here. The findings support records suggesting that few high ranking Roman officials settled in Britain and that they and their families remained largely segregated from the local Celts.

The Danish Vikings, who ruled over large swathes of Britain from 865AD, are known to have inter-married with locals, but the latest study shows that the conquering force, while powerful, must have comprised relatively few fighters.

“There were very large numbers of people - hundreds of thousands - in those parts of Britain, so to have a substantial impact on genetics there would have to be very large numbers of them,” said Robinson. “The fact that we don’t see that reflects the numbers rather than the relative allure or lack thereof of Scandinavian men to British women.”

The analysis also settles a long-running dispute about the nature of the Anglo-Saxon takeover of England following the collapse of the Roman empire. The replacement of the Celtic language by Anglo-Saxon and the complete shift towards North-West German farming and pottery styles has led some to suggest that local populations must have retreated to Wales or even been wiped out in a genocide.

“[Our results] suggest that at least 20% of the genetic makeup in this area is from Anglo-Saxon migrants, and that there was mixing,” said Robinson. “It is not genocide or complete disappearance of Britons.”​

You can read more about it at Nature: http://www.nature.com/news/uk-mapped-out-by-genetic-ancestry-1.17136

The actual study itself can also be found at Nature: http://www.nature.com/articles/natu...t9_CHzc&tracking_referrer=www.theguardian.com

It solely depends on which parts or county's of the UK you are looking at, because they, are in many cases, genetically distinct. People in Wales are not genetically linked historically to the people in the South of England, for example. So no, they do not have a shared ancestry. Far from it. The UK is an example of conquering forces in the last thousand or so years. The Anglo Saxons left a bigger marker, with the Nordic Vikings and the Romans leaving very little.

A word of advice, read actual scientific biological and genetic studies instead of white supremacist literature.

Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!