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News & ArtsFriday, December 16, 2011
Science The Fiction of Aryan Purity
Posted by Charles Mudede on Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 8:35 AM
Who is surprised to read this?
That the Nazis were able to make such connections between their hateful, white supremacist ideology and ancient India is undoubtedly perverse. But the idea of a distinct “Aryan” identity — and the Aryans’ arrival some 3,500 years ago in the Indian subcontinent — is a very real narrative in contemporary historiography. The racial stock of much of South Asia has tended to be classified “Aryo-Dravidian,” the combination of Aryan settlers and the subcontinent’s earlier indigenous inhabitants. Aryan lore supposedly underlays the early legends of Hinduism; the archaic Hindu caste system is seen by some as the political legacy of an Aryan conquest of India.But a new study adds to mounting genetic evidence that no such clear distinction ever existed and that the Aryans of Nazi repute — whose identity has also been embraced over the years by some in the Hindu far-right — weren’t as pure (or real) as arch-racialists would hope. Published in the American Journal of Human Genetics by a team spearheaded by the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, the article argues the roots of South Asia’s genetic diversity are far older and more complex than the myth of Aryan invasion would suggest.
It's all just fiction...
To make matters worse, we are all African apes. I also love the people who suddenly believe that 40,000 years is enough to make considerable genetic differences between races. For so long, the science community has been telling us everything happens so slowly, evolution is glacial. Now that the evidence points to a common ancestor in East Africa only 200,000 or so years ago, suddenly evolution is not so slow. Things can happen like that. This is no joke. There is even a respected scientist, Chinese-born Bruce Lahn, who argues that a mutation that happened 6000 years ago was enough to make Africans stupid and Europeans and Asians geniuses. 6000 years ago. So much for gradualism, so much for 2 millions years of development on the African continent. All you need is 6000 years to make a significant biological difference.
1
The danger of myths cannot be overstated. That science can wipe them away from the more savage mind is doubtful.
2
The rate of "evolution" depends both on the degree of random genetic variability of a species (which is relatively easy to quantify) along with how systematically selective the environment has been (which is largely guesswork).
When the environment is highly systematically selective, 6000 years (roughly 300 generations) could produce a whole new species. For perspective, the American Bulldog has changed radically in just 60 years due to systematic breeding of traits (that make it barely able to function, as it happens). The bulldog of 60 years ago wouldn't even be recognized as such today.
While it's safe to assume that nature's agenda isn't nearly as single-minded as the American Kennel Club, it's all but impossible to model how systematic it has been, so I don't think this debate will be settled anytime soon.
.
When the environment is highly systematically selective, 6000 years (roughly 300 generations) could produce a whole new species. For perspective, the American Bulldog has changed radically in just 60 years due to systematic breeding of traits (that make it barely able to function, as it happens). The bulldog of 60 years ago wouldn't even be recognized as such today.
While it's safe to assume that nature's agenda isn't nearly as single-minded as the American Kennel Club, it's all but impossible to model how systematic it has been, so I don't think this debate will be settled anytime soon.
.
3
Not that this detracts from your main point, but my understanding is that punctuated equilibrium is an accepted theory about one of the ways evolution works - millennia of relative stasis highlighted by brief, intense bouts of mutation (brought about by random mutation or sudden environmental change). So, yeah, "so much for gradualism".
4
To me, it's always clear the difference between a real scientist and pseudo-pop scientist who is bending things to make a point.
The real scientist takes the smallest sliver of reality and studies it. If the results end up bringing down Goliath...they speak for themselves.
The popularizer, big thinking, book writing pseudo-science doesn't bother with the ground work. He jumps right to the Big Theory.
So, a real scientist will study finches and stick to small isolated islands where some degree of control is there.
The p-p scientist talks about differences in "continents" and whole "races".
5
There's something to be said for accepting that there are different subspecies of humanity. Were we any other lifeform, the differences between Caucasian, African, and Asiatic appearances and genetic codes would be enough to differentiate between us. The problem, of course, is that 'sub' can be taken to mean less than. Ironically, the African subspecies would have to be taken to be the purest strain of humanity since it was the originator. Not that Nazis or their ilk would ever accept that. But yeah. it's no surprise the so-called Aryan bloodlines are anything but pure.
8
All you need to discredit gradualism is the lightning speed at which new breeds of dogs and other domestic animals can be produced, under the sharp selective pressures humans can put on them. With that said, the idea that different races of humans are different enough to warrant different legal treatment is absurd.
9
Size doesn't matter.
Lahn is a geneticist, a lens through which he views the world. He's not an anthropologist or a paleontologist. His assertions about the genes affecting brain size are only partially relevant to intelligence. What we know about human brain processing and storage capacity has more to do with surface area than volume, and that surface area varies widely, depending on how many folds there are in the surface. From what we know about modern information technology, there is an argument to be made that a smaller brain with the same surface area as a larger brain, might even have an advantage in processing speed, due to shorter distances the impulses need to travel.
Or not.
The point is, it's important not to extrapolate too much from Lahn's findings. It's only a small piece of a huge puzzle.
Lahn is a geneticist, a lens through which he views the world. He's not an anthropologist or a paleontologist. His assertions about the genes affecting brain size are only partially relevant to intelligence. What we know about human brain processing and storage capacity has more to do with surface area than volume, and that surface area varies widely, depending on how many folds there are in the surface. From what we know about modern information technology, there is an argument to be made that a smaller brain with the same surface area as a larger brain, might even have an advantage in processing speed, due to shorter distances the impulses need to travel.
Or not.
The point is, it's important not to extrapolate too much from Lahn's findings. It's only a small piece of a huge puzzle.
11
@9, i agree with your comments. i think intelligence is stranger than we think. all i wanted to point out was how we change our view of evolution to meet our cultural ideas. thats all.
12
The fact is, a "pure" Aryan would look far more like Saddam Hussein than the Nazi ideal of blond hair and blue eyes.
13
If a single gene has a dramatic effect, the effects of evolution may appear very rapid. For example, the mutation in the SLC24A5 gene that causes pale skin in Europeans may have only originated 6,000 - 10,000 years ago.
This gene caused an obvious change (a difference in skin tone between European populations and other lighter skinned peoples; pale Asians and pale Europeans do not have the same coloring) and we can see how rapidly it spread because of that obviousness.
The appearance of dramatic changes (hair color, skin color, bodily proportions, facial features) can lead people to think that there were changes on a more fundamental level as well. This is faulty reasoning for a couple of different reasons, one of the primary ones being that phenotype can change very rapidly without altering anything else.
Instinct, intelligence, and how the mind works are all very complex genetically and we've likely changed very little in these regards since the first humans originated in Africa. Things like coloring, on the other hand, can be wildly influenced by just a handful of genes, masking the relative sameness beneath.
This gene caused an obvious change (a difference in skin tone between European populations and other lighter skinned peoples; pale Asians and pale Europeans do not have the same coloring) and we can see how rapidly it spread because of that obviousness.
The appearance of dramatic changes (hair color, skin color, bodily proportions, facial features) can lead people to think that there were changes on a more fundamental level as well. This is faulty reasoning for a couple of different reasons, one of the primary ones being that phenotype can change very rapidly without altering anything else.
Instinct, intelligence, and how the mind works are all very complex genetically and we've likely changed very little in these regards since the first humans originated in Africa. Things like coloring, on the other hand, can be wildly influenced by just a handful of genes, masking the relative sameness beneath.
14
I'm not understanding something here. If time and place were such an overriding factor why would the basics of a species change? Granted, color of skin changed and facial characteristics changed but those are so superficial. And over the same period of time the cultures changed. But beyond that, to me at least, it's like arguing a parrot isn't a bird because it's not a pigeon.
16
@14 Parrots and pigeons are different species. Color patterns and physical characteristics are pretty much what defines the different species from one another.
18
@16 No, appearance is not what separates species. Their impulse to interbreed and the ability to produce fertile offspring is what defines a species. If two animals are interfertile but would not breed with one another in the wild, they aren't counted as the same species. If they would interbreed, but produce sterile hybrids, they're not counted as the same species. If the two animals look wildly different (say, a male Yorkie Terrier and a female Irish Wolfhound) but would interbreed on their own and could produce fertile offspring, they're the same species.
19
@ #5
Actually there isn't enough genetic differences between the races to call them "sub-species" as there is often MORE genetic variation between people of the same race than they are people of different races. In fact that greatest genetic variations occur within race, not between. Meaning that it doesn't matter if two people look drastically different and are from different races, humans are very genetic homogenous. Hence the reason actual scientists who study this kind of stuff find the definition of a "race" for humans to be rather silly.
In either case sub-species differences are about the degree to genetic differentiation compared to the baseline, more so than the how different two organisms APPEAR to look, it's about what's under the hood.
Just sayin'
A more apt description would be along the lines of say English Bulldogs that have different coloring, we don't call them sub-species due to having different coloring do we? Of course not.
For something to be a sub species there
Actually there isn't enough genetic differences between the races to call them "sub-species" as there is often MORE genetic variation between people of the same race than they are people of different races. In fact that greatest genetic variations occur within race, not between. Meaning that it doesn't matter if two people look drastically different and are from different races, humans are very genetic homogenous. Hence the reason actual scientists who study this kind of stuff find the definition of a "race" for humans to be rather silly.
In either case sub-species differences are about the degree to genetic differentiation compared to the baseline, more so than the how different two organisms APPEAR to look, it's about what's under the hood.
Just sayin'
A more apt description would be along the lines of say English Bulldogs that have different coloring, we don't call them sub-species due to having different coloring do we? Of course not.
For something to be a sub species there
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