 |
| Tam-Pa-Ling skull |
While this is not the only nor even probably the oldest remain of the so-called anatomically modern humans (i.e. Homo sapiens, our kin) in Eastern or SE Asia, it seems to be the less controversial one so far, what should help to consolidate our knowledge of the period of colonization of the Eurasian region East of Bengal.
Fabrice Demeter et al., Anatomically modern human in Southeast Asia (Laos) by 46 ka. PNAS 2012. Pay per view (6 months embargo) ··> LINK [doi:10.1073/pnas.1208104109]
Abstract
Uncertainties surround the timing of modern human emergence and occupation in East and Southeast Asia. Although genetic and archeological data indicate a rapid migration out of Africa and into Southeast Asia by at least 60 ka, mainland Southeast Asia is notable for its absence of fossil evidence for early modern human occupation. Here we report on a modern human cranium from Tam Pa Ling, Laos, which was recovered from a secure stratigraphic context. Radiocarbon and luminescence dating of the surrounding sediments provide a minimum age of 51–46 ka, and direct U-dating of the bone indicates a maximum age of ∼63 ka. The cranium has a derived modern human morphology in features of the frontal, occipital, maxillae, and dentition. It is also differentiated from western Eurasian archaic humans in aspects of its temporal, occipital, and dental morphology. In the context of an increasingly documented archaic–modern morphological mosaic among the earliest modern humans in western Eurasia, Tam Pa Ling establishes a definitively modern population in Southeast Asia at ∼50 ka cal BP. As such, it provides the earliest skeletal evidence for fully modern humans in mainland Southeast Asia.
Some more details can be found at the press release by the University of Illinois (h/t Pileta).
There are some skulls and skull fragments from East Asia that can be actually older than this one but they may be less straightforward either in their dating or their identification as Homo sapiens:
- Liujiang skull (at Don's Maps, at P. Brown's site, at Bradshaw Foundation), from Guangxi-Zhuang, is clearly a modern Homo sapiens but the exact date is not known because it was originally dug with very limited means. Recent datings of nearby sediment suggest an age of 68-139 Ka but this is hotly debated.
- Zhirendong jaw (at this blog, at PhysOrg), also from Guangxi-Zhuang and dated to before 100,000 years ago (110,000 years ago according to first reports), is argued to be a modern Homo sapiens but its very ancient date and some unavoidable ambiguity of such limited skeletal evidence allow for some skepticism, if you are so inclined.
- Callao cave metatarsal (foot) bone (at Leherensuge) is dated to before 67,000 years ago and comes from Luzon, the largest Filipino island, but because of its small size cannot be ascribed to any human species safely. All we can say is that they knew how to use rafts or boats - but then Homo floresiensis (H. erectus?) did too.
- Also some non-skeletal evidence to consider:
120,00070,000 years old stone tools (?) from Japan ··> Leherensuge.- 130,000 years old "African-like" stone tools from Crete ··> Leherensuge.
- Stone tools from Papua are at least 49,000 years old ··> this blog.
- Early Indians used Southern African style MSA tools c. 80,000 years ago ··> Petraglia 2007 (ppv).
- Growing evidence for a first out of Africa (into Arabia, Palestine) migration since c. 125,000 years ago ··> at this blog for example: Dhofar's Nubian culture, various Africa-to-Arabia scenarios, Nefud, Arabian coastal route 130 Ka. ago; also at WP: Skhul and Qahfzeh people from Palestine (ill dated but very very old).
Whichever is your personal take, it is clear that this skull adds up in support of a very old colonization of East Asia. The question is: exactly how old?
Update: a creative reconstruction by H. Zänder:
Whichever you look at it, there is no concrete skeletal evidence outside of Africa that would contradict an exit out of Africa of modern humans after 70 KYA, at least thus far.....
ReplyDeleteBut that you say sounds like a knee-jerk position more and more, specially because there is quite clear toolkit evidence in form of Indian MSA (Petraglia 2007) dated to c. 80 Ka. Also, in what regards to Southern West Asia (Arabia, Palestine) the evidence (including skeletal evidence in the case of Palestine) is very strong for the first OoA (geographically limited?) being from c. 125,000 years ago.
DeleteSo it is very clear that the archealogically-founded calibration point (or rather "calibration band") for the OoA is 125-80,000 years ago. Not one minute later.
The real interesting area of debate that, hopefully, new discoveries will illuminate soon, is whether there was a first wave early in that period, or even the whole Eurasian expansion process happened as early as before 100,000 years ago, or (the most conservative possible position nowadays) the whole process (beyond Arabia) took place only since c. 80 Ka, when the evidence is more consolidated.
70 Ka. or more recent is already discarded.
Updated with some extra links for the overall references that can be seen as supportive, more or less solidly, debatably, very old dates for the colonization of Eurasia. Just for reference, not trying to prove anything at all.
DeleteMaju, if you noticed what I said was skeletal evidence, the keyword being skeletal, tools (stone or otherwise) are nice but they are categorically NOT skeletal evidence. So from that regard the only one you have shown is Skhul-qafzeh that has the potential to 'discard' the hypothesis of a 70 KYA or later exit out of Africa, however, the issue with the Skhul-qafzeh find is that (a) they show both archaic and modern traits, unlike the finds of this post in Laos for example that shows definitive modern human traits, and (b) deteriorating climatic conditions are thought to have wiped out the people and/or hominids of skhul-qafzeh after about 80 KYA, thus greatly decreasing the possibility of population continuity from them.
DeleteWhat I mean is that restricting yourself to skeletal evidence is defensive, knee-jerk, excessive and unrealistic. After all there is not that much skeletal evidence in general, much less well dated before the UP.
DeleteOther evidence must be considered.
Also the Palestine skulls are perfectly modern with one possible exception (#5 if my memory is correct).
The easily inhabitable (tropical and temperate) parts of Asia are just a very huge area, spanning most East Asia south of Manchuria and all South Asia (Australasia and Arabia should also be considered). Climate change should not have been any major problem once people arrived there, certainly not one of absolute survival (as can be in the areas subject to desertification like Arabia or North Africa, where anyhow some people must have survived as well).
Even the more debatable issue of the Toba supervolcano seems to end up being a not-so-critical episode. In any case re-expansion after Toba should have been fast and made by people already living in Asia - and not any newly arrivals from Africa.
Also it would seem like most of the Arabian Middle Paleolithic vanishes (or is very hard to find) after c. 74 Ka. ago, precisely the Toba "red line" (Petraglia 2009). There's no archaeological room for a post-80Ka migration into Asia, instead before there's lot of it.
Excuse my insistence, but an issue I beg you to consider is that Toba and the climate cooling (and drying) it caused actually caused a more radical closure of the "Arabian corridor", temporarily disconnecting radically Africa and Asia - until the "Aurignacoid" backflow of c. 55 Ka ago (and after).
Delete"I beg you to consider is that Toba and the climate cooling (and drying) it caused actually caused a more radical closure of the "Arabian corridor", temporarily disconnecting radically Africa and Asia" -- an interesting and plausible possibility. The tricky questions is figuring out if the Arabian Middle Paleolithic really involved modern human or Neanderthals. The Nubian archaeological connections to interior Arabian sites are the best evidence that they are modern human rather than Neanderthal.
ReplyDeleteIn addition to potential climate impacts in Arabia, the other increasingly plausible impact of Toba consistent with all of the data points (except two disputed Chinese remains and the Japanese stone tools without a clear affiliation) is that Toba opens the door to an Out of India migration to Southeast Asia and beyond. The barrier to an Out of India migration is precisely the geographic area where Toba's ash fall was most intense. Perhaps Toba's ash temporary kills off enough of the SE Asian jungle to remove it as a barrier to modern humans in India and to encourage resident archaic hominins in the area to mostly migrated elsewhere for a little while until the jungle recovers in a century or two.
Rather than an "Out of Africa all the way to China" in a single migration wave scenario, the data increasingly seem to support a "staged migration" scenario with the following first four parts:
* First to the Levant (and perhaps even Crete) and interior of Arabia (wave 1.1 - Out of Africa) ca. 125,000 years ago
* Then to at least two separate refugia in the region Anatolia-Afghanistan-Iran-South Asia-non-innundated Persian Gulf refugia (wave 1.2 - Out of Arabia) ca. 80,000+ years ago. Wave 1.2 migrations may reflect an avoidance strategy of settling in places that Neanderthals haven't filled because they are inferior territories for the Neanderthal way of life for some reason (explaining a lack of further Neanderthal admixture in this wave). Wave 1.2 may be held back from expanding further in Asia pre-Toba by factors including the impenetrability of the jungles of Burma and SE Asia, the barrier posed by existing archaic hominin populations at their normal population densities, and the difficulty of finding a way to cross Zomia's highlands over long distances as opposed to merely entering it via a migration up a river that drains to the ocean from the SE Asian coast.
* Then to Southeast Asia-East Asia (wave 1.3 - Out of India) ca. 75,000 years ago enabled by temporary effects from the Toba eruption
* Then to Papua New Guinea and Australia and Europe and Siberia (wave 1.4 - Upper Paleolithic Revolution) starting ca. 50,000 years ago. The migration to Papuan/Australian Sahul may not have happened until wave 1.3 migrants (Out of India) were supplemented and thoroughly admixed with new secondary wave 1.4 (Upper Paleolithic Revolution) migrants. In this scenario, exclusively East Eurasian haplogroups are mostly derived from wave 1.3 people, while Eurasian haplogroups found in both West Eurasia and East Eurasia enter the mix populations of East Eurasia mostly via the secondary expansion of these populations from West Eurasian into East Eurasia in wave 1.4 (Upper Paleolithic Revolution).
I'm skeptical of the older dates for the Guangxi-Zhuang remains being modern human, and of the modern human affiliation of 120kya stone tools in Japan. I suspect all three of these outliers are either late archaic Asian hominin traces that predate the arrival of modern human in East Asia or actually have dates within the last 70kya which were miscalculated due to some methodological flaw. These outlier cases aren't convincing enough to overcome the inferences from the bigger picture, and are too isolated to support a genuine full fledged modern human migration wave. But all of the other dates cited fit a the coherent staged migration framework.
There are several reasons to consider the Arabian MP (c. 125-75 Ka ago) to be made by H. sapiens:
ReplyDelete1. Some cultures clearly connect with Africa (where no Neanderthals are known to have existed ever): the Nubian complex is not just from Nubia but is also known in Ethiopia, for example; the Jurreru Valley toolkit is very similar, if not identical, to the Southern African MSA (although we lack here the Arabian link, any migration must have followed the coast via Arabia almost forcibly).
2. The Galilee skulls, even if contextualized within a "Neanderthal tech" (Mousterian) are mostly Homo sapiens (maybe one is a hybrid).
3. No Neanderthals are known south of Galilee, nor their usual Mousterian toolkit (with an Egyptian exception???)
"... Toba opens the door to an Out of India migration to Southeast Asia and beyond"...
I cannot agree with this. As I see it, the genetic evidence suggests a rapid "out-of-India" into Eastern Asia and (soon after) Australasia. There're just too many basal mtDNA M subclades in the Far East. Also Y-DNA C and D suggest a fast migration to East Asia, as does mtDNA N.
It is possible however that the effects of Toba were dramatic enough to erase some genetic evidence in South Asia, where the ash fell thickly. This I'd consider debatable.
But the jungle should not be any solid barrier (at the most a weak buffer) nor we should imagine that the Eurasian explosion took too long to reach East Asia (and then Sahul also) once it began in South Asia. There's a lot of genetic evidence suggesting a fast Eurasian diversification into the two main groups (proto-Caucasoids in South Asia, proto-Mongoloids in SE Asia) an a host of minor pseudo-Australoid (meaning here "something else" and not any well-defined phenotype) groups in Australia, some islands and maybe once upon a time also other pockets in the mainland.
We will have to wait for further evidence in Asia and Australasia before we can be reasonably certain about the chronology. I concur with you that a post-80 Ka. chronology is easier to digest but a pre-100 Ka. one is also possible.
"But the jungle should not be any solid barrier (at the most a weak buffer"
ReplyDeleteAs you know, I disagree. It would have been a fairly significant barrier.
"There's a lot of genetic evidence suggesting a fast Eurasian diversification into the two main groups (proto-Caucasoids in South Asia, proto-Mongoloids in SE Asia)"
Proto-Mongoloids in SE Asia? You've got to be joking. Mongoloid presence in SE Asia is quite late.
"a host of minor pseudo-Australoid (meaning here 'something else' and not any well-defined phenotype) groups in Australia, some islands and maybe once upon a time also other pockets in the mainland".
That 'something else' is obviously Papuan or Australian Aborigine looking. It occurs as 'pockets in the mainland' in the form of 'Negritos'. These are almost universally considered to be pre-Mongoloid survivals.
Otherwise (surprise) I agree with most of Maju's statements.
So you think "Mongoloids" arrived from Mars instead of evolving locally in East/SE Asia, right? Genetics is not suggestive of massive demographic changes, at least not after the LGM, much less of any major N->S flows in that region. Furthermore, the same that southern skulls may be somewhat different from modern ones (as happens everywhere else), that is even more true for northern ones.
DeleteWhatever the case my take means more a population that is ancestral to modern East Asians than issues of phenotype and looks, which I consider slippery terrain and a secondary matter. Genetics first for me thanks, specially as we know so little about the phenotype of ancient peoples - even when skulls are available, which is rare in itself, most of what constitutes a "human type" or "race" is in the flesh, cartilages, skin, hair...
Papuans, Australian Aborigines and the various Negrito populations are extremely distinct from each other, constituting not one "human type" ("race") but many different ones. Hence my use of "pseudo-Australoid" as catch-all term for "others" and not any meaningful category on its own right.
Papuans, Australian Aborigines and Melanesians (many Melanesian populations have relatively small Austronesian admixture BTW) are both genetically and phenotypically quite close to each other. Some eastern Negrito groups might be close to them as well, but certainly not western Negritos (Andamanese, etc.). It is perfectly scientific to call Papuans, Australian Aborigines and Melanesians the Australoid race. But the various Negrito groups might really have very little to do with each other. So it is not the Australoid race (when used to mean Papuans, Australian Aborigines, Melanesians and genetically similar populations) that is artificial and unscientific, but probably the Negrito race (at least in its broadest meanings).
DeleteNot at all, Onur. Papuans and Australian Aborigines are two deeply distinct populations. They do share either a common origin or, more likely, some old admixture but we know since the times of Cavalli-Sforza that they are also deeply divergent from each other.
DeleteBy haploid lineages they are all but related as well. There are minor shared elements but mostly they have very different lineages in fact. It's like South Indians and NW Europeans or even more different maybe.
Not at all, Onur. Papuans and Australian Aborigines are two deeply distinct populations.
Deletenot distinct enough to constitute different races
The term "race" is a human construct and therefore largely arbitrary, so it's a matter of opinion. Whatever the case the facial and hair traits of both populations look to me different enough, as do their underlying genetics.
DeleteThere are some Papuan peoples (Torres Strait Islanders) in Australia but otherwise the two populations are very very different and seem to have been de facto segregated for most of Prehistory, constituting two neatly different populations.
Otherwise Papuans specially have very Caucasoid-like skulls, although sometimes they diverge, specially in the nose, which may be broader, more African-like.
Instead, Australian Aboriginals often have very unique skull features that would seem to set them apart from everyone else in Humankind (but then not many skulls are found in an online search).
But then what makes a skull "Mongoloid"? Here we have two Dayak decorated skulls: skull 1, skull 2. The latter is more archetypally "Mongoloid" (broader cheeks, central ridge) but both belong, no doubt, to equally "Mongoloid" individuals from Borneo, just that they are different in the individual range.
But if the two skulls would be found in archaeological context, people like Terry would make a lot of noise about skull 1. "Australoid, blah-blah..."
Look for example at all these modern Cambodian skulls. How archetypally "Mongoloid" do they look? Or are they rather more like Liujiang? I'd say the latter.
There's an ideal of what is "Mongoloid" and then there is a reality, often unrelated.
Papuans, Australian Aborigines and Melanesians genetically and craniofacially cluster together in a world context, and that is what matters for me to define races.
DeleteI disagree: Papuans and Australian Aborigines do not cluster together well at all. Not genetically, not craniometrically and not in any other way. Papuans and Island Melanesians may do however.
Delete"So you think 'Mongoloids' arrived from Mars instead of evolving locally in East/SE Asia, right?"
ReplyDeleteWhat a ridiculous statement. Of course they evolved in East Asia, but certainly not in Southeast Asia where they are intrusive over an earlier Papuan (or something similar) phenotype. You specifically said, 'proto-Mongoloids in SE Asia'. There have never been proto-Mongoloids in SE Asia.
"Genetics is not suggestive of massive demographic changes, at least not after the LGM"
Only if you choose to interpret the evidence as indicating such because of some preconception. There evidence is there if you are prepared to look.
" much less of any major N->S flows in that region".
What? Where do you think the Han come from?
"the same that southern skulls may be somewhat different from modern ones (as happens everywhere else)"
That link I've sent you twice (which I assume you have refused to read because you don't like what it claims) has no problem identifying Hoabinhian people as being the same as modern Papuan.
"Papuans, Australian Aborigines and the various Negrito populations are extremely distinct from each other, constituting not one 'human type' ('race') but many different ones".
I agree with that. Possibly separate ancestry, but certainly in no way 'Mongoloid'.
"Papuans, Australian Aborigines and Melanesians"
I agree that some Australian Aborigines look much like Papuans and Melanesians but they are mostly the northern ones. Southern Aborigines look reasonably different. In relation to which it is interesting that, as Maju pointed out, Aborigines have higher proportions of mt-DNA C and mt-DNA N that do Papuans/New Guineans. Some Melanesians have a high proportion of C2 but this is from the Austronesian expansion.
"the two populations are very very different and seem to have been de facto segregated for most of Prehistory, constituting two neatly different populations".
Which argues against Australia and New Guinea being connected in any meaningful way during times of lowered sea level. I would guess that the Arafura Sea was lowland tropical swamp forest rather than being dry land at such times.
"But if the two skulls would be found in archaeological context, people like Terry would make a lot of noise about skull 1. 'Australoid, blah-blah...'"
It si widely accepted that the people of Borneo have a much smaller level of 'Papuan' phenotype than do most people of SE Asia. The island seems to have been sparsely populated until the Austronesian expansion. The fact that no 'Negritos' are present in Borneo is revealing.
"Look for example at all these modern Cambodian skulls. How archetypally 'Mongoloid' do they look? Or are they rather more like Liujiang? I'd say the latter".
To me many Cambodians look far more 'Indian' than they do 'Mongoloid'. So no surprises with your conclusion.
What you say is not consistent at all.
Delete1. There are LOTS of genetic research that concludes that the general direction of genetic flow was from South to North. Main exception: a LGM-dated flow into Sundaland, which could also be older (everything looks much older in fact these days, although I have been arguing that for many years). You know all those papers and you are in denial - and I really hate when people is in denial just because they believe X and the facts don't fit with their faith. This is the Nth time that we discuss this. Do your homework or go somewhere else to troll.
2. The Han are irrelevant because theirs is mostly a cultural and not essentially genetic flow (Southern Han are much more like their pre-Han neighbors than like Northern Han). But also Han identity never flowed into Indochina or even some parts of China itself. You're just trying to divert the debate from DNA into Han identity, which is a cultural and political construct.
3. The only papers I have read on Hoabinhian skulls indicate that most are clearly "Mongoloid" but ***one*** is claimed to be "Australoid". We can see that many SE Asian modern skulls do not fit well with the "Mongoloid" ideal, so there you have your explanation.
4. Cambodians are "Mongoloid" or the "Mongoloid" phenotype does not exist. It's like saying "Greeks are not Caucasoid because I only imagine Caucasoids as big broad-faced blond blue-eyed giants with partial epicanthic fold". Get real: it is real people who you are trying to define with those categories, not the other way around. A risk of idealism is to lose contact with reality.
So, talk of real "Mongoloids" like Cantonese, Cambodians or Balinese, not idealized categories that have nothing to do with reality. (In any case Cambodians have nothing of "Indian": they look very much "Chinese").
I disagree: Papuans and Australian Aborigines do not cluster together well at all. Not genetically, not craniometrically and not in any other way. Papuans and Island Melanesians may do however.
ReplyDeletePapuans, Australian Aborigines and Melanesians cluster together in every worldwide genetic or craniofacial analysis.
Here is Zack Ajmal's worldwide dendrogram based on genomewide autosomal genetics ("aus" means Australian Aborigines; note that they are between Papuans and Melanesians):
http://www.harappadna.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/ref3_pops_dend.png
Here is a worldwide craniofacial clustering analysis by Dienekes (Tolai are Melanesians from a region very close to New Guinea, Australian Aborigine samples are from southern Australia; note that Tasmanians form their own cluster only in very high Ks while Australian Aborigines and Tolai Melanesians never separate):
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Ish7688voT0/SkpelBk_lvI/AAAAAAAABwQ/vatNViyGtyc/s1600-h/k2k14.jpg
In all of the analyses, indigenous peoples of the Andamans show up quite distinct from Papuans, Australian Aborigines and Melanesians.
How many people were sampled? You know or you should know that when samples are tiny, the relevant populations see their personality erased. It happened even with the San when their usual sample was of only five people.
DeleteThe uniparental lineages of each population are very different in any case.
But, as I said before, debatable: "races" are not real things but arbitrary categories.
sketching done!
DeleteHow many people were sampled? You know or you should know that when samples are tiny, the relevant populations see their personality erased. It happened even with the San when their usual sample was of only five people.
ReplyDeleteAll of the relevant populations were sampled sufficient enough for the analysis in question. I checked the sample sizes myself. So there is no problem of insufficient sampling.
The uniparental lineages of each population are very different in any case.
When overall autosomal genetics contradicts uniparental genetics, it is the former that should be trusted and used in inferring population relationships.
But, as I said before, debatable: "races" are not real things but arbitrary categories.
Races are not arbitrary categories.
Yes, races are arbitrary divisions within the unavoidable continuum. Every time we talk of clusters (races), we have to face the reality they are not standardized issues but very irregular and with lots of grey zones. There's no absolute definition nor scientific standard for the category of race, subspecies or genetic cluster: they are just trends within a continuum.
DeleteWhatever the case, I distrust your graph because I have seen much sharper differences between Papuans and Australian Aborigines and never before a tendency that would converge AAs with Island Melanesians pimarily, so I think that there must be an error.
Examples: Classical 1996 Cavalli-Sforza tree.
"There are LOTS of genetic research that concludes that the general direction of genetic flow was from South to North".
ReplyDeleteThere are a lot of papers whose authors wish that were so. I accept that Y-DNA NO must have moved north along with several mt-DNA haplogroups. However 'something' must have brought the Mongoloid phenotype back south. It is very unlikely it moved south without any comparable movement of men and women.
"I really hate when people is in denial just because they believe X and the facts don't fit with their faith".
That is exactly your problem. You are unable to accept that haplogroups have been periodically replaced. You believe all modern haplogroups reached the region they are now found during the Early Upper Paleolithic and everyone has remained in the region that God had decided they would live in. People have been continuously moving round: east and west, north and south.
"The Han are irrelevant because theirs is mostly a cultural and not essentially genetic flow (Southern Han are much more like their pre-Han neighbors than like Northern Han)".
Another example of your faith. Everyone (except you) accepts that the Han have expanded in the last few thousand years. The fact the Southern Han are very much like their non-Han neighbours merely shows that those neighbours were simply an earlier part of the same movement.
"But also Han identity never flowed into Indochina or even some parts of China itself".
Yes. They have not been expanding long enough to have reached those regions yet. However related cultures certainly have reached those regions.
Terry:
DeleteI have read that forum post and I think it's all trivial because many modern locals would cluster similarly, as illustrated by the skull images mentioned before. The skulls do not show what in fact defines a "Mongoloid" in actual life (self- and external identification): the eyes (and to lesser extent other non-bony traits).
Anyhow, I have been looking for the Hang Cho cave paper and it's nowhere to be found. Never mind images of the skull. I found a paper on the archaeology of the site however: http://ejournal.anu.edu.au/index.php/bippa/article/viewFile/644/632 - but almost no mention of the human remains.
"Everyone (except you) accepts that the Han have expanded in the last few thousand years".
Not at all and you should know better about that. Minor genetic flow yes, population replacement at any meaningful levels nope. That's a very clear genetic fact: Southern Han are invariably much more similar to their non-Han neighbors than to Northern Han.
Why would you insist on this against all evidence? Beats me.
But also tires me.
"The only papers I have read on Hoabinhian skulls indicate that most are clearly 'Mongoloid' but ***one*** is claimed to be 'Australoid'".
ReplyDeleteYou obviously haven't read many papers on the subject then. It is almost universally accepted that the Hoabinhian were not 'Mongoloid'. Once more I invite you to read this:
http://s1.zetaboards.com/anthroscape/topic/4646060/1/
Quote:
"In general terms, Southeast Asia is thought to have been originally occupied by indigenous people (sometimes referred to as Australo-Melanesians) that subsequently exchanged genes with immigrants from North and/or East Asia, during the Holocene, leading to the formation of present-day Southeast Asians (Callenfels, 1936; Mijsberg, 1940; Von Koenigswald, 1952; Coon, 1962; Jacob, 1967). More recent studies based on late Pleistocene and early Holocene human remains represented by specimens from Niah Cave in Borneo (Brothwell, 1960; Kennedy, 1977; Barker et al., 2007), Tabon Cave on Palawan Island, Philippines (Fox, 1970; Macintosh, 1978; Dizon et al., 2002), Gua Gunung Runtuh in Peninsular Malaysia (Zuraina, 1994, 2005; Matsumura and Zuraina, 1999) and Moh Khiew Cave in Thailand (Matsumura and Pookajorn, 2005) have provided additional support for the existence of an ‘Australo-Melanesian’ lineage in ancient Southeast Asia (for a review see also Oxenham and Tayles, 2006)".
That is quite a few papers. Have you not read any of them?
"Cambodians are 'Mongoloid' or the 'Mongoloid' phenotype does not exist".
Rubbish. I agree that Cambodians have a level of Mongoloid admixture but they also have another element. Cambodians certainly look different from Northern Chinese, Mongolians, Evenks and Yakuts. Those groups are more noticeably Mongoloid.
"talk of real 'Mongoloids' like Cantonese, Cambodians or Balinese"
Those three groups are nothing like as 'Mongoloid' as are the above groups. Open your eyes.
"In all of the analyses, indigenous peoples of the Andamans show up quite distinct from Papuans, Australian Aborigines and Melanesians".
Interesting links. Thanks.
"The uniparental lineages of each population are very different in any case".
That is true.
"Yes, races are arbitrary divisions within the unavoidable continuum. Every time we talk of clusters (races), we have to face the reality they are not standardized issues but very irregular and with lots of grey zones. There's no absolute definition nor scientific standard for the category of race, subspecies or genetic cluster: they are just trends within a continuum".
As you point out the same holds true for many examples of 'subspecies' within other taxa, so you cannot use that as an argument against the use of such differentiation in humans.
"Why would you insist on this against all evidence? Beats me".
ReplyDeleteWe're not talking 'population replacement', but perhaps 'population enhancement'. Older elements remain, as we obviously see in SE Asia and South China. Y-DNAs F and K along with several mt-DNAs are obviously older in SE Asia than is Y-DNA O. And we can be sure that something brought the Mongoloid phenotype south. Do you believe in magic?
"Do you believe in magic?"
DeleteNo, do you? You are talking about nothing with no photos of the alleged skulls or anything.
Instead I'm saying very specific things: Liujiang is similar to modern Cambodians, and these and other modern Mongoloid skulls would cause you and the people you read to cry "Australoid!" - wrongly.
Instead Zhoukoudian is not similar to modern Northern Han or other peoples from the are abut instead they'd be similar to Ainus.
So I see modern (local Mongoloid) people in Liujiang and non-moderns in Zhoukoudian. Of course nothing is lineal because time passes and things change by mere normal sexual recombination and drift (maybe aesthetic selection as well?) but the trend is obvious: Liujiang is pretty much like modern locals while Zhoukoudian is not.
So South to North if anything.
Anything else is "magic".
My take tonight at being objective with Liujiang, UC 101, Minatogawa 1 and Wadjak, which are the best preserved skulls from East Asia (excepted the "Darth Vader" skull recently found, I forgot about it completely) is the following:
DeleteClosest to ideal Mongoloid:
1. Liujiang - 54% (of evaluable traits)
2. Minatogawa 1 - 44%
3. Wadjak - 42%
4. Zhoukoudien UC 101 - 40%
Most opposed to ideal Mongoloid:
1. Minatogawa 1 - 31%
2. UC 101 - 30%
3. Wadjak - 17%
4. Liujiang - 15%
However Wadjak and Liujiang score high in the less dramatic "Mongoloid rather not" category.
None of the four is ideal Mongoloid but neither are something else: they are all non-ideal real people.
Ref. I used for almost all at P. Brown's site: http://www-personal.une.edu.au/~pbrown3/palaeo.html
"Anyhow, I have been looking for the Hang Cho cave paper and it's nowhere to be found".
ReplyDeleteHere is the abstract:
http://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&sqi=2&ved=0CCQQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fvnu.edu.vn%2Fupload%2Fscopus%2F497.pdf&ei=dvg2UKrkCtCdiAedoIC4CA&usg=AFQjCNE2OT3zgdTnxWQXXvtx5OXqMi6T_w
"The results suggest that the Hang Cho skeleton, as well as other early or pre-Holocene remains in Southeast Asia, represent descendants of colonizing populations of late Pleistocene Sundaland, who may share a common ancestry with present day Australian Aboriginal and Melanesian people."
I presume the quotes in the Zetaboards paper are from the paper itself.
Yes, races are arbitrary divisions within the unavoidable continuum. Every time we talk of clusters (races), we have to face the reality they are not standardized issues but very irregular and with lots of grey zones. There's no absolute definition nor scientific standard for the category of race, subspecies or genetic cluster: they are just trends within a continuum.
ReplyDeleteBased on your logic, subspecies are arbitrary too. Races and subspecies are scientifically legitimate categories that are based on major clusters within species.
Whatever the case, I distrust your graph because I have seen much sharper differences between Papuans and Australian Aborigines and never before a tendency that would converge AAs with Island Melanesians pimarily, so I think that there must be an error.
Examples: Classical 1996 Cavalli-Sforza tree.
Cavalli-Sforza's tree proves my argument, not yours. According to that tree, the divergence of Australian Aborigines and Papuans is in the same level (actually even in a bit lower level) as the divergence of South Amerindians and North Amerindians/Eskimos (it is now known that Eskimos are about 50% Amerindian-admixed). BTW, Zack's tree is much more recent and based on much more number of genetic markers than that of Cavalli-Sforza, so clearly Zack's tree is more accurate. These do not surprise me a bit, as worldwide ADMIXTURE analysis results of Australian Aborigines, Papuans and Melanesians too are quite similar to each other.
BTW, the exact relationship between Papuans, Australian Aborigines and Melanesians (e.g., which ones of them are closest to each other) might not be established by the analyses I referred to (e.g., Zack's Australian Aborigine samples are insufficient in number for that), but the fact that they cluster together in a worldwide context is clear from those analyses (e.g., Zack's Australian Aborigine samples are sufficient enough in number for that).
DeleteSubspecies are indeed arbitrary. Notice that arbitrary does not mean irrational or capricious but certainly subjective. There's no scientific category in fact that would be known as subspecies: the buck stops at the species layer (and even that one is becoming blurrier as we speak). Subspecies is just a convenience, fluid and arbitrary, subdivision but it can also become inconvenient because there's nothing solid about it. Some scientists reject the notion of subspecies altogether.
Delete"The divergence of Australian Aborigines and Papuans is in the same level (actually even in a bit lower level) as the divergence of South Amerindians and North Amerindians/Eskimos"...
Or well "above" all African subdivisions (except the Khoisan branch). I don't think they can compare so easily (sample size!) My point is that, in spite of millennia long adjacency, both populations are dramatically distinct.
And this in fact proves my point re. subspecies (and races): they are not rigid categories but fluid ones.
(And many Amerindians, notably Andean peoples, would have difficulty fitting in the idealist overly simplistic "Mongoloid" box anyhow: they are their own cluster/-s).
"Zack's Australian Aborigine samples are insufficient".
I thought so.
Subspecies are indeed arbitrary. Notice that arbitrary does not mean irrational or capricious but certainly subjective. There's no scientific category in fact that would be known as subspecies: the buck stops at the species layer (and even that one is becoming blurrier as we speak). Subspecies is just a convenience, fluid and arbitrary, subdivision but it can also become inconvenient because there's nothing solid about it. Some scientists reject the notion of subspecies altogether.
DeleteAll taxonomic categories are human constructs, but the clusters that we put into various taxonomic categories are real. So the category of race is artificial, but the clusters that we call races are real. We could call them something else rather than race and could even use a very different taxonomic system, but this would not change the fact that they are real clusters.
"Zack's Australian Aborigine samples are insufficient".
I thought so.
Zack's Australian Aborigine samples are insufficient in number to determine Australian Aborigines' exact position vis-a-vis Papuans and Melanesians but sufficient in number to determine how close they are to both Papuans and Melanesians in a worldwide context, and it is enough proof for my argument (but not the only proof as I already demonstrated).
Subspecies is NOT a taxonomic category but an extra adjective like "blond". This is very different from a true taxonomic category as is species, which is not mostly a human construct. The differences between a lion and a leopard are very much unquestionable and absolute, while the differences between a hairless lion from Tsavo or a white lion from South Africa are anecdotal.
DeleteSubspecies, like race, is a taxonomic category and is based on real population clusters. Actually the only taxonomic category that comes close to being non-artificial is species, as it is a category not just based on real clusters but also the criterion of having fertile offspring, though that criterion has its own problems and is far from perfect.
DeleteLook: there is no criterion to describe subspecies: it is just any arbitrary/convenient subdivision of the meaningful unit: the species. You can make as many boxes and sub-boxes as convenient for you or none at all.
DeleteI choose that Australian Aborigines are different subspecies from Papuans because I see almost nothing in common among both groups other than being humans. You can choose differently but that will only underline the unavoidable subjectivity and arbitrariness of the concept subspecies/race.
I choose that Australian Aborigines are different subspecies from Papuans because I see almost nothing in common among both groups other than being humans.
DeleteThat is because you choose to turn a blind eye on all the evidence that connects them together in a sub-cluster of modern humans and even declare that evidence erroneous as it does not fit with your preconceived views.
"... it does not fit with your preconceived views".
DeleteOk, go make a party with Terry T.
What you call my "preconceived views", I call my "qualified opinion" - my opinion at the very least and therefore deserving some respect. Thanks in advance.
'You are talking about nothing with no photos of the alleged skulls or anything".
ReplyDeleteI am talking about what experts in the field have said. I realise you know far more about the subject that they do, but for now I'll stick with them.
"I'm saying very specific things: Liujiang is similar to modern Cambodians, and these and other modern Mongoloid skulls would cause you and the people you read to cry 'Australoid!' - wrongly".
And I'm saying you are completely unjustified in claiming Cambodians as typical Mongoloids. They are an admixed population (as are typical Mongoloid populations, but admixing is a function of degree).
"Instead Zhoukoudian is not similar to modern Northern Han or other peoples from the are abut instead they'd be similar to Ainus".
Which indicates convincingly that the Mongoloid phenotype did not originate around Zhoukoudian. Similarity to Ainu is hardly surprising. Many see a connection between Australian Aborigines and Ainu. The 'Australoid' population perhaps existed as far north as Zhoukoudian and Japan before becoming admixed with the Mongoloid type. And many have noted even that Amerindians mysteriously cluster with Australoids in some comparisons.
"Zack's tree is much more recent and based on much more number of genetic markers than that of Cavalli-Sforza"
And what I found really interesting in that tree is that Australian Aborigines/Melanesians branch off before Sub-Saharan Africans. Whatever their connection to each other they seem distinct from other humans.
"There's no scientific category in fact that would be known as subspecies: the buck stops at the species layer (and even that one is becoming blurrier as we speak)".
Exactly. In fact I remember arguing with you over whether humans and Neanderthals were actually the same species. It seems now that I was correct all along. Mind you, I had formed that opinion by looking at the evidence, not by trying to fit it preconceived views.
"Some scientists reject the notion of subspecies altogether".
And it sounds as though you're moving towards rejecting the idea of species.
"And many Amerindians, notably Andean peoples, would have difficulty fitting in the idealist overly simplistic 'Mongoloid' box anyhow: they are their own cluster/-s"
Ahaa. That's what I've been trying to tell you: the same could be said of Thais, Cambodians, Filipinos and Malays. Don't forget that we have fairly large numbers of Filipinos and Koreans living in this country. And growing numbers of Vietnamese, Thais, Cambodians and Chinese. I have seen many of each group.
"Subspecies is NOT a taxonomic category"
I've noticed before that you are definitely not a biologist, and you've once again provided proof of that.
"That is because you choose to turn a blind eye on all the evidence"
That is Maju's prerogative. It is his blog and he consistently chooses to ignore evidence that doesn't fit his faith.
I don't have much respect for people who limit themselves to parrot others' ideas and then are as vocal as you are. Either you have your own ideas which you can defend yourself or you should shut up at some point (better sooner than later). Otherwise it's not different from arguing with some priest or theologian, who instead of assuming their full responsibility, send you to some "god" who "wrote" the Bible, the Quran or something.
DeleteEither you think by yourself or you do not and, if you do not, don't bother me with your parroting of someone else's ideas. At least not once and again.
"Which indicates convincingly that the Mongoloid phenotype did not originate around Zhoukoudian".
But your whole ranting is based on the absurd idea that Mongoloids are an ideal race who arrived from the North. And in the Ice Age Zhoukoudian, near Beijing, was about the northernmost inhabited place. Notice that Beijing itself was permafrosted with LGM (just as Budapest in Europe), what implies extreme conditions and the northernmost (thinly) inhabitable areas.
So if Mongoloids are not from the North, nor from the South nor from the East... there are no more places for them to have lived at: it's a fantasy like the Hyperboreans.
Not only they are nowhere to be found (per your standards, by mine they'd be everywhere instead) but also you provide no mechanism by which they may have migrated from North to South (or whichever other idea you have).
Never mind the genetics, of course, which almost invariably indicate S>N migrations and not N>S ones. Your hypothesis lacks work, lacks substance and lacks consistence, yet you fill your mouth and the comments section every day with offensive remarks, and only to parrot someone else's ideas.
Please, don't.
"I don't have much respect for people who limit themselves to parrot others' ideas and then are as vocal as you are. Either you have your own ideas which you can defend yourself or you should shut up at some point"
ReplyDeleteUnlike some people I look at ALL the evidence before coming to conclusions. I also accept that many people know more about particular subjects than I do. Conversely I also accept that many people know less about particular subjects than I do. And, unlike you, I am not prepared to believe myself correct and everybody else to be under some delusion.
"Not only they are nowhere to be found (per your standards, by mine they'd be everywhere instead"
You talk some rubbish. It should be obvious, even to you, that the Mongoloid phenotype originated somewhere. Do you seriously believe that it somehow magically appeared instantly everywhere throughout the East?
"And in the Ice Age Zhoukoudian, near Beijing, was about the northernmost inhabited place".
So why do you think it absolutely essential that the Mongoloid phenotype developed north of Zhoukoudian?
"Notice that Beijing itself was permafrosted with LGM (just as Budapest in Europe), what implies extreme conditions and the northernmost (thinly) inhabitable areas".
I would remind you that you have consistently argued that humans have always been incapable of surviving at such latitudes. Changed you mind?
"but also you provide no mechanism by which they may have migrated from North to South"
It should be obvious, even to you, that any widespread subclade of a haplogroup should indicate a relatively recent spread. Y-DNA O3a2c is just such a haplogroup. Find where that originated, especially if it is somewhere near where N, C3 and D originated, and you probably have the region where the Mongoloid phenotype originated. And O3a2c presumably originated somewhere near where O as a whole originated. It is extremely unlikely that it was in SE Asia.
"Your hypothesis lacks work, lacks substance and lacks consistence, yet you fill your mouth and the comments section every day with offensive remarks, and only to parrot someone else's ideas".
That sentence displays very confused thinking on your part. You can't make up your mind whether I am espousing my own hypothesis or parroting someone else's ideas.
Look: I don't believe in your idea of a "Mongoloid" phenotype. I believe in the "Khmeroid" one instead, so to say, whos archetype is Liujiang (and Wadjak, who is very close but has a broader nose) and the Cambodian skulls mentioned above.
DeleteMongols and others are a variant of that Khmeroid archetype.
Try to see it this way, try to put the map upside down for a change.
"So why do you think it absolutely essential that the Mongoloid phenotype developed north of Zhoukoudian?"
I do not think so but you have once and again claimed a northern origin and a N>S flow. I'm just debunking your model.
"I would remind you that you have consistently argued that humans have always been incapable of surviving at such latitudes. Changed you mind?"
(1) You are misinterpreting me: I argued that H. sapiens would first favor warm areas at the OoA and would take their time before developing the survival skills and even biological adaptions to live in the cold North. That affects the time before c. 40 Ka. in the case of Inner Asia but we are talking of a period long before the LGM, when it was not that cold. After developing cold-specific adaptions (first groups linked to Y-DNA Q and C3, later surely N and others), the situation changes and it's even possible that some (few) lived in very cold areas, even in the LGM.
(2) The inhabitation of Zhoukoudian is before and after the LGM not in it. UC-101 and company are either from c. 30 Ka or from c. 10 Ka but not from c. 20 Ka. ago in any case.
"Y-DNA O3a2c is just such a haplogroup"...
The vast majority of "Mongoloids" are not O3a2c. Care to outline some information on this particular lineage and why do you think it may have affected phenotype in such a wide area, from Beringia to Patagonia and Indonesia?
Burning nails! Think again, why to insist on the error?
"You can't make up your mind whether I am espousing my own hypothesis or parroting someone else's ideas".
I think that you have no idea of what you're talking about. You have not measured any skulls in order to contrast if the "Mongoloid" phenotype is real and how much, or how it correlates with ancient skulls, you have to change the known origin of every single haplogroup (be it D or O or O3 or whatever), all to repeat a century-old Asian-Nordicist myth.
Junk!
"Burning nails! Think again, why to insist on the error?"
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry, but I can't help it if you insist on selectively ignoring evidence.
"You have not measured any skulls in order to contrast if the 'Mongoloid' phenotype is real"
I'm not aware of anyone other than you denying its existence.
"The vast majority of 'Mongoloids' are not O3a2c. Care to outline some information on this particular lineage and why do you think it may have affected phenotype in such a wide area, from Beringia to Patagonia and Indonesia?"
Confining ourselves just to the haplogroup for now:
"The Han are irrelevant because theirs is mostly a cultural and not essentially genetic flow (Southern Han are much more like their pre-Han neighbors than like Northern Han)".
So, presumably, the similarities between Northern and Southern Han would be the result of the Han expansion. This paper, which you blogged on at the time, shows that many O haplogroups are evenly spread through North, South and East China. That holds especially for O3a2c1a, so presumably it was involved in the Han expansion. But others are just as evenly spread although making up a smaller proportion of Chinese haplogroups:
http://www.nature.com/ejhg/journal/v19/n9/full/ejhg201164a.html
Note figure 1. As to the phenotype, try this paper:
Quote:
"we argue that the southern origin scenario for this most common Chinese Y haplogroup is not very likely. We tentatively propose a West/North origin hypothesis, suggesting that haplogroup O originated in West/North China and mainly evolved in China and thence spread further throughout East Eurasia".
So that places O's origin close to where C3, N and possibly D originated. All four haplogroups are characteristic of Mongoloid phenotype.
"I do not think so but you have once and again claimed a northern origin and a N>S flow. I'm just debunking your model".
I'm sure you will find figure 4 in this paper interesting then:
http://scholar.google.co.nz/scholar_url?hl=en&q=http://159.226.149.45/compgenegroup/paper/subing%2520sino-tibetan.pdf&sa=X&scisig=AAGBfm1OfkP6_YmTXGyihx2V0Z9tgCyJmg&oi=scholarr&ei=VuE5UKOHLOaviQexzYHABA&sqi=2&ved=0CBwQgAMoATAA
It shows that the Sino-Tibetan languages moved south. Presumably that included Haplogroup O, especially O3. It is presumably haplogroup NO that is represented by the early northward movement.
"I believe in the 'Khmeroid' one instead, so to say"
Only you accept that. The problem is that the Mongoloid phenotype basically forms a cline of decreasing phenotype from north to south.
"Try to see it this way, try to put the map upside down for a change".
I'm way ahead of you on that. Check out map 1 in this essay:
http://humanevolutionontrial.blogspot.co.nz/2009/06/human-evolution-on-trial-human-star.html
In this pat of the world it is not uncommon to present maps of the world with Australia or New Zealand at the top.
"The inhabitation of Zhoukoudian is before and after the LGM not in it. UC-101 and company are either from c. 30 Ka or from c. 10 Ka but not from c. 20 Ka. ago in any case".
We have adequate evidence of humans of some sort or another living at latitude 50 North continuously from the Middle Paleolithic until the Neolithic.
You cannot reach any conclusions on what is Han-specific without contrasting with non-Han. Just because most Han have straight, it black hair doesn't mean that it is a Han-specific attribute to the exclusion of all other peoples. Same for haplogroups.
Delete"Quote:
"we argue..." "
That quote does not exist. I could not find that character string ("we argue" or "We argue") in Shi Yan 2011. I'm hoping it's a honest mistake and not another of your pointless cheats.
Then you send me to another paper which is from the year 2000!!!
Please... As a matter of fact, I consider everything pre-2004 as mostly wrong or at the very least very confused and confusing in the field of population genetics.
"The problem is that the Mongoloid phenotype basically forms a cline of decreasing phenotype from north to south".
That's not true. Dienekes, who is much more of your kind of backwards mentality (but quite more scientific, at least now and then), found that no classical northern Mongoloid or American Native clustered with the main classical Mongoloid cluster but had their own. He does not admit to that with words but his craniometric data speaks volumes: http://dienekes.blogspot.com.es/2009/06/colorful-view-of-potency-of-skulls-and.html
And, as you know, I care not much about what people say with words but about what data reflect about the reality.
Otherwise I'd be forced to believe in God and what not... just because a lot of people does. I find that attitude quite stupid and certainly unscientific. The data does not prove the hypothesis "God" and the data does not prove the hypothesis "Mongoloid craniometric unity" either, rather the opposite. By contrast Caucasoid craniometric unity was apparently confirmed by that mini-study, which consistently kept Scandinavians and Egyptians in the same cluster from K=2 to K=14 (but maybe undersampling?)
So there is no clear Mongoloid anthropometric unity but instead there is a cluster that I called back in the day "Sinoid" but can call "Khmeroid" if you prefer. This one may be associated to populations high in patrilineal haplogroups O and D, both of which have been demonstrated to originate in the South of East Asia.
"We have adequate evidence of humans of some sort or another living at latitude 50 North continuously from the Middle Paleolithic until the Neolithic".
In East Asia? Where? I don't reject it and specially not for Japan and other coastal areas (nor for Altai but this area belonged culturally to the West at that time). But I would like to know for sure because not much is known of the archaeology of NE Asia.
"Just because most Han have straight, it black hair doesn't mean that it is a Han-specific attribute to the exclusion of all other peoples".
ReplyDeleteWhere have I claimed that straight black hair was Han-specific? Most Han have straight black hair but they are not the only people with such. And I have not claimed Han were responsible for carrying it into SE Asia. However I have suggested that the Han are simply part of a continuum of southward expansion of Chinese Neolithic groups. Those groups quite probably carried straight black hair into SE Asia. The process continues, and you may like to follow up and comment at your other blog:
http://freewestpapua.org/
"Same for haplogroups".
Again where have I ever claimed that Han haplogroups are the only ones associated with the Mogoloid phenotype.
"That quote does not exist. I could not find that character string ('we argue' or 'We argue') in Shi Yan 2011".
Sorry I left the link out. Here it is:
http://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=9&ved=0CGcQFjAI&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.yhrd.org%2Ffiles%2Fb8ba4cd94011ce505b8a12b130b4fe240ffccd28.deng2004.pdf&ei=h946UJKoFImfiQfw_oGACw&usg=AFQjCNGTF1U4v-PGT1qyqkfRjiSJfn9dgQ
The comment appears in the abstract.
"Then you send me to another paper which is from the year 2000!!!"
So? That doesn't make it wrong. Unless you're claiming that Galileo was wrong. Actually, knowing you I can quite believe you think he was wrong, flat earther that you are.
"That's not true. Dienekes, who is much more of your kind of backwards mentality (but quite more scientific, at least now and then), found that no classical northern Mongoloid or American Native clustered with the main classical Mongoloid cluster but had their own. He does not admit to that with words but his craniometric data speaks volumes"
Virtually everyone accepts a difference between Northern and southern Chinese. That they form their own cluster does not alter the fact that a cline exists across East Asia. Clines are virtually universal in biology unless interrupted by geographical features. In which case we get abrupt changes such as we have at Wallace's Line.
"And, as you know, I care not much about what people say with words but about what data reflect about the reality".
ReplyDeleteBut your grasp on reality is fairly tenuous.
"Otherwise I'd be forced to believe in God and what not..."
I'm surprised you don't. Your comments display many similarities to those who do believe in God.
"the data does not prove the hypothesis 'Mongoloid craniometric unity'"
Why would 'Mongoloid craniometric unity' be a necessary attribute of 'Mongoloid cline'? Surely we would expact variability.
"This one may be associated to populations high in patrilineal haplogroups O and D, both of which have been demonstrated to originate in the South of East Asia".
A SE Asian origin for the 'Sinoid' or 'Mongoloid' phenotype does not fit the evidence, and certainly doesn't fit any aspact of biological reality. I doubt you will get anyone else to accept you term 'Khmeroid', so it is meaningless. Google the three terms and see how many links come up. None for 'Khmeroid'. But this link is interesting:
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Sinoid
Quote:
"The term Mongoloid (or less often Sinoid) describes a proposed but easily identifiable race of humans, most of whom live in North Asia, East Asia, Oceania or the Americas as natives. Taxonomy does recognize, and has always recognized, homo sapiens as a polytypic species. The Han Chinese are by far the largest Mongoloid group; indeed, they are the largest ethnic group of any race. Other Mongoloids include many smaller groups in Central Asia and the Arctic regions such as the Yakuts, Eskimos, Tibetans, and, of course, Mongolians. The peoples of Southeast Asia, Indonesia, and the Philippines are considered Mongoloid according to the four-race theory; however, they are quite genetically distinct from their neighbors to the north and may be considered a different race. This is also true of the Amerindians".
"In East Asia? Where? I don't reject it and specially not for Japan and other coastal areas (nor for Altai but this area belonged culturally to the West at that time). But I would like to know for sure because not much is known of the archaeology of NE Asia".
I have sent you several papers showing uninterrupted human occupation of the region between Altai and the Upper Amur. Look them up yourself. There are none so blind as those who will not see.
"Please... As a matter of fact, I consider everything pre-2004 as mostly wrong or at the very least very confused and confusing in the field of population genetics".
ReplyDeleteEverything? That's a stupid stand to take. Genetics hasn't really changed much since my father first began using artificial insemination on his dairy cows around 1957.
Brief reply to Terry:
ReplyDeleteGenetics has indeed changed a lot since 1957. In my experience anyhow papers lose interest and, what is more important, correctness, as you go back in time. I draw a line at c. 2004 in the field of population genetics but of course there's the occasional exception, specially this side of the line (researchers still produce a lot of junk, specially when they insist in using the so-called "molecular clock"). That's why we should always consider the raw data and not the text it is wrapped in, which is essentially decoration.
"But your grasp on reality is fairly tenuous".
If you think so, why do you keep coming back to this blog. I'm sure you can find other sites with a firmer "grasp on reality". After all, there's no point in reading and discussing the rants of someone with such a "tenuous" "grasp on reality", right?
"Why would 'Mongoloid craniometric unity' be a necessary attribute of 'Mongoloid cline'?"
Should be obvious to you, specially if you wish to argue that there are skulls which are "Mongoloid" and others that are not. There's no cline in that graph: there's division: strong deep divsion and lack of unity in the very concept of Mongoloid anthropometric type itself. As I said, that does not happen among Caucasoids or even Negroids - sample size may matter but "Mongoloids" make up so many different clusters that the very essence of the phenotype must be questioned and surely dismissed altogether.
In any case there is no "cline": Japanese and Malays cluster together all the time without any irregularity but they simply do not with Buryats, Inuits or any of the many different Native American clusters. You can see that yourself, why to argue against the facts?
"I have sent you several papers showing uninterrupted human occupation of the region between Altai and the Upper Amur".
I don't remember such thing. I remember a paper on certain Altai-related sites in Mongolia (UpperAmur also?) after 20 Ka ago (not before). I can't find them right now but I do not remember anything about "uninterrupted human occupation" but I can only imagine that they were not continuous. Anyhow those people should have got possibly a mixture of Y-DNA Q (from Altai) and C3 (from NE Asia) but it's totally impossible that they were O or O3. Even today O is very rare so far North.
"Where have I claimed that straight black hair was Han-specific?"
You did not. It's an example. Need vitamins or something?
"you are completely unjustified in claiming Cambodians as typical Mongoloids"...
As typical Khmeroids. Let's invert the center of the category altogether. Much of my point is that Mongols are not particularly representative of the East Asian phenotype(s), so why to call them Mongoloids if the archetype is Khmer, for example?
And if Liujiang and modern Khmers are similar, then the archetype must be Khmer. NE Asians would be variants of this archetype, specially having lost pigmentation for reasons similar to what happened in the West (vit. D).
"So? That doesn't make it wrong. Unless you're claiming that Galileo was wrong."
It's wrong if there are more recent papers that say otherwise. The correct comparison is not as much Galileo but Aristotle and Ptolemy, who believed in geocentrism. I claim that these were actually wrong: you can burn me on the stake "but it moves".
"If you think so, why do you keep coming back to this blog".
ReplyDeleteBecause you do post some very interesting stuff.
"Much of my point is that Mongols are not particularly representative of the East Asian phenotype(s), so why to call them Mongoloids if the archetype is Khmer, for example?"
But the 'archetype' is not Khmer. Only in your imagination. There is widespread similarity in East Asia, although I agree that the similarity may not be as close as the similarity within Western Eurasia.
"There's no cline in that graph: there's division: strong deep divsion and lack of unity in the very concept of Mongoloid anthropometric type itself".
Surely that would argue in favour of a very long period of occupation by differing human groups, in contrast to the relative homogeneity in Western Eurasia. And it doesn't really argue against an overall cline spreading later across those varied groups. As for the north to south movement: you are forgetting that the Upper Paleolithic in East Asia started in the north and then spread south, as you revealed yourself:
http://forwhattheywereweare.blogspot.co.nz/2012/08/upper-paleolithic-of-north-china-c.html
Would you now claim that the spread of the Upper Paleolithic in East Asia did not involve the movement of any human population, or even individuals? I'm reasonably sure that you believe the Upper Paleolithic was introduced to Western Eurasia by a migration of humans, but are you now prepared to claim that the situation in East and SE Asia was completely different? You may find this paper interesting in that regard:
http://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCgQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpaleo.sscnet.ucla.edu%2FBrantCA2001.pdf&ei=yDQ8UPG4H9CfiAf4kYGoBQ&usg=AFQjCNFj0ameio7iq-KCFJR44OvOmHch0A
And an interesting comment there (in the 'Discussion'):
"Initial Upper Paleolithic assemblages occur stratigraphically above Middle Paleolithic industries at Kara Bom and Tsagaan Agui ... but it appears that they do not replace those industries. At Kara Bom there is substantial continuity in core reduction strategies across the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic boundary ..., and indeed the many similarities between Middle and Upper Paleolithic core technologies preclude any simple notion of 'replacement'".
So whoever adopted the Upper Paleolithic in northern East Asia had been there for some time. Were they 'Modern' humans, do you think?
"Anyhow those people should have got possibly a mixture of Y-DNA Q (from Altai) and C3 (from NE Asia)"
In a way, yes. My guess is that Y-DNA Q introduced the Upper Paleolithic to a pre-existing population containing C3 and O, or perhaps NO. As well as several mt-DNAs of course.
"but it's totally impossible that they were O or O3. Even today O is very rare so far North".
O is certainly found in the region where the Upper Paleolithic first appears in East Asia. In fact the UP first appears near the boundary between N and O. And the following paper certainly sees the first Upper Paleolithic in northern China as having connections way to the west:
http://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=17&ved=0CEMQFjAGOAo&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ccsenet.org%2Fjournal%2Findex.php%2Fass%2Farticle%2Fdownload%2F3719%2F3308&ei=Ej88UIbgKamUiAeItYDgBg&usg=AFQjCNFW4OcWLNV700yZDTely-UazqHyOg
"This study thinks that these new Paleolithic sites belong to microblade-based micro-tool industry in final Upper Paleolithic period, lithic assemblages have close cultural relationships with many sites from Korean Peninsula, Mongolia, Far East, Trans-Baikal, Baikal and Primorskiy in Russia".
And:
"Present, most scholars agree that the abrupt appearance of blade-microblade artifacts in North China is the result of the immigration of or influence from populations to the north, namely Mongolia and South Siberia".
IMO the archetype is SE Asian, if there is any archetype at all. For example Amerindians remind more of SE Asians than NE Asians even if their genetics are similar to the latter... and they mixed with nobody. But the very idea of racial archetypes is probably wrong in itself: it's more like some elements in common and never all of them but enough to keep a resemblance.
Delete"Would you now claim that the spread of the Upper Paleolithic in East Asia did not involve the movement of any human population, or even individuals?"
Probably not many because we do not see the genetic evidence (such as Y-DNA Q, which was probably the key marker of the initiator population of Altai) anywhere except in very peripheral zones like Beringia and America. But we do not have enough archaeological data to understand the matter well enough.
Kara Bom and all the rest of the Altai should not be considered part of East Asia for any pre-historic purpose. The area has been better studied in later papers, which I have mentioned several times (tell me if you lost the links). It is fully part of the (first Mousterian-Neanderthal and later Aurignacoid-Sapiens) Western Eurasian continental region.
"My guess is that Y-DNA Q introduced the Upper Paleolithic to a pre-existing population containing C3 and O, or perhaps NO. As well as several mt-DNAs of course".
Some details are arguable but, in any case, why is there not any relevant Q in Mongolia or almost anywhere else in NE Asia then? Because the introduction was essentially cultural diffusion and not population replacement.
"O is certainly found in the region where the Upper Paleolithic first appears in East Asia".
At very low levels and low diversity. It's a C3 region essentially. Even the Hui (Chinese-speakers) are low in Y-DNA O.
There is some N but I'm of the opinion that N's Northern expansion is post-LGM, unlike that of Q and C3.
I don't have a qualified opinion on whether the incorporation of microblade tech implies immigration but, would it be the case, it'd be a Caucasoid-like kind of migration with Y-DNA Q or other P, maybe even J, and not your imaginary Hyperborean archetypal Mongoloids. After all it all comes from Altai.
"IMO the archetype is SE Asian"
ReplyDeleteArchetype for what? Certainly not for the Mongoloid phenotype. On the other hand you may be onto something with your Khmeroid taxon. A Cambodian couple own a cafe I visit occasionally. When I first met them I thought they were probably Indian, but something wasn't 'right' about them, so I asked. I also teach a young Filipina who definitely doesn't look at all 'Mongoloid'. She is quite dark-skinned with very curly hair. Rather like the Cambodian couple in fact. And also a little like the Andaman Islanders. What the Khmeroid phenotype probably represents is the pre-Mongoloid SE Asia substrate that stretched from the Ancient South Indian type at one end to the Australoid/Papuan type at the other end. It is surely interesting that the Filipinos have a reasonable proportion of F(xNO) Y-DNA haplogroups. And Wikipedia has this to say about the Khmer:
"Migrations into the mainland regions of Southeast Asia from the north continued well into historic times.[citation needed] Most scholars believe they came at least 3,000 years ago, much earlier than Tai people who now inhabit many parts of what was originally Austroasiatic territory. The reason they migrated into Southeast Asia is generally debated, but scholars believe that Mon–Khmer were pushed down by invading Sino-Tibetans from the north as evident by Austroasiatic vocabulary in Chinese or because of agricultural purposes as evident by their migration routes along major rivers. The Khmer are relatives to the Mon who settled further to the west".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_people
So no problem there concerning the Khmer (and others) having moved south from further north.
"For example Amerindians remind more of SE Asians than NE Asians even if their genetics are similar to the latter..."
Amerindians' genetics are only marginally similar to NE Asians. Amerindians completely lack N or O. To me it seems obvious that Amerindians arrived in America before the Mongoloid expansion got seriously under way. As for the SE Asian: the Mongoloid phenotype is nowhere near as pronounced in SE Asia as it is in NE Asia. That explains the apparent similarity between Amerindians and SE Asian.
"and they mixed with nobody".
Hang on. That is very unlikely. They have Central Asian Y-DNA Q and mt-DNA X, so they do represent a mixture of Central and East Asian phenotype. They are certainly not archetypal Mongoloid.
"But the very idea of racial archetypes is probably wrong in itself: it's more like some elements in common and never all of them but enough to keep a resemblance".
To some extent you are correct. However resemblances in humans are closely related to geographic proximity, just as they are in other widespread species. Those on the margin of the geographic expansion tend to be the most different from the average for the species. Dienekes has a recent post on the matter, although it concentrates on Africa:
http://dienekes.blogspot.co.nz/2012/08/genes-and-geography-wang-et-al-2012.html
"Kara Bom and all the rest of the Altai should not be considered part of East Asia for any pre-historic purpose".
No, but Y-DNA Q almost certainly began its move east from that region. And probably mt-DNA X.
"The area has been better studied in later papers, which I have mentioned several times (tell me if you lost the links). It is fully part of the (first Mousterian-Neanderthal and later Aurignacoid-Sapiens) Western Eurasian continental region".
ReplyDeleteBut it is difficult to argue convincingly that 'modern' humans are necessarily always connected to the first arrival of an Upper Paleolithic technology in a particular region. The development of the Upper Paleolithic in northern China suggests strongly that the humans there before its development were fully modern. The same is very probably true of regions further west, such as Altai.
"Some details are arguable but, in any case, why is there not any relevant Q in Mongolia or almost anywhere else in NE Asia then?"
Nor mt-DNA X. To me the reason is obvious. Q and X have been replaced by later expansion of Y-DNA N and C3, and mt-DNA A, C and D, although the mt-DNA haplogroups were carried to America. And Q is actually found in the far northeast of Siberia.
"Because the introduction was essentially cultural diffusion and not population replacement".
The introduction to northwest China was probably so but for regions further south that is just your preferred position. You really have no evidence that it is so.
"There is some N but I'm of the opinion that N's Northern expansion is post-LGM, unlike that of Q and C3".
I tend to agree. And that should explain your earlier query regarding Q's disappearance.
"I don't have a qualified opinion on whether the incorporation of microblade tech implies immigration but, would it be the case, it'd be a Caucasoid-like kind of migration with Y-DNA Q or other P, maybe even J, and not your imaginary Hyperborean archetypal Mongoloids. After all it all comes from Altai".
I am certainly not claiming that the Mongoloids introduced the microblade technology to northern China, I am merely claiming they were responsible for its spread south through China and down into SE Asia. The Upper Paleolithic in East and Southeast Asia did not enter via South Asia. It came from the north.
@Terry:
ReplyDeleteCurly hair is found at least as far North as Korea and Tibet. It's not the most common thing anywhere in East Asia but it does exist and in some scattered populations it is common enough. You should not judge so shallowly, much less when what you claim is some sort of craniometric standards (in principle unrelated to hair texture or skin color).
Thai (and Burmese) ethno-cultural flows into Indochina should not be taken as true migrations but conquests and assimilation. Nothing in the genetics of the region suggest population replacement associated to those proto-historical episodes. In any case Thai "migration" does not demonstrate anything about Austro-Asiatics, which must have been over there as we know it at least since Early Neolithic.
Amerindian mtDNA is NE Asian (excepting B which is not found in NE Asia proper, i.e. North of China). You would see things much differently (and correctly) if you gave less importance to Y-DNA (specially to the big widespread haplogroups) and more to mtDNA, which is IMO a much more reasonable proxy of overall pop. genetics through time. You can share Y-DNA massively and have little genetic relationship otherwise: Finns and Buryats, Polish and Bengalis, Sardinians and Chadic peoples, etc.
"They have Central Asian Y-DNA Q and mt-DNA X, so they do represent a mixture of Central and East Asian phenotype. They are certainly not archetypal Mongoloid".
MtDNA X2 is so rare and concentrated in some areas of Native North America that doesn't matter. Y-DNA Q obviously flowed to the East and absorbed, one after another, local female lineages and, one after another as well, NE Asian autosomal layers: they were even before colonizing America more East Asian than modern Finns are European. But not in phenotype because the Mongoloid phenotype is a chimera. But they are still archetypally-Mongoloid enough (sometimes very much, others less so) to illustrate how was the phenotype reality of NE Asia some 30-20,000 years ago, when the coalescence of the proto-Amerindians was under way in NE Asia.
In South America, where Native populations have experienced two bottlenecks (one at Beringia, the other at Central America), you can see very "pure" Mongoloid types (ex1, ex2) along others that are very imprecise in anthropometrical terms (ex1, ex2) that almost look something totally different. But they are all the product of a that single founder effect some 15,000 years ago.
So it's not correct that a founder effect will produce a simple archetype nor that what you want to imagine as a simple archetype is the product of any founder effect (migration from an imaginary Hyperborea where the archetype coalesced first into a "pure" form).
"resemblances in humans are closely related to geographic proximity, just as they are in other widespread species".
Not for any expansion from any center of "purity" but because of continuous remix in fact.
...
...
ReplyDelete"Dienekes has a recent post"...
Read the original paper days earlier than that and though it was without merit: confusing rather than truly informative. Thanks for reminding me of how many wasteful efforts surround true progress. :(
"But it is difficult to argue convincingly that 'modern' humans are necessarily always connected to the first arrival of an Upper Paleolithic technology in a particular region".
Even knee jerk Neanderthalists admit that there is a great likelihood to that. Why because we do not have a single known case in which Neanderthal remains are linked to Aurignacoid techno-cultures, while H. sapiens is. (Another issue would be if some alleged Aurignacoid layers in certain caves of Cantabria are truly Aurignacoid or is that an artifact of mediocre classification skills in confusing contexts, but that's not the matter - is it?)
"The development of the Upper Paleolithic in northern China suggests strongly that the humans there before its development were fully modern. The same is very probably true of regions further west, such as Altai".
I do not agree with anything at all in this sentence.
"Q and X have been replaced by later expansion of Y-DNA N and C3"...
C3 from where? C3 only exists in NE Asia (and Native NW America) and can have arrived from nowhere: it has been there all the time. N is another story possibly because we can pinpoint an origin in East or South China.
I think that the main reason why Q and X2 are so hard to find is because Siberia was left essentially desert with the LGM, except maybe some coastal pockets near Beringia. But one thing is Siberia and another Mongolia or China. IMO, at least by the coast, C3 (for sure) and NO subclades (less clearly so maybe) were already there at the arrival of mode 4.
"I am certainly not claiming that the Mongoloids introduced the microblade technology to northern China"...
Just like almost every other idea of you it's total confusion. You don't have a positive model that I could debunk or concede: it's all a complete mess.
But still you want to touch so many different aspects that instead of writing comments you write full articles. I strongly recommend that you write your own blog: you can write your lengthy endless replies to everything I say there in your blog and leave a note here with a link. At the very least it would force you to think twice and improve the format.
Please do, seriously. I don't want to waste hours writing comments three times the max. format.
The Mongoloid (Amerindians included) racial unity is more apparent in genetics than in phenotypes and craniometrics; and if we want to learn actual population relationships and racial affiliations, we should first and foremost look at genetics (especially overall autosomal genetics). Having said these, just from looks, I never confuse a Mongoloid with a Caucasoid or any other race, and vice versa, and I always know whether someone is Mongoloid or not (I am excluding racial hybrids from comparison; by racial hybrid, I mean a person with substantial total admixture from one or more races other than a race X). So the Mongoloid racial unity certainly includes a phenotypic and craniometric unity too (however loose compared to the Caucasoid one).
ReplyDeleteI do confuse "racial" identity at individual levels and it's not a matter of admixture ("hybridization" can only be between species) but something else (phenotype genes and epigenetics floating around with no respect for our arbitrary notions of "race"). I don't confuse populations (with some exceptions maybe) but individuals often are off the mark, looking ambiguous (when their autosomal DNA is not).
DeleteI do confuse "racial" identity at individual levels
DeleteThat is your problem.
Not really: individuals often cluster outside in looks. They are almost never inside another archetype but very ambiguous yes indeed.
DeleteAs I stated, it is your problem, not mine.
DeleteAre you posing or something? It's not "my problem" but an objective feature. If you're blind it's your problem, not mine (and this is MY blog, may I remind you).
DeleteDon't impose your beliefs on me.
DeleteDon't impose your racialist beliefs on me. C'mon!
DeleteBesides, you have a moderator warning for irrational confrontational attitude.
Ability to accurately detect the race of every racially pure or close to pure individual from looks is no belief.
DeleteIt is. "Racial purity" itself is an irrational belief. But in any case, unless you're going to elaborate properly, with data or something of the like, I strongly suggest you to shut up because I'm interpreting your attitude as pointless trollish head-bumping.
DeleteI must remember that this is my online "home" and you must respect your host, at least minimally, by the immemorial laws of hospitality.
Thanks in advance.
Hogwash! You are requesting me to prove the obvious.
DeleteNot so obvious! I'm not sure if all in your family and town are clone-like but not in mine and I'm used to massive ranges of variation, sometimes bordering what other "races" look like. Notably my cousin A. (who is a Nazi) has very dark complexion and black straight hair, and would go unnoticed anywhere between Marrakesh to Almaty (but in much of Europe he looks very exotic). My cousin M. (unrelated to the former) is so African-like (or is it brown skinned East Asian?) that I often get flashbacks of her when I see Black women (but never white ones). This is not unusual re. Spanish Mediterraneans and I have seen Senegalese and Murcians who are almost identical except in some degrees of skin color and some less obvious "racial" traits (slight variations on nose, lips and hair texture). I continuously see Central Africans or South Asians who remind me of my brother A., who incidentally is blond and fair skinned. Another cousin of mine, I., who is like a brunette and short version of Brad Pitt (brother of M., mentioned before, always remind of East Asians or Native Americans (Pitt himself does as so many other Northern Europeans but with my cousin, being dark haired, it's more apparent). Etc. because many in my family, including siblings of the former are blond or red-haired and blue-eyed with marked Nordic-like constitution (and even Nazi rubberstamping of "Aryanness" in one case). And also you have the many "chinos", a very common nickname, who more or less resemble East Asians in their facial traits without any obvious relation. Never mind the ones who have thinly curled black hair like Tropical Africans but then are blond with freckles. All those people are real and blurr the boundaries between "races". Races only exist at the extremes: they have many many exceptions.
DeleteSingle traits do not define races, but a combination of many traits does. That is why it is hard to define features of races verbally. But races are distinguished instinctively fairly easily from looks, and they are genetically and craniometrically distinguished even more easily. From your Brad Pitt example I understand that you have the wrong tendency to overplay the importance of single traits in races. BTW, South Asians are not a race; they are basically racial hybrids with varying degrees of descent from the source races.
DeleteIt's not mere single traits. Do you think that Danielle Miterrand is "Caucasoid"? Or is she Mongoloid? She certainly looks more the latter than the former to me (except in pigmentation traits). What about Maddalen Iriarte?
DeleteIndividually people cannot be classified as this or that race always, there are always exceptions, borderline individuals that break the mold.
South Asians are not product of admixture: that's very false: they are rather the root of West Eurasianness if anything.
DeleteAnd I will also ask, demand, you to stop using the word 'hybrid' for human admixture: hybridization is something that happens between species and your usage is clearly racist, abusive, as if normal human admixture would be something monstrous. Racism is is not allowed in this blog.
Sorry, double post again:
ReplyDelete"South Asians are not product of admixture: that's very false"
Your comment is incorrect. It seems generally agreed these days that South Asians are a mix of ancient northern and southern branches, usually abbreviated as ASI and ANI.
"hybridization is something that happens between species"
Again you are incorrect. The word 'hybrid' is often used for a mixing of different breeds of animals. So Onur's use of the word for the mixing of different regional human populations is completely valid.
"I'm not sure if all in your family and town are clone-like but not in mine and I'm used to massive ranges of variation, sometimes bordering what other 'races' look like".
Aren't you forgetting the huge movement of various human groups over the last few thousand years. Surely we would expect any pre-existing clines to have become confused.
"Curly hair is found at least as far North as Korea and Tibet. It's not the most common thing anywhere in East Asia but it does exist"
Yes. The characteristic is very much a minority in East Asia, suggesting it is an introduced phenotype to the region.
"Thai (and Burmese) ethno-cultural flows into Indochina should not be taken as true migrations but conquests and assimilation".
No-one but you would claim anything but such a scenario. Sure, members of the earlier populations survive, as in the survival of Y-DNA F(xNO) haplogroups in the region, but all agree on at least some level of population expansion into SE Asia from further north.
"Nothing in the genetics of the region suggest population replacement associated to those proto-historical episodes".
Such a statement is only possible if you choose to so interpret the evidence. As usual the evidence is capable of several interpretations and it is only by considering ALL the evidence that it is possible to come to valid conclusions.
"In any case Thai 'migration' does not demonstrate anything about Austro-Asiatics, which must have been over there as we know it at least since Early Neolithic".
I agree that Austro-Asiatics have been in SE Asia 'since Early Neolithic', but their arrival goes back little beyond that period.
"You would see things much differently (and correctly) if you gave less importance to Y-DNA"
You have failed to read what I wrote. I have considered mt-DNA. That is why we can be reasonably sure that the Amerindians are a hybrid population. But I have noticed an interesting aspect of Y-DNA. Although I share you suspicion of molecular clockology Dienekes' recent dating of various Y-DNA splits has the NO split at 33,000 years ago. That's surprisingly close to the arrival of the Upper Paleolithic in northern China.
"the Mongoloid phenotype is a chimera".
I advise you to take off your blindfold. It is possible to tell instantly if an individual comes from Eastern Eurasia. If you cannot see that you are blind.
"Why because we do not have a single known case in which Neanderthal remains are linked to Aurignacoid techno-cultures, while H. sapiens is".
ReplyDeleteYou are conveniently forgetting the Australian Aborigines, although they are technically not 'Neanderthals'. You are also ignoring the complete absence of the Upper Paleolithic in SE Asia until long after any reasonable time can be assigned to H. sapiens arrival there.
"I do not agree with anything at all in this sentence".
Good for you. So how would you explain the evidence, or do you just prefer to ignore it because it is inconvenient for your belief?
"C3 from where? C3 only exists in NE Asia (and Native NW America) and can have arrived from nowhere: it has been there all the time".
Yes. C3 is from NE Asia (probably somewhere near Eastern Mongolia) and has been there a long time. However its major expansion occurred long after it had formed there. And even its expansion to America would have lowered the proportion of Q in NE Asia.
"N is another story possibly because we can pinpoint an origin in East or South China"
You would have a real uphill battle pinpointing its origin to South China. Basically we have N on the plateau country north of Inner Mongolia and O south of the plateau. They are fairly neatly split geographically.
"I think that the main reason why Q and X2 are so hard to find is because Siberia was left essentially desert with the LGM, except maybe some coastal pockets near Beringia".
The 'pockets' certainly do not have to be coastal. Mountains provide a huge variety of micro-climates. And anyway the onset of glacial conditions explains your previous problem: 'MtDNA X2 is so rare and concentrated in some areas of Native North America that doesn't matter'. We would surely expect any haplogroup present in the region before the LGM to have become isolated to small pockets before being able to expand again more recently.
"Just like almost every other idea of you it's total confusion. You don't have a positive model that I could debunk or concede: it's all a complete mess".
I do have a complete and consistent model which I've tried explaining to you multiple times. Unfortunately you are hampered by your lack of knowledge of general biology. Y-DNA C and Y-DNA F took different routes to East Asia, that's why they coalesced separately. The same is true for mt-DNA N and mt-DNA M. The two sets of haplogroups mixed again in East Asia.
"I don't want to waste hours writing comments three times the max. format".
There is hardly any point in starting yet another blog covering the same subject.
"Sorry, double post again"...
ReplyDeleteSorry. Not gonna read it.
"Sorry. Not gonna read it".
ReplyDeleteNot surprised. I've noticed you always refuse to read my comment once we reach the stage of your having to admit you're wrong.
Don't be childish: it's about length and lack of coherence. I'm not reading any more of your comments so long and written as in-line replies instead of texts with their own structure.
DeleteI am not obliged to waste hours replying to your comments in any case. Maybe if you send a check for my time...
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteSouth Asians are not product of admixture: that's very false: they are rather the root of West Eurasianness if anything.
ReplyDeleteIncorrect. South Asians are hybrids of ANI (a subset of Caucasoids) and ASI (a totally different race).
And I will also ask, demand, you to stop using the word 'hybrid' for human admixture: hybridization is something that happens between species and your usage is clearly racist, abusive, as if normal human admixture would be something monstrous. Racism is is not allowed in this blog.
Incorrect again. The term hybrid is used in biology also for mixes of races, subspecies and breeds, all of which are below the rank of species in taxonomy.
It's not mere single traits. Do you think that Danielle Miterrand is "Caucasoid"? Or is she Mongoloid? She certainly looks more the latter than the former to me (except in pigmentation traits). What about Maddalen Iriarte?
Again, you are focusing on single traits, and are not looking at the whole. I would never confuse those individuals with Mongoloids from looks.
Individually people cannot be classified as this or that race always, there are always exceptions, borderline individuals that break the mold.
This is only true for racial hybrids.
I first swallowed that but later I have realized, following others' work, that ANI is not likely to be a Western back-migrant component but rather a native South Asian one, just that related as quasi-ancestor to the genesis of Western Eurasians as a distinct population.
DeleteSouth Asia can probably be understood prehistorically as two only loosely connected regions one in the North (Ganges and Narmada mostly) and another in the South, separated by arid areas in the Deccan Plateau and almost only linked by the Western coast.
You should approach autosomal genetics in a less absolutist manner: it's not rocket science.
Hybrid (biology): "From a taxonomic perspective, hybrid refers to offspring resulting from the interbreeding between two animals or plants of different species". However later also admits the possibility of usage as "intra-specific hybrids". Whatever the case in animals it's not used for humans (except when we consider Sapiens-archaic hybrids or for SF parahumans) and I find it intently offensive against people of admixed origins, which is racist.
You have not even bothered denying racist insulting intent, just shielded yourself behind biological nitty-pickiness.
I insist that you avoid the use of the word "hybrid" with members of the species Homo sapiens, it is most politically incorrect and has clear intent of offending and promoting racial purity nonsense. I will not tolerate it.
Last warning. I will even initiate a period of moderation if you or any other insist on that. I'm getting very angry already.
"Again, you are focusing on single traits"...
It's not single traits at all: it's the skull structure (flatness of the face), hair texture, slanted eyes... almost everything in the case of Iriarte. In any technical comparison, I'm sure M. Iriarte would be classified as Mongoloid.
She's surely purebred European however.
But I was not arguing even for confusion of types but for abundance of exceptions tending towards ambiguity. The more strict you are with the typology of any 'race', the more the exceptions... there's surely soon a moment when the exceptions are the vast majority and only a few fit in the typology.
This comment has been removed by the author.
DeleteIrrespective of where ANI or Caucasoids as a whole originated (these are far from clear), it is clear that the ANI-ASI admixture occurred well after the colonization of West Eurasia by Caucasoids. So South Asians are racial hybrids since the ANI-ASI admixture and cannot be thought as ancestral to Caucasoids with their current racially hybrid state.
DeleteYour antropocentric attitude towards humans is no different from those of religions and is completely unscientific. Humans are not special beings; they are subject to the same taxonomic classification rules as all other species. Mixes of races are called hybrids in all species that have races, humans are no exception. Political correctness and other ideologies have no place in science.
As I said, I would never confuse Iriarte with Mongoloids from her looks; you are exaggerating her Mongoloid-like traits. Maybe I could confuse her with Caucasoid-Mongoloid hybrids (who sometimes look pure Caucasoid or vice versa despite substantial admixture from the opposite race anyway), but as I said in the beginning, I am excluding racial hybrids from comparison and only comparing racially pure or close to pure individuals. In such a comparison, I would never confuse races of individuals.
Don't bother commenting again in this blog, Onur. You were repeatedly warned about the use of racist terminology.
Delete"I'm not reading any more of your comments so long and written as in-line replies instead of texts with their own structure".
ReplyDeleteOK. I'll sum up. Your Eurocentric bias prevents you from seeing that the presence of Homo sapiens in East, Southeast and, probably, Central Asia predates the appearance of the Upper Paleolithic in those regions by tens of thousands of years. Your assumption of an intimate connection between H. sapiens and the Upper Paleolithic is totally wrong for regions outside of Western Eurasia.
"I insist that you avoid the use of the word 'hybrid' with members of the species Homo sapiens, it is most politically incorrect".
Perhaps 'politically incorrect', but not 'biologically incorrect'. So I totally agree with Onur, 'Your antropocentric attitude towards humans is no different from those of religions and is completely unscientific'.
"It's not single traits at all: it's the skull structure (flatness of the face), hair texture, slanted eyes... almost everything in the case of Iriarte. In any technical comparison, I'm sure M. Iriarte would be classified as Mongoloid".
No-one would be inclined in the slightest to conclude an East Asian origin for either Danielle Miterrand or Maddalen Iriarte. You are attempting to fool yourself here. You're certainly not fooling anyone else.
"Don't bother commenting again in this blog, Onur. You were repeatedly warned about the use of racist terminology".
I don't know Onur at all but I doubt that he is racist.
Nothing I wrote here was remotely racist. Also I did not deviate from biology and used biological terminology all along. I know where racism begins and ends, but apparently Luis does not (due to his extreme ideology?). He is as if looking for an excuse to ban me (due to my bad habit of deleting and rewriting my published posts?). He reminds me of witch hunters with his this attitude.
ReplyDeleteIt has nothing to do with your deleting and rewriting of posts (although that's something you could do without, sincerely). It has to do with:
Delete1. Using the word "hybrid" for humans, what IMO implies hostility towards mixed ancestry - it's not used in humans for a reason. I told you repeatedly not to and you insisted as if I had said nothing. You did not apologized in any way nor even denied having racist intent (first time here).
2. Confronting me insistingly: bumping heads once and again in this thread. Something you clearly do not know is when to stop.
Much of the same for Terry. Both of you have very very strong warnings.
Using the word "hybrid" for humans, what IMO implies hostility towards mixed ancestry
DeleteBy saying that, you are implying (intentionally or not) that being hybrid is a negative quality (at least for humans). Is this a normal attitude for a person who claims to be non-racist or anti-racist?
It implies that the "races" are "pure" things and therefore that it is abnormal or questionable to be of mixed ancestry.
DeleteIt has a lot of implications proper of Mein Kampf. Of course Hitler was not born in a vacuum but he was a product of the European society and culture of that time.
You don't say of a Mexican or an Egyptian, for example, that (s)he is a "hybrid". Never. Not in Spanish, not in English and not in Turkish. If you say so it's similar to saying "mongrel": it's clearly offensive and shows hostility toward something as cool as mestizaje.
If you can't understand that, you don't have room here. I'm perceiving all the time that you consider that, somehow, being "pure race" (something unreal but obviously an important part of your ideas) is better than being "mixed race", which you animalize by calling "hybrid".
And then you are stubborn like a mule: you don't listen, you insist. What only aggravates things, causing me increased anger.
I don't have to put up with either element: there are lots of racist or racist-tolerant forums through the Internet. But this is not one of those.
I have always used the word "pure" in a relative sense. Even the purest members of a race (there is varying levels of purity among members of races) are pure only in a relative sense, because races do not stem from archetypical forms but are results of very long histories of admixtures, isolations, selections, drifts, etc. I have also never implied that being pure is positive and being hybrid is negative, but you clearly imply that being hybrid is something negative. The word "hybrid" is a biological term and does not carry the negative connotations that the word "mongrel" has. If you do not have any problem with the word "mestizo", you should not with the completely scientific term "hybrid" either.
Delete"Hybrid" is not a "scientific term" anymore than any other. In biology it is primarily used for inter-specific hybrids, so when you use it for normal human variation it implies a distortion of reality towards the "quasi-speciation" of "races" and all that.
DeleteHybrid also has implications of mongrel. In original Latin it's derivate of ibrida (a mix of boar and pig) with influence of Greek hubris (outrage, disgust).
Even in scientific usage it implies "anomaly".
It's not me the only one who does not use the term "hybrid" the way you do, i.e. for humans, nobody does in fact and no matter how much I look for I cannot find a single example. Why? Because of all racist connotations the terms has, comparing "races" to species and implying that people of mixed ancestry are anomalies, possibly "abominations".
Listen to me and do not be a smartass: nobody uses the word 'hybrid' the way you do - for a reason.
As for the term "mestizo" is proudly used by many peoples and it is unrelated to "hybrid". Mestizo means mixed and nowadays has often a positive connotation, almost never a negative one.
Incorrect. As I and Terry explained above, the term "hybrid" is used for mixtures between any taxonomic rank and this includes the ranks below species (e.g., subspecies, race, breed). It in no way implies anomaly, and this is especially true for taxonomic ranks below species, in which mixing between taxonomic ranks is much more common and easy. So, for consistency, if you want to refute the existence of racial hybrids in humans, you should first refute the existence of races in humans, and should do it in a scientific way, without invoking politically correctist arguments, which have no place in science.
DeleteAlso, if being hybrid implies anomaly in scientific usage, then why is there a scientific concept called "hybrid vigor" (also called "heterosis")?
DeleteStop it! It is not used for humans: it is offensive and racist. Go push your fringe ideas somewhere else and stop bumping heads with me here.
DeleteLast, final, warning.
I thought this was a scientific discussion blog. I am now sad to learn that I was wrong. This will be my final post in this blog, as I hate to see science being distorted for ideological purposes and do not want to be a part of such environments.
DeleteI have to confess that you were more tolerant towards me than Etyopis and Diogenes, as they banned me from their blogs and/or deleted/didn't publish my posts just because I used the -oid terms (e.g., Caucasoid, Mongoloid, Negroid, etc.).
Before departing, I will request you to preserve my posts in this blog (including this one) and not delete them. This is my final request to you.
Agur!
I am often annoyed when people discuss the sharing of derivatives of haplogroup P among European and Native American populations as if it were suggestive of "hybrid origin" or "ancient Caucasoid admixture" in the genesis of Native Americans.
ReplyDeleteFirst, from the viewpoint of physical anthropology, Native Americans who are not recently admixed with European and African colonists or immigrants are actually exhibit more characters that are highly derived/divergent from West Eurasian populations (i.e. "more Mongoloid") than East Eurasian populations. There is no a priori reason to assume that ancestral Native Americans should possess any relationship to West Eurasians to the exclusion of East Eurasians.
Second, the TMRCA of all P-92R7 Y-chromosomes is at least 3/4 of the TMRCA of all IJK-L15/M523/S137 Y-chromosomes. The same may be said in regard to the TMRCA of all NO-M214 Y-chromosomes. In other words, the length of time from the TMRCA of all IJK Y-chromosomes to the TMRCA of all P-92R7 or NO-M214 Y-chromosomes, respectively, is at maximum only 1/4 of the total age of IJK, which might equate to a maximum of about 10,000 years. However, the MRCA of K-M9 and the MRCA of MNOPS-M526 must have existed at some time between the TMRCA of IJK-L15/M523/S137 and the TMRCA of P-92R7 or NO-M214, and K-M9 has also bequeathed another living descendant lineage (LT-L298/P326) besides MNOPS-M526; it is possible that P-92R7 and NO-M214 may coalesce to a common ancestor at some time toward the end of that window (1/4 of the total age of IJK, or perhaps 10,000 years).
In more simple terms, R-M207 and Q-M242 appear to be only marginally more closely related to each other than either is related to N-M231 or O-M175. Furthermore, Q-M242, N-M231, and O-M175 are all commonly found in modern Mongoloid populations; even some derivatives of R-M207 are found in many modern Mongoloid populations, though they tend to be interpreted as indicative of historical or recent West Eurasian admixture. Among the aforementioned derivatives of MNOPS-M526, only R-M207 is regularly found in modern West Eurasian populations; Q-M242 and N-M231 also occur in some West Eurasian populations, but they tend to be interpreted as indicative of some sort of ancient East Eurasian admixture. The other derivatives of MNOPS-M526 have been observed in Papuan and Melanesian populations, who are geographically much closer to East Eurasians than to West Eurasians. Thus, the balance of evidence indicates to an unbiased observer that the MRCA of P-92R7 should have been located in some place closer to East Eurasia than to West Eurasia and that it probably arose in a member of an early East Eurasian population (in other words, "proto-Mongoloids" or one element that has contributed significantly to the formation of Mongoloid populations). In any case, speculations of West Eurasian admixture in proto-Native Americans to the exclusion of proto-East Eurasians are entirely unfounded and rather offensive IMHO.
I have to disagree with R/Q being "only marginally" more related to each other than N/O are in their own branch.
DeleteR and Q and P itself show clear signs of having coalesced in the Western regions (South Asia for P and R, West or Central Asia for Q), while NO, N and O have clearly coalesced in East Asia (and other "brother" MNOPS-derived lineages coalesced in ISEA or Melanesia probably). This means that when "the Q clan" eventually arrived to Altai, it was carrying South and West Eurasian autosomal DNA essentially (not really different these two at that time).
Another different thing is that when the Q-derived "clan" that would found the Amerindian peoples arrived to Alaska, it probably carried 90% East Asian autosomal DNA, just like modern European Finns carry mostly West Asian autosomal DNA in spite of their oriental-derived N lineages.
Also there was some old paper that suggested that Native Americans had some secondary South Asian affinities... never heard of it later on but not too surprised considering where P and Q and almost everything West Eurasian originated ultimately.
"Furthermore, Q-M242, N-M231, and O-M175 are all commonly found in modern Mongoloid populations; even some derivatives of R-M207 are found in many modern Mongoloid populations"
ReplyDeleteC3 is also an important component of Mongoloid populations.
"the balance of evidence indicates to an unbiased observer that the MRCA of P-92R7 should have been located in some place closer to East Eurasia than to West Eurasia and that it probably arose in a member of an early East Eurasian population (in other words, 'proto-Mongoloids' or one element that has contributed significantly to the formation of Mongoloid populations)".
I agree that MNOPS originated in East Eurasia, probably towards SE Asia, but I disagree that the population of SE Asia at the time could in any way be called 'Mongoloid'. That is a later presence in the region.
"In any case, speculations of West Eurasian admixture in proto-Native Americans to the exclusion of proto-East Eurasians are entirely unfounded and rather offensive IMHO".
I certainly wouldn't consider a West Eurasian element to the exclusion of an East Eurasian element. Virtually all the Amerindian mt-DNA is East Eurasian.
"This means that when 'the Q clan' eventually arrived to Altai, it was carrying South and West Eurasian autosomal DNA essentially"
Maju, I agree with you! But I wouldn't be so sure that P cannot have coalesced in SE Asia along with M, NO and S. P could have traveled some distance before R and Q coalesced, probably at least to India.
"Using the word 'hybrid' for humans, what IMO implies hostility towards mixed ancestry"
I don't follow your reasoning here. As far as I'm aware all human populations are 'hybrids', even those some might regard as 'pure'. From Onur's comment I see that he and I are using the word to denote people who are a mix of populations found at the geographic, and so genetic, extremes of the human species' distribution.
"I have always used the word 'pure' in a relative sense. Even the purest members of a race (there is varying levels of purity among members of races) are pure only in a relative sense, because races do not stem from archetypical forms but are results of very long histories of admixtures, isolations, selections, drifts, etc."
That sums up our shared position well.
"I'm perceiving all the time that you consider that, somehow, being 'pure race' (something unreal but obviously an important part of your ideas) is better than being 'mixed race'"
Certainly not true as far as I'm concerned. If anything I would regard a 'hybrid' as likely to be superior through hybrid vigour.
"Hybrid also has implications of mongrel".
They have basically different meanings. 'Hybrid' implies more controlled breeding than does 'mongrel'. Mongrel implies a fairly random mixture.
"Confronting me insistingly: bumping heads once and again in this thread. Something you clearly do not know is when to stop".
I only bump heads with you when I am sure you have the wrong end of the stick. I think we all wish to increase our understanding of how we have come to be where we are today. Discussion and disagreement can help considerably in this enterprise.
"And then you are stubborn like a mule: you don't listen, you insist. What only aggravates things"
That really is 'the pot calling the kettle black', Maju. Of course it is your blog so you are entitled to be 'stubborn like a mule: you don't listen, you insist'.
"I don't follow your reasoning here".
DeleteImplicitly, you quasi-speciate "races", you equate normal admixture among diverse human populations to exceptional and rather shocking admixture between different species (hybridization) such as horse and donkey or sapiens and neanderthal.
I know you can continue arguing this but please not, unless you are yourself of mixed ancestry.
"Implicitly, you quasi-speciate 'races'"
ReplyDeleteNo. Onur and I 'subspeciate' races. I'm sure no-one would consider human races to be different species. And mixing of subspecies is universally know as hybridism.
"you equate normal admixture among diverse human populations to exceptional and rather shocking admixture between different species (hybridization) such as horse and donkey or sapiens and neanderthal".
Horse and donkey hybrids are almost always infertile, and so they are considered separate species. We certainly know that 'hybrids' between Neanderthal and human were at least sometimes (and perhaps usually) fertile so we are forced to conclude they are the same species. And the word 'hybrid' is by no means limited to the mixture of different species. Even the Wiki link you provided says:
"The second type of hybrid consists of crosses between populations, breeds or cultivars within a single species. This meaning is often used in plant and animal breeding, where hybrids are commonly produced and selected because they have desirable characteristics not found or inconsistently present in the parent individuals or populations. This flow of genetic material between populations or races is often called hybridization".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_%28biology%29
This demonstrates that your objection to the term is based on 'political correctness', not biology.
"I know you can continue arguing this but please not, unless you are yourself of mixed ancestry".
I am. Mixed Irish, Scottish and English. I realise these groups could hardly be considered 'races'. I have a nephew who is a mix of European (Caucasian, if you prefer), Polynesian and Chinese. That is certainly a mixture. But I agree, we are wasting our time arguing over such a simple matter as terminology.
By the way. I forgot:
ReplyDelete"And then you are stubborn like a mule: you don't listen, you insist".
That was you when I first suggested that modern humans and Neanderthals had mixed genetically to at least some extent. You are now forced to agree. It was also you when I first suggested that Y-DNA K-derived haplogroups had originated near Wallace's Line. You now agree. You are not yet convinced that mt-DNA R also originated near Wallacea, but the time can't be far off when you are again forced to face the evidence. It may be a little further off when you come to see that mt-DNA N and Y-DNA C moved east from somewhere near Altai, but the time will come.
Not accepted: people are not "hybrids". Quit it!
ReplyDelete"Not accepted: people are not 'hybrids'. Quit it!"
ReplyDeleteI suppose that little exercise in hair-splitting has effectively diverted attention away from the real point: ancient Homo sapiens from Laos.
I did not initiate it. You and Onur did. It's definitely your fault.
DeleteSorry to revive this post but in regard to your denial of replacement in SE Asia by southward-moving Mongoloid phenotype, demonstrated by your comment:
ReplyDelete"Thai (and Burmese) ethno-cultural flows into Indochina should not be taken as true migrations but conquests and assimilation. Nothing in the genetics of the region suggest population replacement associated to those proto-historical episodes. In any case Thai 'migration' does not demonstrate anything about Austro-Asiatics, which must have been over there as we know it at least since Early Neolithic"
I missed the following paper ('Y Chromosomes of Prehistoric People along the Yangtze River') when it first came out:
http://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=4&ved=0CDkQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fcomonca.org.cn%2Flh%2Fdoc%2FA37.pdf&ei=HEhzUPXmD8-eiQfNv4HYCw&usg=AFQjCNHfFv4GBKcVkMhHzfU8--Zm5B-3Sw
The paper draws attention even to some apparent changes of haplogroup within China since the Neolithic. The simplest way to interpret the data is that Y-DNAs O1, O2a and O3 all originated along the Yangtze River, or very close to it. O1 near the mouth in the east, O2a in the middle and O3 in the headwaters. Members of these haplogroups moved south, carrying the Chinese Neolithic. We can further draw the conclusion that during the expansion O1 basically carried the Austronesian/Thai language group, O2a carried the Austro-Asiatic group (along with O3a2b, O3d in the paper) and O3a2c1 (O3e in the paper) carried the Sino-Tibetan group of languages. So there you have it: Thai (and Burmese) ethno-cultural flows into Indochina should definitely be taken as true migrations, in the form of Y-DNA O at least. Southward movement of the Mongoloid phenotype, mixing with the pre-existing phenotypes in Southeast Asia, and probably in China south of the Yangtze as well.
The correct link is:
Deletehttp://comonca.org.cn/lh/doc/A37.pdf
I'm posting it just to see if I can download it because it's giving me errors.
Alright, I could download it.
DeleteI see that what indicates is, first and foremost an O1-only population in the area of Shanghai but none in the Interior, North or Guangzhou zones. In this sense, modern data suggest that this O1 pocket has been possibly remixed but not vanished:
Although Haplogroup O1 occurs only at an average frequency of approximately 4% among Han populations of northern China and peoples of southwestern China and Southeast Asia who speak Tibeto-Burman languages, the frequency of this haplogroup among the Han populations of southern China nearly quadruples to about 15-23%. (from Wikipedia)
The other relevant data speaks of O3d at very high frequencies in Daxi (upper Yangtze). However I could not find information to confirm or deny its persistence today in the area (it does exist at low frequencies among Southern but not Northern Han however, so it has persisted to some degree up to present day).
A Northern (Longshan culture) driven hypothetical replacement can only be tracked by O3* (not too informative) and O3e, haplogroups both common among Sino-Tibetan (whatever that means), Hmong-Mien and Austroasiatic (and even Daic to lesser extent) but all these linguistically-grouped macro-populations have more O3e than O3*, while the Longshan site people were the other way around (75% O3* and 25% O3e).
It's therefore interesting to know but no conclusions can be drawn other than contemplating in awe the quite interesting O1 pocket of the Shanghai zone.
I think that a very important thing to understand is that, most likely, the Northern (Huang He or Yellow River) Neolithic cultures like Longshan are early Sinitic and directly lead to the early Chinese Empire. Actually we can easily draw a sequence: Peligang-Cisan > Yangshao > Longshan > Erlitou (Xia dynasty) > Shang dynasty, etc. All that is with all likelihood Sinitic, i.e. already diverged from Sino-Tibetan.
DeleteSo whatever you can identify (or imagine) as migration from these cultures southwards is, must be, part of the Chinese ethno-cultural expansion (not strictly demic but with some arguable degree of migration and settlement from North to South).
Not that I can identify anything specific but you cannot imagine the alleged "migration of the Mongoloids" as part of the expansion of the Chinese Empire. Because it simply does not make any sense whatsoever.
"The correct link is:"
ReplyDeleteThanks.
"I see that what indicates is, first and foremost an O1-only population in the area of Shanghai but none in the Interior, North or Guangzhou zones. In this sense, modern data suggest that this O1 pocket has been possibly remixed but not vanished"
I was only meaning 'local replacement' in my original comment. O1 certainly hasn't 'vanished'. In fact it seems to have been O1 that first introduced the Austronesian language family into Southeast Asia. From the information in the paper O1 looks very likely to have originated near the mouth of the Yangtze, not further south. It is therefore no surprise that, 'the frequency of this haplogroup among the Han populations of southern China nearly quadruples to about 15-23%'. Members of the haplogroup remained there as it moved south to SE Asia.
"The other relevant data speaks of O3d at very high frequencies in Daxi (upper Yangtze). However I could not find information to confirm or deny its persistence today in the area"
According to the paper it seems to have been replaced in the Daxi region. The paper does mentions a very low presence through much of China, ('O3d is very rare in modern populations'), although it is found especially in the Hmong-Mien (Table 1). Evidently it is also found at low levels in Mon-Khmer and even in Indonesia.
"all these linguistically-grouped macro-populations have more O3e than O3*"
In actual fact O3a2c1 (O3e) is the most common and widespread Y-DNA in China. It is found in Tibet, Japan and Southeast Asia as well. I would guess its expansion is relatively recent though, presumably with a later Neolithic expansion. And that expansion was from within China, not from SE Asia.
"I think that a very important thing to understand is that, most likely, the Northern (Huang He or Yellow River) Neolithic cultures like Longshan are early Sinitic and directly lead to the early Chinese Empire. Actually we can easily draw a sequence: Peligang-Cisan > Yangshao > Longshan > Erlitou (Xia dynasty) > Shang dynasty, etc. All that is with all likelihood Sinitic, i.e. already diverged from Sino-Tibetan".
Quite possibly so. It is presumably from such centres that the Sino-Tibetan languages originally spread out. O3a2c1 is not just associated with the Sinitic branch though. It is associated with the Tibeto-Burman in Burma and Tibet (especially in the derived form O3a2c1a). So it looks very likely that the language family diversified once the various groups speaking Sino-Tibetan languages lost contact with each other.
"So whatever you can identify (or imagine) as migration from these cultures southwards is, must be, part of the Chinese ethno-cultural expansion (not strictly demic but with some arguable degree of migration and settlement from North to South)".
We are certainly able to conclude that Y-DNA O has no Paleolithic presence in SE Asia.
"you cannot imagine the alleged 'migration of the Mongoloids' as part of the expansion of the Chinese Empire. Because it simply does not make any sense whatsoever".
The migration of the Mongoloids predates the expansion of the Chinese Empire, but the expansion of the Chinese Empire is just the final(?) act of a longer process. Y-DNA O introduced the Mongoloid phenotype into Southeast Asia, and possibly into the hills of China south of the Yangtze.
According to you the "migration of the Mongoloids" happened before or after 3000 BCE?, which is the approx. date of these samples.
DeleteIf earlier, then what we see in that paper would be the result of such hypothetical "migration". If after, it's not possible to make it fit in any consistent prehistoric reconstruction (because Daics, Hmong, etc. must expanded from South China, Austroasiatics were since much earlier in SE Asia and even India), etc.
"In actual fact O3a2c1 (O3e) is the most common and widespread Y-DNA in China. It is found in Tibet, Japan and Southeast Asia as well".
Including Austroasiatic peoples (less so Daics and Austronesians however). And Austroasiatic peoples are almost without doubt in SE Asia since the beginnings of the Neolithic period, if not earlier.
"I would guess its expansion is relatively recent though, presumably with a later Neolithic expansion".
Not possible if it's to be found among Austroasiatic peoples at similar levels as others like Sino-Tibetans, Hmong-Mien. I can think of people changing language without absorbing (much) Y-DNA but I cannot think of people absorbing lots of Y-DNA and retaining their ancestral language. You must consider Austroasiatic peoples because those have been in SE Asia (South of the Chinese border) since the very beginnings of the Neolithic (if not before). And they have about the same O3e as Han or Hmong-Mien.
You mention O3d but O3d (M7) is not too relevant, right? It's strong only amonng Hmong-Mien and Austroasiatics actually (therefore if anything a persistance, not a new arrival).
What matters is O3e (M134), which reaches level of 20% among Austroasiatics, 26% among Hmong-Mien and 32% among Sino-Tibetans, per your own source. The difference between the oldest inhabitants (Austroasiatics) and the most recent arrivals (Sino-Tibetans) is not significant.
So what are you talking about?!
"It is presumably from such centres that the Sino-Tibetan languages originally spread out".
Only Sinitic. Tibeto-Burman probably originated in Sichuan, whose Epipaleolithic culture seems related to the first Neolithic of the Yellow River. It was then surely when early Sinitic became the language of the riverine farmers, while early TB remained as the language(s) of the highland late hunter-gatherers, who would adopt farming later on.
"We are certainly able to conclude that Y-DNA O has no Paleolithic presence in SE Asia".
I see not a single piece of evidence that could mean that. You begin with your "conclusion", waste my time going forth and back about nothing and end up in the same pre-determined "conclusion".
"The migration of the Mongoloids predates the expansion of the Chinese Empire, but the expansion of the Chinese Empire is just the final(?) act of a longer process".
There's absolutely no evidence supporting such ideas: neither archaeological nor genetic. You just want to believe that for no reason at all.
"According to you the 'migration of the Mongoloids' happened before or after 3000 BCE?"
ReplyDeleteBoth. It may have started nearly 10,000 years ago and carried on till at least 2000 BCE, if not more recently. It was not a 'single' migration, as you appear to imagine all prehistoric migrations to be. Garden of Eden syndrome? Or Noah's ark?
"If earlier, then what we see in that paper would be the result of such hypothetical 'migration' [presume you mean 'northward']".
Not likely. The haplogroups are sorted as to region along the Yangtze at that stage. That regional separation is unlikely to indicate an end product of any sort of migration from anywhere. The haplogroups become much more mixed in China after that time.
"I see not a single piece of evidence that could mean that".
I see no other way to interpret the evidence. How would you envisage a downstream mutation such as Y-DNA O3a2c1 for example as being able to expand north through the whole of China more recently than any realistic period for its coalescence?
"If after, it's not possible to make it fit in any consistent prehistoric reconstruction (because Daics, Hmong, etc. must expanded from South China, Austroasiatics were since much earlier in SE Asia and even India), etc."
On the contrary it is possible to fit the pattern very easily to the generally accepted prehistoric construction. I agree to the extent that Daics, Hmong, etc. must have expanded 'into' South China, but where did they arrive in South China from? The Austroasiatics such as Hmong-Mien are closely associated with Y-DNA O2a, but O2a's closest relation is O2b, very much a northern haplogroup, uncommon in China. So the evidence fits a southward-moving Austroasiatic population originating somewhere round the middle Yangtze. The Daic and Thai languages are closely related to Austronesian, basically O1. The evidence very much fits a southward-moving Austronesian/Daic population originating somewhere near the mouth of the Yangtze.
"And Austroasiatic peoples are almost without doubt in SE Asia since the beginnings of the Neolithic period, if not earlier".
I agree with 'since the beginnings of the Neolithic period', but 'earlier' is unlikely. And most agree there has been Han introgression into the South Chinese Austroasiatic people, and O3a2c1 fits that scenario exactly. Which also explains:
"Not possible if it's to be found among Austroasiatic peoples at similar levels as others like Sino-Tibetans, Hmong-Mien".
I'm sure you agree that haplogroups are not necessarily always closely associated with particular haplogroups. Either languages or haplogroups are capable of moving beyond the reach of the other.
"I can think of people changing language without absorbing (much) Y-DNA but I cannot think of people absorbing lots of Y-DNA and retaining their ancestral language".
Quite possible to envisage such a scenario. The women of a group can pass on the language even if men from a different group have entered the population.
"Garden of Eden syndrome?"
DeleteAt least not your particular version of that "Garden of Eden syndrome", which locates it in NE Asia. Quite intriguingly because there was no particular condition nor is any fossil evidence supporting that: just ancient Nordicist-like conjectures with not a single element of support.
"How would you envisage a downstream mutation such as Y-DNA O3a2c1 for example as being able to expand north through the whole of China more recently than any realistic period for its coalescence?"
I do not accept the "molecular clock", certainly not for Y-DNA, certainly not when it produces OoA ages of 50 Ka. Ridiculous! Double or even triple the dates if you want to have a reasonable estimate. In any case it is not evidence of anything because the "clock" may well have behaved differently in different branches, times and places.
"Daics, Hmong, etc. must have expanded 'into' South China"...
Why can't they have been in South China since time immemorial? Since the early colonizations of the area? That's how I think of them.
"The Austroasiatics such as Hmong-Mien"...
Hmong-Mien are NOT Austroasiatics. Hmong-Mien is one of the World's primary language families, just like Sino-Tibetan (if confirmed) or Austroasiatic.
The Hmong-Mien are the only pop. of the area who actually display some genetic affinity with the North but the exact relation is most unclear.
"... are closely associated with Y-DNA O2a, but O2a's closest relation is O2b, very much a northern haplogroup, uncommon in China. So the evidence fits a southward-moving Austroasiatic population originating somewhere round the middle Yangtze".
Or exactly the opposite: a northwards moving population along the coast, skipping most of China and landing into Korea and Japan early in the colonization process of the region. Both are equiprobable but the southern origin model fits best with the evidence for all other haplogroups of the region: O1, O3, D, C, N... all of them having clearly southern origins and northwards vectors of expansion in mainland East Asia (incl. Japan but maybe not ISEA).
"most agree"...
Most actually disagree in my little universe. Care to avoid such empty claims, which actually mean "that author I read once and Dienekes Pontikos in days of full moon"?
"Most"... ha!
" And most agree there has been Han introgression into the South Chinese Austroasiatic people, and O3a2c1 fits that scenario exactly".
Not at all. O3a2c1 (M134) is most dense in South China what normally fits with a Southern China origin. You could only argue the opposite in such a twisted manner that you'd kick your own ass, so please don't try it.
Massive founder effects such as those are only possible where demic replacement is almost total (or there was never a native pop. to replace) AND, critically, the colonists are very few initially. That's oxymoron: such a circumstance should end with the absorption of the settlers in the native population very quickly, regardless of whether there is language shift or not.
For a massive replacement you need massive waves with their corresponding diversity: the same that today US citizens are not 30% descendants of Daniel Boone but of a most diverse array of Europeans, Africans and others. Or do all white New Zealanders descend from Captain Cook?
"What matters is O3e (M134), which reaches level of 20% among Austroasiatics, 26% among Hmong-Mien and 32% among Sino-Tibetans, per your own source. The difference between the oldest inhabitants (Austroasiatics) and the most recent arrivals (Sino-Tibetans) is not significant".
ReplyDeleteHave you not noticed that the proportion through all those groups is remarkably consistent? And O3a2c1-M134 is a derived clade within O3, therefore it is likely to represent a relatively recent expansion through the whole region. The fact it is not associated with any single language family further supports that idea. It adopted pre-existing languages as it spread out.
"Only Sinitic. Tibeto-Burman probably originated in Sichuan"
But both Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman must once have been spoken in a reasonably small region. The three language groups are easily seen to be related, which indicates a separation time of considerably less than 10,000 years.
"It was then surely when early Sinitic became the language of the riverine farmers, while early TB remained as the language(s) of the highland late hunter-gatherers, who would adopt farming later on".
I think you are quite correct there.
"You begin with your 'conclusion', waste my time going forth and back about nothing and end up in the same pre-determined 'conclusion'".
On the contrary it is you who are committed to your pre-existing 'conclusion' in spite of a complete inability to massage the evidence sufficiently to make it fit your own conclusion.
"There's absolutely no evidence supporting such ideas: neither archaeological nor genetic".
There is abundant archaeological and genetic evidence to support the idea. It is just that you refuse to see it. Are you sure you're not in politics? Most anthropologists who have studied Southeast Asia see exactly what I have been trying to help you see, but there are none so blind as those who will not see.
"Have you not noticed that the proportion through all those groups is remarkably consistent? And O3a2c1-M134 is a derived clade within O3, therefore it is likely to represent a relatively recent expansion through the whole region".
DeleteO3 is at least 40 Ka old (using this full sequence tree and recalibrating to make CF fit with the 80Ka that Petraglia research implies for the Eurasian colonization). It may still be older but certainly not more recent. One problem is that I do not know how distant the two O3 sequences are phylogenetically.
O-M134 looks like totally originating in the South of China and migrating northwards and maybe southwards as well. It can well be a Neolithic marker (?) but not a Sinitic (Northern Chinese) one certainly.
"The fact it is not associated with any single language family further supports that idea. It adopted pre-existing languages as it spread out".
I fail to believe that. Rather different languages may have adopted it instead: language is much easier to change than genes, you know. One of the highest density regions is precisely Hunan, the cradle of Eastern Neolithic. If Neolithic, it could well have spread from there and later the linguistic homogeneity (Daic?, Hmong-Mien?) replaced by Tibeto-Burman ethno-cultural flows.
Most important O3 subclades, now that I notice, are very dense in districts of Hunan, strongly suggesting that it was a center of their expansion, possibly in relation with Neolithic techno-cultural flows.
"... both Sinitic and Tibeto-Burman must once have been spoken in a reasonably small region".
Sino-Tibetan is still matter of debate. It can well be as Indo-Uralic: a sprachbund and not phylogenetic relation. From Wikipedia:
A few scholars, most prominently Christopher Beckwith and Roy Andrew Miller, argue that Chinese is not related to Tibeto-Burman. They point to what they consider an absence of regular sound correspondences, an absence of reconstructable shared morphology, and evidence that much shared lexical material has been borrowed from Chinese into Tibeto-Burman.
They were in contact at their respective genesis most likely, as Gansu and Shaanxi (part of the Sinitic Neolithic) do border Sichuan. Later also Chinese has obviously exerted linguistic hegemony over its neighbors.
"I think you are quite correct there".
Thanks.
"... in spite of a complete inability to massage the evidence sufficiently to make it fit your own conclusion".
I'm no "evidence massager": they don't pay me enough. If the evidence is (does) not fit, out!
"Most anthropologists who have studied Southeast Asia see exactly what I have been trying to help you see, but there are none so blind as those who will not see".
As I told you before that's an ancient early-to-mid 20th century conjecture based on nothing worth mentioning other than some sort of Hyperborean syndrome. In those times people (I remember my fascist grandpa for example, who ironically was anti-racist) were made to believe that the cold of the North favored intelligence and hence the "superior races" were bound to conquer the "inferior" ones of the tropics and sub-tropics.
Knowingly or not, you are parroting that racist nonsense, which has infected anthropological thought way too much. Northern European racism (spoused by the Nazis but also many Anglosaxons and others) established an unholy alliance with Northern East Asian racism (spoused by the imperialist Japanese for example). They had not a single piece of evidence, the same that Ignatius Donelly had not a single piece of evidence for his nonsense about a technologically advanced Atlantis and blah-blah... but they managed to make a dent (or a dozen) into our imaginary, including some people with PhD.
"As I told you before that's an ancient early-to-mid 20th century conjecture based on nothing worth mentioning other than some sort of Hyperborean syndrome".
ReplyDeleteMaju, surely even you can see a phenotypic divide between 'Papuan/Australian' to the east of Wallace's Line and 'Mongoloid' to the west. The Mongoloid phenotype stops suddenly near the line, but some 'Papuan-looking' people are found west of the line, notably in Timor. And Papuan and Australian haplogroups survive even further west through the region too. Surely genetic enhancement by Mongoloid migration into Southeast Asia is the most logical explanation for what we see with our own eyes. It has nothing to do with any belief in 'superiority' or 'inferiority'.
"I do not accept the 'molecular clock', certainly not for Y-DNA"
That's a ridiculous comment for you to make when you later say this:
"O3 is at least 40 Ka old (using this full sequence tree and recalibrating to make CF fit with the 80Ka"
Anyway, even if your date is correct for O3's coalescence it doesn't follow at all that its expansion is anywhere near that ancient.
"Why can't they have been in South China since time immemorial? Since the early colonizations of the area? That's how I think of them".
That is how you 'think of them' but what you think is completely wrong in this case. Probable pre-O Y-DNA haplogroups in South China and Southeast Asia include F (probably F2), K (perhaps K3) and C* (probably a single haplogroup, xC1, C2, c3, C4 and C5). These haplogroups survive widely, but thinly, spread through the region.
"Massive founder effects such as those are only possible where demic replacement is almost total (or there was never a native pop. to replace)"
I doubt that 'replacement' was involved. The region appears to have been sparsely settled until the Neolithic. The fact that pandas survive (in a continually more restricted range) indicates just recent human population growth, as do the relatively recent extinction of the tapir and orangutan in the region.
"AND, critically, the colonists are very few initially".
In the case of South China we can be fairly sure they were a diverse population. Most groups appear to have contained several Y-DNAs even if in each case the majority were originally a single Y-DNA clade.
Let it be clear that Timor is East of Wallace Line, which separates Sundaland and Philippines from Wallacea. Anyhow, I see diverse pockets of Negrito phenotypes West/North of WL but excepting maybe the Filipino Negritos they do not seem to be much more related with Papuans or Australian Aborigines than I am. So if anything what we see is penetration of "Mongoloids" into Wallacea, what is probably related to recent Austronesian flows and maybe preliminary waves from Neolithic Indochina and/or the ex-Sundaland (of Austroasiatic character?)
Delete"That is how you 'think of them' but what you think is completely wrong in this case".
And you walk away happily... without even bothering to explain WHY I am "wrong".
"I doubt that 'replacement' was involved. The region appears to have been sparsely settled until the Neolithic".
Why? Again why?
Besides Paleolithic densities being generally much smaller than Neolithic ones everywhere, there is zero support for that claim.
Even sparse population are people, highly susceptible to become less sparse as soon as they learn to farm.
"The fact that pandas survive (...) indicates"...
Indicates nothing at all. That's one of your fetishes: megafauna.
According to this "logic" of yours, Australian Aborigines should live before European contact in extremely dense urban networks or something of the like because the main megafauna extinction happened precisely there, right. So they must have been extremely dense since 60,000 years ago...
... or maybe all your speculative ranting is wrong.
"Hmong-Mien are NOT Austroasiatics. Hmong-Mien is one of the World's primary language families, just like Sino-Tibetan (if confirmed) or Austroasiatic".
ReplyDeleteChoose your terminology. This:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austro-Asiatic_languages
Quote:
"The Austro-Asiatic (Austroasiatic) languages, in recent classifications synonymous with Mon–Khmer, are a large language family of Southeast Asia, also scattered throughout India and Bangladesh".
So the term 'Austro-Asiatic' at least includes Mon-Khmer, and presumably the Munda languages. And strikingly the correlation between language and haplogroup is surprisingly close in the region:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tai_peoples
Quote:
"Linguistic heritage is not synonymous with genetic heritage, because of language shift where populations learn new languages. Tai people tend to have very high frequencies of Y-DNA haplogroup O2a with moderate frequencies of Y-DNA haplogroups O2a1 and O1. However, it is believed that the O1 Y-DNA haplogroup is associated with both the Austronesian people and the Tai. The prevalence of Y-DNA haplogroup O1 among Austronesian and Tai peoples also suggests a common ancestry with the Sino-Tibetan, Austro-Asiatic, and Hmong–Mien peoples some 35,000 years ago in China.[3] Y-DNA haplogroup O2a is found at high frequency among most Tai peoples, which is a trait that they share with the neighboring ethnic Austro-Asiatic peoples of Yunnan in southern China".
So we basically have O1 associated with Austro-Tai and O2a associated with Austro-Asiatic. That in itself would argue in favour of a recent expansion of the two groups. The limited mixing of haplogroups by no means negates that.
"Sino-Tibetan is still matter of debate. It can well be as Indo-Uralic: a sprachbund and not phylogenetic relation. From Wikipedia:"
And the same link has this comment:
"However, Jacques (2006) notes, 'comparative work has never been able to put forth evidence for common innovations to all the Tibeto-Burman languages (the Sino-Tibetan languages to the exclusion of Chinese),'[b] and that 'it no longer seems justified to treat Chinese as the first branching of the Sino-Tibetan family,'[c] as the morphological divide between Chinese and Tibeto-Burman has been bridged by recent reconstructions of Old Chinese".
And:
"Van Driem points to two main pieces of evidence establishing a special relationship between Sinitic and Bodic, and thus placing Chinese within the Tibeto-Burman family. First, there are a number of parallels between the morphology of Old Chinese and the modern Bodic languages. Second, there is an impressive body of lexical cognates between the Chinese and Bodic languages, represented by the Kirantic language Limbu.[17]"
So, believe what fits your pre-existing beliefs.
Mon-Khmer is not Hmong-Mien. Do your homework please.
Delete"So we basically have O1 associated with Austro-Tai and O2a associated with Austro-Asiatic. That in itself would argue in favour of a recent expansion of the two groups. The limited mixing of haplogroups by no means negates that".
Daic are also rich in O2a, while Austroasiatics are not just about O2a. Also there may be significant differences between populations within those linguistic groupings, which can only be a very preliminary way of sorting a survey. And only with the fine grained apportions we can know if what you claim makes sense or not and how much.
At the moment I am not aware of the exact genetic patterns. Maybe if Ebizur had a blog or site, we could data-mine from there. But judging on 170 Austroasiatics of unknown specific origin only... is too little unless one has religious faith on the identity of linguistics and genetics, which I do not.
"Or exactly the opposite: a northwards moving population along the coast, skipping most of China and landing into Korea and Japan early in the colonization process of the region".
ReplyDeleteI'm quite happy to accept that Y-DNA NO did that. However it is just as likely that it took an inland route north.
"the southern origin model fits best with the evidence for all other haplogroups of the region: O1, O3, D, C, N... all of them having clearly southern origins and northwards vectors of expansion in mainland East Asia"
Only if you've made up your mind in advance that that is what you want to see. There is actually no evidence for that theory at all. Just a belief.
“At least not your particular version of that 'Garden of Eden syndrome', which locates it in NE Asia”.
So we have your Garden of Eden syndrome exposed yet again. Why would all those haplogroups necessarily have all lived in the same place originally? I don't accept any Garden of eden, not even in Africa. Humans have always moved around and mixed. They don't all come from a single small region, not at any time.
"O-M134 looks like totally originating in the South of China and migrating northwards"
How on earth do you arrive at that conclusion? How about we look at some evidence:
"Not at all. O3a2c1 (M134) is most dense in South China what normally fits with a Southern China origin".
It is not 'most dense in South China'. Why don't you have a look at some papers on the subject instead of making things up:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21505448
O3a2c1-M134 is listed as 14.7% in the north (the highest proportion of the haplogroup), and the derived form O3a2c1a-M117 is at 16.3% in the north and 17.4% in the east. For neither haplogroup is the majority shown as south Chinese, which is amazing because the 'south' includes the Yangtze River in the paper. So your statement, 'O-M134 looks like totally originating in the South of China and migrating northwards' is complete rubbish.
"You could only argue the opposite in such a twisted manner that you'd kick your own ass, so please don't try it".
Can you please post a film of you kicking your own ass on YouTube?
"I'm quite happy to accept that Y-DNA NO did that".
DeleteI don't care what makes you happy or not but it is not that way: C (C3 and possibly C5), D, N, O2 and O3 did that after their respective coalsecences, as did all or most mtDNA lineages I can think of.
"Only if you've made up your mind in advance that that is what you want to see".
Fuck you, man! That's what the data says: my opinion is founded on the raw data and relevant papers that you insist on ignoring.
"Why would all those haplogroups necessarily have all lived in the same place originally?"
Many are relatives with each other (NO at least) but, anyhow, it is the main route of arrival of our species to that region (so no surprise here) and, most importantly, they have relatives in Aboriginal Australasia or the Andamans, and in many cases researchers have carefully measured the diversity and frequencies of their subclades determining with great likelihood their areas of origin with are in Indochina, South China or Sundaland in all cases.
"Humans have always moved around and mixed. They don't all come from a single small region, not at any time".
Not from NE Asia either? I find your claim here contradictory with your claim before, what you said about a continuous N>S wave expanding the "Mongoloid" phenotype. You can't have it both ways. Actually, in what matters to me, you are wrong in both cases.
On the contrary, phylogenetics do support expansions based on specific areas like East Africa, South Asia and SE Asia. Not all regions were the same in all periods.
"How on earth do you arrive at that conclusion?"
Hong Shi 2005 maybe?
"It is not 'most dense in South China'".
You cite (finally a cite!) Shi Yan 2011. However, as we discussed back in the day, it is unclear how well the 361 sampled students (studying in Shanghai) represent all China (most likely not). Hong Shi instead sampled 2332 men in many many locations with due care of including minority ethnicities. Hong Shi's sample is almost 10 times in size that of Shi Yang, and also 10 times better in quality.
Also, if you want "molecular clock", Hong Shi ends up with dates of 34-16 Ka ago for O-M134, what would not allow for it to be Neolithic.
"Fuck you, man! That's what the data says: my opinion is founded on the raw data and relevant papers that you insist on ignoring".
ReplyDeleteThe data does not 'say' that. It is your interpretation says that.
"You cite (finally a cite!) Shi Yan 2011. However, as we discussed back in the day, it is unclear how well the 361 sampled students (studying in Shanghai)"
And look again at the comments I made there. Very interesting in the light of further developments.
"Hong Shi 2005 maybe?"
2005. The phylogeny has been considerably adjusted since than. I'm sure you linked to that paper when it first came out so it is a waste of my time to go through its weaknesses again, although it does have interesting aspects:
"Hong Shi instead sampled 2332 men in many many locations with due care of including minority ethnicities".
And have a look where he sampled them from. Virtually all from the south. That would bias the sample for a start.
"Mon-Khmer is not Hmong-Mien. Do your homework please".
Sorry. They share the same haplogroups so I thought they were branches within a single family. This comment regarding the Hong Shi paper from our friend Andrew:
http://dispatchesfromturtleisland.blogspot.co.nz/2011/09/genetic-links-of-mon-khmer-and-hmong.html
The paper concentrates on Y-DNA O while ignoring the very likely situation of C(xC3), D1, F and K being the 'aboriginal' haplogroups. The authors are also obviously unaware of the geographic separation of the O haplogroups along the Yangtze during the early Neolithic. And this is interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hmong%E2%80%93Mien_languages
Quote:
"The current area of greatest agreement is that the languages appeared in the region between the Yangtze and Mekong rivers, but there is reason to believe that speakers migrated there from further north with the expansion of the Han Chinese.[1]"
"Also, if you want 'molecular clock', Hong Shi ends up with dates of 34-16 Ka ago for O-M134, what would not allow for it to be Neolithic".
I don't want 'molecular clock'. It is you who keep bringing that up. And even if the date is correct that doesn't mean at all that its major expansion began immediately it coalesced.
"So if anything what we see is penetration of 'Mongoloids' into Wallacea, what is probably related to recent Austronesian flows and maybe preliminary waves from Neolithic Indochina and/or the ex-Sundaland (of Austroasiatic character?)"
ReplyDeleteWhich is simply a continuation of the Mongoloid penetration into Southeast Asia and South China. In fact we can probably date the expansion of the three O haplogroups if accept that the expansion beyond Wallacea was in turn just a continuation of that expansion. Subclades of all three O haplogroups crossed Wallace's Line and the dates of this crossing probably gives us an indication of those haplogroups' time of expansion on the mainland.
First to carry the Mongoloid phenotype across Wallace's Line appears to have been O2a, common in Mon-Khmer populations. But it crossed only as far as Sulawesi, probably as part of the Hoabinhian. Its expansion south from the Yangtze may therefore date to as recently as 10,000 years ago.
O1 beyond Wallace's Line is almost exclusively O1a2, found also in Taiwanese Aborigines and in Western Indonesia notably in Nias. I thank you for drawing my attention to that information some time ago. This haplogroup too contributed to the Mongoloid phenotype in the Pacific islands. It reached the admiralty Islands and Near Oceania, exactly the region in which Lapita pottery first appeared 4000 years ago. O1a2 most probably therefore represents the first Austronesian-speaking people across Wallace's Line, perhaps a little more than 6000 years ago. They had met C2 somewhere nearby. And mt-DNA B4a.
O3 too has carried the Mongoloid phenotype across Wallace's Line. It has moved further than O1a2, through Near Oceania right out to Western Polynesia. But it is virtually all O3a2c. This haplogroup is very much associated with Sino-Tibetan-speaking people. These people can definitely be described as displaying a Mongoloid phenotype. We can date O3a2c's joining of the Austronesians to around 5000 years ago.
Many historical movements into SE Asia over the last 2000 years are widely accepted. These expansions may have been largely 'cultural' but they probably also involved some haplogroup expansion as well. So we are not dealing with haplogroups arriving somewhere in the Paleolithic and staying in the same place until today. We are dealing with continual movement.
"C (C3 and possibly C5), D, N, O2 and O3 did that after their respective coalsecences, as did all or most mtDNA lineages I can think of".
But it is most unlikely that all those haplogroups coalesced in the same region.
We agree that Hong Shi 2005 covered much much much much better South China than Shi Yan 2011. They also have a good sample from North China, no doubt (304), almost double than that of Shi Yan. The only area not surveyed by Hong Shi was the so-called East China (the area of Shanghai). Only on that Shi Yan surpasses Hong Shi in sample quality.
ReplyDeleteChanges on phylogeny are not the matter of discussion here just another of your excuses.
About Hmong-Mien, I already mentioned that there are some indications (cf. the HUGO Consortium paper) linking them and only them among all Southern populations with the North. Not too clear however. In any case they'd be exceptional and not the rule.
As for molecular clock, it was you who first waved it as your only "evidence", without giving much precision about the times you had in mind but talking clearly of O-M134. Hence my precision because I'm trying to address all your "evidence" piece by piece.
Sadly you have no "evidence" or almost and what you want to pass as that is easily challenged, at least in your interpretation.
As for Wallacea, there's no way you can use it as evidence for anything this side of Wallace Line ("my" placentarian side, not "your" marsupial side), so let's skip that part.
"But it is most unlikely that all those haplogroups coalesced in the same region".
In what affects me, they could well have coalesced in neighboring districts each one. There's no "unlikelihood" at all: if the basal diversity and geographical scatter data says that, they all coalesced in the same region, maybe at different times and different districts but I can't be that precise.
"About Hmong-Mien, I already mentioned that there are some indications (cf. the HUGO Consortium paper) linking them and only them among all Southern populations with the North. Not too clear however. In any case they'd be exceptional and not the rule".
ReplyDeleteA paper on the subject (reasonably old):
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/22/3/725.full
Quote:
"Archeological and historical studies have shown that proto–H-M populations were associated with the Neolithic cultures that were found in the Middle Reach of the Yangtze River, i.e., Daxi Culture (5,300–6,400 years before present [YBP]) and Qujialing Culture (4,600–5,000 YBP), and the San-Miao tribes in Central-southern China (Fei 1999)".
So there we have an earlier reference to an origin along the Yangtze. And we know that Hmong-Mien and Mon-Khmer populations share haplogroups. That really places the Mon-Khmer origin in much the same region.
"The only area not surveyed by Hong Shi was the so-called East China (the area of Shanghai)".
We can be fairly sure that the majority of early Y-DNA round the mouth of the Yangtze will be O1.
"As for Wallacea, there's no way you can use it as evidence for anything this side of Wallace Line"
You next actually contradict that statement with:
"they could well have coalesced in neighboring districts each one".
In which case we would expect individual clades to have a particular, and limited, time of expansion. so O1a2's expansion would be largely a single event, as would O2a's and O3a2c's. Subclades would then expand from within regions reached by the particular 'parent' clades. From that we can be reasonably confident that the expansion of the above particular clades across Wallace's Line was actually just one of the geographic extremities reached following their original expansion. The movement across Wallace's Line would be not much later than the origin of each haplogroup's expansion. I agree that some 'parent' haplogroups mix with their 'offspring' haplogroups during expansions, but those are usually easily detected.
"Mon-Khmer is not Hmong-Mien. Do your homework please".
Guess what. I found this:
http://forwhattheywereweare.wordpress.com/2011/09/24/are-hmong-mien-descendant-from-austroasiatic-peoples/
"Are Hmong-Mien ‘descendant’ from Austroasiatic peoples?"
probably at least related. You readily accept that Mon-Khmer are Austro-Asiatic, but you seem undecided on the Hmong-Mien.
I've read once and again this latest comment of yours and I don't find anything meaningful to be replied other than this comment:
Delete"You readily accept that Mon-Khmer are Austro-Asiatic, but you seem undecided on the Hmong-Mien".
Because Mon-Khmer is part of the Austroasiatic language family and Hmong-Mien is not. Linguists say so, no me.
Just like Basque is not Indoeuropean regardless that Basques are genetically related to some Indoeuropeans. If you make a linguistic classification of peoples, be coherent with it.
Virtually all the various human populations around the world are connected by a series of clines. We find very few abrupt changes. So you are left with the problem of how to explain the lack of a gradual cline between SE Asia and Australia/New Guinea. Just using Wallace's Line as a boundary explains nothing. People have crossed it at various times since the Paleolithic, yet the O haplogroups have barely crossed it at all. To me the problem is easily explained:
ReplyDelete"If you make a linguistic classification of peoples, be coherent with it".
That is what is particularly interesting about East Asia. It is reasonably uncluttered with haplogroups and, as a result, individual haplogroups appear to be connected to individual languages. That situation doesn't exist to near the same extent elsewhere.
"Because Mon-Khmer is part of the Austroasiatic language family and Hmong-Mien is not. Linguists say so, no me".
Not all linguists. Remember that relationships between languages become almost impossible to discern as the divergence time approaches 10,000 years. And remember too that no hunter-gatherer languages survive in SE or East Asia. So we are left with a set of languages spoken in East Asia that lumpers see a relationship between and splitters see as separate families:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_schemes_for_Southeast_Asian_languages
The accepted language families are:
Tai–Kadai
Austronesian
Austro-Asiatic
Hmong–Mien
Sino-Tibetan
Quote from the Wiki entry:
"Austric links the languages of Southeast Asia apart from Sino-Tibetan. Sagart proposes instead Sino-Austronesian, linking Austronesian and Sino-Tibetan; Starosta proposed a family called East Asian which covered both this and Austric. Genetic similarities between the peoples of East and Southeast Asian languages have led some to speculate about 'Haplogroup O' languages. In a different direction, the Dené–Caucasian hypothesis links Sino-Tibetan to languages of Siberia (Dene–Yeniseian) and the Caucasus".
Most linguists today accept a connection between the Tai-Kadai and Austronesian languages, and geneticists see a connection between them through Y-DNA O1. Chinese linguists see a connection between Hmong-Mien and Sino-Tibetan although Western linguists oppose such a connection, and Sino-Tibetan is associated genetically with Y-DNA O3a2c1 while Hmong-Mien is associated with Y-DNA O3a2b. But you earlier admitted, 'About Hmong-Mien, I already mentioned that there are some indications (cf. the HUGO Consortium paper) linking them and only them among all Southern populations with the North'. So they at least have an accepted link to the north. At times some have proposed a connection between Hmong-Mien and Austro-Asiatic, although others see the two as being unrelated. But the two language families have a genetic connection through O3a2b and O2a.
Surely it is possible that all five languages are actually ultimately related. To me the most likely scenario is that Tai–Kadai and Austronesian along with Y-DNA O1 are from the Lower Yangtze, Austro-Asiatic along with Y-DNA O2a is from further upstream at the three Gorges region of the Yangtze, Hmong-Mien along with Y-DNA O3a2b is from even further upstream (Eastern Szechuan), and Sino-Tibetan along with O3a2c1 is from the headwaters (western Szechuan). Haplogroup O originally entered China via the mountain region of Zomia, in the form of NO. In northern Zomia the haplogroup split, N carrying on north, O moving east. O2b also seems to have carried on north, possibly setting in motion the connection between the Chinese languages and the Dené–Caucasian languages. Fits all the evidence as we have it at present.
"So you are left with the problem of how to explain the lack of a gradual cline between SE Asia and Australia/New Guinea".
DeleteThe clinality of that cline is very non-clinal, actually sharp and abrupt.
"Just using Wallace's Line as a boundary explains nothing".
It's you who brought that up, no me. I just replied to your qualms.
"... individual haplogroups appear to be connected to individual languages".
That's not something we do know. In the paper you cited, there is some appearance of that but, because only linguistic families as wholes and not individual languages/communities are studied/indicated, that data can well be very much misleading.
I am aware from other studies of TB peoples who cluster with Austroasiatics, etc. In general what I have seen is the opposite of what you claim: that structure is geographic rather than linguistic, suggesting more homogeneous ethno-linguistic borders in the past.
But in any case all this can only be properly addressed with careful research of all available data, population by population, community by community, and not in mere abstract super-familial linguistic groupings whose detailed internal composition we do not know.
"Not all linguists".
If you wish to contend a mainstream linguistic theory, you should say so from the beginning. But what you did was to declare it as a given fact, which is not.
In what regards to me I accept only the basic "universal" classification, per your list:
Tai–Kadai
Austronesian
Austro-Asiatic
Hmong–Mien
Sino-Tibetan
With quite some doubts about the existence of Sino-Tibetan.
"... it is possible that all five languages are actually ultimately related".
All human languages are ultimately related. But how exactly, that's another issue.
"The clinality of that cline is very non-clinal, actually sharp and abrupt".
ReplyDeleteMaju, I am asking you to explain why that is so, not merely to state the fact. It can only be explained through a separate migration into SE Asia after humans had already reached Australia/New Guinea. Until that later migration humans on either side of Wallace's Line would surely have looked much the same as each other. That such is a fact is demonstrated by the Timorese. Even though they are actually east of Wallace's Line they are an incomplete mix of Mongoloid and Papuan phenotype. That is most easily explained as being because the Mongoloid phenotype is a recent arrival on the island and mixture is not yet complete. Another point is that the cline is not actually so 'sharp and abrupt' if you're prepared to look out into the Pacific. The 'Papuan' phenotype becomes progressively diluted as you move east. In Polynesia the people look more like those found today in SE Asia. They complete the cline.
"It's you who brought that up, no me. I just replied to your qualms [Wallace's Line as a boundary]".
Your 'reply' explains not one single aspect. You are totally ignoring the difficulties with your belief.
"That's not something we do know. In the paper you cited, there is some appearance of that but, because only linguistic families as wholes and not individual languages/communities are studied/indicated, that data can well be very much misleading".
Almost any paper you might be prepared to read on the subject claims a reasonably close connection in East Asia between language and genetics, especially haplogroup. Of course if such a connection conflicts with your belief you are quite entitled to carry on being deluded.
"I am aware from other studies of TB peoples who cluster with Austroasiatics, etc."
Doesn't it make complete sense that they would be?
"In general what I have seen is the opposite of what you claim: that structure is geographic rather than linguistic, suggesting more homogeneous ethno-linguistic borders in the past".
But that homogeneity is not a product of the distant past. It has basically been slowly developing since the beginning of the Neolithic. Following is a paper on the subject.
"Maju, I am asking you to explain why that is so, not merely to state the fact".
DeleteYou make debating with you almost impossible: first you claim clinality between SE Asia and Aboriginal Australasia and when I say it's not really such thing then you say that you knew it already and that I should explain you why.
It would be a lot easier if you could keep some pretense of rational consistency.
Anyhow, the reason why the cline is so sharp is, IMO, that it was even sharper earlier, and was at Wallace Line. Since Neolithic SE Asian peoples have penetrated in Wallacea blurring the line a bit into an still quite abrupt cline.
"Until that later migration humans on either side of Wallace's Line would surely have looked much the same as each other. That such is a fact is demonstrated by the Timorese".
This is an example of your lack of consistency: the Timorese are in the same side of WL as Papuans or Australian Aborigines. It would not be me who claims that all those peoples are the same thing, as you dare to oversimplify, but, regardless, it is the current affinity with SE Asia, ex-Sundaland and Philippines specially, which has been gained since Neolithic. No mystery here - why are we even discussing this?
"Another point is that the cline is not actually so 'sharp and abrupt' if you're prepared to look out into the Pacific".
That's a diversion tactic: we know well that the Polynesian island territories are a product of recent founder effects and of no help when dealing with older consolidated populations. That you have a fetish with them is of no help, really.
"The 'Papuan' phenotype becomes progressively diluted as you move east. In Polynesia the people look more like those found today in SE Asia".
Different founder effects: the peoples who colonized Island Melanesia are not exactly the same as those who colonized Polynesia proper, who began their route in Fiji after an obvious founder effect.
But it's a distraction and a waste of my time.
"Almost any paper you might be prepared to read on the subject claims a reasonably close connection in East Asia between language and genetics"...
Not really so. Just that authors have the bad habit of oversimplifying ethnic reality into linguistic families. You just have to explore a few distinct "Tibeto-Burman" populations, for example, to see that they have almost nothing in common genetically.
"Doesn't it make complete sense that they would be [TB peoples who cluster with Austroasiatics]?"
Only if you are prepared to admit that the TB linguistic expansion was not so much genetic, what you apparently are not.
"But in any case all this can only be properly addressed with careful research of all available data, population by population, community by community"
ReplyDeleteAnd here we have such a study:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2790583/
Quote:
"Using over 350,000 genome-wide autosomal SNPs in over 6000 Han Chinese samples from ten provinces of China, our study revealed a one-dimensional 'north-south' population structure and a close correlation between geography and the genetic structure of the Han Chinese. The north-south population structure is consistent with the historical migration pattern of the Han Chinese population".
The 'Han' migration may have been mainly O3a1c-002611 rather than being primarily an O3a2 haplogroup. O3a1 is widely, and evenly, spread through China, and to some extent beyond. Another quote from the paper, presumably displaying the result of O3a1c's expansion:
"Although the observed trend can be explained by a myriad of population models, such as isolation by distance, it seems to concur very well with documented migratory patterns in China. The inferred north-south pattern in the genetic structure analyses suggests a primary north-south migratory pattern in China. This ties in very well with historical records indicating that the Huaxia tribes in northern China, the ancient ancestors of the Han Chinese, embarked on a long period of continuous southward expansion as a result of war and famine over the past two millenia".
The expansion southwards of other haplogroups appears to have been somewhat earlier. And regarding your doubts about the connection between genetics and language:
"First, our study clearly showed that the one-dimensional north-south structure of the Han Chinese population is characterized by a continuous gradient, instead of distinct subpopulation clusters. This seems to support the hypothesis by Wen et al. for a demic diffusion of the Han Chinese.30 Second, our study was also able to reveal some fine-scale subpopulation structure within local populations of language from the same region. The three dialect groups from the Guangdong province were separated genetically along the same one-dimensional north-south axis of the overall population structure of the Han Chinese".
Turning to good old Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Han_Chinese
Quote:
"Han Chinese trace their ancestry back to the Huaxia people, who lived along the Huang He or Yellow River in northern China.[22] The famous Chinese historian Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian places the reign of the Yellow Emperor, the legendary ancestor of the Han Chinese, at the beginning of Chinese history. Although study of this period of history is complicated by lack of historical records, discovery of archaeological sites have identified a succession of Neolithic cultures along the Yellow River. Along the central reaches of the Yellow River were the Jiahu culture (7000 BCE to 6600 BCE), Yangshao culture (5000 BCE to 3000 BCE) and Longshan culture (3000 BCE to 2000 BCE). Along the lower reaches of the river were the Qingliangang culture (5400 BCE to 4000 BCE), the Dawenkou culture (4300 BCE to 2500 BCE), the Longshan culture (2500 BCE to 2000 BCE), and the Yueshi culture".
So that fairly convincingly places O3a1c's origin along the Huang He River.
The study is somewhat interesting but fails to provide K=4 and higher for the Structure analysis (not even in the supp. materials), or alternatively partial PC analyses of reduced samples, so there may well be a lot of hidden structure (probably an East-West cline or also clines within the rather undersampled South China - lots of Cantonese but little more).
DeleteAs far as I can see the study does not discuss Y-DNA, so why are you making Y-DNA claims ("The 'Han' migration may have been mainly O3a1c-002611"...) when it has no obvious relation?
"Although the observed trend can be explained by a myriad of population models, such as isolation by distance"...
For example. In fact taken as it is it'd suggest that Cantonese and probably also Hunanese have no major genetic similitude (within the context of East Asia) with Northern Chinese.
On the other hand the area of Shanghai might well have been colonized by the Han in large numbers.
Han demic diffusion:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCcQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2F159.226.149.45%2Fcompgenegroup%2Fpaper%2Fwenbo%2520han%2520culture%2520paper%2520%282004%29.pdf&ei=7NZ8UNesCcnoiAes7YHwDw&usg=AFQjCNFMSm139XOLZ17FdBqIUrZwD8egSw
Note that the boundary between 'northern' and 'southern' Han is the Yangtze, precisely where it seems Y-DNA's O1, O2a and O3a2b originated. It is therefore no wonder that these haplogroups represent pre-Han populations south of the Yangtze.
Why don't you use a proper link instead of a google link? For example: http://159.226.149.45/compgenegroup/paper/wenbo%20han%20culture%20paper%20%282004%29.pdf
DeleteIt does not work however because the server at that IP does not seem to be active at all hours. I can't link to the paper either way.
Also I have no problem with O1, O2a and O3a2b being "pre-Han". Han colonization is not important for your claims of a N>S migration before the historical Han imperialism. Actually, as you accept that all Northern Neolithic cultures are Sinitic (as I do), they cannot be the source of hypothetical pre-Sinitic migrations, which if anything, must have been initiated in the South of the region (or not exist at all as such migrations).
DeleteAgainst your N>S flow I claim S<>S flows instead. With the North being not influential in SE Asia (South China included) before the Chinese Empire as such.
Erratum not "all Northern Neolithic cultures" would be Sinitic, but those of the Yellow River only. Further North they may well be Koreanic or whatever.
Delete""No mystery here - why are we even discussing this?"
ReplyDeleteBecause you are determined to deny Neolithic enhancement of any population, anywhere, in spite of evidence to the contrary.
"As far as I can see the study does not discuss Y-DNA, so why are you making Y-DNA claims ("The 'Han' migration may have been mainly O3a1c-002611"...) when it has no obvious relation?"
For God's sake Maju (and that coming from an atheist). The paper specifies male mediated gene flow as the explanation. So you're now trying to claim that male-mediated gene flow cannot possibly involve Y-DNA. Ridiculous. Anything to avoid facing facts.
"it'd suggest that Cantonese and probably also Hunanese have no major genetic similitude (within the context of East Asia) with Northern Chinese".
Another of your ridiculous claims. 'No major genetic similitude'? The whole paper deals with the CLINE, note: THE CLINE, between north and south.
"so there may well be a lot of hidden structure"
Obviously that is what you hope for. The authors actually comment that there is a complete lack of evidence for any major east/west cline.
"Against your N>S flow I claim S<>S flows instead".
Another desperate attempt to avoid facing facts. Made on the basis of no evidence whatsoever. In fact in the face of evidence to the contrary.
"Anyhow, the reason why the cline is so sharp is, IMO, that it was even sharper earlier, and was at Wallace Line".
How on earth could it be 'sharper earlier'? Surely there is no conceivable reason why the original people east of Wallacea would look any different from the people west of the line at the time. Unless you're now claiming the people who crossed Wallace's Line did so by aircraft from somewhere miles away. Unlikely, I think. Could be wrong, of course.
"Since Neolithic SE Asian peoples have penetrated in Wallacea blurring the line a bit into an still quite abrupt cline".
Exactly. And those Neolithic people were ... Mongoloid. And although their immediate ancestors were from SE Asia their more distant ancestors were from the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers. The reason why we see a cline from north to south right through China and into SE Asia is that the Neolithic people from the north mixed with the southerners along the way.
"This is an example of your lack of consistency: the Timorese are in the same side of WL as Papuans or Australian Aborigines".
And presumably they are the remnant of the cline that originally spread right across both sides of Wallace's Line. The Timorese are in the process of being diluted by the expansion of the Mongoloid phenotype from further west in Indonesia. The Papuan phenotype has been largely lost, or greatly diluted, further west and north.
"It does not work however because the server at that IP does not seem to be active at all hours. I can't link to the paper either way".
I have no trouble copying over the link I gave, but here is the abstract:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15372031
I can't find the whole paper anywhere but in the link I provided yesterday. The paper is earlier than the other one so it just reinforces the concept of a north to south cline established at least partly as late as the Han expansion.
"For God's sake Maju (and that coming from an atheist). The paper specifies male mediated gene flow as the explanation. So you're now trying to claim that male-mediated gene flow cannot possibly involve Y-DNA. Ridiculous. Anything to avoid facing facts".
DeleteI just asked why. Thanks for the explanation (bolded), the rest is clearly in excess.
I would probably do not mind to discuss why you think this or that lineage is associated but it's obvious that if I dare to ask you will pour on me a host of undeserved accusations, so I'll rather pass.
" 'No major genetic similitude'? The whole paper deals with the CLINE, note: THE CLINE, between north and south".
Cline indicates a gradual change between two extremes. And one extreme of the gradation in that paper is made up by Cantonese (which incidentally are oversampled, while other Southern Chinese are undersampled). They did not show Admixture/Structure levels other than those desired by them (K=3 and K=4) and otherwise they used PCA in ways not too informative. So, yes, there is some sort of cline but we know very little about what the extremes are made of or whether there are further transversal clines. We know nothing about the role played by pre-Sinitic populations also because they were simply ignored altogether.
(Although it was evidenced in the past that Cantonese "Han" generally cluster with pre-Han populations and NOT with Northern Han).
"The authors actually comment that there is a complete lack of evidence for any major east/west cline".
I don't see anything in their analysis that could suggest that and instead I know of other studies which do. As you should know by now: if it's not in the graphs and tables, don't even bother: it's a mere opinion, often unwarranted.
There is at least one obvious E-W cline between China and Japan, also noted in the HUGO paper. There are also other clines that can be interpreted as such in the South.
Also in Hui Li 2009 (discussed here), a "Tibeto-Burman" or Western China component was located.
...
...
Delete"How on earth could it be 'sharper earlier'?"
Why not? Perplex: we're talking of one of the sharpest biological divides on Earth, nothing less than Wallace Line!
"Surely there is no conceivable reason why the original people east of Wallacea would look any different from the people west of the line at the time. Unless you're now claiming the people who crossed Wallace's Line did so by aircraft from somewhere miles away".
Why? After the first founder effects the natives just drifted away in relative isolation. WL is a major biogeographical divide and it applied through all the Ice Age, with Sundaland physically united to Indochina by a thick isthmus.
What I don't understand why would you expect WL to be "invisible" for humans but then the less dramatic bio-borders dividing Wallacea from Sahul be most active instead. Or the non-existant bio-borders within contiguous Eastern Asia, only present in your mind (if at all, because often it's impossible to know what's in your mind).
"Exactly. And those Neolithic people were ... Mongoloid".
Only if you accept Cambodian and Javanese as such (what you do or do not at your caprice, it seems). They were not Mongol nor Northern Chinese if that's what you mean.
"And presumably [the Timorese] are the remnant of the cline that originally spread right across both sides of Wallace's Line".
Most likely there was no cline back then but a sharp biological border between those who crossed originally and those who remained behind. Those two populations drifted away sharply. The original Wallaceans were most likely not clinal at all but clustered with Papuans and Australian Aboriginals, as their "Denisovan" admixture index and other genetics tell quite clearly. Clinality was only achieved with the Asian immigration since Neolithic.
"I can't find the whole paper anywhere but in the link I provided yesterday".
It works now (still you should avoid Google search links because they are way too long: if I get redirected to a regular link, I don't see why you would not - using Chrome or IE maybe?)
The letter (not a formal paper) suggests that the Southern Han are sometimes akin in Y-DNA to Northern Han (but not in mtDNA and not in about half the cases for Y-DNA either). This explains why Hongbin Li 2010 found that Southern Han cluster apart from Northern Han in autosomal (general) genetics: some of their male lineages may well be from the North but the overall genetic makeup is mostly generated by the female (and other male) ancestry, which is native.
"The paper specifies male mediated gene flow as the explanation".
ReplyDeleteSorry. That comment is in the paper you seem unable to access. But my comment still holds.
"Only if you accept Cambodian and Javanese as such (what you do or do not at your caprice, it seems). They were not Mongol nor Northern Chinese if that's what you mean".
ReplyDeleteCambodians and Javanese are not 'Mongoloid', they are hybrids, as I will explain.
"Why not? Perplex: we're talking of one of the sharpest biological divides on Earth"
Which humans have crossed numerous times. I've worked out why you are unable to understand East Asian genetics. A few days ago you wrote:
"That's a diversion tactic: we know well that the Polynesian island territories are a product of recent founder effects and of no help when dealing with older consolidated populations".
On the contrary. This is another example of your Garden of Eden syndrome. The Polynesian 'founder effects' did not involve just a single man and a single woman. Besides which there were no more than three or four founder effects involved. At each stage it was most likely that the majority haplogroups at the source provided the majority of the next founder population. Through genetic studies it has been calculated that at least 200 people reached New Zealand for example. It's possible that the East Polynesians provide us with a proxy for the SE Asian population at the time they departed.
The most recent 'founder effect' (around 1600 years ago) was that between Central and East Polynesia. Y-DNA C2a1 and mt-DNA B4a1a1a are basically the only haplogroups to reach Eastern Polynesia. We can be reasonably sure that these haplogroups were the most common ones in Central Polynesia when Eastern Polynesia was settled. We can possibly also assume that the ancestors of these two haplogroups were prominent in the source SE Asian population.
C2 is originally from Southern Wallacea, probably including Timor, although by the time C2a moved into the Pacific it had established itself on the Bird's Head of Irian Jaya. B4a is from Taiwan/Philippines. The two haplogroups are not from the same region. The two met somewhere between the Bird's Head and the Philippines, and set out into the Pacific. C2 was presumably Papuan-looking. B4a's expansion into the islands looks to be associated with that of O1, probably Mongoloid-looking.
So, going back to Onur's original argument, we have a hybrid population moving out into the Pacific. Not separate species, but definitely different-looking.
"Cambodians and Javanese are not 'Mongoloid', they are hybrids"...
DeleteThere are no human "hybrids". You already participated in a discussion in which I kicked a commenter for using such a racist terminology (racist against mixed-blood people, let's be clear). You know that I do not tolerate even the slightest racism and that I consider such usage to be racist.
It's your last warning.
By the moment I'm not in the mood to even read anymore of your dogmatic Asian-Nordicist nonsense.
Seriously: I spend one hour almost everyday reading and answering to your nonsense. Don't even try to bend the rules a bit because you're much more work than you're worth.
"What I don't understand why would you expect WL to be 'invisible' for humans but then the less dramatic bio-borders dividing Wallacea from Sahul be most active instead".
ReplyDeleteYou're forgetting that humans have boats. Kangaroos don't. The islands of Sahul were large, so they supported a large population, able to absorb newcomers. The islands of Wallacea and SE Asia had smaller populations, easily overwhelmed.
"Most likely there was no cline back then but a sharp biological border between those who crossed originally and those who remained behind".
Why would you expect that? Or are you again imagining that just one man and one woman crossed WL?
"Thanks for the explanation (bolded), the rest is clearly in excess".
I apologise for the excess. At the time I didn't realise you were not aware of the substance of the claim.
"Cline indicates a gradual change between two extremes. And one extreme of the gradation in that paper is made up by Cantonese (which incidentally are oversampled, while other Southern Chinese are undersampled)".
The cline actually continues south beyond China through SE Asia. The southern extreme of the cline is therefore the 'The original Wallaceans' who, as you say, 'most likely ... clustered with Papuans and Australian Aboriginals'.
"There is at least one obvious E-W cline between China and Japan"
'Japan' is not 'China'. And that cline is simply the northward extension of the north/south cline within China, as is obvious in the map. So in this example we have a representative of the northern extreme of the cline that stretches right through China south to Wallacea.
"There are also other clines that can be interpreted as such in the South".
I agree there is a cline between Chinese and Tibetans. Remember, though, that at the border between China and Tibet we find a concentration of Y-DNA O3a2c, exactly where I am sure it originated. Another male-mediated cline?
"This explains why Hongbin Li 2010 found that Southern Han cluster apart from Northern Han in autosomal (general) genetics: some of their male lineages may well be from the North but the overall genetic makeup is mostly generated by the female (and other male) ancestry, which is native".
I explained the pattern of Y-DNA O's expansion into the Pacific some days ago. My comments there still stand. Y-DNA O came from at least as far north as the Yangtze. Even Austro-Asiatic O2a is just the southern version of O2. Yet O2b seems virtually unknown in China. It is Manchurian, Korean and Japanese. The Ryukyu Island chain provides a tenuous geographic connection for O2b's slight presence in the south. It used to be claimed that elements of the 'Austronesian' toolkit arrived in SE Asia from Japan. O2b's presence in the south may be supportive evidence for that old idea. Certainly any group capable of moving through the Ryukyus, even at times of lowered sea level, would have to have had a reasonably competent boating technology.
The population of SE Asia is the product of a virtually continuous whole series of population movements from the Paleolithic to the present. The same presumably holds for most other regions of the world.
Sorry. One more thing:
ReplyDelete"Not really so. Just that authors have the bad habit of oversimplifying ethnic reality into linguistic families [Almost any paper you might be prepared to read on the subject claims a reasonably close connection in East Asia between language and genetics]".
Quote from the HUGO paper you linked to:
"Our results show that genetic ancestry is strongly correlated with linguistic affiliations as well as geography. Most populations show relatedness within ethnic/linguistic groups, despite prevalent gene flow among populations".
"By the moment I'm not in the mood to even read anymore of your dogmatic Asian-Nordicist nonsense".
ReplyDeleteWhat the hell is 'Asian-Nordicist'?
"There are no human 'hybrids'".
Even you agree that there are admixed populations, as shown here:
"Also in Hui Li 2009 (discussed here), a 'Tibeto-Burman' or Western China component was located".
And an SE Asian centre and an expansion centred on the Sea of Japan. You wrote there:
"It is noticeable that three quite distinct populations emerge in East Asia: inland, coastal and south".
So, 'three quite distinct populations'. And note that both Cambodians and Javanese are part of the SE Asian population, not Mongoloid. Regarding two of the populations you wrote:
"Further down in the Eastern branch, it seems a division happened between NE Asians and SE Asians with the 'border' running through modern China".
That accounts for the cline between north and south we see in China. But the two have become mixed. If you're uncomfortable with the word 'hybrid' I'm quite happy to use anther term. What do you suggest?
"If you're uncomfortable with the word 'hybrid' I'm quite happy to use anther term. What do you suggest?"
DeleteI am extremely unhappy with it being used for admixture within the species Homo sapiens, as I already told to some other commented who was stubborn enough to be invited to leave. You witnessed that.
The primary meaning of hybridization is that of admixture between different species, maybe some people use it in other contexts but when applied to humans (H. sapiens) it sounds like having a plural, multirracial or multiethnic ancestry would be borderline, unnatural, so it is definitely offensive.
"What the hell is 'Asian-Nordicist'?"
I already told you that all these old-school obsolete hypothesis about widespread migrations from the North belong to a time when weird conjectures like the claim of cold weather favoring intelligence were popular (hence Hitler but also all the rest of Eurocentric imperialism, with NE Asian mirror offshoots). Those were racist models designed by Nordics to "demonstrate" Nordic superiority and, as I say, had offshoots in East Asia, where traditionally the Han or more recently the Japanese found it useful to justify their alleged superiority and imperialism.
That is it. I suggest that you make a note because I'd hate to explain it thrice.
"That's a diversion tactic: we know well that the Polynesian island territories are a product of recent founder effects and of no help when dealing with older consolidated populations".
ReplyDeleteTo which I replied:
"On the contrary. This is another example of your Garden of Eden syndrome. The Polynesian 'founder effects' did not involve just a single man and a single woman. Besides which there were no more than three or four founder effects involved".
Research just released:
http://popular-archaeology.com/issue/september-2012/article/dna-study-of-ancient-new-zealanders-yields-surprising-results
Quote:
"We found that three of the four individuals had no recent maternal ancestor in common, indicating that these pioneers were not simply from one tight-knit kin group, but instead included families that were not directly maternally related. This gives a fascinating new glimpse into the social structure of the first New Zealanders and others taking part in the final phases of the great Polynesian migration across the Pacific."
Four may not sound like very many, but the study involved:
"Of the 19 burials screened for DNA preservation, four provided sufficient sequence data for inclusion in the current study. These included the remains of two young to middle-aged females, a young adult male and a young adult female".
Not much of a founder effect apparently. As an aside, you may find this observation mildly interesting:
"Intriguingly, they also discovered that at least one of the settlers carried a genetic mutation associated with insulin resistance, which leads to Type 2 diabetes".
Seems that the Polynesians may provide us with more information about prehistoric human migrations than you have been prepared to admit.
I never meant that a single man and woman founded anything. You don't seem to understand the notion of founder effect and you are not providing any specific data that says otherwise (for example that most those women had not the Polynesian motif, which is a founder effect since Thaiti at the very least).
DeleteThe only thing your quote says is that the group was patrilocal, not any novelty.
"The only thing your quote says is that the group was patrilocal, not any novelty".
ReplyDeleteWhere does it say that?
"You don't seem to understand the notion of founder effect and you are not providing any specific data that says otherwise (for example that most those women had not the Polynesian motif, which is a founder effect since Thaiti at the very least)".
Maju, most of the women HAD the Polynesian motif. The article actually explains that they had a surprising level of diversity within that motif. In fact the article basically claims they were possibly a representative sampling of the Central Polynesian population of the time. As for understanding the notion of founder effects, it is extremely easy to construct a scenario for the Polynesian expansion involving just a single founder effect. That occured only at the departure of mt-DNA B4a1 and Y-DNA C2 from somewhere between the Bird's Head and the Philippines. The presence through the wider Pacific of all other haplogroups, both mt-DNA and Y-DNA, is most easily explained as other haplogroups having joined along the way or having followed along behind. C2 and B4a1 are the only ones to have made it all the way. Others made it only some of the way, or were picked up from Melanesia or New Guinea and again carried part of the way. One founder effect, not multiple founder effects.
Here says that:
Delete... "included families that were not directly maternally related".
...
... "most of the women HAD the Polynesian motif".
Which is a founder effect at the Fiji stage (I understand).
"it is extremely easy to construct a scenario for the Polynesian expansion involving just a single founder effect. That occured only at the departure of mt-DNA B4a1 and Y-DNA C2 from somewhere between the Bird's Head and the Philippines".
So what?
Sorry. I haven't pointed you in the direction of the original article:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/10/17/1209896109.abstract
I've had it brought to my attention that it is free access.
Yeah, it's open access. I'll write a short note later on.
Delete"Which is a founder effect at the Fiji stage (I understand)".
ReplyDeleteMost likely not. The non-B4a haplogroups from Fiji are all Melanesian, so the didn't leave SE Asia with B4a. Haplogroups involved include P1, P2, Q1, Q2 and M28. The general consensus is that their presence is a product of later movement east from Melanesia, not from SE Asia. We know from archeology that new waves of humans have several times reached Fiji from both Vanuatu and New Caledonia. It is therefore most probable that just B4a made it into the wider Pacific. The 'founder effect' therefore occurred long before humans reached Fiji. Unless you're going to suggest that each of those Melanesian haplogroups represents a separate 'founder effect' within the Pacific population. A position I can agree with, but it would then mean that every single haplogroup expansion is the product of a founder effect.
"So what?"
True 'founder effects' are very rare in human pre-history. We cannot invoke the expression as an explanation when the evidence fails to fit a belief. Founder populations are usually simply a representative sample of the people available, not a subset of the people available.
B4a is massively dominant (>80% or >90%) already at Fiji. That's the essence of the matter, the rest is just complicating things unnecessarily because minority clades are subject to drift and similar stochastic negative effects in further founder effects, as we can see in NZ.
Delete"True 'founder effects'"...
I think this case of Fiji is a "true" founder effect. But in any case it is you who must take note because you're always assuming pops. to be single-haplogroup, when they almost never are such thing in real life and, at best, come to be so only after long periods of isolation-cum-drift.
"I think this case of Fiji is a 'true' founder effect".
ReplyDeleteAs I've said in the other post, not so.
"But in any case it is you who must take note because you're always assuming pops. to be single-haplogroup, when they almost never are such thing in real life and, at best, come to be so only after long periods of isolation-cum-drift".
I agree 'isolation-cum-drift' is far more common than are true 'founder effects'. Settlement of new regions is usually preceded by a period of isolation-cum-drift before the expansion. If that were not so the 'original' population would have simply kept going.