A few posters made fun of Asma Gull Hasan’s assertion of Genghiside ancestry because she had the Mongolian Blue Spot. Here is a relevant point:

Internationally: The prevalence of Mongolian spots varies among different ethnic groups. This condition is most common among Asians. It also has been reported in 80% of East African children, in 46% of Hispanic children, and in 1-9% of Caucasian children.

It is also found among many West Africans. This site asserts that it is common among East Indians.

A few points.

1) ~0.5% of the men in the world carry what is likely the Genghiside Y lineage (see here). This is the direct male line, that is, father to son, father to son, father son, and so forth. Asma Gull Hasan claims descent through the matrilineal line, so she wouldn’t carry the marker (she doesn’t have a Y chromsome and neither does her mother), but that doesn’t mean she couldn’t be descended from a daughter of a male who carried the marker, at some point in the past 1,000 years. Of course, that implies that it’s not something to brag about, since many people through Eurasia could make as similar claim.

2) Limited data sets can skew perception. The term “Mongolian Blue Spot” is a misnomer if you look at the prevelance of the trait among Africans and other dark-skinned populations. This site asserts that the spot is more common among “dark skinned babies,” though I suspect this impression comes from the fact that the writer is probably American, and most children with the Mongolian Blue Spot in the United States are probably black or Hispanic. In a similar fashion, a Masai warrior might assume that lactose tolerance is a Masai trait and that northern Europeans must have Masai ancestry since they have no problem consuming raw milk (or the reverse, and I believe recent research has implied that there were multiple mutations that allowed for metabolization of lactose in adults, implying no common ancestry).

3) Speaking of limited data sets, since Asma seems to imply she is a virgin, she probably shouldn’t be talking a lot about the human body, since her exposure is probably limited to her own kin.

4) So that I’m an equal opportunity sneerer, KXB correctly notes that many Muslim South Asians tend to play up a tenuous exogenous origin when ~90% of their ancestry is “native” (I would have given a higher percentile figure, but I saw some recent data which suggested a higher frequency of West Asian lines among Muslims as compared to Hindus than what I expected. Also, note it was the Mughals who popularized many of the color terms in circulation in South Asia, as they, the “white Muslims,” were keen on distinguishing themselves from the native “black Muslims”). But, many Hindus, especially high caste ones, tend to want to emphasize the fact that they are “Caucasians,” just like Europeans, and there used to the bizarre practice of upper caste Hindus going to southern Sweden to see the land of their “Aryan ancestors.” To see that this is a human universal, when Ambedkar, the “Dalit Saint,” was asked if his people were descended from the indigenous pre-Aryan people of Maharashtra, he could only respond, “that is a hypothesis,” as if this was a wild suggestion without any basis in fact (I also read that the Dalits of Uttar Pradesh were uncomfortable aligning with those of South India because they felt that they were somewhat superior on the Chain of Being). The winners are always our ancestors.

Posted by razib at 07:34 AM