So we put up a 3rd reviewer mug. Kind of an “inside joke”, but we liked it. One thing we have noticed: people really like the DNA helix logo. They click it. They buy it. More visual, less wordy.
One thing that’s funny, when it paternal haplogroups I1 clicks a lot, but they never buy (in contrast to R1b).
Thousands of horsemen may have swept into Bronze Age Europe, transforming the local population. The piece is pretty expansive, though something of a mess. But it’s a mess because there are still unresolved issues.
There’s a Digital Media Crash. But No One Will Say It. Privately my friends in the media tell me exactly this. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. There are many reasons, but it’s happening.
The Evolutionary Genomic Dynamics of Peruvians Before, During, and After the Inca Empire. Similar thing in Mexico: old population structure is still there!
Singleton Variants Dominate the Genetic Architecture of Human Gene Expression. Genomics is a little overhyped, at least in evolution, but it can really do incredible things nailing down the specific details of what’s going on.
The nature of nurture: effects of parental genotypes and Estimating heritability without environmental bias.
I’ve spent a little time reading Oathbringer this week, mostly before I go to sleep. It’s a little hard to keep track of everything because it’s been seven years since the first book and over three since the last one. Since Brandon Sanderson projects ten books in the series I doubt I will finish this out. At the current rate of production I will be thinking about retirement when the Stormlight Archive is near completion!
But reading Oathbringer it did come to my mind that Sanderson has done a really good job in building a world which is fundamentally not just a European Middle Ages retread, as is the norm in much of fantasy. There are so many new words and characters to keep track of I think I didn’t internalize this in the earlier books. So I did a little Googling and found that Sanderson was trying to do the same thing that Frank Herbert did in Dune, by creating a whole new and novel ecology.
Secondly, he has mentioned that most of his characters are not white and that he has struggled to make sure that they are not depicted in stereotypical European fashion in cover art. The primary protagonists are in fact a people who he imagines to be a hybrid between East Asians and Middle Easterners (his time in Korea as a Mormon missionary inflected his world-building), though that is simply the closest analog. He specifically states that the one human race without epicanthic folds, and look the most European in feature and complexion, are often assumed to be East Asian in by readers because of their exoticism and name (Shin).
Charles Manson has died. I haven’t read it, but have heard good things about Jeff Guin’s Manson: The Life and Times of Charles Manson (it seems like it’s a cultural history).
Precise dating of the Middle-to-Upper Paleolithic transition in Murcia (Spain) supports late Neandertal persistence in Iberia. What we’re learning is that our patchy understanding of the human past also understates how patchy and uneven many dynamics were.
The day the Pintupi Nine entered the modern world. The story of nine people who were totally isolated from the modern world until 1984. They were scared when they met relatives who had lived in a town. To convince them to stay the relatives had them taste sugar.
a hybrid between East Asians and Middle Easterners
Central Asians – queue the music for Borat!
That Yamnaya article is interesting because it challenges my stereotypes. I understand the notion that middle eastern farmers would end up with a society of a few men with land and wives, and many landless wifeless men ready to expand into the hunter-gatherer lands of Europe. But I had the idea that nomadic pastoralists brought their women with them.
What do we know about how the Mongols did it?
Haven’t read beyond the first Stormlight Archive book when it first came out, so my memory might be hazy. But one thing I do recall about that world is that literacy is confined to women, while men who can read/write are viewed as freaks and misfits. This stuck in my craw – how could such a maladaptive cultural value not only evolve but survive across the Alevi lands? Brandon Sanderson never bothered to justify it, so I am left to assume that he whimsically stuck it in just to add something unusual and exotic to his world.
Sites like https://consortiumnews.com/, seem to be doing well. I guess there is a growing market out there that isn’t paid by third parties to indoctrinate/sedate its audience (unless one would consider people paying out of pocket for information/presentation that’s routinely ignored [for obvious reasons on close inspection of the money trails] by outlets driven by their advertisers to pursue medium that has mostly been introduced to the world since circa 2003, some form of self indoctrination).
“Gaddafi, it turns out, had never really shut down his weapons programme. The UK and the US had done a deal with one of the worst dictators of the last century, and he had fooled them.”
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/09/how-britain-did-gaddafis-dirty-work-libya?CMP=share_btn_tw
re: literacy. he mentioned it on a bulletin board. wasn’t too interesting, as i don’t remember the detail. it was something from history.
it is kind of annoying, but the way i can rationalize it is to think of the stormlight world as not mapping well onto our own. so in many ways it is a renaissance tech society (equivalent, with magic), but in other ways it is like a bronze age one. so in the bronze age literacy was caste-limited.
Sandersonian Worlds: The success of G.R.R. Martin seemed to increase the number of panels on world-building held at science fiction conventions, or at least that’s my impression. Sanderson had been brought into finishing Wheel of Time so his early writing experience was already deep into that. I’ve read of couple of Sanderson’s books. He’s extremely good at writing fantasy. Page-turners. But if I might make a general criticism of fantasy which his writing partakes – After finishing novels I look at the various notes I’ve collected, sometimes I was struck by just one particular passage, sometimes there’s a page or two of notes. With fantasy novels it tends to be not much or nothing. It leaves me with a feeling something like having eaten a lot of empty calories. Fun, but somehow unsatisfying. Not surprisingly I read mostly older science fiction books by writers like Brin and Stephenson, and not so much fantasy. But that’s just me. It’s interesting to me that you mentioned Dune, as I liked it the first time through but didn’t really appreciate it until I read O’Reilly’s book length critique of it, making me go back through and read it a third time.
re: fantasy and prose. r scott bakker has some stuff that’s good. gene wolfe and le guin are good at style.
btw i should admit that until sanderson explicitly said that all but non-shin had epicanthic folds i had imagined the protagonists as olive skinned european looking people, and the shin as east asians with large eyes. the default assumptions are strong.
Before the Fall of the Roman Republic, Income Inequality and Xenophobia Threatened Its Foundations
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/fall-roman-republic-income-inequality-and-xenophobia-threatened-its-foundations-180967249
this guy compares the U.S. condition to the Fall of Rome in an interview about his new book
Robert Ford: They always do. But, we haven’t even gotten to the age of the Antonines yet.
Of course, one of the Empire’s biggest problems was its inability to control its borders and prevent illegal immigration.
Razib: I read the following:
“What These 3 Doctors Think Should Be Done for Children Who Think They Are Transgender” by Ian Snively / November 02, 2017:
http://dailysignal.com/2017/11/02/what-these-3-doctors-think-should-be-done-for-children-who-think-they-are-transgender/
I think their bottom line is talk therapy, no hormones, nor surgery.
The most interesting part of the posting is the comments. As nearly as I can tell, the pro LGBTQI2S (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning, Intersex, and Two-Spirit) people asserted that “gender identity” is inborn, but not biological, nor is it learned.
I always thought that nature (DNA) and nurture (learning) were the choices. I never thought there was a Door Number 3.
More below.
Razib: I would appreciate your opinion on the following, which was the prize comment to the page linked above was from a ???? handled: “Zoe Ellen Brain” affiliated “The Australian National University”
“Tests for sex that rely on the presence of a Y “male” chromosome don’t work. Some men don’t have them. Tests for sex that rely on the presence of the SrY “male” gene somewhere on one of the other chromosomes also don’t work. Some men don’t have those either. So why do we call these “male” genes or “male” chromosomes? Why do we, including those of us who know better, sometimes say someone with 46,XY chromosomes is “genetically male”? Because of laziness, basically. Imprecision. All but 1 in 300 men are 46,XY. That’s most of them. Not all, and there are plenty of women who are 46,XY too, and so and there are plenty of women who are 46,XY too, and some of those even give birth to 46,XY daughters.
Trying to define anyone’s sex purely from the genome is a philosophical or ideological issue, requiring much handwaving and dismissal of the existence of exceptions, or even outright denial that exceptions can exist, for philosophical reasons.
At best, we can say that DNA/Chromosomes/Genes determine sex.. except for the many cases where they don’t. A good guide, usually true, but not completely reliable, so cannot possibly be used to “define” what exactly what sex anyone is.
See for example
A case report of an XX male with complete masculinization but absence of the SrY gene Ghalia Abou Alchamat, Marwan Alhlabi, Muhyiddin Issa , Middle East Fertility Society Journal January 2010, Vol.15(1):51–53,
J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2008 Jan;93(1):182-9 A 46,XY mother who developed as a normal woman underwent spontaneous puberty, reached menarche, menstruated regularly, experienced two unassisted regnancies, and gave birth to a 46,XY daughter with complete gonadal dysgenesis.
It is frankly alarming that these pediatricians haven’t kept up with science past 1890, which is when their ideas date from.
Peru:
A fascinating place. We went there 2 years ago. Beautiful, and the Inca Ruins are literally awesome.
One thing to remember though is that Inca were only in power for about a century. The empire began in 1438 with Pachacuti and the Conquistadors showed up in 1532. What they could have accomplished unmolested is a matter of conjecture. Their policies included moving populations around and making Quechua the language of the Empire.
My Inca Reading list:The classic history of the Incas and the Conquistadors is:
“The History of the Conquest of Peru” by William Hickling Prescott
(A Modern Library E-Book)
http://www.amazon.com/History-Conquest-Peru-Modern-Library-ebook/dp/B000QCSA0E/
It was written in the 1840s. It is in a 19th century style, which can seem a bit slow for 21st Century readers, but it is very thorough. The first set of chapters describe Inca Society in great detail. The linked edition is the $2.99 Kindle edition.
There is dividing line between the 19th Century writers and the 20th Century. It is, first, the great expansion of archeology in the 20th Century, and, second, the rediscovery of the 1189 page illustrated manuscript of “El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno” written by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, an Indian, in 1615 & 16. A work, which lay unnoticed in the Royal Library of Denmark for 300 years. You can look at its pages, and read its Spanish transcription (if, you read Spanish, I don’t) at: http://www.kb.dk/permalink/2006/poma/info/en/frontpage.htm
There are two modern histories of the Conquest:
The Conquest of the Incas by John Hemming (1973)
http://www.amazon.com/Conquest-Incas-John-Hemming/dp/0156028263/
http://www.amazon.com/Conquest-Incas-John-Hemming-ebook/dp/B00B3IKAQM/
The Last Days of the Incas by Kim MacQuarrie (2007)
http://www.amazon.com/Last-Days-Incas-Kim-MacQuarrie-ebook/dp/B000QGES8I/
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0743260503/
I read the MacQuarrie book, not the Hemming book. Hemming seems to be more focused on the events of the 16th Century. MacQuarrie has some more recent information about archeology in Peru.
The following is more oriented to being a textbook in a college anthropology course, but it has lots of neat information:
The Incas: New Perspectives Paperback – September 17, 2008
by Gordon F. McEwan (Author)–http://www.amazon.com/The-Incas-Perpectives-Gordon-McEwan/dp/0393333019
No Kindle edition.
There is a new exhibit at the National Museum of the American Indian of the Smithsonian Institution on the Mall in Washington DC
The Great Inka Road: Engineering an Empire
June 26, 2015–April 2018
The website has a lot of interesting maps and pictures:
http://www.nmai.si.edu/inkaroad/index.html
And there is a companion book:
The Great Inka Road: Engineering an Empire Hardcover – July 21, 2015
by Ramiro Matos Mendieta (Editor), Jose Barreiro (Editor), David Penney (Foreword), John Oschendorf (Contributor)
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Inka-Road-Engineering-Empire/dp/1588344959/
When I went to find the link to that book, I found this one as well:
“The Inka Empire: A Multidisciplinary Approach” by Izumi Shimada (Editor) June 1, 2015
http://www.amazon.com/The-Inka-Empire-Multidisciplinary-Approach/dp/0292760795/
Ec 12:12 “of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh.”
Video:
On PBS in December:
Time Scanners: Machu Picchu
http://www.pbs.org/program/time-scanners/
Engineers study Macchu Picchu to learn how it was built. I think you can watch it at a number of TV sites, like Amazon prime.
Movies:
“Aguirre, the Wrath of God” (German: Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes), a 1972 West German epic film written and directed by Werner Herzog.
“The Royal Hunt of the Sun” is a 1969 British-US film based on the play of the same name by Peter Shaffer. It stars Robert Shaw as Francisco Pizarro and Christopher Plummer as the Inca Emperor Atahualpa.
i’ve always had a liking for “Aguirre…” Klaus was one of a kind:)
Fantastic film. One can really feel the madness as the story unfolds.
With Kinski, one gets the feeling he wasn’t acting! Mandatory Klaus Kinski story: http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/features/film-studies-herzog-v-kinski-was-a-fight-to-the-death-308731.html
Re Thousands of Horsemen. Mostly correct except for this bit: “Europeans are the descendants of at least three major migrations of prehistoric people. First, a group of hunter-gatherers arrived in Europe about 37,000 years ago.”
Of course, most of Europe was depopulated in the LGM and repopulated for a few refugia in the Mesolithic after the LGM ca. 16-10 kya.
I’d love to see a post on this paper https://twitter.com/LassalleFlo/status/933357244149886976
It is right at the boundary of what I can grok and a little more expert commentary would be really illuminating as it seems like it has interesting points to make.