Patrick Wyman’s The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World is out in ten days. He’ll be doing the podcast circuit.

Speaking of which, please leave more reviews on Apple podcasts or Stitcher.

From the Substack: Alex Mesoudi: the origins of cultural evolution, Here be humans, Dragon Man ascending: two geneticists discuss the latest paleoanthropological discoveries, and Out of Africa’s midlife crisis. A lot of people are pointing out introgression, etc. that are not present on the charts I made. But the goal was to expose a broader audience to simplified representations. Life is about trade-offs.

Bayesian inference of clonal expansions in a dated phylogeny.

Projecting ancient ancestry in modern-day Arabians and Iranians: a key role of the past exposed Arabo-Persian Gulf on human migrations.

Richard C. Lewontin, Eminent Geneticist With a Sharp Pen, Dies at 92.

Is it my imagination, or is Charles Murray’s new book, Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America getting more traction than his previous book? Probably due to the engagement with the “heterodox academy” types.

I wrote about the crime spike for my Substack in late April, and a lot of people told me that I was pretty bold for having done so. Of course, by mid-May our propaganda media did a heel-turn and decided to start talking about the issue in unison. I can’t express how disgusted I am with American media in 2021. They’re no better than they were during the Iraq War II period. Just new masters.

Unless you’ve been asleep, you know there are new hominins discovered galore. I posted a long (free) Substack on it and my perspective. Please share and retweet, etc.

I’ve also been posting on Finnish genetics and culture recently. See Go west, young Siberian, and Weirdness as a national pastime.

This is apropos of nothing… but I have a lot of friends in academia who think they are “based” and dissent from the regnant orthodoxy. For almost 20 years I’ve been taking fire and absorbing hits because I’ll say what I think (to the point of being physically attacked at scientific conferences). A lot of you appreciate it. But in general, you’re cowards and keep your head down.

Sit down and wonder what you’ll tell your kids in the future about the courage you showed, and how you measured up to the values you claim to hold dear. And ask yourself if perhaps the collapse of the world you valued will have had something to do with your craven behavior. You know the answer. Don’t pretend you’re something you aren’t. My kids are starting to be old enough to know who I am. I’m not ashamed. Would you be? If not, perhaps you should be.

My friend Patrick Wyman has a new book out, The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance, and Forty Years that Shook the World. I’ll be having him on my podcast too. Speaking of which, please add some positive ratings.

Speaking of Patrick, David Anthony on his podcast. Don’t miss it.

Evidence of the interplay of genetics and culture in Ethiopia.

Population inter-connectivity over the past 120,000 years explains distribution and diversity of Central African hunter-gatherers.

The rise and importance of Secret Congress.

Quest for Fire. Is this a documentary now?

All known archaic groups with ancient DNA evidence interbred. Repeatedly. Seemingly every time they came into contact. Three distinct groups of Denisovans, all known from their ancient interbreeding with modern people. So. Much. Interbreeding. pic.twitter.com/AkZkSjacUF

— John Hawks (@johnhawks) June 25, 2021

SIA: Selection Inference Using the Ancestral Recombination Graph.

‘In the Heights’ and Colorism: What Is Lost When Afro-Latinos Are Erased.

Peace, Poverty and Betrayal: A New History of British India. Don’t read if you haven’t read on this topic before. Also, check out John Darwin’s Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain.

Applying IQ to IQ. This is my most popular Substack post. I always feel stupid arguing that being intelligent is important.

Herded and hunted goat genomes from the dawn of domestication in the Zagros Mountains.

PRDM9 losses in vertebrates are coupled to the loss of at least three other meiotic genes.

New version of AdmixTools.

Thank you to everyone here who subscribed to my Substack. For those of you who subscribe to the paid content, I am hoping you can tell I’m putting a lot of effort into the writing!

I’ve been setting up some Amazon book lists. So here is one for population genetics. I also set them up for the steppe, Roman Empire, and the origins of Islam. I’ll be adding more lists and fleshing them out.

Lots of content on my Substack. I assume most readers of this weblog are on the e-list, but who knows? Perhaps of note, two posts on the Romani. Also check out my interview with J. P. Mallory.

The ungated podcast site has more than two dozen podcasts now. If you haven’t posted a review on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher, please do so.

The media’s lab leak fiasco. Matt Yglesias does a forensic analysis of what happened.

I’m reading Peace, Poverty and Betrayal for a review at UnHerd.

Recent Common Origin, Reduced Population Size, and Marked Admixture Have Shaped European Roma Genomes.

I’ve been corresponding with a reader who is of English Romanichal background, and my supposition that they have less South Asian ancestry than Roma and Iberian Romani seems correct. Closer to 10-15% than 20-30%. A lot of the ancestry (from Ancestry/Family Tree DNA) is assigned as British, so that indicates the dilution may have happened in the United Kingdom.

E. O. Wilson’s Social Conquest of the Earth is now $2.99 on Kindle (don’t know how long this will last).

The “noble lie” on masks probably wasn’t a lie: Why Western public health went all-in on a campaign against masks. Basically, they didn’t know what they were talking about, but their authority is based on the premise that they do. Also, the evidence in favor of masks isn’t really that strong, just like it wasn’t strong against them. People have polarized this issue in a way that’s crazy.

Deciphering signatures of natural selection via deep learning.

Ancestral diversity improves discovery and fine-mapping of genetic loci for anthropometric traits – the Hispanic/Latino Anthropometry Consortium.

Transposable elements drive the evolution of genome streamlining.

Please, Think Critically About College Admissions: you can’t help the disadvantaged by refusing to engage in critical thinking. This is nothing new to readers of this weblog, but the wave of mainstream-media propaganda around this issue is reading going to go into overdrive soon, so it is best to have the literature familiar to you (also, read A Year Without Miles).

What shall become of Charles Darwin?

I periodically guest on The Study of Antiquity YouTube channel. The episodes are not that long. YouTube channels are not my jam, but the view numbers are incredible, and it’s another way to get the “good news” out.

Dissecting polygenic signals from genome-wide association studies on human behaviour.

Molecular evolution and the decline of purifying selection with age.

Continuity of Pagan Religious Traditions in Tenth-Century Iraq. So here’s what going on: some of the customs and rites of ancient Mesopotamian religion persisted down to the 900s A.D. The ethnographic reports of the Muslims who observed this indicate that the peasants were forgetting the purpose and intent of the rites, but it is rather clear that what they’re writing about consists of veneration of the Babylonian God Tammuz. Modern scholars have access to cuneiform and so understand the Babylonian religion well enough to validate the Muslim informants’ veracity.

I’m Angry About Palestine. Should You Be? I said this on Twitter: Shadi is a believer in traditional liberal norms of fair play and engagement. This buys him something: my attention.

Update: Since Clubhouse is opening to Android, I should put up a few notices. First, join my club, Razib Khan’s Unsupervised Learning. Second, follow me, @razibkhan. Finally, my “rooms” are usually on Friday evening (PDT). If you join the club you’ll see the event days ahead of time.  I also do impromptu rooms now and then, and if you follow me or join my club you will see notifications when you are online.

At Matt Yglesias’ recommendation, I decided to read By Steppe, Desert, and Ocean: The Birth of Eurasia. It’s decent. Recommended from me too.

This Liz Bruenig column, I Became a Mother at 25, and I’m Not Sorry I Didn’t Wait, has elicited unhinged responses. I feel that people invest too much into their various life choices in terms of those choices reflecting on their views and preferences for society as a whole. Americans express a preference for larger families than they end up having. Is that revealed preference? Or is it a cultural and policy environment that doesn’t allow for large families (I think it’s more cultural than policy to be honest, so not sure if it’s soluble)?

In general, people should talk less and just focus on their own life. If you want more kids, have them, figure out how you can have them, etc. If you don’t want to have kids, don’t, but kindly shut up about how awesome your life choice is and how you get to travel (many of us don’t think your life is that awesome and you constantly talking about how awesome it is is weird).

Substack, Steppe 1.0, Going Nomad. The first of many. Also, David Anthony: the origin of Indo-Europeans and RKUL: time well spent 05/05/2021. Kristian Kristiansen and Marie Favereau soon.

By the way, thanks to everyone who has supported my Substack! It’s been a good experience.

I figured out how to link to my Clubhouse account, Razib Khan. Also, I created a “club” for my Substack, Razib Khan’s Unsupervised Learning. I’ve been doing “Rooms” every Friday since the end of February.

Scotland’s Independence Parties Gain Upper Hand as Pressure Builds on U.K. I guess I was mildly pro-independence in 2014, but at this point, it seems like it would be ill-advised for Scotland to do this.

Breaking the Scale: Allometric scaling analysis in Carnivoran families.

Again, I recommend The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World. Reminder: this is a book about the Golden Horde. Not the whole Mongol Empire.

When Covid Hit, China Was Ready to Tell Its Version of the Story. Of course, China is manipulating media. First, the USA does some of this too. Voice of America? Second, I think The New York Times going the way of “moral clarity” really puts it in a worse position to respond and benefit from this expansion of Chinese propaganda. Half the articles in The Times read like biased propaganda as well, and they’re not even clever about it. The shift toward subscription newspapers to becoming “fan-service” for their customers means there’s top-down propaganda (China) and bottom-up propaganda (more and more The New York Times). It’s pretty clear that many of the desks of The New York Times won’t publish things their staffers and subscriber might not like.

These Neanderthals Weren’t Cannibals, So Who Ate Them? Stone Age Hyenas. Cool story.

The role of epistasis in amikacin, kanamycin, bedaquiline, and clofazimine resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex.

Why Did It Take So Long to Accept the Facts About Covid?

Read The Horde: How the Mongols Changed the World. Recommended. The book is really about the Golden Horde, not the whole Mongol world, but it has a pretty international scope. Probably gets a little too much in the weeds about Jochid family internal politics, but that’s my main complaint (going to have a review up in UnHerd soon).

Our Three-Body Problem: China, India and the Rest. A free piece on my Substack. There’s only so much I can put into a piece that’s this “short.” A major problem is that a lot of people don’t know much about multiple society’s histories, so most of the responses that are critical haven’t been too impressive. Lots of people who say there are lots of “howlers” but don’t bother to say what. I assume these are stupid people, but I honestly have no idea since they won’t say what!

Also, another piece on my Substack, The ultimate price of costless gestures: 2020’s 2,000+ excess black lives lost to murder. I don’t think that we’re going back to the 1970’s, but the trendline does not make me happy either. I’ll be fine. Most people who read this will be fine. It’s the people who are the usual targets of violence and murder who won’t be fine. But no one cares.

My last two gated podcasts (gated): Greg Clark: For Whom The Bell Curve Tolls and Thomas Olander: the origin and spread of Indo-European languages. I think followers of this blog will enjoy. In the next few weeks I’ll be talking to David Anthony (The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World) and Kristian Kristiansen.

I’ll say it again, The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World is an excellent book. Really ages well even 14 years on.

Cultural Evolution of Genetic Heritability.

Are Collectivistic Cultures More Prone to Rapid Transformation? Computational Models of Cross-Cultural Differences, Social Network Structure, Dynamic Social Influence, and Cultural Change.

U.K. Covid-19 Variant’s Hold in U.S. Has Silver Lining: Vaccines Counter It.

My friend Colin Wright has a Substack, as does David Mittelman. Check them out!

Diverse mechanisms for epigenetic imprinting in mammals. This looks really interesting.

Inferring the timing and strength of natural selection and gene migration in the evolution of chicken from ancient DNA data.

The effects of epistasis and linkage on the invasion of locally beneficial mutations and the evolution of genomic islands.

‘Every Time I’m Calling, Someone Has Died’: The Anguish of India’s Diaspora. I’m being told there’s no problem in the slums. The reason is that the slums were hit on the “first wave.” Obviously a lot of people died in the slums but were never taken to the hospital. Now that it’s hitting the middle class, there’s a huge concern in the Diaspora.

The Shape of Ancient Thought is $1.99 again on Kindle. I have no idea what Amazon is doing, but it’s strange that periodically expensive academic books are put on sale on the Kindle. Always great to see, as academic books tend to be $50-100.

Hunter-gatherer foraging networks promote information transmission.

Doing some reading for my series on the steppe for my Substack, Empires of Ancient Eurasia: The First Silk Roads Era, 100 BCE – 250 CE is worth reading. The focus is on the silk road, 2,000 years ago.

Also, rereading David Anthony’s The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World. It’s a good book and stands the test of time. We know so much from ancient DNA it’s more rewarding to read, not less.

Pantheon: A New History of Roman Religion. Dense but informative.

Been keeping the Friday evening Clubhouse scheduling for giving talks. Android will go live in a month.

Benjamin Basset: pagans and Christians then and now.

Life without mismatch repair.

DNA from cave dirt tells tale of how some Neanderthals disappeared.

I’ve been lax about the open threads because I’m busy. Remember you can see what I’m up to at razib.com. What’s going on? What are you reading? I’m really behind on a lot of things. But, I can say I’ve read Byzantine State and Society three times front to back.

Ten Months After George Floyd’s Death, Minneapolis Residents Are at War Over Policing. I’m feeling more people will make sure to stay in the suburbs or small towns. The re-urbanization wave was overplayed but it was real. But it’s a clown show now in these big cities.

Welcome to the Decade of Concern.

A Synthesis of Game Theory and Quantitative Genetic Models of Social Evolution.

Nick Patterson interview ungated. I should have asked him about human-chimpanzee “complex-speciation”.

Still gated, but Chris Stringer: 1,000,000 years of human evolution. I tried hard to have Chris lay out the basics for us.

Reading chapter 9 of Not Born Yesterday: The Science of Who We Trust and What We Believe. Lots of stuff about the Nazis, so juicy. Will put the post up soon.

5,300-word piece up now on Substack: They came, they saw, they left no trace…except for all of Western Civilization. This is focused on Italy from 1000 BC to 1000 AD. I interleave genetics and history. Even if you are not tempted to become a paid subscriber, do consider signing up for free. I’m devoting more and more of my content generation to Substack, and some of it is not paywalled (for example, my recent piece on the Uyghurs).

In Hawaii, Reimagining Tourism for a Post-Pandemic World. I don’t believe it. But who knows?

Human challenge trials with live coronavirus aren’t the answer to a Covid-19 vaccine. From June 2020. I don’t think this ages well.

NASA’s Perseverance Rover Lands on Mars to Renew Search for Extinct Life.

I’m experimenting with a site called Indie Ocean. It’s basically a physical book storefront. You’ll recognize the list. Here is some information on the project. I’ve been talking to them for months, so this isn’t out of the blue.

It looks like the pandemic is finally ending?