[HN Gopher] The human family tree, it turns out, is complicated
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The human family tree, it turns out, is complicated
Author : dnetesn
Score : 70 points
Date : 2021-07-04 10:36 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (nautil.us)
(TXT) w3m dump (nautil.us)
| Digory wrote:
| I know the facts are the facts, but this is depressing. If this
| holds, it seems our politics are doomed to tribalism and
| paternalism in the long run.
| dcow wrote:
| If you're just discovering that race is a social construct and
| all of our political bickering is better characterized as
| tribalism.. well.. that's not news. But reading this article it
| does appear that there is distinction between some African
| lineage and essentially everybody else. So maybe there is or
| was something innately genetic between those two groups? I
| think the article makes the assertion that modern humans are
| all the same species.
| lkrubner wrote:
| There is no connection between biology and politics save for
| what meanings currently active politically actors attempt to
| assert. Such assertions are purely for current political
| advantage, they are not made in any kind of good faith effort
| to discover the truth.
| whatshisface wrote:
| > _There is no connection between biology and politics_
|
| Connections between biology and politics:
|
| - Municipal water systems have to provide water instead of
| inert gasses or iron ingots.
|
| - Limited human lifespans are directly related to the
| successor problem of monarchies or dictatorships and are a
| major reason why democracies are more stable.
|
| - Whether or not the public believes what propagandists are
| saying is determined by what goes on in their brains, which
| are inscrutable, but undeniably biological.
|
| - Minor phenotypical differences are used by troublemakers to
| start fights, in behaviors ranging from playground mocking,
| to racism and beyond.
| josefx wrote:
| > Limited human lifespans are directly related to the
| successor problem of monarchies or dictatorships and are a
| major reason why democracies are more stable.
|
| Given how long some monarchies have been around and how
| quickly some democracies fall to extremism that would
| actually be interesting to compare.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> Given how long some monarchies have been around_
|
| Don't discount survivorship bias. The Japanese monarchy
| lasted (as a political entity) for 2600 years, but in
| that time consider how many thousands of other
| autocracies rose and fell throughout human civilization.
| It's a bit like pointing at some old, well-preserved
| houses and saying "they sure made houses to last back in
| the day", when in fact all the houses from back-in-the-
| day which were not built to last have long since rotted
| away, and whose presence cannot attest as a
| counterexample.
| est31 wrote:
| Yeah it seems to help that you are on an island. The
| english monarchy has lasted for around the same order of
| magnitude.
| mhuffman wrote:
| >There is no connection between biology and politics save for
| what meanings currently active politically actors attempt to
| assert.
|
| This is outlandishly untrue! Think about the politics (not
| "Politics") within your own family. Now extend that out a bit
| and you have a "tribe" ... and of course that is going to
| have "political" and "Political" ramifications. And on it
| goes ...
|
| As soon as you get more than one person in a group politics
| of some sort will emerge. And "natural" groupings have
| historically been biological.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I think the point is not that biology is never relevant to
| politics, but politics isn't _inherently_ based in race.
| Humans have a huge array of tribal identities and
| affiliations which cross racial lines. The idea that
| "natural" groupings are based on race is absurd. Even in
| the historical context, there are a peletora of examples
| where personal interest trumps biological alliances and
| diverse alliances are formed.
| mhuffman wrote:
| >I think the point is not that biology is never relevant
| to politics, but politics isn't inherently based in race.
| Humans have a huge array of tribal identities and
| affiliations which cross racial lines.
|
| No one said anything about race, but I guess you could
| consider it implicit historically. However, I could
| easily see a tribe of people with multiple races, but
| biologically connected by their genetic relationships. In
| fact, without looking it up, I would think around the
| Mediterranean that was common at some time in the past.
|
| >The idea that "natural" groupings are based on race is
| absurd.
|
| One, no one specified race. But two, before the rise of
| empires (and mega-empires) I would defy you to name a
| single example contrary to that. Before easy
| transportation, every one local in a society was related
| one way or another and likely separated from other groups
| enough for race to count. I don't know how, historically,
| you can get a more "natural" grouping than that!
|
| >Even in the historical context, there are a peletora of
| examples where personal interest trumps biological
| alliances and diverse alliances are formed.
|
| I would be curious if you can name even one historical
| example that did not start off with some sort of
| biological context. All large empires that you can name
| started off as tribes and eventually grew to incorporate
| others. Small ones would likely be even more biologically
| concentrated. Granting that some society can grow and
| start to incorporate other groupings as you suggest.
| brudgers wrote:
| Statistically, humans are chimpanzees as p < 5%.
|
| Of course, accepting such a thing requires valuing science over
| theology.
| folli wrote:
| Care to elaborate? I hope you're not referring to DNA homology.
| brudgers wrote:
| I am referring to the use of DNA as an adjunct to scientific
| racism as in the article where normal variations are treated
| as fundamental differences in worth.
|
| In the extreme it is 23andme emphasis on "18% Welsh but I
| thought I was English" as scientific. Every report ought come
| back as 98.8% Chimpanzee if it was science.
|
| Sure there's a little science. But mostly it is theology. A
| belief that humans are especially special masquerading as
| science.
| sharikone wrote:
| That said I have a very strong preference for marrying a human
| vs a non-human chimpanzee...
| brudgers wrote:
| That marriage is the basis of counterpoint is consistent with
| theology. Not with science.
|
| Marriage customs are a common means of enforcing
| discriminatory societal practices (miscegenation, same sex,
| other religion, etc.). The logical structure of the objection
| is consistent with all of those...they are plug and play for
| chimpanzees.
| ElViajero wrote:
| Hmm, if the chimpanzee is rich with a life expectancy of only
| 35 it may be worth it. On the other side, golddigger is
| probably not the worse thing that people is going to think
| about you.
| gweinberg wrote:
| How is a chimpanzee supposed to get rich? Don't say
| "inherit the money", that just pushes the problem back a
| generation.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I feel like this is critiquing a theory that either I'm not
| familiar with, or is so much of a straw man that I don't
| recognize it.
|
| > The true diversity and complexity of human evolution over the
| last few hundred millennia surpasses even the most unhinged
| imaginings we might have hazarded just a short generation ago.
| But greater clarity has left us with a messier and less elegant
| narrative. Our species' status, it turns out, is "complicated."
|
| What was the elegant but overly simple narrative? What's an
| example of an "unhinged imagining" that we'd now accept as
| boringly true? How long is a short generation?
| peter303 wrote:
| Harvard professor David Reich wrote a popular science book "Who
| We Are" in 2018 about the analysis of of 900+ ancient human
| genomes. He identified the subpopulations mentioned in thus
| article, plus additional ones that dont have snappy names yet. I
| asked him at an archeology talk in early 2021 if he had an update
| to his book. He answered he now has 5000 genomes. But the main
| elements of his 2018 book still hold.
| lkrubner wrote:
| In the ongoing debate between the "lumpers" and the "splitters"
| the splitters are now looking well justified in their belief that
| you can't take every fossil and lump into a broad category known
| as "homo erectus".
|
| Ian Tattersal has been a leader of the splitters for many years
| now, and the basic arguments of his books are looking fairly good
| right now:
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Extinct-Humans-Ian-Tattersall/dp/0813...
|
| Mind you, so many discoveries have been made recently that each
| of these books tends to go obsolete quickly in so far as they try
| to tell a specific story based on the fossils known in a
| particular year. However, the overall argument for the splitters,
| that the "homo" genus has many branches, just like any other
| successful genus, is a strong argument that is reinforced by
| these recent finds. I link to one of Ian Tattersal's books where
| he clearly made the argument for the splitters, and did a good
| job of it.
| Retric wrote:
| It's arguable that many existing branches should be
| consolidated into Homo sapiens including Neanderthals and
| Denisovans based on generic information.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interbreeding_between_archaic_...
|
| As such the lumpers have real support based on current generic
| information. Anatomically distinct branches aren't enough to
| declare something a different species.
|
| Discovery however favors splitters as prestige follows from
| discovery of new branches of humanity.
| beowulfey wrote:
| What is "generic" information? You used this term twice but I
| am not sure what that means in this context.
| czzr wrote:
| They meant "genetic"
| msrenee wrote:
| I'd expect that kind of rhetoric from one of you lumpers.
|
| Seriously though, the more I learn about speciation, the more
| I realize how imperfect our system is at categorizing life.
| Obviously lots of cases are pretty clear-cut, but there's so
| many examples where you almost have to treat every population
| as its own distinct entity.
|
| My definition of species honestly changes depending on the
| context. For conservation efforts, if you don't look at the
| separation and genetic distinctness between populations which
| would happily interbreed if it weren't for geographical
| restraints, you're liable to lose both genetic diversity and
| location-specific genetic adaptations that may be present in
| one population. For human evolution, I don't know what it
| really matters whether we call it one species or twelve. It's
| a very artificial system that will never be 100% agreed upon
| by experts. Being hominid fossils, they'll be studied
| intently down to the tiniest sliver of bone no matter where
| they're placed taxonomically. We all like nice, neat
| categories, but life is much messier than our naming system
| wants it to be and I'm not sure I really care where we draw
| these lines. If I'm missing a good reason for it, please
| educate me.
| [deleted]
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