[MGSA-L] Fwd: Golden Dawn Abuse of History: Sparta

Dan Tompkins pericles at temple.edu
Fri Dec 26 12:42:40 PST 2014


Another worthwhile comment on Cavalli-Sforza

Dan

Sent from my iPhone

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Colin McLarty <colin.mclarty at CASE.EDU>
> Date: December 26, 2014 at 3:32:25 PM EST
> To: CLASSICS-L at LSV.UKY.EDU
> Subject: Re: Golden Dawn Abuse of History: Sparta
> Reply-To: Classical Greek and Latin Discussion Group <CLASSICS-L at LSV.UKY.EDU>
> 
> I doubt anyone has collected a massive critique.  Cavalli-Sforza is
> enormously respected for making important and nearly impossible problems of
> human migration over the past 150,000 years approachable by data.  For an
> idea of what that means, it begins more or less when human started
> migrating out of Africa, and started making tools from flakes taken off of
> prepared stone cores instead of putting an edge on a stone and using that.
> The most recent ice age glaciation began about 110,000 years ago and ended
> about 15,000 years ago.  Human populations were very small during the
> glaciation.  People do not even like to make guesses but there are
> estimates that the population of Europe during the glaciation was well
> under 10,000 (that is not a typo, and not short for some number of
> millions, it is really10,000 people).
> 
> But these problems may just be impossible.  With the genetic technology of
> the 1990s and before, collecting data was slow and difficult.  As it has
> sped up, it has also revealed that the range of data is even more immense
> than anyone guessed.  And you run into extremely contentious problems of
> defining what is "European origin" or "Chinese," or "African," let alone
> tracking more detailed migrations of people.
> 
> So people are not inclined to criticize a brilliant effort.  But as Jon
> Marks says it is hard to know exactly what to make of the particular claims.
> 
> Colin
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Fri, Dec 26, 2014 at 2:37 PM, Dan Tompkins <pericles at temple.edu> wrote:
>> 
>> Thanks very much for this. Fuller quote.
>> 
>> Are other Cavalli-Sforza results this dubious?  I'd bet someone's worked
>> this up.
>> 
>> Dan
>> 
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> 
>>> On Dec 26, 2014, at 2:22 PM, Colin McLarty <colin.mclarty at CASE.EDU>
>> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Thanks to Dan for digging into this, but the quote from Jon Marks got
>> badly
>>> shortened, so it left out the actual criticism of Cavalli-Sforza's
>>> conclusion.  Marks knows genetics and statistics very well as do a good
>>> many anthropologists.  The fuller quote is
>>> 
>>>> In fact, I have always thought that the root of Cavalli-Sforza's failure
>>> to connect with the
>>>> broader anthropological community is simply that most anthropologists
>>> simply do not know
>>>> how seriously to take research that can contrast the DNA of 64 samples
>> of
>>> "Chinese ..
>>>> . living in the San Francisco Bay Area", 94 samples from "two groups of
>>> African pygmies",
>>>> and 110 samples from "individuals of European origin from ongoing
>> studies
>>> in our laboratories
>>>> or reported in the literature", and conclude sweepingly that "ancestral
>>> Europeans are
>>>> estimated to be an admixture of 65% ancestral Chinese and 35% ancestral
>>> Africans"
>>>> (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA, 88 839, 1991).
>>> However
>>>> sophisticated the statistics, they simply cannot transcend the
>>> limitations of
>>>> unsophisticated epistemologies.
>>> 
>>> The samples are explicitly spotty and poorly characterized.  It is a safe
>>> bet that all living humans are of African ancestry (though few of
>>> specifically pygmy ancestry). So why is that 35% not reported as 100%?
>>> And what are either "ancestral Europeans" or "individuals of European
>>> origin"?   Sophisticated crunching of numbers leads nowhere if the
>> numbers
>>> are poorly obtained.
>>> 
>>> Colin
>>> 
>>> On Fri, Dec 26, 2014 at 1:31 PM, DANIEL P. Tompkins <pericles at temple.edu
>>> 
>>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Thanks, Jim,
>>>> 
>>>> I'm copying the Modern Greek Studies list as well
>>>> 
>>>> I went to JStor and did a quick search for what recent scholarship in
>> bio,
>>>> anthro and other disciplines has had to say.  There is a lot of positive
>>>> comment, but also serious reservations, e.g. this from Jonathan Marks in
>>>> The
>>>> Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2006 (reviewing Lurkin's
>>>> book on Cavalli-Sforza).
>>>> 
>>>> It sounds as if one should be careful here.   I have not dug very deep.
>>>> 
>>>> I have always thought that the root of Cavalli-Sforza's failure to
>> connect
>>>> with the broader anthropological community is simply that most
>>>> anthropologists simply do not know how seriously to take research that
>> can
>>>> contrast the DNA of 64 samples of "Chinese in the San Francisco Bay
>> Area,"
>>>> 94 samples from two groups of African pygmies, and 110 samples from
>>>> "individuals of European origin from ongoing studies in our
>> laboratories or
>>>> of the National Academy of Sciences USA."  However sophisticated the
>>>> statistics, they simply cannot transcend the limitations of
>> unsophisticated
>>>> epistemologies.
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> Dan
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Fri, Dec 26, 2014 at 12:54 PM, James H. Dee <jhdee1243 at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Almost certainly to *The History & Geography of Human Genes* (Princeton
>>>>> 1994), a thousand-plus-page work -- done *before* the analysis of the
>>>>> genome was completed in the late 90s.  There must be better & more
>>>> detailed
>>>>> information available now -- is there a population biologist in the
>>>> house?
>>>>> There's a less-indigestible version, *The Great Human Diasporas*
>> (1995).
>>>>> As a recently-released study of "African-American" & "Native-American"
>>>>> genetics shows, there can be significant gaps between "cultural
>> identity"
>>>>> and "biological identity."
>>>>> J. H. Dee
>>>>> Austin, TX
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Fri, Dec 26, 2014 at 10:38 AM, Elias j Theodoracopoulos <
>>>>> ejtheod at hunter.cuny.edu> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>>> For those of us not up-to-date on anthropology or genetics, what is
>> the
>>>>>> reference in "Cavalli-Sforza"? Thank you.
>>>>>> E. J. Theodoracopoulos
>>>>>> Hunter College, CUNY
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> ________________________________________
>>>>>> From: Classical Greek and Latin Discussion Group [
>>>> CLASSICS-L at LSV.UKY.EDU
>>>>> ]
>>>>>> on behalf of Aristide Caratzas [acaratzas at GMAIL.COM]
>>>>>> Sent: Thursday, December 25, 2014 3:50 PM
>>>>>> To: CLASSICS-L at LSV.UKY.EDU
>>>>>> Subject: Re: [CLASSICS-L] Golden Dawn Abuse of History: Sparta
>>>>>> 
>>>>>> Concepts such a "purity of Greek descent" are clearly outdated, given
>>>> the
>>>>>> fact that DNA now allows us to establish the biological relationships
>>>>>> between human groupings; it is interesting to note that Cavalli-Sforza
>>>>> and
>>>>>> his students have established a genetic "map" of Greece, which attests
>>>> to
>>>>>> the fact that 95% of the native population below a line formed by
>>>>>> Dyrrhachion, Monastiri (in today's Skopje statelet), Philippoupolis
>>>>> (today
>>>>>> Plovdiv, Bulgaria) and Pyrgos (Burgas, also in Bulgaria) all the way
>> to
>>>>>> Crete and including the Ionian coast and Cyprus, has a continuity in a
>>>>>> *biologica*l presence (as distinct from *cultural *identity and the
>>>>>> elements on which it draws) of about 12,000 years.
>>>> 
>> 
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