quote:Of the tribal hunter gatherers still in existence today, some lead lives of great violence, whereas other groups live in societies with no warfare and very little murder. Here I find that hunter gatherers that belong to mitochondrial haplotypes L0, L1 and L2 do not have a culture of ritualized fights. In contrast to this, almost all L3 derived hunter gatherers have a more belligerent culture that includes ritualized fights such as wrestling, stick fights or headhunting expeditions. This appears to be independent of their environment, because ritualized fights occur in all climates, from the tropics to the arctic. There is also a correlation between mitochondrial haplotypes and warfare propensity or the use of murder and suicide to resolve conflicts. This, in the light of the “recent out of Africa” hypothesis” suggests that the tribe that left Africa 80.000 years ago performed ritualized fights. In contrast to the more pacific tradition of non-L3 foragers, it may also have had a tendency towards combat. The data implicate that the entire human population outside Africa is descended from only two closely related sub-branches of L3 that practiced ritual fighting and probably had a higher propensity towards warfare and the use of murder for conflict resolution. This may have crucially influenced the subsequent history of the world.
Curious that the African hunter-gatherers examined in this study are less violent than the other hunter-gatherers. So much for "Negroids" being prone to violence!
Posts: 7080 | From: Fallbrook, CA | Registered: Mar 2004
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This sounds silly, a correlation between haplotype and Murder/suicide/warfare?!
Posts: 1502 | From: Dies Irae | Registered: Oct 2010
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^This is probably the most idiotic paper I've ever seen published by Nature! Is this a joke? Has this guy ever heard of Franz Boas? What the hell?!
quote:This, in the light of the “recent out of Africa” hypothesis” suggests that the tribe that left Africa 80.000 years ago performed ritualized fights.
This was supposedly even before behavioral modernity so what makes him think behaviors don't drastically change despite pre-determined haplogroup affiliation?!
What is in a mtDNA haplogroup that codes for propensity to violence? Where's his comprehensive data set showing this correlation? Where is his demographic data out side of his select ethnography of certain hunter-gatherers? Where does he statistically account for that which is specifically due to contingencies which lead to distinct cultural histories/practices? Where is his archaeological data showing signs of warfare and ritualistic fighting being associated with L3 groups going so far into the past?
^This is worse than the comparative method used by archaeologists to reconstruct ancient symbolic meaning and life ways through modern ethnoghraphic interpretation. It is beyond neo-evolutionary and goes all the way back to the nature vs. nurture nonsense. I cannot believe that this was read at a national conference. It is the most absurd thing I've read in a VERY long time. I cannot stress enough how utterly stupid and brainless this paper is.
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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quote:Originally posted by Truthcentric: Curious that the African hunter-gatherers examined in this study are less violent than the other hunter-gatherers. So much for "Negroids" being prone to violence!
You should know that this word "Negroid" has absolutely no meaning whatsoever and even though I see your point, it is misplaced. Blacks carry L3 lessen one forgets. As stated, this paper is baseless. There is no difference in propensity to behavior across populations. The nature vs. nurture nonsense has all but been settled in anthropology. Anthropologists acknowledge that culture mucks everything up to the point where it makes the study of things like evolutionary psychology useless (which is why it is heavily criticized by anthropologists and isn't even seen as a legitimate discipline by them).
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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quote:Originally posted by Sundjata: ^This is probably the most idiotic paper I've ever seen published by Nature! Is this a joke? Has this guy ever heard of Franz Boas? What the hell?!
quote:This, in the light of the “recent out of Africa” hypothesis” suggests that the tribe that left Africa 80.000 years ago performed ritualized fights.
This was supposedly even before behavioral modernity so what makes him think behaviors don't drastically change despite pre-determined haplogroup affiliation?!
What is in a mtDNA haplogroup that codes for propensity to violence? Where's his comprehensive data set showing this correlation? Where is his demographic data out side of his select ethnography of certain hunter-gatherers? Where does he statistically account for that which is specifically due to contingencies which lead to distinct cultural histories/practices? Where is his archaeological data showing signs of warfare and ritualistic fighting being associated with L3 groups going so far into the past?
^This is worse than the comparative method used by archaeologists to reconstruct ancient symbolic meaning and life ways through modern ethnoghraphic interpretation. It is beyond neo-evolutionary and goes all the way back to the nature vs. nurture nonsense. I cannot believe that this was read at a national conference. It is the most absurd thing I've read in a VERY long time. I cannot stress enough how utterly stupid and brainless this paper is.
You may be seeing more of this in the future, haplogroup racism
quote:Originally posted by Sundjata:
quote:Originally posted by Truthcentric: Curious that the African hunter-gatherers examined in this study are less violent than the other hunter-gatherers. So much for "Negroids" being prone to violence!
You should know that this word "Negroid" has absolutely no meaning whatsoever and even though I see your point, it is misplaced. Blacks carry L3 lessen one forgets.
you say "Negroid" has absolutely no meaning whatsoever. Then in the very next sentence you say "Blacks" carry. -as if the term "Blacks" is clearly defined.
you mention L3 a precisely defined measurable marker. Can what a "Black" is be defined this way? You dismiss a term , Negroid and replace it with an even vaguer term, "Black" This makes no sense
quote:Originally posted by Sundjata: As stated, this paper is baseless. There is no difference in propensity to behavior across populations. The nature vs. nurture nonsense has all but been settled in anthropology. Anthropologists acknowledge that culture mucks everything up to the point where it makes the study of things like evolutionary psychology useless (which is why it is heavily criticized by anthropologists and isn't even seen as a legitimate discipline by them). [/qb]
An interesting. well known book on the subject was written by M.I.T professor Steven Pinker called The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. Here's a video:
Pinker argues that modern science has challenged three "linked dogmas" that constitute the dominant view of human nature in intellectual life:
* the blank slate (the mind has no innate traits) — empiricism * the noble savage (people are born good and corrupted by society) — romanticism * the ghost in the machine (each of us has a soul that makes choices free from biology)[1] — mind/body dualism
Much of the book is dedicated to examining fears of the social and political consequences of his view of human nature:
* "the fear of inequality" * "the fear of imperfectability" * "the fear of determinism" * "the fear of nihilism"
Pinker claims these fears are non sequiturs, and that the blank slate view of human nature would actually be a greater threat if it were true. For example, he argues that political equality does not require sameness, but policies that treat people as individuals with rights; that moral progress doesn't require the human mind to be naturally free of selfish motives, only that it has other motives to counteract them; that responsibility doesn't require behavior to be uncaused, only that it respond to praise and blame; and that meaning in life doesn't require that the process that shaped the brain must have a purpose, only that the brain itself must have purposes. He also argues that grounding moral values in claims about a blank slate opens them to the possibility of being overturned by future empirical discoveries; and that belief in a blank slate human nature encourages destructive social trends such as persecution of the successful and totalitarian social engineering.
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quote:Originally posted by lioness: you say "Negroid" has absolutely no meaning whatsoever. Then in the very next sentence you say "Blacks" carry. -as if the term "Blacks" is clearly defined.
you mention L3 a precisely defined measurable marker. Can what a "Black" is be defined this way? You dismiss a term , Negroid and replace it with an even vaguer term, "Black" This makes no sense
How is Black EVEN vaguer? Relative to what? By asserting that "Negroid" is less vague you give it validity.
Black is not since it denotes a color. It IS clearly defined. Since it is clearly defined and many of the people referred to as Negroid have nearly Black complexions, I am able to generalize under the flexibility of language and use the term "Black" euphemistically to describe dark-skinned people who were in the past, formally referred to as Negroid, though the problems inherent in "Negroid" allows me to broaden its applicability. My definition is not rigid and is personal/subjective. I do not insist on the objectivity of my description as would someone using the term Negroid. For instance, how do you know that I was not referring to myself when i claimed that Black people carry L3 also? Socially, it has meaning. If you don't find the term useful, then don't use it but it has social meaning to the effect that people within my social context, understand in what way I'm applying the term so it is not meaningless or vague (e.g. an African American = a Black person). You are confused.
quote:An interesting. well known book on the subject was written by M.I.T professor Steven Pinker called The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature.
Cool. Have you read it and can you give us a summary of the points that are relevant to the topic?
Posts: 4021 | From: Bay Area, CA | Registered: Mar 2007
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The thing about the nonsense term "negroid" is its implication that there are "negroes" then there are "negroids". In the racist old-fashioned anthropology there were "negroes", i.e. the true ones then there were gradations away from the ideal type typology of "negroes". This is the Seligman hypothesis.
Curiously enough these old-fashioned anthropologists never did the same for East Asian "mongoloids" in that there were no "true mongols" that served as the ideal type for the East Asian types.
But though we don't have "blanco" and "blancoid" we have "caucasian" and "caucasoid".
The possible advantage in using the term "black"--even though I would prefer the term "African" -- is that it does not make those pseudo-anthropological distinctions.
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Africa is a place, not a race, it is no good as an ethnic term. Boers and Berbers are Africans. Black Americans are not.
Posts: 870 | From: uk | Registered: Apr 2011
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The Caucasus is a place not a race. Mongolia is a place not a race. Your tripod is whack. Eurocentrism is base. Boers are Dutch European interlopers in Africa. Black Americans are of African descent.
Again, nonsense. In the science of zoology the classification of living organisms is a basic criterion for analysis. Sometimes, of course, there are mis-classifications which are later corrected. But a more serious problematic occurs when there is judgmental debate as to what the proper classificatory criteria should be.
But a key point in responding to your erroneous statement is that very often floral and faunal living species and types are classified according to the ecology or environment where they evolved. In other words, such types are classified as if they are part of some specific ecological environment.
Thus we have flora defined as "African violet", "African wild rice" as being native to particular environments. The same for "African elephant", "Asian elephant", "Polar bear", "Alaskan grey wolf", "Artic tern", "Artic fox", etc, etc.
Humans are part of the world's faunal ecology. The African environment is the area where some humans have evolved over thousands of years. Thus it would not be erroneous to classify those sub-groups of humans that evolved on the specific environments of Africa as "African homo sapiens".
In that regard the groups that evolved in Africa and groups that still carry those phenotypical traits despite migrations are best classified as "African". In much the same way that if some African elephants are transported to Asia and breed successfully there over many generations and still carry the phenotypical traits of the African elephant over time, the classification of "African elephant" would still be valid zoologically.
In the same vein, terms such as "negro", "negroid" "caucasoid" would appear to be scientifically invalid--even though they are used by some scientist--in a rather naive way.
What tends to confuse some people who are not thinking logically is the fact that the African environment produced certain phenotypical traits that are found in other ecologies. The erroneous thinking on this is the invalid assumption that such traits must have origined from some other environment.
The illogic of this kind of naive thinking is evidenced by the fact traits such as height or blood type, when they show universal commonalities are generally not assumed to be of any specific ecological origin. Example: the fact that some Wolof, say, carry blood type O+ and some Swede carries the same type does not imply that the Wolof got such a trait from the Swede.
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