The Bottleneck Hypothesis
Most medical geneticists believe that these common Ashkenazi genetic diseases are a product of population bottlenecks. A population bottleneck occurs when a population goes through a period in which it is quite small. This often happens in the founding of a population. In a bottleneck, gene frequencies change almost randomly just as you can get unrepresentative results different from 50-50 when you flip a coin just a few times, or when you poll 20 people rather than 1,000, in a population...
Ashkenazi Intellectual Prominence
Jewish intellectual prominence is striking. As we have said, Ashkenazi Jews are vastly overrepresented in science. Their numbers among prominent scientists are roughly ten times greater than you'd expect from their share of the population in the United States and Europe. Over the past two generations they have won more than a quarter of all Nobel science prizes, although they make up less than one-six-hundredth of the world's population. Although they represent less than 3 percent of the U.S....
The Ashkenazi Mutations
The best-known of the genetic diseases disproportionately affecting Ashkenazi Jews are Tay-Sachs disease, Gaucher's disease, and the breast-cancer mutations BRCA1 and BRCA2, but there are a number of others, such as Niemann-Pick disease, Canavan disease, and familial dysautonomia. Some of these cause neurological problems. And they're unusually common among Ashkenazi Jews so common that they constitute an enduring puzzle in human genetics. In principle, absent some special cause, genetic...
Limone Sul Garda
In 1980, Italian researchers found that a man from Limone sul Garda a small lakeside village in northern Italy had very low levels of HDL good cholesterol and high levels of triglycerides, yet showed no sign of heart disease. Both of his parents had lived to advanced ages. Their curiosity whetted, the researchers performed blood tests on all 1,000 inhabitants of Limone and found a total of 43 people with this same unusual blood-lipid profile. The local church had birth records going back...
Examples Of Introgression
Introgression as an important evolutionary force is more than just a theory Geneticists know of many cases in which it has definitely occurred. Most of the examples that are well understood involve domesticated animals and plants, mainly because there are practical economic reasons for undertaking close genetic studies of domesticated species. Introgression is hardly rare in fact, it is ubiquitous among domesticated plants. For example, the wheat that produces our daily bread is derived from...
Conclusion
A burst of innovation followed the expansion of modern humans out of Africa. Signs of that change existed in Africa before the expansion, but the pattern became much stronger in Europe some 20,000 years later, after anatomically modern humans had encountered and displaced the Neanderthals. That transition to full behavioral modernity as seen in the archaeological record occurred patchily and finished later in other parts of Eurasia. We argue that even limited gene flow from Neanderthals and...
Under The Yoke
As Rousseau wrote, Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.15 In the days before agriculture, governments didn't really exist. Most of the hunter-gatherers were egalitarian anarchists They didn't have chiefs or bosses, and they didn't have much use for anyone who tried to be boss. Bushmen today still laugh at wannabe big men. Perhaps we could learn from them. But farmers do have chiefs It goes with the territory. Grain farmers store food, and so they have something valuable to steal,...
The Malthusian Trap
In An Essay on the Principle of Population, Thomas Malthus in 1798 observed that population tends to outrun food supply, since population increases geometrically while food supply increases arithmetically. He wrote The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race. The vices of mankind are active and able ministers of depopulation. They are the precursors in the great army of...
Bibliography
Achilli, Alessandro, Anna Olivieri, Maria Pala, Ene Metspalu, Simona Fornarino, Vincenza Battaglia, Matteo Accetturo et al. Mitochondrial DNA Variation of Modern Tuscans Supports the Near Eastern Origin of Etruscans. American Journal of Human Genetics 80, no 4 2007 759-768. Allen, Robert C. Agriculture and the Origins of the State in Ancient Egypt. Explorations in Economic History 34, no. 2 1997 135-154. Anderson, Roy C. The Ecological Relationships of Meningeal Worm and Native Cervids in North...
The Protoindoeuropeans
What we know about the Proto-Indo-Europeans, as we call this group, is mostly derived from comparative linguistics, supplemented by archaeology.15 We know that they were stock-raisers and grain farmers, probably depending more on their animals than on grain. They raised cattle and sheep, along with goats and pigs. The cow played a paramount role, both in daily life and in religion. They had domesticated the horse, and in fact may have been the first to do so. The Proto-Indo-Europeans knew...