tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post3520835016964669934..comments2023-06-07T09:04:36.390-04:00Comments on More Grumbine Science: We're all relatedRobert Grumbinehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10783453972811796911noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-2157131708915617462008-11-04T17:28:00.000-05:002008-11-04T17:28:00.000-05:00Well I did enjoy the book. The controversies were ...Well I did enjoy the book. The controversies were naturally discussed from one point of view, but were diplomatically handled. There was some good detail fleshing out the European discussion that I remember from Olson's book (though I did read that some time ago, I might have to re-read it), and the "World" section at the end is a summary of a lot of Olson's book.<BR/><BR/>The descriptive bits of each of the women is probably unnecessary, but I enjoyed them to some extent - I finished the rest of the book and came back to them as if they were a separate document.<BR/><BR/>Thye very last chapter is in danger of stretching this a bit, almost straying into metaphysical ideas, but he does get to spend a lot of time thinking about this stuff.<BR/><BR/>All in all a good book, despite the title (which seems to appear 'titlised' all through the book, and suggests maybe an external influence and a search & replace, but that's a guess). It's obviously a bit behind the times now and just to see the advances in the decade up to its publish date, suggests it could be considerably behind now. <BR/><BR/>I'll look for a more up to date one to read in a year or two, when I get through my current reading pile (which includes some AR4 chapters....)skankyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14584908320777937193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-42904074588672878282008-10-20T10:03:00.000-04:002008-10-20T10:03:00.000-04:00I've not forgotten to post what I think of the Syk...I've not forgotten to post what I think of the Sykes book. I'm only halfway through at the moment - having very young children in the house is reducing reading time.<BR/><BR/>That said, despite the title (I had to look up who Brian Sykes was before buying it put me off so much), I'm enjoying it so far. It's at a bit of a different level to the Olson book, but there's some good overlaps and the writing is entertaining, as well as some of the anecdotes. <BR/><BR/>As a layman, it's interesting just how ad-hoc this early genetic research was (DNA didn't strike me as lending itself to that approach but it shows how all science can, I guess). Also when Sykes discusses how laborious early DNA techniques were in the early '90s and how "now" there's sophisticated machines to do a lot of it, it's easy to forget that the book was written less than ten years from the period he's discussing. This shows how rapidly this field has progressed.skankyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14584908320777937193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-72935021417411281962008-10-13T08:54:00.000-04:002008-10-13T08:54:00.000-04:00There's a couple of amusing corollaries that I pic...There's a couple of amusing corollaries that I picked up recently from Dawkins' "Ancestor's Tale": If you go back far enough then you reach a point where someone who was alive then is the (an) ancestor of everyone alive today. In fact there are several such people. Keep going back and you soon reach a time when _everyone_ alive then is the ancestor of everyone alive today.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-8990371910079861852008-10-13T08:15:00.000-04:002008-10-13T08:15:00.000-04:00The first paper is also athttp://www.nature.com/na...The first paper is also at<BR/><A HREF="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v431/n7008/abs/nature02842.html" REL="nofollow">http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v431/n7008/abs/nature02842.html</A>, and gives the most recent common ancestor estimate as a few thousand years. Call it on the order of 100 generations. Awfully recent. When I first heard this (it's a 2004 paper) I was amazed, but then I started looking at the numbers, and learned how few infusions of 'outside influence' are needed to leave an observable influence in genomes.<BR/><BR/>The second and third notes you give subtly (which I'll make unsubtle) destroy, again, the notion of race as a biological concept. The thing is, biological races are defined by things which express themselves in the organism. The Alu's the second uses, and the mtDNA analyses used in the book, both depend on analysis of parts of our genome which <I>don't</I> express themselves.<BR/><BR/>Do let me know what you think of the book when you finish. Judging a book by its title (seldom chosen by the author in the first place) is even more removed than judging by its cover, but I confess I cringed at the title.Robert Grumbinehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10783453972811796911noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5337555368793819627.post-13233790225818185932008-10-12T17:03:00.000-04:002008-10-12T17:03:00.000-04:00Steve Olson has a book "Mapping Human History" whi...Steve Olson has a book "Mapping Human History" which covers this. His discussion has a more formal basis in a published study. I have the book, but not the paper.A quick search on GS threw up this, which looks like it might well be it:<BR/><BR/>http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2004Natur.431..562R<BR/><BR/>Quite pertinently to the linked discussion above is this article (http://schools.tdsb.on.ca/rhking/departments/science/bio/evol_pop_dyn/does_race_exist.pdf) which has this paragraph:<BR/><BR/>"The results of these studies indicate that genetic analyses can distinguish groups of But caution is warranted.<BR/>people according to their geographic origin. But caution is warranted. The groups<BR/>easiest to resolve were those that were widely separated from one another geographically. Such samples maximize the<BR/>genetic variation among groups. When Bamshad and his co-workers used their 100 Alu polymorphisms to try to classify a<BR/>sample of individuals from southern India into a separate group, the Indians instead had more in common with either<BR/>Europeans or Asians. In other words, because India has been subject to many genetic influences from Europe and Asia,<BR/>people on the subcontinent did not group into a unique cluster. We concluded that many hundreds--or perhaps<BR/>thousands--of polymorphisms might have to be examined to distinguish between groups whose ancestors have historically<BR/>interbred with multiple populations."<BR/><BR/>I've only skim-read it so far. I'll read it properly later. <BR/><BR/>I'm currently reading "Seven Daughters Of Eve" by Bryan Sykes (just started), which is also proving interesting, and related.skankyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14584908320777937193noreply@blogger.com