Genes, Culture, and the Levant

Paper.

I have discussed this paper before (see here), interpreting the genetic-cultural correlations with respect to long-term pan-European biopolitics. I consider that interpretation very important, and the main reason why the paper is important (from my perspective). I would suggest re-reading those Western Destiny posts.

However, there are some more minor points of interest with respect to the paper, which I will briefly examine here.

Excerpts, emphasis added, plus my comments:

Abstract

The Levant is a region in the Near East with an impressive record of continuous human existence and major cultural developments since the Paleolithic period. Genetic and archeological studies present solid evidence placing the Middle East and the Arabian Peninsula as the first stepping-stone outside Africa. There is, however, little understanding of demographic changes in the Middle East, particularly the Levant, after the first Out-of-Africa expansion and how the Levantine peoples relate genetically to each other and to their neighbors. In this study we analyze more than 500,000 genome-wide SNPs in 1,341 new samples from the Levant and compare them to samples from 48 populations worldwide. Our results show recent genetic stratifications in the Levant are driven by the religious affiliations of the populations within the region. Cultural changes within the last two millennia appear to have facilitated/maintained admixture between culturally similar populations from the Levant, Arabian Peninsula, and Africa. The same cultural changes seem to have resulted in genetic isolation of other groups by limiting admixture with culturally different neighboring populations. Consequently, Levant populations today fall into two main groups: one sharing more genetic characteristics with modern-day Europeans and Central Asians, and the other with closer genetic affinities to other Middle Easterners and Africans. Finally, we identify a putative Levantine ancestral component that diverged from other Middle Easterners ∼23,700–15,500 years ago during the last glacial period, and diverged from Europeans ∼15,900–9,100 years ago between the last glacial warming and the start of the Neolithic.

Again, culture, relating to endogamy vs. admixture, can significantly influence a people’s genetic makeup and their relative genetic kinship (and, hence, ethnic genetic interests) with other populations.

We show that religious affiliation had a strong impact on the genomes of the Levantines. In particular, conversion of the region’s populations to Islam appears to have introduced major rearrangements in populations’ relations through admixture with culturally similar but geographically remote populations, leading to genetic similarities between remarkably distant populations like Jordanians, Moroccans, and Yemenis. Conversely, other populations, like Christians and Druze, became genetically isolated in the new cultural environment. 

Thus, the main point of interest.

We reconstructed the genetic structure of the Levantines and found that a pre-Islamic expansion Levant was more genetically similar to Europeans than to Middle Easterners.

This is an interesting secondary point, and one that must be considered when evaluating Levantine populations in the Classical World; for example, in the Roman Empire (and as immigrants to Rome itself).  The Levantines of that time were genetically more similar to Europeans than are Middle Easterners of today.  It is also reasonable to consider pre-Turkish Anatolians to be more similar to Europeans than Turks of today.

Genome-wide surveys in the Levant are limited and most of our knowledge comes from studies assessing the relationship of Diaspora Jewish groups to a Levantine/Middle Eastern origin [6], [7]. These studies show that the Jews form a distinctive cluster in the Middle East…

Note – Middle East. 

In this study we analyze newly-generated genome-wide data from Lebanon in addition to individuals from 48 published global populations…The results suggest endogamous practices among the religious groups of Lebanon within a small geographical area not exceeding 10,452 km2 (half the size of the state of New Jersey or one third the size of Belgium…

Culture can lead to endogamy, with consequent genetic effects.

…an unsupervised…

Unsupervised = more objective,

…clustering method (ADMIXTURE) [10] was applied to the Lebanese dataset (Figure S1A). At K = 2, which showed the lowest cross-validation error (Figure S1B), Christians present one major component (∼82% on average per individual), which is also found in Druze and in lower frequencies in Muslims; in contrast, the second component is almost exclusive to Muslims with a lower representation in Druze. At K = 3 and K = 4, new components most abundant in Lebanese Muslims are shown, probably reflecting recent admixture after the split from the other Lebanese groups.

OK.

Ashkenazi Jews are drawn towards the Caucasus and Eastern Europe, reflecting historical admixture events with Europeans, while Sephardi Jews cluster tightly with the Levantine groups. These results are consistent with previous studies reporting higher European genome-wide admixture in Ashkenazi Jews compared with other Jews…

This is exactly what I’ve been talking about with Eurasian PCA and why some Ashkenazi Jews begin to overlap with Southern Europeans; it is because of the Eastern European admixture in those Jews.

The population tree (Figure 3A) splits Levantine populations in two branches: one leading to Europeans and Central Asians that includes Lebanese, Armenians, Cypriots, Druze and Jews, as well as Turks, Iranians and Caucasian populations; and a second branch composed of Palestinians, Jordanians, Syrians, as well as North Africans, Ethiopians, Saudis, and Bedouins. The tree shows a correlation between religion and the population structures in the Levant: all Jews (Sephardi and Ashkenazi) cluster in one branch; Druze from Mount Lebanon and Druze from Mount Carmel are depicted on a private branch; and Lebanese Christians form a private branch with the Christian populations of Armenia and Cyprus placing the Lebanese Muslims as an outer group. The predominantly Muslim populations of Syrians, Palestinians and Jordanians cluster on branches with other Muslim populations as distant as Morocco and Yemen. 

Once again, we see how cultural affiliation, in this case religion, influences genetic affiliation.

ADMIXTURE identifies at K = 10 an ancestral component (light green) with a geographically restricted distribution representing ∼50% of the individual component in Ethiopians, Yemenis, Saudis, and Bedouins, decreasing towards the Levant, with higher frequency (∼25%) in Syrians, Jordanians, and Palestinians, compared with other Levantines (4%–20%). The geographical distribution pattern of this component (Figure 4A, 4B) correlates with the pattern of the Islamic expansion, but its presence in Lebanese Christians, Sephardi and Ashkenazi Jews, Cypriots and Armenians might suggest that its spread to the Levant could also represent an earlier event. Besides this component, the most frequent ancestral component (shown in dark blue) in the Levantines (42–68%) is also present, at lower frequencies, in Europe and Central Asia (Figure 4A, 4C). We found that this Levantine component is closer to the European component (dark green) (FST = 0.035) than to the Arabian Peninsula/East Africa component (light green) (FST = 0.046). Our estimates show that the Levantine and the Arabian Peninsula/East African components diverged ∼23,700-15,500 y.a., while the Levantine and European components diverged ∼15,900-9,100 y.a. 

All minor points of interest.

Our time estimate of divergence between the Levantine and European components (∼15,900-9,100 y.a) overlaps with the transition to agriculture in the Levant ∼11,000 y.a but is also slightly earlier than the proposed expansion to Europe starting at ∼9,000 y.a. [23]–[25]. In agreement with this, a recent study of complete mtDNA sequences also proposed earlier expansion dates (19,000-12,000 y.a) of certain female lineages from the Near East to Europe [26]. These results suggest that population migration to Europe from the Near East could have started after the LGM warming and continued until the Neolithic. 

Historical genetic points of some interest.

In addition, these results show that the modern European genetic component is more recent than would be expected from a component that developed from the initial peopling of Europe in the Upper Paleolithic ∼40,000 y.a.

The “movement” weeps bitter Ice Age tears.

…recent cultural developments, such as the founding and spread of major world religions, have had a strong impact on population stratifications in the Levant.

Thus, as the aforementioned Western Destiny posts make clear, raciocultural-civilizational political constructs (e.g., an Imperium restricted solely to indigenous Europeans) can have strong genetic population effects leading to greater pan-European cohesion and greater distinctiveness compared to other groups.

Odds and Ends, 2/25/24

In der news.

There is a lot of stupidity out there on Der Right praising “classical liberalism” and “democracy.” These idiots think we live in Periclean Greece. Even if we focus on a purely White electorate, there are issues.

A problem is that the average person really isn’t very bright, is conformist, and is easily manipulated by those with more cunning and greater media access and social power. So, putting aside election fraud, hate speech laws, and the banning of political parties (the first an American problem and the latter two European ones), even under optimal situations, “voting” in a “democracy” is to a large extent a fraud. The herd can be manipulated into voting for who the System wants and even if the herd goes off the reservation and elects a populist that populist will turn out to be a fraud (more manipulation) or will have his agenda stymied by the System. You can talk all you want about restricting the voting franchise (in general, a good idea), but eventually it inevitably degenerates into “one hominid, one vote.” Then we have the plusses and minuses of pure democracy vs. representative democracy. In the former, “rule by the people” is more direct, but, besides the reality that “the people” will be manipulated, in this scenario there is no filter between the “will of the people” (sic) and enactment (of course, in America we also have elite rule by judges, but I’m talking in general here). A representative democracy puts a filter in between the people and enactment, but, besides the manipulation question again, there really is no remedy for the representatives going against their voters – other than “voting them out” in the next election, to be replaced by another equally bad.

You can say that at least popular voting in theory protects against elite free riding. But in practice it does not. Maybe we need totalitarian democracy instead.

The other shoe drops:

On the concept of de-nazification: “De-nazification… means the prohibition of all kinds of neo-Nazi movements… We have to get rid of those people who maintain this concept and support this practice and try to preserve it.”

I call on ALL those who promoted the “Putin is our guy, he’s playing a deep game, the cosmic wheel is turning” memes to publicly RESIGN from any and all leadership roles within the “movement” and just shut the hell up.

See this. Consider the radically different – sometimes even opposite! – correlations between vitamin D levels, calcium, bone density, and cardiovascular disease in Whites vs. Blacks. Then consider the possibility of mulatto mixed-racers having these conflicting tendencies encoded in their hybrid genome. Outbreeding depression, anyone?

The fate of the National Alliance after the death of Pierce is another example of a weakness of Der Right – it depends too much on leadership personalities and too little on a strong ideological foundation; further, the leaders (such as they are ) do not seriously groom their replacements (because of…ego? incompetence? lack of the appropriate human material? fear of being prematurely replaced by the heir apparent?). Pierce is an example. Hitler and Mussolini and the fate of their states are others. The Legion did survive Codreanu but was not the same. MAGA is too much about Trump. And so forth.

By “hopeful monster” we do not refer to a fat woman on an online dating site. You can read the link to understand the concept. I am a proponent of this (somewhat controversial) concept in evolutionary biology and it may explain the evolutionary “gaps” that certain online retards bloviate about with an air of self-assured ignorance.

WDR21: PCA Etc.

On population genetics.

Listen here.

This is the PCA paper mentioned.  You can read it yourself.

Two more points about my PCA comments. First, when I talk about European homogeneous groups, the point I am making is that if you look at Europeans alone in PCA you can get homogeneous clusters of sub-groups (e.g. North vs South, East vs. West) but if you look at a global PCA, with sub-Saharan Africans and East Asians included, all Europeans will cluster tightly together and this smaller clusters will no longer be distinguishable.  Second, a particularly crude use of PCA was in that dumb Roman IQ HBD paper, never mind that the analysis was unnecessary since the Antonio et al. Rome paper already had more detailed PCA (for whatever that’s worth).

The rest of the podcast is quite clear to understand conceptually, assuming that the listener is not stupid, ignorant, dishonest, and/or obsessive (90% of Der Movement automatically excluded).

It is also clear though that Der Movement will continue to do whatever they do, dishonestly presenting cherry picked genetic data.  But at least you all will have a better idea of why what they are doing is dishonest.

Odds and Ends, 3/7/23

In der news.

It’s interesting how population genetics papers from a narrow period of several years, focusing on similar populations, often yield markedly different results and conclusions. That’s not just from “innocent” differences in methodology. Since results are highly contingent upon methods and reference samples chosen, and since population genetics is one of the most politicized of all sciences, it is almost certain that studies are being designed with desired conclusions in mind. If you want to be charitable, you can ascribe that mostly to unconscious bias; but regardless, bias it is nevertheless.

Here we see classic population genetics bullshit, and also a perfect example of “Padanian” manipulation of population genetics to attack Southern Italians.  They write, re: Fst (and other data):

Southern Italians showed a genetic affinity with Middle East populations, such as Palestinian and Druze; and Northern Italian populations were genetically closer to the French and CEU populations…the Northern Italian population was genetically close to the French population, and the Southern Italians had some similarities with other Mediterranean populations such as those from Middle East…

Now look at the actual Fst data. The reality is that the Northern Italians are relatively more similar to the French than are Southern Italians and the Southern Italians are relatively more similar to Middle Easterners than are the Northern Italians – BUT both Italian groups are closer to French than to Middle Easterners.  Looking at the actual data, rather than the breathless text, we see that Southern Italians have a Fst of 0.003 with French and 0.005 with CEU (Northwest Europeans from Utah) but 0.006 to Palestinian, 0.008 to Druze, and 0.011 to Bedouin. Thus, the Southern Italians were genetically closer to even Utah Mormons than to Levantine Palestinians, and much closer to French.  Further, the Fst between Northern and Southern Italians in this study was only 0.001 – the same as between Northern Italians and French!  Consider that, and then re-read what the authors wrote in the text.

The same applies to other metrics they use. The expected clinal differences in Italy are interpreted as “Southern Italians are akin to Middle Easterners” when the reality is that Northern and Central Italians are intermediate between French and Southern Italians, and the modeling puts the Southern Italians as having a bit more closeness to Middle Easterners, as would be expected. The differences are relatively small (see ADMIXTURE for example) and not the disjunctive differences that the hysterical text would indicate.

By the way, the Italian populations here are:

Colors represent the four different macro-areas; green- Southern Italy (Apulia, Calabria/Sicily, Campania, Basilicata), red- Central Italy (Tuscany, Lazio, Emilia Romagna and Abruzzo/Marche), black- Northern Italy (Piedmont,Liguria, Aosta Valley and Lombardy), blue- Sardinia.  

Thus, “Southern Italy” is both the mainland south as well as Sicily.

I am going to comment, from an American perspective, on the ethnic question and then the generational question. I have previously addressed the woman question.

First, the ethnic question. There are no doubt large numbers of normie NW Europeans who have no problem with White ethnics, including swarthoids. The issue here is that those are by and large the same Eloi who also have no problem with Coloreds. The trick is to find NW Europeans on the Far Right – Dissident Right types – who have are genuinely pan-European and without negative attitudes toward any White ethnies. Such people did exist; I have known some. But these were by and large WN 1.0 types, and were never in the “movement” majority. If such people exist today, I do not know them, and if they do exist I wish they’d speak up and make common cause with the rest of us.

The generational question – Boomer bashing is not only wrong in the sense of being factually incorrect and blaming people who themselves have been victims of the System even longer than the blamers, but it is also emotional masturbation, since there is no practical strategy or tactics to improve the situation; there is only juvenile venting. One issue that is brought up is old folks refusing to retire and make way for youth. Well, most people hate their jobs; they work out of necessity. Unless you plan to exterminate Boomers and other older working folks, you need to make it possible for them to retire. That means a return to pensions, instead of making people dependent on stock market-connected uncertain retirement accounts and the equally uncertain Social Security. There also needs to be a universal, effective health care system and provisions for long term care. All of that is not possible in a darkening America that has a hollowed out economy. So, we’re back to the problem of overturning the System.

What about humans, eh?