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.

Aspirational Race

Being the best race we can be.  

See this.

White nationalism is the same. The adjective here is White. Of course, people can define “White” in different manners – I myself see “White” as equivalent to “European” and thus “White nationalism” to me means “pan-European nationalism.” But we need not quibble about those definitions here; instead, the main point of this essay is that White nationalism is, like Black nationalism, a form of (aspirational) racial nationalism, in which the nation is defined in explicitly racial, not ethnic, terms, and the long term aspirational objective would be building a nation state based on race.

In a Western Destiny blog category of gene-culture interactions, I have dealt with these issues, summarized in the Yockeyian Genetics post. A key part of that post, emphasis added:

1. A pan-European state (Imperium) would be set up that would have the effect of an enhancement of net EGI, by advancing the interests of the group of peoples and thus the interest of each constituting group.

2. In order to safeguard the uniqueness of the constituent groups, movement and mixture between these groups would be restricted, preventing any panmxia and loss of biological and cultural ethnic distinctiveness. Of course, there would be some (limited) movement and gene flow, consistent with what has occurred throughout European history.

3. At the same time, movement and mixture from without the Imperium, from biologically and culturally alien non-European peoples, would be strictly forbidden and absolutely restricted.

4. Thus, what would obtain over historical, evolutionary time is a complete absence of gene flow from the outside, coupled with continuous, low level, internal gene flow. Genetic drift, selection, and other such processes would take place, with the within vs. without distinction further pushing Europeans and non-Europeans farther apart.

5. These processes would have the effect, over time, of increasing the genetic distance of groups within vs. without the Imperium (European vs. non-European), while genetic distances within the Imperium would be maintained and/or slowly decreased (to an extent) over time.

6. Kinship overlap within/without would be eliminated due to these processes (particularly the strict isolation from outside gene flow).  Thus, in every possible case, any European ethnies chosen for comparison would be genetically closer (measured with genetic kinship/gene sharing, Fst, or whatever) than would be any European ethny compared to a non-European one. In PCA, European groups would be more separated from non-Europeans, and the European groups may be expected to slowly concentrate around a narrower core grouping along the major axes of genetic variation – Europeans less spread out among themselves, but more isolated from others.

7. These processes would take place naturally over long time frames, with ethnic distinctiveness being maintained, preserving local EGI while enhancing group EGI, leading to not only an increase in net EGI but gross EGI as well, a more optimal profile of genetic interests with costs minimized.

So we can focus on aspirational race not only from a “political” White nationalism standpoint (Our Race is Our Nation) forming a White national state in the same sense that, e.g., Basque nationalists aspire to their own state, but also from the biological, genetic standpoint, the Race-Culture standpoint, in which an integrated Race-Culture, geographically isolated via the White nationalist state

Another form of aspirational race involves eugenics, improving the stock biologically above and beyond enhanced racial purity and genetic kinship distinctiveness, to improve traits and march toward the Overman (while maintaining our ethnic genetic interests).

Yet another type of aspirational race is the improvement of the race in the moral sense, akin to The New Man of the Legionary Movement.

Finally, we can try to adjust the trajectory of the Spenglerian cycle and aspire to a new High Culture to provide a superior long term future for our people.

Thus, aspirational race can be viewed as constituting five components:

1. We aspire to the Our Race is Our Nation paradigm, the true White nationalist nation-state, a racial, pan-European peoplehood (that still preserves ethnic distinctiveness).

2. The major focus of this post is aspiring to a more biologically cohesive ingroup characterized by greater internal genetic kinship and more distinctiveness toward The Other, as outlines in the Yockeyian Genetics post.

3. We can aspire to eugenic improvement – the biological Overman.

4. We can aspire to moral improvement – the New Man.

5. We can aspire to a new High Culture befitting our people and befitting the Overman, the New Man, of the future.

The Butterfly Effect

See this.

In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can result in large differences in a later state.

This phenomenon may help explain why, for example, different areas and nations and peoples of Europe are so different in culture and society when there are not huge genetic differences there and why on an individual level, White people typically are not that different.

Human cognitive – e.g., intelligence and behavior, etc. – traits, like most traits, exist on a bell curve.  The bell curves of closely related ethnies are not going to be markedly different, but may be shifted to a small degree in one direction of the other. These small differences, amplified over the large numbers of people in an ethny and synergizing through all the complex interactions between them, and amplified over long periods of historical time, “can result in large differences in a later state” of the final outcome of what we see in each society.  There is gene-culture cross-talk, influencing each other, further amplifying initial state effects – genetics select cultures and cultures select genes. The same cross-talk occurs between innate traits and the physical environment – the environment selects genes while the traits derived from those genes can work on the environment to alter it to suit particular people’s needs. Further, even when the bell curves shift slightly, this can have a large impact on the numbers of people at the far ends of each curve at given metric points, so that the numbers of geniuses or retards can be more marked than average IQ, or the numbers of highly individualistic or collectivist people can change be markedly than the average. These outlier fractions can have a disproportionate impact on societal trajectories through “butterfly effect” mechanisms.  Thus, the naïve idea that significant differences on observed societies correlate to equal sized differences in innate traits of the mass populations is likely not true.

When such populations are placed in a common novel environment, like America, much, if not all, of the differences observed in their native habitats vanish, as the innate differences are not sufficient to result in really noticeable differences in outcome in the time periods heretofore available for observation.

On the other hand, populations that are genetically very divergent – such as different continent population groups (races) – would be so different in innate traits that even in the American contest, the differences are obvious and consistently reproducible. For example, Negroes are a catastrophe wherever they are.

Instinct and the Racial Soul

A hypothesis.

With respect to the idea of a Jungian “racial soul,” consider my work on the idea of an “empirical racial soul,” with speculation about possible biological mechanisms.  See this.  Also see this.  Finally, also see this.

One needs to consider the inherited behavioral trait of instinct in this context (emphasis added):

A feedback process driven by experience is required for these simulated synaptic levels to settle into optimal states. Extensive training is typically required before an ANN can perform at a high level. A similar process of experience-driven synaptic modification enables every cognitive and motor skill that people acquire through learning.

Instinct appears to preset synaptic connections to “adult” values during embryology. That is to say, the genes that are responsible for constructing the synapses as part of the neural networks that mediate instinct appear to also set their functional properties to optimal excitatory or inhibitory levels that replicate what would have been achieved if the network had gone through a rigorous and comprehensive developmental learning phase. DNA appears to code for final “adult” synaptic values in the case of spiders where instinct seems to dominate their behavior. Genetics appears to exert a lesser but still noteworthy effect in what are called biologically prepared behaviors such as our fears of heights and the dark.

The ability of DNA to present properties of individual synapses across complex neural networks explains how behaviors can be inherited. This explains how spiders can weave complex webs shortly after hatching. It also explains why dogs and cats behave differently. Genetic variation explains individual behavioral differences—or in other words, why spiders of the same species may behave somewhat differently, or why individual dogs and cats differ temperamentally.

Thus, the idea can be summarized as follows. When an animal learns, there are changes in its neural network that “fixes” that learned behavior in the physical structure of its brain and nervous system. Instinct is inherited behavior; the changes in the neural network that would have occurred via learning are instead encoded in the DNA so the animal is born with the analogous changes in the neural network already there. Instead of the changes requiring a process of learning, the changes are thus present from the start, encoded in the DNA and expressed in a neural network that allows the animal to express a behavior without needing to have first learned it.

Is a “racial soul” encoded in a similar manner?  Is it possible that gene-culture evolution during a population’s ethnogenesis results in certain (“stereotypical”) behaviors being encoded, in a heritable manner, affecting human neural networks, so that members of different ethnies behave in particular ways without needing to learn those behaviors?

Or perhaps it is more subtle – it may not be so much that specific human ethnoracial behaviors are strictly inherited – although some basic ones may well be – but that the potential for such behaviors are encoded.  Thus, at an individual level, a member of group X may have an inherited greater tendency to express particular behaviors in the context of certain environmental cues than would a member of another group, and when one looks at large numbers of each population, the mass effect results in stereotypical group behaviors. Or, perhaps, members of certain groups have a greater tendency to be able to learn certain behaviors than other behaviors, as compared to members of other groups. Or maybe, most likely, it is a combination of all of these possibilities – rigid inherited behaviors, potentialities expressed in particular environments, increased ability to learn certain behaviors, all combined with differences due to variation in IQ and in a general ability to learn as well as in behavioral differences that may be inherited, learned, cultural, etc.

That which is labeled a “racial soul” would be those components most similar to that of animal instinct, and inherited in a similar manner, persons being born with certain neural network changes and patterns that would otherwise need to be learned. There’s some rigidity with that, but also some plasticity as well, all modulated by general intelligence and behavioral patterns.