[HN Gopher] Archaeologists extract DNA of ancient Israelites ___________________________________________________________________ Archaeologists extract DNA of ancient Israelites Author : wslh Score : 63 points Date : 2023-10-10 10:51 UTC (12 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.haaretz.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.haaretz.com) | jmclnx wrote: | First I want to note this: | | The greater the genetic differences, the more likely a population | will survive a pandemic. | | Interesting research, but people forget one thing about Human | Genetics. | | Outside of Africa, genetic differences between people are not | that great. People in Africa have far greater genetic differences | than everyone in the Americas and Eurasia. | amanj41 wrote: | Can you explain why that is the case? I would have thought that | the large amounts of immigration from many places to countries | like the U.S. would lead to greater genetic diversity. | Nicholas_C wrote: | Not the OP but I'm guessing that it's because humans in | Africa were isolated in thousands of communities/regions for | hundreds of thousands of years and evolved separately. | Meanwhile the diaspora outside of Africa spread via select | communities in a much shorter time. Somewhat | counterintuitive. | giraffe_lady wrote: | Humans originated in africa, and only a subset of our species | genetic diversity ever _left_ africa. So all immigration from | "many places" still represents only a subset of the existing | diversity. | | There is also some immigration directly from africa, but that | can only increase it to _at most_ the same as exists there. | Almost certainly somewhat less, in practice. | INTPenis wrote: | Thank you for the clear explanation. | | I've heard that humans were at some point reduced to a very | small number, like thousands of individuals. | | So how did a few thousand individuals become such great | genetic diversity? Does genetic diversity come from being | isolated, instead of mingling with other migratory groups? | neonnoodle wrote: | Human genetic diversity on the whole is very, VERY low | compared to other species. The superficial physical | variation we associate with ethnic diversity (skin tone, | nose shape, lip shape, hair color/texture, eye folds and | angles) are genetically insignificant compared to their | visual impact. | livinginfear wrote: | It's worth noting that this is not the only hypothesis for | the origin of modern humans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ | Multiregional_origin_of_modern... | roughly wrote: | Interestingly, even within Africa, the human genome notably | lacks variability, to a point where it's hypothesized that | there was a fairly severe population bottleneck at some | time in the last couple hundred thousand years. | myhf wrote: | oh gee i wonder what that bottleneck could have been | | _cough_ mysterious 1:4:9 monolith _cough_ | rbanffy wrote: | I don't remember exactly where I read that, but from | mitochondrial DNA it was calculated that at some point we | were down to 50 or so individuals. | jmclnx wrote: | You can do a search for that, I read that article a few years | ago but never saved the link. | jcranmer wrote: | Humans have been living in Africa for as long as humans have | existed--let's call that a round 300,000 years. The | populations around where humanity first existed therefore | reflects accumulated genetic diversity for all 300,000 years. | | Let's say 100,000 years ago, a small group of humans left | Africa for the other places of the world. That small group of | humans represent a very small fraction of genetic diversity-- | it's effectively genetically identical. Assuming no more | admixture over the millennia, the out-of-Africa humans will | get more genetically diverse. But so are the original | Africans, who _also_ have the genetic diversity they started | with--they 're getting diverse no less quickly than the out- | of-Africans, and since they _started_ more diverse, the | entire out-of-Africa can 't ever catch up. | | Real genetics is of course more complicated than this simple | picture, but the basic principle holds that you find more | diversity the closer you get to the origin. | epivosism wrote: | Think about how much you know about a random country, say | Hungary. Probably only one composer, maybe one movie. But in | Hungary there are millions of books, movies, etc most of | which never left. | | Same for humans during migrations. Only a small percent of | humans left Africa, and then only a smaller percent kept | going, etc. So as long as not much time has passed to | generate new variation in the areas they settle, only a small | fraction of local variation ever leaves is low. And that's | what we see, Africa is extremely diverse, Europe/Central Asia | less, east Asia even less, etc. It's neither bad nor good, | just a number. | | There are some other factors, such as mixing with people | already present at the destination for a long time | (Neandertals, Denisovans) which balance it out slightly. | | The US has lots of diversity, but there were a lot of groups | in Africa for a very long time (maybe 10k+ separate groups). | It's unlikely that people from each one have made it here, or | even out of Africa at all, in significant numbers. | droptablemain wrote: | It's the founder effect. While on the surface it looks like | "large amounts" of migration, it in fact represents a very | small percentage of the gene pool. That group effectively | becomes an isolated breeding population (though it's far more | complex than that because groups would often encounter other | groups and there would be interbreeding and such). | [deleted] | foogazi wrote: | This coupled with current events reminds me of the Marx quote: | | > "The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare | on the brains of the living." | | Hope someday we can move on from whatever team we were born into | voz_ wrote: | Hard to move on when other people will kill you for it. Maybe | the perpetrators of violence can move on first? | aradox66 wrote: | This is more or less Sartre's take on the identity of | Jewishness, that it is essentially defined and maintained by | the forces of antisemitic discourse and violence. Arguably a | reductive, even insulting, understanding of identity and | culture but still a compelling one for many people, people | make the same arguments about womanhood and misogyny, | Blackness and racism. | drc500free wrote: | A less charged version of this is Daniel Boyarin's take in | "Border Lines," that early Christianity and early Rabbinic | Judaism were largely defined in opposition to each other. | I.e. that being "not that other thing" both established a | bright line division where one didn't previously exist, and | shaped the things on each side of that line. (And in his | opinion, created the very concept of "a religion" as a | distinct package of culture and ideas where previously it | was more integrated across social activities and | behaviors). | | As Christianity became dominant, it began to schism | internally with much the same pattern, fractally defining | parts of itself as things like "not Arian" or "not | Catholic." Judaism, embedded within Christian society, | still primary organizes around being "not Gentile" which | ranges from simply Christian to full blown anti-semitism | and pogroms. | hutzlibu wrote: | "that early Christianity and early Rabbinic Judaism were | largely defined in opposition to each other" | | I never heard of that theory, but I don't think it makes | a lot of sense. I would think early christians mainly | defined themself by believing in jesus christ, meaning | they believed Jesus from Nazareth was the Messias and the | other jews did not believe jesus was the messiahs. | | And then you had christians who believed jesus | resurrected from the death and those who did not. Then | you had those who believed it was only a jew thing and | then you had Paulus, who made it a universal religion, | ... so all in all, plenty of different things people | believed in. So surely some groups of people define | themself by what they are not, but I don't think this was | valid of early christians. | WillPostForFood wrote: | "they believed Jesus from Nazareth was the Messias and | the other jews did not believe jesus was the messiahs" | | Isn't that definition in opposition? | hutzlibu wrote: | Not in my understanding: it is | | group A believes in X | | group B believes in Y | | What the parent poster seemed to imply was | | group A believes in not Y. | | Or a more concrete example of today, many people today | define themself by being anti green, anti progressive, | anti woke, antifashist etc. but often struggle to define | what they are standing for. | myth_drannon wrote: | I recently saw an interview with Natan Sharansky who was a | Soviet dissident who spent many years in Soviet jails | fighting to be allowed to immigrate to Israel. His take on | Jewishness at least in context of USSR was that Jews were | completely assimilated and only the antisemites defined | them as such and hated them and that's all. I think jews in | Nazi germany as well suddenly found themselves jewish by | the Nazi genocidal ideology while before it was complete | assimilation with the German culture. | cmrdporcupine wrote: | That seems a bit taken out of context. The Old Man wasn't | talking about ethnic identity, but about political / | revolutionary / national traditions in the context of the | revival of Napeolonic imagery (and autocracy) in France. | | Like many things with him, the quote can also be turned on its | head when read in full context. Just like when people quote _" | Religion is the opiate of the masses"_ they rarely read the | rest of the sentence _" the heart of a heartless world"_. | Negative judgement was not being cast on religion just a | description of the reality of the situation: the world sucks | for the mass of people and people reach for God to save them | from it. | | Likewise the traditions of the dead generations can also be | beautiful dreams. The powerful can and do use the past or | religion or whatever to build a mythos for the purpose of | domination, but the weak can reach for it as a tool of | liberation, too. | | Good book: https://www.amazon.com/Fatherland-Mother-Earth- | National-Ques... | | (early journal-article version here: | file:///home/ryan/Downloads/titusland,+SR_1989_Lowy.pdf) | cmrdporcupine wrote: | Love that I put a file URL there and it's too late to edit. | Not embarassing at all: https://socialistregister.com/index.p | hp/srv/article/download... | breakyerself wrote: | It will be interesting to see how it compares to modern groups of | people. I don't think having ancestors in a place 1700+ years ago | gives you defacto claim to ownership either way though. | [deleted] | jqpabc123 wrote: | [flagged] | lo_zamoyski wrote: | With the abrogation of the Mosaic covenant, I am not sure | what the status of the Promised Land is. | | EDIT: Correction, the Promised Land is part of the Abrahamic | covenant. | aradox66 wrote: | I'm curious which theological/mythical abrogation you're | referring to! Rabbinic tradition generally considers | covenant regarding living on the land indefinitely | suspended since the 73 CE exile began. Modern religious | Jewish Zionist movements claim that suspension is validly | terminated and covenant renewed in the act of reclaiming | the land by force, mostly motivated by a post-Holocaust | reassessment of the waiting-for-moshiach strategy. | | Contemporary Christian Evangelicals understand Jewish | relocation to the land to be a necessary prerequisite for | the Rapture. IDK much about the background or history | there. | wslh wrote: | Please keep the discussion civil. The findings and the future | publication shows a great archeology achievement. | cmrdporcupine wrote: | It matters little what science or anthropology generally says | -- nationalist/nativist ideology pretty much always fits the | facts to the desired outcome, and ignores those that can't be | made to do so. (From any "side") | | In the end, "legitimacy" of a group claiming exclusive access | to a piece of land comes down to might-makes-right. | | The other stuff is usually window dressing. | aksss wrote: | > the other stuff is usually window dressing | | Makes for good grievance politics though, eh? | jqpabc123 wrote: | Wouldn't it be amusing if the Israelites were genetically | Canaanites --- just with religious differences? | | Someone would have a lot of explaining to do. Or maybe a lot of | denying and covering up to do. | | This would flip the scripture so to speak. | optionalsquid wrote: | > Wouldn't it be amusing if the Israelites were genetically | Canaanites --- just with religious differences? | | As I understand it, that is the expectation: The consensus | among archeologists seems to be that ancient Israelites were | simply another group of Canaanites who came to dominate the | region. The Exodus is not a historical event. | otabdeveloper4 wrote: | > Israelites were simply another group of Canaanites | | Yes. | | > The Exodus is not a historical event. | | This does not follow from your premise at all. (Nowhere does | it say that people of the Exodus weren't Canaanites | genetically.) | optionalsquid wrote: | My comment was not meant as an argument with the last | sentence as its conclusion. Sorry for the (obvious) lack of | clarity on my part. | | Rather, the statement about the Exodus was meant to expand | on the "who came to dominate the region": It was meant to | convey that they did not come to dominate through | systematic genocide of the other Canaanites as depicted in | the bible. It is my understand that there is little to no | evidence of this event (or the preceding events) having | occurred. | | The overall understanding that I was trying to communicate | was simply that the ancient Isrealites were Canaanites who | stayed in Canaan. | otabdeveloper4 wrote: | > they did not come to dominate through systematic | genocide of the other Canaanites | | That does not follow either. Civil wars happen all the | time, and are usually accompanied by large-scale ethnic | cleansing. | optionalsquid wrote: | > That does not follow either. Civil wars happen all the | time, and are usually accompanied by large-scale ethnic | cleansing. | | It is my understanding that there is little to no | evidence of such an event having occurred. | hobo_in_library wrote: | nit: (as a non-Christian) There is little to no | __archeological__ evidence | | The Bible's testimony itself, along with conclusion that | people believed in this historical event at some point in | time, is at least a some evidence towards it. | MisterBastahrd wrote: | Claims are not evidence. Mythology is not evidence. The | more you examine the early books of the Bible, the more | ridiculous they become. | bawolff wrote: | Yeah - its like say the illiad. Did the trojan war happen | exactly like that? Obviously not. Was there some big war | that inspired it? Probably. | | Like, you shouldn't take the events of the bible | literally, but you could probably reasonably infer that | the nations demonized in it probably were historical | enemies of the people who wrote it, etc | Tuna-Fish wrote: | The problem with this thinking is that many of the | "early" books of the Bible appear to be written much | later than the "later" books, and while they are probably | a record of the attitudes of the writers, they record | their attitudes as of the time they were written, not as | of the time period the claim to represent. | jqpabc123 wrote: | Yes. Basically, this would flip the Old Testament on it's | head. | edgyquant wrote: | No it wouldn't and is basically assumed as fact already. | wslh wrote: | The point here is not to target the Old Testament but think | in wider terms about believes vs. history/archeology. You | can find similar challenges in other religions and | cultures. | jqpabc123 wrote: | The point is to accurately unveil history. | | Nothing I said suggests otherwise. I was simply looking | at potential aftereffects of the unveiling --- and why | any such unveiling might be vehemently opposed by | entrenched non-scientific interests. | wslh wrote: | > I was simply looking at potential aftereffects of the | unveiling | | I think the world is less run by logic than people | generally think. I don't think there will be an | aftereffect. There is an Status quo and that's it. This | observation is general and in anyway targeted in the | context of the article. The Status quo involves any of | us. | hersko wrote: | This is Haretz; the point probably is to target the Old | Testament. | wslh wrote: | From the article I understand that the Israelites were a | group of Canaanites. Regarding the Exodus, again, according | to this article, there could be a connection between the | withdrawal of the Egyptians from the region. The topic of | challenging scriptures (for every religion) with archeology | is very interesting because you need to have the mind open | where one and/or the other have gray areas but you cannot | repress them. | bjourne wrote: | That is mostly assumed these days. The Israelites were people | that inhabited the Canaanite hinterland. Where they came from | and whether they "came from" somewhere else is unknown and we | can only speculate. Perhaps they were herders who migrated | westwards from the Jordan valley and beyond. They show up in | history at around the same time as the Philistines (1200 BC) | whose origins are also unknown. | | The early Israelites were polytheists but had some affinity for | Yahweh which was one Canaanite god among many. Why, how and | when the Israelites became monotheists and why Yahweh became | their only god is unknown. My guess (speculation follows) is | that the Israelites were influenced by the Babylonians and | Zoroastriansim. Zoroastrians worshipped fire and Yahweh was the | god of fire (and smoke). Perhaps the many conflicts with other | Canaanites caused them to adopt foreign practices to | distinguish themselves from their enemies. Ritual circumcision | perhaps was borrowed from Egypt. | | There is not a shred of evidence of an emigration from Egypt | and archaeologists have been searching for it for over 200 | years. So why the Exodus is in the Bible is unknown. At the | time these stories were written down Egypt was a regional super | power, so perhaps whoever wrote it felt that "having been to | Egypt" was something to brag about? Perhaps the story is | allegorical? | Tuna-Fish wrote: | The story of Moses is probably an allegory of the plucky | Israelites beating the local great power who held them in | captivity, and fleeing to found their own state... written by | people who were presently held in captivity by the local | great power, Babylon. Unlike the story of Exodus, the | Babylonian captivity is a well-attested historical event, | which agrees with archeological evidence and is found in | multiple sources. | hutzlibu wrote: | The scripture remained quite intact despite the rise of | astronomy and evolution theory. That is because only some | people take old scripture literal (but those who do, tend to be | quite dangerous). | edgyquant wrote: | As a sort of born again Christian I've come to believe that | modern fundamentalists are among a very small group of people | who believe the Torah to be literal. For ancient people they | were myths used to remember common law | cmrdporcupine wrote: | Ok, but that's not shocking or amusing because that's the | already-known archaeological situation of the pre-Roman Levant | understood by anybody who was paying attention and didn't have | an ethno-supremacist or religious axe to grind? | | There were probably dozens of different West Semitic speaking | cultures/groupings, with plenty of cultural mixing. Hebrew (and | Aramaic) speakers were only one of many in the region, all with | competing claims over grazing and growing lands, etc. The Bible | basically alludes to this all over. | | What you have there is the stories of various fragments of it | that distilled into more or less powerful tribal federations | and, eventually, kingdoms. Told from their vantage, because the | others did not commit theirs to writing. | | And by the 3rd or 4th century AD, all West Semitic languages | had basically gone functionally (but not liturgically) extinct, | but the cultural and religious traditions of one of them | tenaciously held on through the diaspora. | codesnik wrote: | "by the 3rd or 4th century AD" - that early?! | cmrdporcupine wrote: | Hebrew itself was "extinct" as a spoken language by about | 200ce. Until the 20th century when it was revived. It was | replaced by Aramaic and Greek. | | Aramaic lived for a longer period, but then slowly died | out. As a liturgical language western Aramaic / Syriac | lived on, and eastern variants for longer but as a | widespread, spoken lived language in the Levant I believe | Greek replaced it, and then Arabic. I understand that | "Jewish Palestinian Aramaic" lingered on for some time in | some smaller communities. | jqpabc123 wrote: | Yes but semi-plausible debate still exists. | | Genetic evidence could eliminate this. | air7 wrote: | Ha, if logical inconsistencies could "flip the scripture" the | world would be very different place than it is... | yieldcrv wrote: | I mean you kind of have to be told these things child to ever | believe that stuff, our brains work too well after that | | Just like yours is trying to, but with competing information | | The simple, adult, quantifiable reality is that there is always | cross drift between populations by mere nature of humans being | compatible species to produce viable offspring with one another | Digory wrote: | Not really. The story of Abraham begins in "Ur of the | Chaldees." The modern consensus is that it should be in | southern Iran, but historical sources had it in northern Iran | or closer to Turkey. Which is also the source of the | Phoenicians / Canaanites. | | Between that, the sojourn to Egypt, and the constant complaints | about intermarriage in the OT, you'd already expect these to be | roughly the same gene pool. | | More interesting may be the connection (or lack thereof) | between OT-era Jews to modern Jews, which plays into political | and racial arguments. | empath-nirvana wrote: | > The story of Abraham begins in "Ur of the Chaldees." | | You're presuming some historicity there that I don't think is | warranted. A lot of the stories in Genesis had their origin | in stories from Mesopotamia, and I wouldn't read much more | into that than you'd read into the Aenead claiming that the | Romans originated in Troy. They're just borrowing legitimacy | from an older historical tradition. | cloudyq wrote: | [dead] | wslh wrote: | https://archive.is/2023.10.09-133848/https://www.haaretz.com... | neonate wrote: | http://web.archive.org/web/20231010105143/https://www.haaret... | | https://archive.ph/oLK5q | fooker wrote: | Interesting timing! | photochemsyn wrote: | context: "Going local with ancient DNA: A review of human | histories from regional perspectives" (Science 5 Oct 2023) | | https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh8140 | | Also headline is slightly misleading, it's not 'a first': | | "Ancient DNA from Chalcolithic Israel reveals the role of | population mixture in cultural transformation" (2018) | | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05649-9 | | One clear conclusion is that modern popular concepts of human | racial and ethnic groups have little connection with the actual | biological-genetic history of individual modern humans, they're | mostly artificial (which is why claims about 'race-based | biological weapons' are nonsense, for example). | wslh wrote: | > One clear conclusion is that modern popular concepts of human | racial and ethnic groups have little connection with the actual | biological-genetic history of individual modern humans, they're | mostly artificial (which is why claims about 'race-based | biological weapons' are nonsense, for example). | | When you said "race-based biological weapons" you mean weapons | that target specific races? | nirav72 wrote: | If race-based targeted medical treatment is a possibility, | i.e that targets specific areas of the genome commonly found | within specific human groups - then why is it not possible to | have a race-based biological weapon? | jghn wrote: | For one thing because it can't be "race based": | https://ewanbirney.com/2019/10/race-genetics-and- | pseudoscien... | nirav72 wrote: | interesting read. thanks. | jghn wrote: | Ewan has a lot of discussion on the topic in other | venues, including Twitter. I grabbed this one as being | somewhat representative but if you find the topic | interesting I'd suggest digging into his stuff further. | peyton wrote: | Yeah Te Ding Chong Zu Ji Yin Gong Ji "specific ethnic | genetic attacks." There are some interesting documents | floating around from a few years back if you're into China-US | military stuff. | User23 wrote: | > One clear conclusion is that modern popular concepts of human | racial and ethnic groups have little connection with the actual | biological-genetic history of individual modern humans, they're | mostly artificial (which is why claims about 'race-based | biological weapons' are nonsense, for example). | | This isn't really clear at all and there is plenty of evidence | to the contrary. For example, consumer DNA testing pretty | reliably agrees with self-reported genealogical claims. Race | has become a loaded word, but we understand population genetics | pretty well and the effects of long periods of genetic | isolation between different population groups are very much | measurable. | | The claim that it's impossible to develop a bioweapon that | targets some genomic pattern that's common in descendants of | some formerly long term isolated population and uncommon in | others doesn't appear well-supported. In fact, nature already | did this herself, as is well attested by the introduction of | Eurasian diseases to the Americas. | photochemsyn wrote: | Even if someone has something like a specific immune system | genetic profile that makes them more susceptible to a | particular virus than other people, that genetic marker is | extremely unlikely to correlate at all closely with any | socially defined racial or ethnic group. | | The effects of European diseases on native American | populations is a red herring in this context, as modern | populations are increasingly interbred and not isolated, and | even with that case, it's not entirely clear that it was | genetic vs. developmental, i.e. European children who | survived to adulthood likely had been exposed to those | diseases when young, while native American adults had not - | so if they had been exposed as children, there could have | been no difference in susceptibilty. | lawlessone wrote: | Those diseases introduced the Americas didn't target specific | races. Eurasian peoples could still get them too but had some | immunity. If Eurasian people were immune we never would have | carried these diseases with us. | | Saying that...shamefully it was consciously used as weapon in | some instances. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-10-10 23:00 UTC)