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Vijay
Vijay
5 years ago

Bob Trivers has launched upon a project “The evolutionary genetics of honor killing” described as:
“Goal: It turns out that a history of first cousin marriages raises relative relatedness of parents to non-children compared to own children etc, predisposing toward so-called ‘honor killings'”

I do not understand the word “predisposed” but he is looking for help in areas such as “i have been trying to find out in Hindu societies who makes up a “Village Council”. Is there a caste-bias, e.g. higher caste more frequently?”.

While endogamy does increase relatedness, I think without cosanguinous marriage, I do not think coefficient of relatedness between parent and children does not change substantially; while it does increase in children of multi-generation cousin marriage. While I think culture triumphs over genetics here, the project looks interesting.

https://www.researchgate.net/project/The-evolutionary-genetics-of-honor-killing

girmit
girmit
5 years ago
Reply to  Vijay

Trying to understand this better. Because first-cousin marriage increases how genetically close you are to a typical child of your clan relative to your own, you are more likely to sacrifice the latter for grave transgressions?

Vijay
Vijay
5 years ago
Reply to  girmit

I am also trying to comprehend what he is saying, and my guess i:

Caste endogamy makes the relatedness higher to members of the caste; of course, relatedness is the highest with children, but the small increase in clan relatedness apparently is sufficient to sacrifice your errant child.

In clans formed by marriages to first cousins, the increase in relatedness to children is not sufficient to overcome the increase in relatedness to clan, making them more ready to sacrifice erring children.

In either case, it is the “others’ who drive this, and their relatedness to the errant children is fairly low.

I understand that, sometimes, evolutionary genetics sounds like stories that want to be true, but this man is very intelligent.

VijayVan
5 years ago
Reply to  Vijay

Not worth understanding – it is wordy rubbish. Giving some ‘genetic science ‘ leg for honour killing to stand on.
Every mass murder or individual murder in the world has stood on some twisted notion of ‘honour’ .

Vijay
Vijay
5 years ago
Reply to  VijayVan

Whether you think something is rubbish or not, it is real, and happens in southern India and in Inod-Gangetic plain at a regular basis. Even in UK! As women become more educated, they will break away from this, and the response of the men is honor killing. It needs to be understood via a cultural basis or a genetic basis or both.

Studying something is not the same as supporting something it. Caste (or clan) endogamy is responsible for a lot of health concerns; overlaid with cousin marriage, this is creating havoc in medical care and social issues. India is a living lab for genetic diseases.

Some people with Vysya ancestry — who live primarily in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana — have had fatal responses to common muscle relaxants. The cause of many recessive diseases is that strongest of these founder groups most likely started with major genetic contributions from just 100 people or fewer. In India, so far, 14 groups with these genetic profiles in South Asia have estimated census sizes of over one million. These include the Gujjar, from Jammu and Kashmir; the Baniyas, from Uttar Pradesh; and the Pattapu Kapu, from Andhra Pradesh. All of these groups have estimated founder effects about 10 times as strong as those of Finns and Ashkenazi Jews, which suggests the South Asian groups have many, or more, recessive diseases. One identified is a gene mutation known to cause a joint disease called progressive pseudorheumatoid dysplasia. Some medical specialists think that people with the surname Reddy may be more likely to develop a form of arthritis affecting the spine. Dr. Thangaraj thinks people from the Raju community, in southern India, may have higher incidence of cardiomyopathy, which affects the heart muscle.

People in India say that they do not marry cousins so they are no affected; but founder effect and endogamy have also strong impacts, both, on body and mental health, and also on culture.

Snake Charmer
Snake Charmer
5 years ago

The mystery of Karanja Infrastructure Private Limited, and how business is done in India
https://www.thequint.com/news/india/anil-ambani-reliance-defence-karanja-blackstone-capital?utm_source=metype

Raj Darbhanga
Raj Darbhanga
5 years ago

Will BJP lose in 2019? Getting wiped out in 3 states of their main Western/Central power base isn’t a good sign. Unlikely to sweep UP this time around with the opposition united.

Milan Todorovic
Milan Todorovic
5 years ago

A question re: ‘Pathans between Hind and Iran’ map:

When Polish got in this genetic map and which language they spoke at that time?
Anyone?

(Optionally: if this happened more than 200 years ago – what was their name at that time and how this happened?)

Milan Todorovic
Milan Todorovic
5 years ago

For those who missed, there is a question at Open Thread. Thanks for the answer.

Fraxinicus
Fraxinicus
5 years ago

Does anyone know if there are plans to release “Early Indians” in the US, or as an e-book? I’d really like to get my hands on it but it’s only available on Amazon India.

Vijay
Vijay
5 years ago
Reply to  Numinous

“You can stand in the middle of a crowded market in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai or Kochi and say that the common ancestor of the languages Kannada, Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam was brought to India by migrants from West Asia some 8,000 years ago, and no one is likely to care or protest. You could stand in the middle of Jharkhand and say that Austroasiatic languages such as Mundari, Santali and Ho came to India from Southeast Asia around 4,000 years ago, and no one is likely to raise a finger against you. You could go to Manipur and tell them that their language, Meitei, belongs to the Tibeto-Burman family and was brought to India from East Asia and they aren’t likely to be too bothered. You can stand anywhere in India and say that the earliest Indians were Out of Africa migrants who reached South Asia some 65,000 years ago and no one would really mind.

But if you were to say that an early version of Sanskrit was brought to India from central Asia by pastoralists who called themselves ‘Aryans’, expect the skies to open and pour condemnation down on you. Thundering articles will be written and published three at a time on right-wing websites; trolls will hound you; and there will be calls for you to be expatriated, excoriated or even exterminated.

Why is this so? Why is there a special sensitivity to the issue of ‘Aryan’ migration alone? ”

Love the opening. Got the book delivered in India from Amazon.in, but stuck in the U.S.

Anurag Kadian
Anurag Kadian
5 years ago

Indian populations with Slav affinities are actually much older than is coming through in recent modeling. The mistake that is showing them as bronze age products is the ‘circular referencing’ in Lazaridis’ proposed solution for South Asia.

Lazaridis thinks South Asians can be modeled with steppe and Iran neolithic but reality is the two S Asian populations showing most affinity to Europeans can be better modeled using ANE and Mehrgarh neolithic (for which we once again need Iran neolithic as proxy due to lack of aDNA)

So, these populations would have formed before bronze age in the northern parts of the indus valley

I reached this conclusion when I read through Lazaridis’ work in detail and found that EHG, eastern European hunter gatherers, were being used as vehicles of ANE (ancient north Eurasian) ancestry for Europeans.

It has been observed that the Indian Indo-Europeans (Jat, Ror) show much higher affinity for EHG than Iranians. That gave me the idea that steppe is just the wrong vehicle as we can directly use ANE for modeling these Indians

Further, the fact one of the plots (IBD vs. Steppe ancestry) in Pathak et al 2018 is missing Latvian clinches the deal as they have the most IBD sharing of all Europeans with Indian Ror and latvians are heavy on yDNA Hg N, which is strongly suggestive of an ANE (ancient north Eurasian) connection. The Indian guys don’t have Hg N but autosomally they are closest to these guys with Hg N suggests some of their ancestors were together in that ancient population before the formation of steppe EMBA or MLBA

Milan Todorovic
Milan Todorovic
5 years ago

Maybe Tony Joseph explained why I will not get the answer regarding the (genetic) link between so-called Polish (and their language which is not Polish) and SA nations. There are no Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Slavs in this story. The term ‘steppe’ is stupid (unless it points on Polish=people from the fields? i.e. steppe=fields? (-: ), Indo-Germanic (aka Indo-European) is idiotic. Until these things are fixed we will be chasing our tails.

Re: Tibet, etc…I can offer hundreds of old toponyms, many of them still actual (such as Serbi Milan mountain in Tibet).

Toponyms are a taboo theme in this discussion. I haven’t seen that anyone ever wrote or commented on them. I have thousands from India, Tibet, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Anatolia… but it seems no one is interested. They are evidence that certain group of people lived there for hundreds of years, at least.

What about old ritual songs from this region?

JT
JT
5 years ago

Any comments on a recent paper? See https://www.cell.com/ajhg/pdfExtended/S0002-9297(18)30398-7?

Thanks.

AnAn
5 years ago
Reply to  JT

It would take me some time to read and process. Amazing scholarship though.

Anurag Kadian
Anurag Kadian
5 years ago
Reply to  JT

Hi JT,

That’s the paper I referred to as Pathak et al 2018 in my post just above this last post of yours

Brown Pundits