Invisibility, Jeff Sharlet’s The Family, and the goddess Kubjikaa

August 31, 2019 Charles Cameron 3 Comments filed under Archived Authors

It’s like a waterfall: you stumble on an idea that comes from the mouth of Doug Coe, describing the principle behind the influence of The Family, of which he was the long-time leader —

— and it turns out the same principle is referenced in an article on surveillance in Defense One —

— only to re-emerge in Dr Mark SG Dyczkowski‘s work on the tradition, philosophy and practice of the goddess Kubjikaa.

There’s clearly a principle at work here that could find application in many fields, contexts, silos — and the concatenation of such instances is itself a demonstration of the value of silo-breaking thinking.

FWIW, I wouldn’t have so much as heard of the Goddess Kubjikaa were it not for my half-century friendship with Mark Dyczkowski, to whom I owe so much, and into the waters of whose scholarship so deep I have dipped no more than a toe.

South Asian PCA

August 31, 2019 Razib Khan 20 Comments filed under Razib Khan

Doing some data analysis for my data job. Looking at the data sets some interesting patterns. I will explore further time permitting, but it looks to me that the Bengalis are on the Khasi/Tibeto-Burman cline, not the Munda cline. Basically, Bangladeshis are the inverse of the Khasi people to their north. After seeing these results I read a bit more on the Khasis, and it’s fascinating to see how some of them look like my relatives in their facial features.

(the Iranians are sampled mostly from the west of the country, explaining their separation from Pakistani samples, which include Pathans)

The podcast from last fall on Indian genetics is probably worth listening to, as you’ll be hearing more about the topic shortly…

How Islam’s greatness redounds to Indian religion

August 31, 2019 Razib Khan 85 Comments filed under Popular, Razib Khan

Reading a paper on Yemen made me realize something that is quite bizarre upon reflection: the greater the evidence of Islam’s transformative power, the greater the miracle and robustness of Indian religion in the face of its expansion. To me, Islam’s demographic impact is clear when it comes to Sub-Saharan African ancestry. Though some of the admixture into Near Eastern and Mediterranean populations predates the Islamic era, most of it always seems to date to the last 1,000 years.

Whatever the ideological merits of Islam, the Islamic civilization had massive economic, social, and demographic consequences as seen in the genes. It took the culture of Iran and transformed its religion.

Which takes me to India: the more impactful Islam seems to me, the more amazing it is that India remained 75% non-Muslim on the eve of partition. The most Islam-skeptic Indians tend to be pro-Hindu, but historical evidence of Islam’s power and influence actually suggest that Hinduism is something very special as a cultural complex.

Note: I say “Indian religion” to side-step semantic arguments about Hinduism. Ironically, I think modern elite Hinduism probably emerged and developed around the same time as Islam itself, though proto-Hindu beliefs are clearly very old.