In ~48 hours I will be recording a podcast with Vagheesh Narasimhan, first author of The formation of human populations in South and Central Asia, and the second author of An Ancient Harappan Genome Lacks Ancestry from Steppe Pastoralists or Iranian Farmers. We’ll have lots to talk about but open to taking questions from readers as well.
As per usual I’ll be posting it for patrons first.
(I’m also recording a podcast with ex-academic Justin Murphy)
I’ll update this post as needed.
Update: Rakhighari paper is out, An Ancient Harappan Genome Lacks Ancestry from Steppe Pastoralists or Iranian Farmers.
The graphic abstract gets at the main point:
Update II: The Formation of Human Populations in South and Central Asia. The map says it all:
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.
Please keep the other posts on topic. Use this for talking about whatever you want to talk about.
Another BP Podcast is up. You can listen on Libsyn, iTunes, Spotify, and Stitcher. Probably the easiest way to keep up the podcast since we don’t have a regular schedule is to subscribe at one of the links above.
You can also support the podcast as a patron. The primary benefit now is that you get the podcasts considerably earlier than everyone else. I am toying with the idea of doing a patron Youtube Livestream chat, if people are interested, in the next few weeks.
Would appreciate more positive reviews!
In this episode we talk to Mukunda Raghavan, who runs Meru Media (“your home for all things Indic”). We talk about Hindu drinking culture, India, Pakistan, Tambrams, Aryan Invasion, all the fun stuff. Do check it out and leave comments.
Please keep the other posts on topic. Use this for talking about whatever you want to talk about.
One of the things that I admitted when reflecting on where I’ve been wrong, is that my default stance is to be somewhat isolationist because international entanglements are so complex. Some critics always wonder why I use such a simple heuristic, why not evaluate on a case by case basis?
At the extreme, this is obviously what would happen. But most cases are not at the extreme. The reality is I know more about history and geography than the vast majority of people, and I just don’t feel comfortable offering definitive judgment on many issues.
In the USA today the Right is pro-Israel to a default, to such an extent that it strikes me that they are as pro-Israel as they are pro-American. At least their in their rhetorical posture. Similarly, the Left is now pro-Palestine to a very great extent.
We could conclude that both the Right and Left have thought through their positions deeply and come to a reasoned position, but the reality is that these are just tribal politics. A subset of the Right adheres to a philo-Israeli theological position that has emerged in the last few decades, and these dictate the terms for the broader Right. Similarly, a small group of activists have kept and amplified the fire of 1970s Left nationalism which aligned with Palestine, and merged with more mainstream “social justice” views so that the pro-Palestinian position is now the Left position.
This is the case with many issues. Tribal politics and coalitional affinities drive solidarity and opinions. When your enemy was the Nazis, things get much easier. But these are very rare cases. Reality is more complex.
Which gets to why I used Ilhan Omar and Sarah Palin to illustrate this post. Both are very sincere and very stupid. So they have strong unnuanced opinions on foreign affairs, even if they could barely navigate a map. They are the best models for “hash tag activists.”
Priyanka Chopra tweeted during a time when we were this ?? close to sending nukes to one another. Instead of advocating for peace she tweeted in support of the Indian army pic.twitter.com/LhbMkOW59v
— Ayesha Malik (@Spishaa) August 11, 2019
If you are lucky, you are not aware that Priyanka Chopra got “called out” by a young Pakistani woman for “encouraging nuclear war against Pakistan.”
On the face of it seems very unlikely that Chopra was doing anything more than making a vanilla patriotic statement during a very tense time (I assume literally no one except for insane people would have wanted nuclear war in any case or even a conventional war!).
Though the initial stories referred to a “Pakistani woman”, you can tell by the accent that she was raised in the USA. In fact, she was naturalized as an American citizen at a very young age (she posted the certificate on her Facebook page). To be honest, even when I heard her referred to as Pakistani (she refers to herself as such), I was a bit skeptical and suspected perhaps she was actually American because this sort of self-righteous grandstanding is what America teaches the current generation.
Ayesha Malik is self-centered, ignorant, and milking an issue of genuine geopolitical concern to elevate her own individual profile as a beauty vlogger. Very American.
Please keep the other posts on topic. Use this for talking about whatever you want to talk about.
Nothing to say of substance myself. What do I know compared to you geniuses? That being said, I’m a little surprised how dumb the American media is ( basically they seem to fall back on the same sources).
Like they used to say back in the day, “it’s yours”….
