From the LA Times
Those of European descent are more closely related with one another than with their fellow countrymen, say researchers who were primarily studying genetic diseases.
By Thomas H. Maugh II, Los Angeles Times
Jews of European descent living on opposite sides of the globe are more closely related to one another than they are to their fellow countrymen, according to the largest study ever conducted of what it means genetically to be Jewish. Ashkenazis, the primary group descended from European Jews, are all as closely related as fourth or fifth cousins would be, the study found.
Glad to see a news report finally implying what I've been saying since the late 1990s: a racial group is a partly inbred extended family.
Frank Salter may have invented this way of thinking about racial relatedness in terms of cousins back in the 1990s. It's very useful, but it has to be understood, not surprisingly, relativistically.
"Jews really are different from their non-Jewish neighbors," said Dr. Harry Ostrer, a geneticist at the New York University Langone Medical Center, coauthor of the study appearing Thursday in the American Journal of Human Genetics.
They are not different enough to be considered a separate race, as some experts have argued, he added, but definitely are a "distinct population" — the result, presumably, of cultural separation down through thousands of years.
Does anybody actually know what are unarguable criteria for defining a "separate race" from a "distinct population?" It seems to me that biologists have a hard enough time deciding whether dogs, wolves, and coyotes are separate species or not to pronounce authoritatively on the differences between separate races and distinct populations. It would be simpler and clearer to adopt my terminology: Jews are a partly inbred extended family.
The study, which was conducted primarily to further medical knowledge of genetic diseases, rejected a highly controversial idea that Ashkenazi Jews are descended from Khazars in Eastern Europe who converted to Judaism — an idea that has recently been used in an attempt to discredit the idea that Jews belong in Israel because it is their historic homeland.
The study shows that there is "clearly a shared genetic common ancestry among geographically diverse populations consistent with oral tradition and culture …and that traces back to the Middle East," said geneticist Sarah A. Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania, who was not involved in the study. "Jews have assimilated to some extent, but they clearly retain their common ancestry." ...
Although the study sheds light on Jewish history — providing new information about the separation between North African and European Jews 2,500 years ago and the near extinction of European Jews in the Middle Ages — its major goal is to identify genes for many diseases that are more common in Jewish groups, such as breast cancer, Gaucher's disease and Tay-Sachs.
The higher incidence of those diseases among "Abraham's children" will allow scientists to more readily find genes that causes the illnesses and then extend that knowledge to the general population, said geneticist Gil Atzmon of Yeshiva University's Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, coauthor of the paper.
The study examined 237 Jewish individuals from seven regions of the world, comparing them with 418 non-Jewish people from the same regions. Each of the Jewish subjects had all four grandparents from the same population.
So, this study leaves out individuals who are only part-Jewish. It would be interesting to know what percentage of today's self-identified Jews have fewer than four self-identified Jewish grandparents. Conversely, what percentage of Americans who don't identify as Jews had at least one Jewish grandparent?
The researchers studied about 160,000 sites across the entire genome, providing a great deal more information about the population than has ever been available. ...
The Jewish people, according to archaeologists, originated in Babylon and Persia between the 4th and 6th centuries BC.
The theory is that the hothouse Babylonian Captivity of intellectuals led to the emergence of Hebrews as a self-aware nation.
The modern-day Jews most closely related to that original population are those in Iran, Iraq and Syria, whose closest non-Jewish relatives are the Druze, Bedouins and Palestinians, the study found.
It could well be that, on average, today's Arab-speaking Palestinians are more closely related to the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine in, say, 1 AD than are the current Jewish inhabitants of Israel. (In James Michener's novel about an archaeological dig in Israel, The Source, one character is a sardonic Palestinian archaeologist who points out that his ancestors have, so far as anybody can tell, been living in the same grove of olive trees since Biblical times.) But, politically, so what? To my mind, possession is nine-tenths of the law.
Sometime in that period, the Middle Eastern and European Jews diverged and the European branch began actively proselytizing for converts.
At the height of the Roman Empire, about 10% of the empire's population was Jewish, although the bulk of them were converts. Some Khazars were also incorporated during this period.
"That explains why so many European and Syrian Jews have blue eyes and blond hair," Ostrer says. It also explains another of the team's findings — that the population most closely related genetically to European Jews are Italians.
The data also show what the researchers call a "bottleneck" in the Jewish population during the Middle Ages. The population of European Jews shrunk below 50,000 during that period because of disease, prejudice, anti-Semitic edicts and the Crusades, Atzmon said.
Afterward, however, an easing of restrictions led to what is known as the "demographic miracle," in which the Jewish population rose twice as fast as that of other Europeans, reaching more than 5 million by the 19th century.
The Jewish population in Europe grew so much that a lot of Jews in early modern times had to move down the economic ladder into lousier jobs. The constant kvetching about being poor in, say, Fiddler on the Roof, is inspired in part by the characters' knowledge that their ancestors hadn't been as poor -- an awareness largely lost on today's Jews.
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It also explains another of the team's findings — that the population most closely related genetically to European Jews are Italians.
Well, I feel vindicated. I remember Fred getting a bit testy some time back when I wrote here that I have sometimes conflated Jews and Italians.
the population most closely related genetically to European Jews are Italians
This probably has more to do with Italians having Middle Eastern ancestry than with Jews having European ancestry.
"It would be interesting to know what percentage of today's self-identified Jews have fewer than four self-identified Jewish grandparents"
I'd be surprised if there were very many at all. It seems like it would take a Jewish ancestry of like 1/8th or less for a modern young American Jew not to identify as Jewish. Being half Jewish isn't even a thing anymore for Americans, it seems. And especially never mind maternal lineage and all that.
Under the 'Law of Return' I qualify for Israeli citizenship, but I don't consider myself to be Jewish -- any more than do a hundred thousand or so Russians who were allowed into Israel in the eighties and nineties because they have Jews in the family tree.
Odd that the US -- a secular democracy -- considers a racist theocracy its best friend.
Interesting article but what's new about it.
Please correct me if I'm wrong but the Ashkenazi population expanded from 50k in the 16th century and so therefore would be highly interrelated.
If there was substantial admixture it would have been during the medieval and ancient period.
I mean the genetic tests are interesting but the fact is that the Palestinians are the "indigenous" people of the region.
The Jews are like the Gypsies; a migrant people who have dispersed, retained their core population characteristics, albeit with some admixture.
I think the Jews are a perfect blend of East & West (or Orient & Eastern Europe) and the Khazar contribution is there in the Levy priesthood (50% of which has a "slavic" marker).
At any rate genetic tests, more often than not corroborate the reality on the ground.
The Iranians are a Middle Eastern people, with a significant trace of Iranic genes, all the populations of the Muslim world are fully differentiated and unique (retain their pre-Islamic heritage) but are also significantly inter-related.
We are both indigenous but the Bedouin genes have scatted far and wide throughout the Muslim world.
"I'd be surprised if there were very many at all. It seems like it would take a Jewish ancestry of like 1/8th or less for a modern young American Jew not to identify as Jewish. Being half Jewish isn't even a thing anymore for Americans, it seems. And especially never mind maternal lineage and all that."
In Russia and the Russian diaspora is full of half and quarter Jews who consider themselves "nationality" Jewish.
I think that's right because of a mix of persecution, ability and history (also the world is obsessed by them) Jewish ancestry figures more prominently than any other.
So in a way outmarriage is a win-win it diversifies the "inbred" Ashkenazi gene pool, without seriously threatening it (the Orthodox are more than compensating, but at the same time strengthens the cosmopolitaness of the Jewish race.
This probably has more to do with Italians having Middle Eastern ancestry than with Jews having European ancestry.
That's unlikely. Jews have Southern European ancestry because lots of people converted to Judaism in ancient Roman times. Interestingly, this study indicates that Ashkenazi Jews have very little Germanic or Slavic ancestry, even though many of them have blue eyes and fair hair.
Syrian Jews are blonde?
As I recall, the late journalist Luigi Barzini, in his bestselling 1964 book The Italians, found certain characteristics (cultural ones: he wasn't writing a scientific survey) shared by Italians and Jews.
First, and most obviously, intense family pride. Italy in the 1860s and 1870s became a "proposition nation", but the average Italian remained far more loyal to his extended family than to anything as abstract as a country.
Second, business acumen, tempered with a certain fatalism. You see this still, with the situation where (a) even the dumbest Italian lavatory-cleaner realizes that Berlusconi is a conniving propagandistic sex-crazed dirtball, (b) nobody is actually capable (or even all that desirous) of getting rid of him on that account, although legal proceedings against him have been rumbling on for years.
Perhaps less convincingly, Barzini also likened Italians to Chinese, not only in the fatalism and business acumen departments but in the extreme reluctance to do anything in public without making a dreadful noise.
"At the height of the Roman Empire, about 10% of the empire's population was Jewish"
Is this true?
Also, in "Before the Dawn" I believe it is mentioned that European jews are generally matrilineal European and patrilinealy Hebrew. Anybody know anything about this?
I can never understand how a group of people so appreciative of and welcoming to modern science abide by the maternal lineage belief.
Yeah, I agree with Average Joe, that the genetic kinship between Jews and Italians is probably related to the high percentage of Turkish/Arab genes in Italian populations. Dont forget that the Ottomans and Arabs controlled Sicily and large portions of Italy during the Middle ages. Quentin Tarantino describes what they did in "True Romance".
At the height of the Roman Empire, 10% of the population was Jewish? What? How come I have never read about this before? Could somebody provide some historical evidence here? The Romans left a heck of a lot of written material - I have read some of it but don't recall any Tacitus or whoever writing about such an enormous population. Could some kind reader provide some info?
"Jews of European descent living on opposite sides of the globe are more closely related to one another than they are to their fellow countrymen."
Unlike gentiles. If a gentile from Europe moves to Japan, he magically becomes more genetically like the Japanese than like other Europeans.
This probably has more to do with Italians having Middle Eastern ancestry than with Jews having European ancestry.
RACE MIXTURE IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE
Tenney Frank
American Historical Review (July 1916, vol. 21, no. 4: 689–708)
toqonline.com
...By combining epigraphical and literary references, a fairly full history of the noble families can be procured, and this reveals a startling inability of such families to perpetuate themselves. We know, for instance, in Caesar's day of forty-five patricians, only one of whom is represented by posterity when Hadrian came to power. The Aemilii, Fabii, Claudii, Manlii, Valerii, and all the rest, with the exception of the Cornelii, have disappeared. Augustus and Claudius raised twenty-five families to the patriciate, and all but six of them disappear before Nerva's reign. Of the families of nearly four hundred senators recorded in 65 A.D. under Nero, all trace of a half is lost by Nerva's day, a generation later. And the records are so full that these statistics may be assumed to represent with a fair degree of accuracy the disappearance of the male stock of the families in question. Of course members of the aristocracy were the chief sufferers from the tyranny of the century, but this havoc was not all wrought by delatores and assassins. The voluntary choice of childlessness accounts largely for the unparalleled condition. This is as far as the records help upon this problem, which, despite the silence, is probably the most important phase of the whole question of the change of race. Be the causes what they may, the rapid decrease of the old aristocracy and the native stock was clearly concomitant with a twofold increase from below: by a more normal birth-rate of the poor, and the constant manumission of slaves.
This Orientalizing of Rome's populace has a more important bearing than is usually accorded it upon the larger question of why the spirit and acts of imperial Rome are totally different from those of the republic, if indeed racial characteristics are not wholly a myth. There is today a healthy activity in the study of the economic factors - unscientific finance, fiscal agriculture, inadequate support of industry and commerce, etc. - that contributed to Rome's decline. But what lay behind and constantly reacted upon all such causes of Rome's disintegration was, after all, to a considerable extent, the fact that the people who built Rome had given way to a different race. The lack of energy and enterprise, the failure of foresight and commonsense, the weakening of moral and political stamina, all were concomitant with the gradual diminution of the stock which, during the earlier days, had displayed these qualities...
List of countries and territories by fertility rate
en.wikipedia.org
Italy, UN estimate, 2000-2005: 1.29
Italy, UN estimate, 2005-2010: 1.38
Italy, CIA estimate, 2000: 1.18
Italy, CIA estimate, 2009: 1.31
That slight uptick you see in the [otherwise extinction-level] Italian fertility rates is almost certainly due to a new class of "Orientals" who are moving in and establishing a beachhead for themselves [in this case, for something they call Dar al-Islam].
What is really fascinating is that the Jewish population was able to succeed in two ways at the same time. First of all they increased their population by 100 fold (from 50 thousand to 5 million) Second of all, they grew the average IQ of the population.
It is pretty well accepted here on the HBD blog-o-sphere that the success of the ashkenazi in growing their population's IQ comes from the community's decision to make the high prestige, highly compensated positions open to those young Jewish men with the highest IQ, not just the ones who were born to successful fathers.
Let me lay out the following hypothesis. In a Jewish village, the teachers were all on the look out for brilliant young men born in to a poor family. The Chief rabbi was interested in taking a few very poor but brilliant young men in to study the talmud, and if a young man proved to be extraordinary, he would be given an honored position in the village, a fertile young wife, and the means to have ten children.
By no means was the Ashkenazi village going to make this young man "rich" but it would provide for him to have ten children.
Meanwhile, in the Catholic town next door, a young Catholic man born with super high IQ had fewer options. There was no infrastructure in place to find him and give him intellectual opportunities. He might spend his life working in a low paid position and if he had kids, he might not make enough money to insure that they survived to adulthood. Or perhaps he would join the priesthood and have no children.
If we here in the HBD blog-o-sphere wanted to create, from scratch, a society focused on elevating the average IQ of each generation, so that 500 years from now our society would be able to out think its competitors, I dare say that the society we create would bear much more similarity to the ashkenazi society than to the Catholic society
Well, that's it. The LA Times has officially gone over to the Nazis.
At the height of the Roman Empire, about 10% of the empire's population was Jewish, although the bulk of them were converts. Some Khazars were also incorporated during this period.
"That explains why so many European and Syrian Jews have blue eyes and blond hair," Ostrer says.
That's interesting. So Jews got their blue eyes and light-colored hair in Roman times instead of in the Middle Ages? I had always assumed that it came from interbreeding with Germans and Swedes in the Middle Ages.
This means that Ashkenazi Jewish genetic distinctiveness must have developed post-diaspora...modern American Jews are more a subpopulation of ancient Romans than a relative of modern-day Palestinians...
Afterward, however, an easing of restrictions led to what is known as the "demographic miracle," in which the Jewish population rose twice as fast as that of other Europeans, reaching more than 5 million by the 19th century.
The Jewish population in Europe grew so much that a lot of Jews in early modern times had to move down the economic ladder into lousier jobs. The constant kvetching about being poor in, say, Fiddler on the Roof, is inspired in part by the characters' knowledge that their ancestors hadn't been as poor -- an awareness largely lost on today's Jews.
Once again, Google search refuses to link directly* to your piece on Olof Aschberg, the Jewish banker in Sweden who laundered the Bolshevik's stolen loot and thereby financed their victory over the White Russians in the Civil War of 1917-1921.
iSteve readers might also be interesting in perusing Gareth Jones's diary entry for his interview with Soviet Foreign Minister Maxim Litvinov, about the Holodomor.
"Maxim Litvinov" was the nom-de-guerre of one "Meir Wallach-Finkelstein", a son born to a a wealthy Jewish banking family in Bialystock.
*Someone at Google is intentionally removing that piece from the Google search engine's URL data store. My experience has been that if Komment Kontrol approves a post like this for publication, then the search results will briefly become correct, until that person [or persons] at Google notices it, and once again removes the URL from the data store [which maybe ought to tell us something about the internals of Google's implementation of the page rank algorithm, although I'm not sure what].
This is particularly egregious since Google owns "Blogger/Blogspot" - i.e. they are intentionally censoring their own intellectual property.
I don't think the Khazar conversion should be discounted. It makes a great deal of sense.
To one of the anonynmices,
Sicily was controlled by Arabs, but the Ottoman Turks never controlled Sicily or any part of the Italian peninsula.
Unfortunately we have to deal with people on this site who get their history from Quentin Tarantino.
"It could well be that, on average, today's Arab-speaking Palestinians are more closely related to the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine in, say, 1 AD than are the current Jewish inhabitants of Israel."
I doubt that. There may be more genetic diversity among the Palestinians. I doubt they would even agree to participate in this sort of genetic study, but consider the effect that pervasive black slavery and manumission have had in Arab communities. The darker Palestinians probably have some African ancestry (as seems to be the case among Iraqis and is obviously the case in Saudi Arabia, which still has slaves). The more European-looking Palestinians may have some Crusader ancestry.
If the Palestinians were true to their name, they would be of European ancestry as the Phoenicians were. But considering that Palestinians didn't start calling themselves that until 50 years ago or so, they are probably descended mainly from transient Arab tribes, with some African and European ancestry tossed in.
"Well, I feel vindicated. I remember Fred getting a bit testy some time back when I wrote here that I have sometimes conflated Jews and Italians."
I don't recall that, but there are obvious overlaps in appearances between some Jews and Italians.
"interesting in perusing" = "interested in perusing"
I assume that Harvard will be updating its quota rules to break out Jewish from white any day now. If you did that, I wonder if there would be any underrepresented groups that are not counted as such today?
"At the height of the Roman Empire, 10% of the population was Jewish? What? How come I have never read about this before? Could somebody provide some historical evidence here?"
It's a pretty popular figure. "Jews Population Roman Empire" on Google & Google Books should get you started.
The decline in the Jewish population in the late Roman empire could be due to the rise of Christianity, which some wag has summed up as "Judaism for Gentiles." Monotheism minus circumcision proved more popular, and Christian theology provides a more explicit role for the non-Hebrews.
Jews (and Christians) forbade infanticide while it was extensively practiced by the Greco-Roman pagan population. In addition, Christians would rescue exposed infants. The monotheists thus easily won the population competition.
"I assume that Harvard will be updating its quota rules to break out Jewish from white any day now. "
They already do to a large extent. Why do you think they have "geographic diversity" rules which limit the number of admitees from the suburbs of New York?
Fred:
I don't recall that, but there are obvious overlaps in appearances between some Jews and Italians.
Oh, it was probably at least three years ago. I was just admitting my provincialism (something like: "them thar New Yorkers all look the same to me"), and you quite adamantly drew some distinctions.
I made a mental note of it, and vowed that if I were to visit New Jersey or thereabouts I would be careful to pay attention to these distinctions.
an idea that has recently been used in an attempt to discredit the idea that Jews belong in Israel because it is their historic homeland.
It's really strange how a significant portion of WNs and ethnopatriots fall in line with this. I don't get it. If Israel goes down the tubes, there goes our biggest excuse for European ethnostates. All that work for nothing. As it stands now, we get to make some pretty good rhetorical jujitsu takedowns over this, and rightly so; what are Euros, second class humans?
I guess the problem is nuance; most people like to be 'fur or agin' something, keeps things simple. WNs know they can't be fur Israel, so they's agin it.
Well, I feel vindicated. I remember Fred getting a bit testy some time back when I wrote here that I have sometimes conflated Jews and Italians.
Absolutely; Italians are the only group I regularly have difficulty distinguishing from Jews.
Steve Johnson said
I assume that Harvard will be updating its quota rules to break out Jewish from white any day now. If you did that, I wonder if there would be any underrepresented groups that are not counted as such today?
________
Steve, it is pretty well known that Harvard has policies that show preference for a gentile from the red states vs a jew from the blue states
This is pretty openly talked about at Harvard and other ivies as "seeking geographical diversity"
If a white from say Idaho or Montana has the same IQ and same test scores as a jewish person from the New York suburbs, the white person is much more likely to get in.
No serious observer of the ivy admission process has ever disputed this as far as I know
Putting that aside, why do you, as a white survivalist want your people to go to the ivies? The ivies teach young men and women to hate the white surivalist movement. So why deliver your best and brightest to be indoctrinated - why not put them to some other use?
Just askin
"Unlike gentiles. If a gentile from Europe moves to Japan, he magically becomes more genetically like the Japanese than like other Europeans."
Half Sigma, uber-rational except when it comes to topics relating to Jews.
"Oh, it was probably at least three years ago. I was just admitting my provincialism (something like: "them thar New Yorkers all look the same to me"), and you quite adamantly drew some distinctions.
I made a mental note of it, and vowed that if I were to visit New Jersey or thereabouts I would be careful to pay attention to these distinctions."
Well, there are overlaps and there are differences. To break it down specifically for you, most Italian-Americans in the New York area are of Southern Italian extraction -- dark hair, dark eyes, dark complexion. Some Jews in the area have a similar phenotype. E.g., the actor Scott Cohen, who has played Italians and Jews. But there are also plenty of Jews in this area who have fair skin and light-colored hair, both of which are uncommon among Southern Italians.
(I can't remember if I posted part of this already so I'll post the whole thing)
Unlike gentiles. If a gentile from Europe moves to Japan, he magically becomes more genetically like the Japanese than like other Europeans.
Well, if we were talking about yesterday's crop of migrants (and not their great-great-etc-grandkids), your point would be pointier.
Plunk down a few Europeans (what you call "gentiles from Europe") in Tokyo and they'll look like Ainu in three generations.
What is really fascinating is that the Jewish population was able to succeed in two ways at the same time. First of all they increased their population by 100 fold (from 50 thousand to 5 million) Second of all, they grew the average IQ of the population.
The thing to remember here is that Jews represent a selected population. Not smart and ethnocentric enough to keep up? Apostasy awaits.
I dare say that the society we create would bear much more similarity to the ashkenazi society than to the Catholic society
Which of course manages to piss everyone off; on one hand you're an anti-Semite, and on the other you're trying to "be like Jews." *sigh*
Unfortunately we have to deal with people on this site who get their history from Quentin Tarantino.
And unfortunately Tarantino worships blacks. I think his entire concept of masculinity is tied up with blackness, having been raised by a black man, or somesuch. So, he takes many shots at white men and elevates blacks over them in his work.
the Palestinians are the "indigenous" people of the region
Indigenous is a slippery concept, because population movements never really stop, even if cluster like structure remains. Like Steve says, possession is nine tenths of the law (which you must shut the gate before the horse has bolted... in).
Hmmm... Christianity is really more Middle-Platonism and the popular bits of Late Antique Paganism with some Jewish theological bits glued on at weird angles to give it an authentic religious tradition feel (than "Judaism for Gentiles"). There's very little Jewish about it. Not that any other religion is actually more authentic when you get down to brass tacks. Of course, there's very little of the pre-Rabbinical Judaism left in Judaism (they're literate, they expect everyone to be interested in some form of intellectual matters, even if they're only faux intellectual movements, they supposedly don't defer to priests just because they're priests), so Judaism (as we think of it now) really isn't much older than Christianity.
(Western Philosophy has always been a much better *fit* with Christianity for this reason. You have to throw the whole edifice o Judaism somewhat more to one side to proceed with any serious philosophy in the Western manner).
Btw, light complexions amongst Ashekenazi Jews, to the extent that they are present, are probably the result of selection. Jews in a Middle European environment and the Europeans they were around would probably find those Jews with lighter complexions more attractive and trustworthy. Thus selection.
Also, regarding Ashkenazi communities being more willing to donate large fractions of their income to the reproduction of the intelligent, I'm highly skeptical. I think the hypothesis that IQ was more useful within their trader niche is more likely.
>Steve, it is pretty well known that Harvard has policies that show preference for a gentile from the red states vs a jew from the blue states
This is pretty openly talked about at Harvard and other ivies as "seeking geographical diversity"<
You seek what you don't have.
>why do you, as a white survivalist want your people to go to the ivies? The ivies teach young men and women to hate the white surivalist movement. So why deliver your best and brightest to be indoctrinated - why not put them to some other use?<
Excellent question. It has to do with white gentile status-jockeying. Irish hates Scot hates Swede hates German hates Italian - but WASPs created Harvard to mop the floor with 'em all. This should be put well behind us whites. Harvard is lost, and so should be the inter-ethnic white competitions.
I think the scene some have talked about in True Romance is the one where Dennis Hopper (sorry, can't remember the character's name) is trying to provoke Christopher Walken into killing him.
He never mentions anything about the Ottoman Empire.
Here's the scene:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tqccyUpnZwA
Re: "possession is 9/10ths of the law"
That's an easy out. So if I broke into your house and took your TV, I assume you'd shrug and let me keep it.
Easier to say when it's someone else's TV.
"That's an easy out. So if I broke into your house and took your TV, I assume you'd shrug and let me keep it.
Easier to say when it's someone else's TV."
Well said. Now sign over the deed to your house to me. It's the least you can do after taking my country.
Anonymous said...
"Steve, it is pretty well known that Harvard has policies that show preference for a gentile from the red states vs a jew from the blue states"
How big are these preferences versus those for affirmative action? Tiny. Let's look at the numbers for undergraduates.
Caucasian or white students = 61 to 62 percent of undergraduate students
Non-white or students of color = 38 percent of undergraduate students
(from http://athome.harvard.edu/programs/light/light7/light7.html)
Ok, so 62% of the undergrads are white (including Jews). What percentage of the total class is Jewish? 33 (cite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Jews). 53% of whites at Harvard are Jewish (assuming that the numbers of Jewish people who identify as both Jewish and a non-white race are negligible). By cutting the number of slots for whites (through affirmative action) and by having Jewish people counted in those slots, the result is basically to severely limit the slots available to white non-Jewish people.
"This is pretty openly talked about at Harvard and other ivies as "seeking geographical diversity""
Looks like they do a great job. They limit the slots for whites to 60% of the entering class then give more than half of those spots to people who are genetically distinct from the rest of whites. Sort of seems strange from the "diversity" perspective. Like you might want to have separate quotas for separate genetic groups if the whole "diversity" thing isn't just a smoke screen for who / whom.
"Putting that aside, why do you, as a white survivalist want your people to go to the ivies? The ivies teach young men and women to hate the white surivalist movement. So why deliver your best and brightest to be indoctrinated - why not put them to some other use?"
Hmm, maybe because whoever goes to Harvard controls the country? Most of what's wrong with our country is because of the structure of government (see the writings of Mencius Moldbug for a great description of this) and the damage that it does to everything it touches (most especially by propagating lies) but the ethnic makeup of the people who run this horrifying machine still matters. It might be possible that the highest SAT scoring ethnic group might not be the one best suited to ruling. It is probably possible to have a progressive state that isn't quite as bad as the one we have now.
Probably having an elite group that was (1) sufficiently competent (enough said), (2a) related to the people they are ruling (so they don't simply enrich themselves at the expense of non-kin) or (2b) not hugely ethnocentric (same reason), and (3) likely to be related to non-elites (so rules don't end up massively tilted to the elite) would be preferable to the current situation.
"And unfortunately Tarantino worships blacks. I think his entire concept of masculinity is tied up with blackness, having been raised by a black man, or somesuch..."
Well Svigor, that would mean that he has an excuse for "worshiping" blacks. Considering hour, upon hour, upon hour upon hour that you spend pontificating on us; what's yours?
Dienekes discusses this study at his blog. He agrees Jews have Italian-Balkan-Anatolian ancestry, and disagrees that they have Khazar ancestry.
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2010/06/two-major-groups-of-living-jews-atzmon.html
"By cutting the number of slots for whites (through affirmative action) and by having Jewish people counted in those slots, the result is basically to severely limit the slots available to white non-Jewish people."
It seems to me that to reach this conclusion, you need to ask what percentage of Harvard students would be Jewish without affirmative action or "geographic diversity"
It's difficult to say, since it's not just a matter of competing IQ distributions. There's also the fact that Jews tend to put a lot of value on attending elite colleges. Further, one might ask what percentage of the American Jewish population lives within a day's drive of Cambridge, Mass? Probably it's far higher than the percentage for Gentile Whites.
To distill down the other findings, basically the authors found that Jews comprise a loose genetic cluster, with Ashkenazim falling as something of an outlier of the group. The authors suggest that this is due to a high rate of admixture among Ashkenazim with their non-Jewish European neighbors, reaching a rate of 30-60%, as well as a dramatic bottleneck effect. On the other hand, the loose clustering suggests a shared ancestry reaching back to an ancient Israelite past.
Interestingly, the study found close genetic ties between Ashkenazim and Northern Italians, French and Sardinians (as well as Syrian Jews). The authors suggest the genetic affinity "favors the idea of non-Semitic Mediterranean ancestry in the formation of the European/Syrian Jewish groups." The authors suggest that the core Ashkenazim population was formed from a mixture of Jews who migrated or were expelled from Israel, with those who converted during either Hellenic-Hasmonean or Greco-Roman times.
Ellen Coffman
WASPs created Harvard to mop the floor with 'em all
Not in any modern sense of the phrase "mopping the floor".
Harvard was created to provide a classical education to young Puritan men so that they could read the Bible [particularly the New Testament] in the original Greek.
Of course, the reason for doing this was so that they wouldn't have to rely on the Latin translations as rendered by the Papists [they didn't trust the Papists to provide an accurate translation, and suspected the Papists of offering up deliberate mis-translations], so maybe you could try to argue that they were mopping the floor with Italians and Frenchmen and Spaniards and Hapsburgian Austrians.
Seems to me that it's a losing battle to get more people like you/me/us/whoever into Harvard. A better solution to the "Harvard runs the country" problem is for the rest of us to mock and ridicule Harvard and Yale every chance we get. Discredit the bastards.
Hey, it's a cheap hobby, and opportunities to pursue it come along nearly every day.
Half Sigma said...
"Jews of European descent living on opposite sides of the globe are more closely related to one another than they are to their fellow countrymen."
Unlike gentiles. If a gentile from Europe moves to Japan, he magically becomes more genetically like the Japanese than like other Europeans.
Dear Half Sigma.
Not unlike gentiles.
Just the opposite, like gentiles. And that is why Jews in Poland, Germany and US are separate race.
Just because the Jews live in these countries does not mean they magically become more genetically like the Europeans.
The Jews were and are Middle Easterners.
You have just confirmed this in your post :)
Palestinians are largely descended from the ancient Hebrews as are Jews. Both groups have other sources of ancestry.
Lighter skinned Ashkenazi Jews look like people in the Caucuses, not Northern Europeans. Look up pictures of Chechens and Armenians on the internet and compare them to the whiter looking Jews. You'll see the same facial features.
A lot of Syrian Arabs are about as European looking as the average Jew. There are a fair number of people in Northern Iraq, both Arabs and Kurds who are more or less white looking.
Phoneticians were not of European ancestry. They were Near Eastern Semites, like the Hebrews.
The data also show what the researchers call a "bottleneck" in the Jewish population during the Middle Ages. The population of European Jews shrunk below 50,000 during that period because of disease, prejudice, anti-Semitic edicts and the Crusades, Atzmon said.
This would be extremely important if true, and the most likely source for the Ashkenazi IQ advantage. (I'd guess those 50,000 non-converts were the most intellectually attached to Judaism, hence most bookish, and perhaps had other sorts of advantages). But it seems almost impossible. How do you get from less than 50,000 Jews in, say, AD 1200 to 5 million in AD 1850? That's a hundred fold increase in 20-25 generations, everyone averages 5 surviving and reproducing kids each generation? Seems impossible.
MQ:
20,000-30,000 Puritans in 1630-1640 formed the group from which most of New England's population in 1800 was descended, I believe. So it can be done.
But in Malthusian Europe? In terms of pure population size, England only went from around a shade under 3 million to 21 million from 1200-1850 (according to google), which is only a seven fold increase. Bear in mind that this is a group which, unlike the pre-Twen Cen Jews, probably did go through a demographic transformation to reduce its fertility. beginning at least in the 18th century though (this is a remarked upon historical phenomenon which AFAIK was not mirrored in the Jewish community).
This isn't the full story though since the population of England at that time would (c.f. Gregory Clarke) only be the descendants of a small minority of the English (and British) population of the Middle Ages.
But it's still hard to understand a 100 fold increase, in the Malthusian world of Europe, assuming that these the descendents of the Jews did not cause negative or massively depressed reproduction in the gentile community through their increase.
I suspect the European Jewish population bottleneck was in the Dark Ages of, roughly, 500 to 1000, when gentiles hit their population lows as well.
Razib at GNXP Discover and Dienekes have extensively covered this journal article much more thoroughly than the LA Times article:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2010/06/genetics-the-jewish-question/
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2010/06/two-major-groups-of-living-jews-atzmon.html
Anonymous responding to Half Sigma wrote: "The Jews were and are Middle Easterners.
You have just confirmed this in your post :)"
This is not consistent with the data at all if you were to read the original journal article or Razib's or Dienekes' analyses. The similarity of the Jewish populations reflects ancient common ancestry as supported by identity by descent (IBD) analysis of the genome. This is significant and ties all mainstream Jewish populations together, representing a common origin. However, there is evidence for significant Southern European introgression into the progenitors of the Ashkenazim in the clustering of Ashkenazim between Middle Eastern populations and S. European populations (look at the Fst Table which shows relatively close relationship between Ashkenazim and Northern Italians as well as the French and Sardinians). S. European populations cluster away from Middle Eastern populations and closer to other European populations, although there is some north-south and west-east European substructure.
" Barack Mugabe said...
At the height of the Roman Empire, 10% of the population was Jewish? What? How come I have never read about this before? Could somebody provide some historical evidence here? The Romans left a heck of a lot of written material - I have read some of it but don't recall any Tacitus or whoever writing about such an enormous population. Could some kind reader provide some info?"
I don't believe this claim. I don't recall Gibbon saying anything about it. Nor is this fact (factoid) mentioned in anything else I've read on ancient Rome. If true, it would be remarkable, and I don't remember anyone remarking on it.
And given that the roman state went out of its way in the first century to all but wipe out the jewish state, I find it hard to believe that the romans would then permit so many people to convert to the religion of a bunch of obstreperous troublemakers.
"Steve Sailer said...
I suspect the European Jewish population bottleneck was in the Dark Ages of, roughly, 500 to 1000, when gentiles hit their population lows as well."
Only 500 - 1000, really? That sounds awfully low.
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