"Race, Religion and Inheritance" - A discussion at Durham University

In the last post, we had an article about The Institute of Advanced Study at Durham University discussing "Race, Religion and Inheritance". Here is now the official report on their website:

On 26th April 2007 Durham University publically launched its Institute of Advanced Study by hosting a debate on Race, Religion and Inheritance at Durham Castle.

One topic that has emerged from the Institute's inaugural theme, 'The Legacy of Charles Darwin' concerns the relationship between classification and responsible knowing. Is it possible to develop means of classifying that are not divisive, harmful, or exclusionary, and especially among the human races and faith systems?

In the April 26 round-table debate, the Institute's interest in classification turned to the question of whether classes are pre-given, whether human taxonomy is hard-wired. This was a question of fundamental public interest, in the context of current controversies relating to the origins of racial and religious beliefs. We are seeing the resurgence of biological readings of race and racial difference, the rise and rise of religious fundamentalism, and growing bi-centennial public interest in the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade. These controversies – and possible solutions relating to religious and racial tolerance and understanding – hinge around the unresolved problem of whether differences of behaviour, disposition, and affect are inherited, and if they are, through what kind of evolutionary mechanism.

The panel of distinguished speakers included:

John Hedley Brooke (IAS Fellow, Professor of History of Science at the Ian Ramsey Centre, Oxford University, and author of the prize-winning book Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives); Madeleine Bunting (Author, Guardian columnist, and recipient of the Race in Media award by the Commission for Racial Equality in 2005); Robin Dunbar (Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at the University of Liverpool, Fellow of the British Academy and author of The Human Story);John Dupré (IAS Fellow, Philosopher of Science at Exeter University, Director of the ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society, and author of the celebrated book The Disorder of Things); Anthony P Monaco (Professor of Human Genetics and Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics, Oxford University)

The debate was chaired by Durham University's new Vice-Chancellor, Professor Christopher Higgins.A full transcript and video recording of this event will be available in due course.Last modified: 17th May 2007

It would be of special interest to have more information about this discussion.

The population genetics of inborn religious traits

At Gene Expression I cannot find anything about this (Medicalnewstoday). Are they sleeping?

What Makes A Racist? And Other Provocative Questions
At The Institute Of Advanced Study Debate, Durham University, April 26, 2007

Some of the world's finest scientists, writers and evolutionary thinkers are converging on Durham for a major event which will examine provocative questions relating to fundamental human beliefs and spirituality.

The debate, to be hosted by the University's pioneering think tank, the Institute of Advanced Study, will debate two key issues: 'Are we born racist or do we become racist?', and 'Is religion inherited or acquired?'.

The event will be chaired by Durham University's new Vice Chancellor, world-renowned scientist and evolutionary geneticist, Professor Chris Higgins, and discussions will be stimulated by a round table of leading experts in their field.

Professor Ash Amin, Director of the Institute of Advanced Study, outlined the inspiration for the event:

"9/11, the wider war on terror, and the intensifying clash of world civilizations are reinforcing essentialist understandings of human difference and recognition. We are seeing the resurgence of biological readings of race and racial difference, the rise and rise of religious fundamentalism, and growing skepticism towards secularist and socially negotiated principles of living with difference.

"These shifts, as well as possible solutions relating to religious and racial tolerance and understanding, hinge around the unresolved problem of whether differences of behaviour, disposition, and affect are inherited, and, if they are, through what evolutionary mechanism?"

Prof Amin added: "The panel aims to confront thinking in genetics and evolutionary psychology on the carriers and nature of inherited traits and on the speed with which beliefs become part of the inherited human hardwiring."

The April 26 event is part of a programme organised by the Institute of Advanced Study, whose theme for 2007 is the Legacy of Charles Darwin. On the same day, the eminent Darwin scholar Professor Michael Ruse from Florida State University will give a public lecture that will take on the various critics of evolutionary theory and will argue that 'Darwinism' remains the jewel in the crown of science.

The IAS, which opened last October, is becoming one of the major global centres of interdisciplinary study. It gathers together world-class scholars, intellectuals and public figures from around the globe and across all disciplines, to address topics of major intellectual, scientific or public and policy interest. Future annual topics will include Modelling, and Being Human.

One of the panel members at the April 26 event, Professor John Brooke, a science historian at Oxford University and an IAS fellow, will be contending the notion that our religious beliefs are 'hard-wired'. He said: "We should not seek to isolate some peculiar religious susceptibility and try to account for it in terms of the latest voguish science.

"Rather I would see the capacity for a religious response to the world as simply an extension of the perfectly normal capacities that make us human. I am thinking of our capacity for fellowship with others, of our ability to express a sense of gratitude for the fact that we exist at all, and a capacity to empathise with those who suffer."

Other panellists are the Guardian columnist, Madeline Bunting; Professor Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist at Liverpool University; John Dupre, Professor of the Philosophy of Science at Exeter University; Professor Anthony Monaco, Director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics at Oxford University.

"PZ Myers doesn't know anything ..."

Gene expression has a very good article about eugenics and IQ-(population-)genetics - a theme treated by "famous" PZ Myers.

Some things become trivial scientifically if you repeat them too often. And so Utah's geneticist Gregory Cochran is right in his short commentary: "Probably PZ Myers doesn't know anything about quantitative or population genetics. I hear they're old hat."

- But these are themes that not only have to be discussed by scientists, they have to be discussed by the whole society. And this in no way trivial any longer.

Positive selection in chimps and humans

I have made a longer post on my german blog. (Studium generale) For more information look here. (Gene Expression) Nature, Science, New Scientists have articles now. But the best commentary, I have read until now comes from an australian physics departement exploring complex and nonlinear systems (!) (Nature, Comments):

It's a big jump from observing the number of genes which have a high proportion of non-synonymous mutations, to taking this to be a measure of how much the species has changed, how 'highly evolved' they are, or who is winning the evolutionary race - to use three phrases from the article in question. As many writers have beautifully and eloquently described (eg Gary Marcus' wonderful book The Birth of the Mind - How a Tiny Number of Genes Creates the Complexities of Human Thought) there are generally no simple correspondences between genes and phenotype properties. The genotype-phenotype map is complex, highly-structured and poorly understood. A more perceptive and thoughtful discussion of the possible interpretations of the reported data would be more welcome than the cheap pseudo-controversial headlines.
Also interesting: what is the possible impact of cultural evolution as a selective force?

Anne-Marie Grisogono

Adventurer and geneticist: Spencer Wells

A very good interview with geneticist Spencer Wells about his Genographic Project at PlosGenetics. He says about Hungary:

We've gotten some fascinating results and a lot of e-mails. For example, a Hungarian woman wrote in and said, “You've got to redo my test. You told me I'm native American or Siberian, and I know my ancestors came from Hungary—I can tell you the village they were living in in the sixteenth century.” The Hungarian language, Magyar, is actually related to languages spoken in Siberia, and this is one of the first cases where we've actually seen Siberian lineages showing up in the Hungarian population. They are there at very low frequency. We now through this project have over 350 people who are of Hungarian descent and we see these [Siberian] lineages at four to five percent on both male and female sides.

And he says about the traditional tribal genealogical thinking (here in southern Tajikistan):

... Most people are interested in their history, and indigenous people, who are the ones who give us the clearest glimpse of their genetic history, are particularly interested, because in many cases it is all they have—what they cling on to—their sense of identity.

I was just in Tajikistan a week and a half ago, and we were sampling all over the southern part of the country and asking people to name their grandparents and great-grandparents and so on. I could do that back to maybe to my great-grandparents. These people can do it back six, seven, eight generations. They've always lived in the same place and beyond that they know even more about their history, but not necessarily their names.

So they have a sense, a clear idea of where they came from, that something is passed from generation that ties them to their ancestors. You explain to them that that thing is DNA and that it will tell us not only about the people they can name but also people beyond that that they can't name ...

Some personal things about this blonde Spencer Wells:

My father (...) he comes from a military family. His father, whom he never knew because he died in World War II, graduated top of his class from West Point and was apparently a wild man out in the field. I think maybe I got some of my love of danger and going to strange places from him. ...

The Anglo-Saxons ... Genes, Mind and Culture ....

Nicholas Wade gives a good survey in the NYT about current thinking of geneticists about the population history of the British Isles since their recolonization after the Ice-Age. Geneticists seem to agree, that most of current people in the British Isle are stemming from this recolonization after the Ice-Age and not from later migrations bringing agriculture (4000 BC) or by the Celts, the Anglo-Saxons or the Vikings. (But Bryan Sykes seems to make greater differences between small neolithic and big celtic genetic influence on current populations.)

The geneticists Stephen Oppenheimer, Bryan Sykes, Christopher Tyler-Smith, Mark Thomas, Peter Forster and others mostly disagree at the moment about the Anglo-Saxonian genetical influence. And there is another - may be - new insight:

English is usually assumed to have developed in England, from the language of the Angles and Saxons, about 1,500 years ago. But Forster argues that the Angles and the Saxons were both really Viking peoples who began raiding Britain ahead of the accepted historical schedule. They did not bring their language to England because English, in his view, was already spoken there, probably introduced before the arrival of the Romans by tribes such as the Belgae, whom Caesar describes as being present on both sides of the Channel. (...)

Germanic is usually assumed to have split into three branches: West Germanic, which includes German and Dutch; East Germanic, the language of the Goths and Vandals; and North Germanic, consisting of the Scandinavian languages. Forster's analysis shows English is not an offshoot of West Germanic, as usually assumed, but is a branch independent of the other three, which also implies a greater antiquity. Germanic split into its four branches some 2,000 to 6,000 years ago, Forster estimates.

Addendum: Razib Khan and others are sceptical concerning the last thoughts. Me too. But you should never say never.

Community genetics

A very interesting article is publicized in the new "Nature Reviews Genetics": "The co-evolutionary genetics of ecological communities". It seems, that there are some parallels to human communities and how they influence each other in history and evolutionary times. - Only as one example we can suppose a sort of "co-evolution" between the Germans and the Ashkenazi Jews in the last 1000 years (parallels in genetics and mother-tongue). Another example for "co-evolution" could be the influence between Europeans and East Asians at the long chinese border during ancient times (the beginning of chinese bronze age and other events).

Here are some sentences concerning plants and animals:

Advances in the emerging field of community genetics, which integrates genetics and community ecology, could revolutionize how co-evolution is studied, how genes are functionally annotated and how conservation geneticists implement preservation strategies.

Patterns of co-adaptation result from the process of co-evolution, which occurs whenever two ecologically interacting species exert reciprocal selection pressures on one another and the response is inherited. Although most interactions between species, including those between competitors, predator and prey, host and parasite, or host and symbiont, generate reciprocal selection pressures, the specific pattern that emerges over time varies with the nature of the ecological interaction, the genetic architecture of the co-evolving traits and the degree of co-transmission across generations.

Incest: Good for the Jews

In an Online Journal called "Jewcy" you can find an interesting article: "Incest: Good for the Jews - The benefits of a small tribal gene pool". An overview about current thinking concerning jewish population genetics. - But first - what does this online journal is telling "About Us"?:

"Jewcy has become a cultural icon at the forefront of a new wave of Jewish culture and pride.” - Guardian “[Jewcy] is the accoutrement of choice for a new breed of Jewish hipsters...”- Washington Post

Jewcy Media Group is an entertainment and media company devoted to helping Jews (and anyone else) find, use, share, and expand meaning and community.

With its online site, theatrical productions, and steady diet of exciting events, Jewcy is the premier Jewish media and entertainment outlet for progressive free-thinkers.

WHY NOW?

In the thick, messy context of contemporary American life, it’s a remarkable moment to be a Jew. There is unparalleled opportunity for people hell-bent on making a meaningful difference with their lives, but also an unprecedented uncertainty about the relevance of old traditions and institutions.

This much we know: we’re hungry. Hungry for meaning. For community. For continuity and clarity and inspiration. For intelligent, thoughtful analysis of consequential ideas and issues. Our affluence, our boundless access to information, our education and unprecedented acceptance into the cultural mainstream carry with them unlimited possibilities – and unlimited possibilities carry equal measures of hope and fear.

So, what does matter now? ...

In this online journal you can find the following overview concerning jewish population genetics:

Incest: Good for the Jews
The benefits of a small tribal gene pool

by Joey Kurtzman, January 1, 2007

Genetically, Ashkenazi Jews are freaks. For most of Jewish history in Europe, cherem-wielding rabbis and an unwelcoming Gentile world made inbreeding a far more appealing option than intermarriage. As a result, Ashkenazim became what scientists call an “endogamous group,” which is another way of saying that they have been sleeping with their cousins for a thousand years. And because endogamous groups often develop distinctive genetic profiles, nothing gets a population geneticist hotter than incest.

Ashkenazim aren’t the only group that has kept outsiders out of the gene pool. Most other such groups, however, are isolated, rural populations, like the Amish or the inhabitants of Australia’s Norfolk Island. Ashkenazim are the best-studied group of cousin-kissers on the planet because they’re convenient. A scientist doesn’t need to trek out to the boonies to do her research when she’s got a million Ashkenazi Jews outside her door in the same city where she lives and works.

So endogamy and cosmopolitanism go a long way towards explaining why Jewish DNA has been the source of a gobsmacking number of important genetic findings. Unfortunately, the news coverage of those findings has focused primarily on the negative: genes that predispose us to Tay-Sachs disease, breast cancer, intestinal disease…and the list goes on.

But not all the startling stories hiding in Ashkenazi DNA are bad. Freakishness has its benefits. Some of our genetic eccentricities are more Übermensch than sissy-pants, more Schwarzenegger than DeVito.

Here’s a brief tour through four of the happier genetic quirks discovered about the Ashkenazi wing of our tribe in recent years.

RESISTANCE TO HIV

Yes, you still need to use condoms. But a significant proportion of Ashkenazi Jews have a mutation in a gene called CCR5, and the most common strain of HIV uses the protein produced by CCR5 to climb inside people’s cells. The mutation prevents HIV from exploiting that protein to gain access. If you get two copies of the mutant gene, then most strains of HIV will have little to no chance of getting into your cells. If you get one copy, you’re still less likely to contract HIV, and, if you do, your prognosis is better.

The number of Ashkenazi Jews who have the mutation varies among different Jewish subgroups. According to a study conducted at the Center of Neurogenetics in Paris, a whopping 45 percent of Litvaks (Jews from Lithuania) have at least one copy of the mutation. Ethiopian Jews, on the other hand, don’t have it at all.

Population geneticists aren’t sure why Jews have the mutation in such high numbers. Some of the microbes responsible for Europe’s plagues may have used the same protein, and, as one theory goes, the plagues hit Jews harder than most other European populations, leaving us with a genetic advantage today. Wearing the same heavy clothes every day and never bathing may have had its benefits.

LOW RATES OF ALCOHOLISM

“Shicker iz a goy, shicker iz a goy, shicker iz er, trinken muz er, vahl er iz a goy!” That racist old Yiddish ditty translates: “The goy is a drunk! The goy is a drunk! He has to drink, because he’s a goy!” Classy stuff.

Jews made a mint in Europe by distilling alcohol and selling it to Gentiles, and then we sang songs about what drunks they were. But it turns out Gentiles really are more likely than Jews to become drunks, and it’s not because young Jews learn how to drink responsibly by quaffing Manischewitz at the Seder table, or any of the other old, folk explanations.

Twenty percent of Ashkenazi Jews have a genetic mutation on chromosome nine that causes an unpleasant reaction to alcohol—headaches, nausea, flushing—which in turn makes heavy drinking and alcoholism less likely. This mutation is almost nonexistent among non-Jewish Europeans, but common among Asians.

It’s a model minority thing, apparently.

LOW RATES OF CERVICAL CANCER

It’s not cause you’re not a slut, that’s for sure. The low incidence of cervical cancer among Jewish women has been a longstanding mystery to scientists. People used to think that a circumcised penis was like a magic wand, protecting Jewish women from a nasty cancer that was far more common among non-Jews. That partly explains why American Gentiles started doing like the poor biblical boys of Shekhem and slicing off their foreskins. Once all these Gentiles started circumcising their kids, the bad news came in: Low rates of cervical cancer have nothing to do with circumcision.

The low incidence of human papilloma virus (HPV) among Jewish women may partly explain their low rates of cervical cancer. And scientists have recently discovered that a genetic mutation called p53-D12 predisposes some women to cervical cancer; that mutation is rare among Jewish women.

HIGH RATES OF INTELLIGENCE

“The world is riddled—riddled!—with dumb Ashkenazi Jews,” as Leon Wieseltier reminds us. Too true, Leon. But with the tribe’s lineup including Freud, Einstein, and Speed Levitch, and Ashkenazim possessing an exceedingly high mean IQ, Jews have more than their share of smarties. They’ve also got more than their share of neurological disorders such as Tay-Sachs and Gaucher’s disease. According to a recent study at the University of Utah, there’s a connection: The same genes that cause diseases such as Tay-Sachs and Gaucher’s can also help make you a little Einstein.

The genes in question promote the growth of brain cells. Basically, if you get two of those genes, your brain cells will be afflicted by the kind of extreme and disordered cell growth associated with Tay-Sachs. Get only one of those genes and the cell growth within your brain is enhanced, meaning your grandma will never shut up about you at the mah-jongg table. Or so the Utah researchers argue.

The theory attempts to answer the question of what causes higher rates of intelligence among Jews. And as the theory’s premise is clear and testable, we’ll know for certain in a few years whether it’s the right answer. As to the question of why the gene is there in the first place, it’s all conjecture from here on in.

Some think it’s because our smartest guys became big Talmud chachams and got the girls, while the smartest non-Jewish Europeans became priests and spilled their seed into bed sheets. Or, others postulate, maybe it’s because Jews had to pursue talky, cognitively taxing professions because they weren’t allowed to own land or join guilds. Whatever the explanation may be, Jews got the smahts, baby.

N E X T

Do: What do DNA and endogamy mean for Jewish chauvinism – and antisemitism? Leave your comments below.
Go: Feel certain that your family tree takes you directly back to King David himself? Then meet thousands of other crazies like yourself at the Eternal House of David Reunion in Jerusalem on May 28-30, 2007.
Read: Evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker wrote [subscription necessary] on Jewish IQ in The New Republic in June 2006. A more controversial evolutionary psychologist Kevin MacDonald has spent a career addressing Jewish group characteristics, which he terms an “evolutionary strategy” to keep tribal chromosomes exclusive. Judith Shulevitz called MacDonald “Evolutionary Psychology’s Anti-Semite” six years ago in Slate.

Human traits and their evolution - a new book

The OMIM-databank ("Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man") is full of scientific literature concerning data and theories about the evolutionary causes of the worldwide distribution (frequencies) of inborn human traits - of EVERY inborn human trait, we know about today. Only very few popular science books exist today, that try to give the public an understanding at least of the tip of the iceberg, that is formed by that databank - that is humanity's knowledge about itself. So a lot of reason exist to welcome books, that are publicised in that field. We have to thank "Gene Expression" once more for giving a hint to a new book in this field:

A review of Survival of the Sickest, by Sharon Moalem with Jonathan Prince

(...)

Most of the chapters are centered around the population genetics of a disease. This is fascinating material, and Moalem (along with his co-author) does a wonderful job presenting it. Each chapter starts with an observation--a high prevalance of Type I diabetes in Europeans, the frequency of a genetic disease called hemochromatosis, or the geographic distribution of favism, for example--which sets the stage for a series of anecdotes that eventually leads the reader to his evolutionary hypothesis (for the examples given, these hypotheses are adaptation to cold and resistance to the plague and malaria, repectively). Some of these anecdotes are worth the price of the book alone (though, it must be noted, I didn't pay for my copy, so I suppose I can't judge)--there's an investigation of the biology of a toad that allows itself to freeze solid each winter that is particularly remarkable, and the section on host manipulation by parasites would make Carl Zimmer proud. A large number of human traits are touched on from this perspective--apart from the ones mentioned above, traits like skin color, alcoholism, taste, and even skull shape get mentions[1].

While these chapters are the highlight of the book, an alert reader may notice a couple hints that perhaps the science isn't definitive on some of these stories: first, the oft-added qualifier that a given theory (for example, that the high rate of hypertension in African-Americans is due to selection for salt retention on slave boats) is "controversial", and second, that there are a number of theories for some of the observations. The prevalence of diabetes, for instance, is attributed to metabolic systems unaccustomed to carbohydrate-rich diets (pg. 26), a selective sweep for better cold response during the Younger Dryas (pg. 46), and transgenerational epigentic effects, the so-called "thrifty phenotype" hypothesis (pg. 166). These possibilities are not mutually exclusive, but a reconciliation of all of them would certainly have been desirable.

(...)

[1] Moalem gives a cursory look at the concept of "race" with regard to these traits, but essentially chooses not to discuss it, preferring to cite a Nature Genetics editorial from 2001 as saying that "population clusters identified by genotype analysis seem to more informative than those identified by skin color or self-declaration of race". Regular readers know that much has changed since 2001; in particular, there doesn't seem to be much of a distinction between genetic clusters and clusters based on self-declaration of race [Tang et al. 2005].

Population bottleneck during "out of africa"

New hints for a population bottleneck concerning (anatomical modern) humans leaving the african continent were presented in "Annals of Human Genetics":

"... At the NF1 gene locus two clearly separated groups of haplotypes, corresponding to the two haplogroups described by us (Schmegner et al. 2005), are present in the European population and both Asian populations, but not in the African population. This argues against a population bottleneck during the immigration of the AMH into Europe, because a reduction to two NF1 gene lineages during this event would not have affected the Asian populations. At the chromosome 22 locus a different picture is obtained for the European and Asian populations, with no split into two clearly separated subgroups of haplotypes. The patterns for the two loci in the African population are quite similar. Therefore, if a population bottleneck is considered to explain the variability patterns, the HapMap data show that this bottleneck most probably occurred throughout the emigration of the AMH out of Africa. Recently signs of a population bottleneck in variability data obtained for a number of genomic loci in European and Asian populations, but not in African populations, were described and also led to the conclusion that this bottleneck occurred after the appearance of the AMH in Africa, and thus presumably during the emigration out of Africa (Harpending & Rogers, 2000; Balciuniene et al. 2001; Alonso & Armour, 2004; Marth et al. 2004; Stajich & Hahn, 2005; Voight et al. 2005)."

And for Europe only:

"Regarding demography, the most plausible explanation is the assumption of a severe bottleneck in the history of the European population: in the case of the chromosome 17 locus two ancient lineages passed this bottleneck; for the chromosome 22 locus it was only one ancient lineage."