[lit-ideas] Re: On misunderstandings and dialogue
- From: Omar Kusturica <omarkusto@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 15 May 2014 00:58:15 +0200
Well, but I was talking what we might consider established historical
facts. Before we start applying genetic explanations, perhaps we should get
the facts right ?
O.K.
On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 8:53 PM, Lawrence Helm
<lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:
> You might not like Cochran and Harpending’s book. They base their
> arguments around recent studies in genetics; so their emphasis is not upon
> “tradition”
> other than to point out cases where genetic analyses do not support it.
> They probably don’t cover material in a form you would like. In places
> where you would like a one to one counter of traditional views, they
> probably just summarize their points making them susceptible to quibbles.
>
> “In the case of the Jews they write, “Admixture has not kept the
> Ashkenazim from becoming genetically distinct. Even if a population starts
> out as a mixture of two peoples, as in this case, becoming endogamous
> (ending intermarriage) and staying so for a long time ensures that the
> population will become homogeneous. If the population’s ancestry is 60
> percent Middle Eastern and 40 percent European, for example, a few dozen
> generations of endogamy will result in a population in which each
> individual’s ancestry is quite close to 60 percent Middle Eastern and 40
> percent European. In other words, you eventually get a population that has
> a flavor all its own—even more so if it experiences special selective
> pressures.
>
> “This means that if you look at the most informative parts of the genome,
> you can tell whether a certain individual is Ashkenazi (as opposed to, say,
> a non-Jewish Italian, Greek, or German) just about every time, particularly
> if all his or her recent ancestors are Jewish. In the plot, the circles
> represent Ashkenazi Jewish individuals, but the shaded circles represent
> individuals whose grandparents were all Ashkenazi Jews as well. That
> distinction matters, because Jews haven’t been nearly as endogamous over
> the past century as they were during the Middle Ages.
>
> “Could these same methods distinguish the Ashkenazi from other Jewish
> groups, such as Moroccan Jews or Yemeni Jews? The answer is almost
> certainly yes. Although that particular measurement has not yet been made,
> it should be easy to make that distinction because the genetic distance
> between Ashkenazi Jews and Yemeni Jews is considerably larger than that
> between Ashkenazi Jews and Western Europeans.
>
> “Further down Cochran and Harpending write, “It is noteworthy that
> non-Ashkenazi Jews do not have high average IQ scores. Nor are they
> overrepresented in cognitively demanding fields like medicine, law, and
> academics. In Israel, Ashkenazi Jews, on average, score 14 points higher
> than Oriental Jews, almost a full standard deviation, which is 15 or 16
> points on most IQ tests.37 That difference means that the average
> non-Ashkenazi Jew in Israel would have an IQ score that would be at the
> 20th percentile among the Ashkenazim. Academic accomplishment in the two
> groups seems to vary in the same way, even among those born and raised in
> Israel: Third-generation Ashkenazi Jews in Israel are 2.5 to 3 times more
> likely to have graduated from college than third-generation Mizrahi Jews,
> for example (the ancestors of the Mizrahim moved to Israel from Asia and
> North Africa).”
>
> As to the idea that the Ashkenazis genetic difference being resistance to
> a disease, the happy side-effect being increased intelligence, Cochran and
> Harpending write, “. . . we think that most of the characteristic
> Ashkenazi mutations are not defenses against infectious disease. One reason
> is that these mutations do not exist in neighboring populations—often
> literally people living across the street—that must have been exposed to
> very similar diseases. Instead, we think that the Ashkenazi mutations have
> something to do with Ashkenazi intelligence, and that they arose because of
> the unique natural-selection pressures the members of this group faced in
> their role as financiers in the European Middle Ages.”
>
> [Cochran, Gregory; Henry Harpending (2009-01-27). The 10,000 Year
> Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution (p. 205-217).
> Basic Books. Kindle Edition.]
>
> Lawrence
>
> *From:* lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [
> mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]*
> On Behalf Of* Omar Kusturica
> *Sent:* Monday, May 12, 2014 9:50 AM
> *To:* lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> *Subject:* [lit-ideas] Re: On misunderstandings and dialogue
>
> Well again, the 'traditional view' holds that the Jews in the Ottoman
> Empire, far from being permitted to do only manual work, played a key role
> in its foreign trade. A few links below.
>
>
> *https://jewishhistory.research.wesleyan.edu/i-jewish-population/5-ottoman-empire/*<https://jewishhistory.research.wesleyan.edu/i-jewish-population/5-ottoman-empire/>
>
> *http://books.google.me/books* <http://books.google.me/books>?
>
> *http://sephardichorizons.org/Volume1/Issue3/SecondGoldenAge.html*<http://sephardichorizons.org/Volume1/Issue3/SecondGoldenAge.html>
>
>
> id=ScsUAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA129&lpg=PA129&dq=jewish+merchants+in+ottoman+empire&source=bl&ots=yE9HYC1Kxc&sig=1iqZBsT5qF2hdN5TzM2IoVQkmgA&hl=en&sa=
>
> On Mon, May 12, 2014 at 7:13 AM, Lawrence Helm <
> *lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx* <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>
> Yes, but I didn’t quite know how to reply to this since you were
> presenting the traditional point of view while Cochran and Harpending are
> drawing conclusions based on recent studies based upon the human genome and
> arguing new points of view. Perhaps I put it poorly, but at some point
> Cortez put about 500 troops on the ground. Not everyone available came
> ashore. I didn’t mean to imply that 500 was all he had throughout his
> entire military career. Cochran and Harpending clearly don’t imply that.
> But had it not been that disease destroyed about 90% of the Amerindians
> during the period that Cortez was working, he (in the opinion of Cochran
> and Harpending) would not have succeeded. They mention one critical battle
> where the Amerindians opposing Cortez were largely sick, but there were
> probably others.
>
>
>
> The traditional view is to credit Cortez cleverness and not to think
> disease played a critical role. I believe Cochran and Harpending have
> argued that the traditional view does not adequately explain these events.
> Viruses and bacteria deserve more credit than they’ve received.
>
>
>
> I can see that my brief examples haven’t done justice to Cochran and
> Harpending’s arguments but I don’t feel up to going into much more detail
> than I already have – especially since their book seems one argument after
> another.
>
>
>
> In another case, I had written that it was easier for colonist to settle
> North America because disease had wiped out most of the Amerindians. North
> American was empty. I thought I wrote enough to mean “empty” as compared
> to “India” for example.
>
>
>
> In another case I wrote that the Ashkenazi Jews working as money lenders
> developed skills that gave rise to Einstein, but I intended “money lenders”
> as a synecdoche. Medieval states didn’t need that many money-lenders.
> Ashkenazis did other things as well. Cochran and Harpending refer to the
> Ashkenazis as being the “white collar workers of the medieval world.”
>
>
>
> Jews were treated better in Muslim dominated areas during the period the
> Ashkenazis were coming into their own, but those Jews were only permitted
> to do menial work. And today in Israel the difference in potential,
> between Ashkenazi Jews and Jews from Muslim countries is marked. The
> latter apparently are not competent to take on the more complicated work.
> They do menial work in Israel just as they did in Muslim lands. I’m sure
> there are exceptions.
>
>
>
> Lawrence
>
>
>
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