Hi.
I can’t make sense of some of your reasonings. First of all the separation between the lineages leading to H. neanderthalensis and to H. sapiens did not diverge just 500,000 years ago but are rather separated by at least 900,000 years (and probably even more). 900,000 years BP is the approximate date of humans (I guess the generic term H. erectus applies still then for all) arriving to Europe, where (in adition to West Asia) H. neanderthalensis evolved (via H. heidelbergensis and H. antecessor). The lineage leading to H. sapiens instead remained in Africa (most likely East Africa) and the two branches therefore were separeted for about one million years or maybe even more (hard to say without full genetic data from the Neanderthal branch).
That makes sapiens and neanderthals at least half as distant as tigers and lions. And while tigers and lions can be interbred in captivity, such interbreeding doesn’t seem to happen in the wilderness. I guess that you still have a point in hybrids being potentially viable (maybe) but that doesn’t necessarily mean that interbreeding actually happened or that hybrids were actually succesful and not stoned to death or drowned after birth out of racist (“specist”?) prejudice (just a guess). Hybrids of tigers and lions are possible but have some problems, following with your example. They are sometimes fertile but their offspring are very fragile and would surely die in wild conditions without leaving any genetic legacy.
Anyhow, the main barrier to hybridation between lions and tigers is not just genetic but specially behavioural: male lions, for instance, seem to find the mating play of female tigers unappealing or confusing. They are very different beyond their gentics: they are also different in their behaviour and that’s most important, specially regarding such a cultural animal as humans.
Also, why would sapiens interbreed with neanders only in Europe in the Upper Paleolithic and not in SW Asia in the Middle Paleolithic, just after our ancestors left Africa? Neanderthals were in West and Central Asia also then and our ancestors surely met (or maybe avoided) them in their early travels.
But the main objection I have to the surprising insistance of some on a suppossed hybridation is that modern West Eurasians don’t look at all like Neanderthals. If hybridation happened and specially if it was driven by need of adaptation we should see Neanderthal traits as prominent occipitals, lower foreheads or extremely strong stocky (but short) bodies in their modern descendants, at least to a point. None of those traits are present among Western Eurasians.
And then you have the MtDNA…
All evidence points in the direction of lack of succesful hybridation (even if there could be some isolated cases without legacy). What do you have in favor of succesful hybridation? Nothing but a “maybe”…
Maybe Nessie exists too… but where’s the hardcore evidence? Nowhere.

LOL! I never meant to be impolite. I just meant to question your reasoning (and that of all the people still oddly enthusiastic about multiregionalism and/or hybridation hypothesis against all evidence).
My apologies if I have offended you. It wasn’t my intention. I was just trying to make my point clear and truly I don’t see what is in my post to be offended about.
Anyhow, let’s go point by point:
1/You probably know that chronologies derived from genetic data have huge margins of error. You find much more recent chronologies of that sort (with much better samples) that yield dates ranging from 11,000 BCE to 400 CE (this example is taken from a study in South Asian R1a – if I don’t recall badly – and obviously leaves a huge margin for speculation). If the Neanderthal MtDNA chronolgy has proportional error margins, well… Genetics is still in its infancy.
2/ I still expect that date to be the minimal for the gentic divergence between the two species/subspecies.
3/I’m not sure if I understand well enough that but the introgression can also be digging in our own (Sapiens) archaisms, can’t it?
4/ Sadly since I had a computer brakdown a few days ago, I can’t open PDFs online. I know I must fixt it fast but sadly can’t do it right now. Skipped
5/ Ahem… I will skip that part too if you don’t mind.

Well, it will take me a while to dig in the Google page for “skin color” – yet all the first page adresses to your blog. It will be interesting anyhow.
My guesses are just guesses. In general all or most animal species adapted to cold climates are quite hairy and, as I said, neanders had a long time to adapt to those conditions – maybe 12 times more than any Eurasian modern human, including Inuits, assuming the “out of Africa” mainstream theory for our species. But anyhow it’s just a guess, nothing I can defend beyond my own logic.
You have point in that a minor but adaptative “leak” between (sub)species can be selected possitively or even (if the trait is trivial) be lucky in the genetic drift. But still it is only a “maybe”.
The lactose example also suggest me many ideas. First, it is quite obvious that it was trivial (non-adaptative) for pre-Neolithic peoples (huter-gatherers just don’t drink milk as adults), therefore it doesn’t seem to be any reason for its selection among them – genetic drift should be blamed instead. Yet some of the selection may have happened in Neolithic and post-Neolithic times and that may have helped Northern Europens to survive in their rather dark enviroment. It’s tricky. Also North Indians and North and Eastern Europeans do share at least part of their patrilineal lineages (R1a) – the gene may have been more strongly associated (by mere drift) with the population that spread that Ychr haplogroup, whichever their origin, and been selected in Northern Europe even more strongly due to climatic adaptation already in a Neolithic context, where it became useful. I’m not sure if that gene could have any adaptative meaning in Indian context – are northern Indians more attached to cows and other milking cattle than southern ones?

“if someone didn’t understand what you had said, but proceeded to respond to you and rebut you point by point without understanding what you’d said, wouldn’t you be irritated?”
No. Only personal attacks and lack of compassion provoke my anger normally. Ignorance can be disappointing but not irritating. As you can see here, I have little problem in going once and again over the same point if necessary – I’m rather pedagogic and patient – and young people specially tend to appreciate it (when they don’t just get bored).
…
Also if you know something that nobody else knows, that’s no reason to insult. In fact it should be a reason to explain that reason behind your point. Anyhow, besides your word about that paper (that probably won’t be as conclussive as you seem to think) I have no evidence. And while that paper may contain evidence, assuming that you know something you have not made explicit is not any kind of evidence.
The more you talk, the more clear that there’s nothing to it. And, if there is something, it’s so hidden in some scholarly corner that we just can’t discuss about it. Not even you: you can’t show the evidence that you say now that it backs your claim, then you just can’t defend your point – so you’d better keep silent till that supposed evidence is published and you can use it as support for your viewpoint and the rest can check it to see what’s all about.
In any case, you can’t call me idiotic and patronizing just because I don’t know something that only you and few colleagues of you know. You are the one that is being idiotic, patronizing and totally irrespectful.

Now you have something.
Still the authours seem to remain cautious and consider alternative possibilities (selective pressure, for instance) and I imagine that this paper will cause quite an upheaval and hopefully interesting criticisms and maybe also interesting new studies that may add or substract to the apparent conclussions in it.
Whatever the final conclussions (if any) all that should add to a better understanding of our origins.

I don’t have hundreds of readers (nor I think I ever will). I just started a blog a few month ago to write about my pet-loves and pet-hates. Only three different commenters so far – so guess I’m writing mostly for myself. Not that I meant much more either.
It seems I can’t post the URL nor include it in the field (anti-spam filter or something). I’ll email you with it.

John Emerson wrote: “Spinoza is said to be very hard to read and I’ve never tried”.
I’ve only read his “Ethics” but he’s not that hard. Just as most philosophers from that period, he’s very methodic and therefore his writting style may be unapealing for modern mentality. But it can be a good reading if you take it calmly.
“I wonder whether his naturalism or pantheism didn’t have an aspect of providence or design…”
He does seem somehow determist, at least in a first reading, (maybe that helped make him popular in Puritan Netherlands) and he also likes to appeal to causality “ad infinitum”, as God is defined as infinite in time and substance.
Personally I find his approach quite interesting in that instead of starting from the human mind, as Descartes for instance did, he begins almost directly defining God. That is, if nothing else, quite thought-provoking.
I like this first part of his Ethics and I can agree with it largely. Then I don’t follow so easily his reasonings nor find necessary to agree with him.
In the last part of the book he actually postulates quite conservative ideas, probably because his elitist viewpoint. Anyhow, his ideas have inspired many particularly non-conventional thinkers of Modernity, so he’s worth a reading or two surely.
My two cents.

“Actually, the difficulty people told me about wasn’t page-by-page, but do to the systematic nature of Spinoza’s writing. It was claimed that until you’d mastered the whole thing, you didn’t really understand any part of it”.
Well, if that’s the case, I don’t have the slightest idea of what I’m talking about, as I’ve only read the whole work once. But as Hakim Bey suggested: who says one has necessarily to uderstand fully another’s idea to make use of it?
Nevertheless, I find that suggestion suspiciously “scholastic”. I have used Spinoza’s reasoning often when dealing with theo-philosophical subjects and nobody could say that I was ranting. But, as I said above, I don’t understand fully the rest of his main book nor I have enough interest in it (at least so far) as to study it in greater depth. Maybe I’m mising something but still I think I can understand well enough his “heretic” concept of God, without mastering his whole work.
But, in any case, the best way to know is reading it yourself and reaching your own conclussions. Only first hand you can know what good old Baruch actually meant.

Hi, Razib.
I know you are talking about a much wider topic but I will just comment on your speculations on Basques, on what I am more knowledgeable.
While Basques are very high in Rh- frequency, we are still 65% Rh+ (that’s almost 2/3). Also high Rh- (in lower frequencies) is also common among all Europeans (with a tendency to decrease towards the East, pockets apart).
Apart of that, Basques did intermarriage with their inmediate neighbours on occasion but:
a- their inmediate neighbours are genetically very simmilar, including relatively high frequencies of Rh-
b- the intermarriage (or interbreeding – who says one has to get married to have children?) seems to have been relatively low, as genetics seem to show (at least to my eyes). In fact Basques seem a distilled or quite pure pocket of what Western Europeans were once long ago (before Neolithic and post-Neolithic migrations and invasions). Other almost as pure pockets are found among modern Celtic-speakers but also among Romance-speakers surrounding the Basque Country, specially Gascons.
For me it is quite obvious that the main barriers for intermarriage were cultural, linguistic and political. Some examples:
a- for almost all purposes, the Basque provinces can be considered virtually independent before the 19th century, and for the most part very rural and self-centered.
b- the lack of Celtic loanwords in Basque suggests strong animosity between Basques (and Aquitanians, etc.) and their Celtic neighbours in the Iron Age.
Even today the best way to earn the sympaties of Basque-speakers is to speak Basque yourself. Traditionally, even Humboldt (?) mentions that they looked at outsiders with strong reserve until you broke the ice speaking some Basque. Then the situation changed totally. Actually Basques define themselves as Euskaldunak/ok: Basque Speakers, while the rest of the planet are just Erdeldunak (maybe “babblers” or maybe “speakers of half-tongues”). Language was for sure a relative but strong barrier for milennia. Add to that different law and a strongly rural context of soft patriarchal character in which people usually married their neighbours from the same or a nearby village/town, often after a pregnacy happened in pre-marital relations.
You just can’t take an isolated trait, anyhow common to all Europeans, even if in a more diluted density, and build around it supposed history of Basques. There’s much more to Basque identity than just Rh- and, on the other hand, Basques are not that different from their Western European neighbours.
By the way, I have never heard of the supposed curse before. I know that we were relatively akin to witchery (ancestral religion mostly) but I never read that our neighbours treated us with such contempt; actually Castilians conceded us universal gentry status, and this was rationalized based in the antiquity of the “lineage”; also many Medieval monarchs had Basque wifes or mistresses without any known contempt (for instance, Abd al-Rhaman is Ummayad only by the pure paternal lineage, his mother and paternal grandmother were Basques). Can you reference your claim so I can illustrate myself on such an insteresting subject?

While I haven’t read yet Kurlansky’s famed book, I understand from reference that while being an excellent book for people that have little or no knowledge of Basque culture and history, it’s not so good for people with greater knowledge, including most Basques. Anyhow, I guess Kurlansky documented his statement but I don’t know on what.
The prohibition for Jews and Muslims (other than slaves, I think) to enter Basque territory only applied to part of it (Biscay, Gipuzkoa), already in the period of Castilian control. Other provinces had no such statutes and Jews were relatively well protected in Navarre while independent (there were a few pogroms but were clearly repressed by the state). It’s not so simple as some have stated in the past, after all the Basque Country, specially after the 1199-1200 invasion by Castile of the west, was fragmented into several autonomous territories, each one with its own constitution and institutions (plus the territories no longer considered Basque that lost any self-rule). Most famous Basque Jew is the traveller Benjamin of Tudela.
the key is the discrepancy between the frequency of rh- and neutral markers. that is, the latter tend to show a more gentle rate of change and exhibit less difference
As far as I know Rh- clinal variation, at least in the case of Basques and our neighbours seems to correlate rather well with the other genetic differences/simmilitudes I have been able to spot in different studies (for instance it relates pretty well with Y chromosome haplotype frequency). It just seems to point, in my amateur opinion, to ancient (Western) Europeans being even more frequent in Rh- as they were surely more aboundant in R1b haplogroup, that is: much more homogeneous genetically.
Can you refer me to a study where such a discrepancy is highlighted? Thanks.

Thanks for the link. It’s an interesting paper but why does they exclude so sharply that, for our case, European colonization by modern humans could have been caused by a very small group of people rapidly growing in a relatively wealthy landscape where they had apparent technological and maybe intelectual advantage over Neanders?
Their way of treating the process of inmigration into Basque-speaking societies seems a little ignorant of the prehistory (archaeology) behind. For instance the first IEs seem to have arrived to near the Basque area only in the last milennium BCE and these (probably Celtic) newcomers weren’t welcomed if we follow the linguistic reasoning. So the input (Neolithic isolates apart) only started actually in Roman times but was surely interrupted again soon after only to be restarted in the High Middle Ages. So while he ponders 250 generations, I can only count about 100 at most. And most of them were from nearby Northern Spain or Southern France, where the genome is most simmilar.
I have to read that more carefully but I’m under the impression that his questionable assumptions are what cause his conclussions.
Regarding your first comment, Rh- is a negative trait that is probably selected against but rather weakly. The first newborn is almost always unaffected and the mother is only sensitized in about 13% of cases (from Wikipedia – Rh disease). It is a big individual problem when it happens but it does not happen necessarily and the first child is almost always free from trouble. Considering that the Franco-Cantabrian region was surely the best place to live in Ice Age Europe and that anyhow the “tribe” that settled it started already with a huge Rh- density (by founder effect, in my understanding), it should not have been so significatively selected against, as it is not significatively selected against today (or “the day before” when modern medical tech wasn’t still available to treat or prevent the disease).
Also please ponder that an Rh- Basque woman is very likely to have Rh- children, also unaffected when the mother may have been sensitized, because her husband would quite probably be either Rh- or Rh+ heterozygote. Only with an Rh+ homozygote husband the threat of lacking healthy descendancy after the first born icreases up to 13%. If you look at it carefully it may be well seen as an in-built biological “defense” against Rh+ homozygote men (rather weak anyhow), statistically against foreigners. This could well compensate against your and your colleagues’ model and even favor the concentration of Rh- alelles in highly dense Rh- areas as the Basque Country and others.
I think I have spotted several reasons why your colleague’s model can be questioned. It’s not as simple as saying Rh- is a problem and is selected against… it may be but it can also act as a filter against Rh+ males’ descendance, and anyhow it’s effect (considering the many other health threats that may have affected Basque and even overall European people through prehistory and history) seems quite small.
You are better than me at the maths of biology and statistics, so, if you feel such task interesting, please go ahead and try to claculate a corrected effect with my objections in it. Intuitively I feel pretty sure the selective effect would be minimal and maybe even null (as pro-Rh+ and pro-Rh- pressures seem to compensate each other for high densities of Rh-).

this exactly his model
Uh!
Then it seems I was missing something. Sorry.

Yes – I was missing something indeed! Harpending and Eller are suggesting that the whole Basque genome (y-chr haplogroup, I assume) has been replaced by mere dropping of isolated inmigrants. That just makes no sense!
LOL – That’s an even more far fetched theory than anything I read before. It’s a total nonsense.

Just to explain my previous objection: Eastern inmigrants were not purebreeds: they were surely mostly very simmilar to Basques. As peoples moved westward through centuries and milennia they mixed with locals becoming more and more like Basques in the proccess. That’s why the R1b haplogroup, once surely dominant in most of Europe, becomes less dense towards the East. But inmigrants were always few and locals many, there’s no way that they could have done anything else than diluting themselves, becoming more and more Western Europeans as they mixed with the locals. Of 10 inmigrants arriving 5 or more had R1b. There was very limited inmigration and intermarriage anyhow all the time, so it’s impossible that such thing happened.
Western Europeans are descendants of Easterners (“Neolithics” and IEs) only in a very limited ammount. They may speak IE languages now but they are not very IE by blood. That’s evident and most markers are coincident. As I said before R1b and Rh- for instance are very simmilar in their patterns of distribution.
And, in the end, the more I look at it, I don’t see that Rh- is such a selective problem. Just look at Africa with a much larger selective history and still relatively aboundant in that blood type. The extreme cases of West and East Eurasia can only be explained by founder effect.

It sounds like a Catholic microbe! Is that for real? I can hardly beleive it.

Steve, your influence is everywhere. From the comments:

I suspect that Saletan is another Steve Sailer brain-washee. For those not aware, Sailer, a failed journalist, is the main purveyor of racist pseudoscience on the Internet. He charms his targets to the extent they lose the common sense required to check up on him and his sources before adopting his beliefs.

“I have not seen a history of the spread of cattle-raising in human society. (Such histories exist for the horse, the camel, iron, and the codfish)”.
They exist for oxen too:
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=1472438
http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=1617209
(among other stuff you can easily search online)
“From what I’ve seen, the cow was domesticated about 7k BC and the Indo-Europeans became a factor about 4k BC”.
You are compressing late prehistory a little bit probably. Add at least 500 years for the first and substract some 500 years for the second maybe. Also consider that Indo-Europeans did not arrive to Scandinavia till c. 2400 BCE and to Britain till around 300 BCE. Finally consider please that people can also drink sheep and goat milk (and later also from mare and camel – but that’s less relevant for what is discussed here).
“Not long after horses were domesticated some 6500 years ago, the horse and cattle herding nomads of the Eurasian steppe or parts of it…”
If by “not long” you mean at least 3,000 years… Anyhow horse domestication is surely of later date, closer to the real beginning of IE expansion, c. 3500 BCE.
“This process, I think, would involve quite enough allele spreading to do the LP sowing trick, would it not?”
The problem is that you don’t see more lactase tolerance in Russia than in Britain, as would be the case if it was just an IE mediated gene (IEs were roaming Russia 3,000 years before they reached Britain and Russians have much more R1a1 than Britons). You see Basques with high lactose tolerance levels, in spite of not being IE (but being a shepherd people). Britons are not more IE than Italians or Greeks by any means, yet Britons are mainly lactose tolerant and Italians aren’t.
I am with Razib in this: “adaptive alleles can be radically and quickly decoupled from demographic mass movements, as they sweep across populations and disregard phylogenetic considerations”. Cultural elements, like cheese-making tradition, or maybe mere ecological/nutritional determinants, as the availability of a rich diet without need to resort to milk, may have been much more decissive maybe.

“I’ll let you figure out what’s going on with NUDT15….”
Epicanthic fold?

One thing is clear: Celts did not originate in Iberia (but in the Rhin basin most likely) and there is no indication of connections between the Iberian peninsula and Britain/Ireland in the Celtic period. In fact Iberian Celts seem to have been cut from the mainland c. 600 by an Iberian “reconquest” of the NE and therefore they never recieved La Tène influences nor practiced Druidism (that is believed to be of British origin).  
 
Nevertheless there were many contacts between Iberia and Britain in the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age (before the arrival of Hallstatt Celts to Western Iberia c. 700 BCE). And it is possible that a fraction of the original Epipaleolithic/Neolithic settlers of Britain and Ireland were of Franco-Cantabrian or even Iberian-proper origin – though I think the main source was the Rhin basin (or now submerged Doggerland) anyhow (though the genetic pool of that area has been more modified since then than that of Britain, logically).  
 
There is this misleading myth that shared cultural or genetic elements between Iberia and Britain are “Celtic” and that is surely false. Such common elements must be pre-Celtic (and therefore pre-Indo-European) – or at least that’s what the archaeological record strongly suggests. 
 
… 
 
On the main issue, better than Oppenheimer is surely the paper of Capelli et al., 2003 (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0960-9822(03)00373-7) leaves a clear impression of the British Y-DNA genome being a gradual mixture between a “native” Western element (Welsh, Basques) and a Northern European one (Danish/North German mainly), but significatively more slanted towards the “native” side (only some Eastern coastal areas would be rather “Germanic”). 
 
But there is much work to do on high definition Y-DNA for Europe yet. The substructure of R1b1c specially seems to be still underdeveloped and could potentially give much fine-grained information.

PConroy, I used the phrase “it is possible that a fraction” of the Epi-/Neolithic colonists arrived from SW Europe. Immediately after clarifying that “I think the main source was the Rhin basin (or now submerged Doggerland)”.  
 
So we are basically in agreement.  
 
I cannot exclude that a fraction of the British colonists of that time could have arrived from SW Eruope because the high resolution study of DNA necesary for that is still to be done or inconclusive (some data suggests it other rather not). 
 
In any case, Britain and the Atlantic basin of SW Europe (from Portugal to Belgium) shared strong connections in the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age, forming a somewhat homogeneous macro-region, that in some times spans further beyond but always retains this core “Euro-Atlantic” area as culturally connected between the Megalithic expansion and Celtic one. The same that Celts or Vikings probably carried some genetics to the islands, surely the Chalcolithic and Bronze age travellers did too. The exact ammount is yet to be clarified though and is sometimes hard to take apart what is Paleolithic from what is post-Neolithic or intermediate.

“Nothing new”, as you say but still interesting. Anyhow there are a couple of things that drew my attention:
1. The graph showing the apportion of native blood by linguistic/geographical groups (figure 5) shows that many mestizos have not just native blood from the local area but from all the continent without much distinction (for instance, Mexico City mestizos have as much meso/north American native blood as South American). This probably implies that mestizo people moved around the Spanish colonial empire pretty much (at least that’s my first thought).
2. A couple of samples (Oriente-Guatemala and Salta-Argentine) show equal apportion of European autosomal and X-chr genetics. If I don’t understand wrongly, that means that admixture in those populations was balanced with similar male and female European input, right? I find this somewhat strange. This is a contrast to the general trend that is of significatively more autosomal than X-chr European apportion (mainly male input) and to the systematically much more X-chr (mainly female) than autosomal African input (that is about the same in all samples).
I hope I’m not reading that wrong but, as I see it, basically 67% of the X-chr is statistically female in origin in contrast with 50% of the autosomal pool, right?

“Hybrid”??? A mule is a hybrid, a horse is not. A liger is a hybrid, a lion is not. X Cupressocyparis leylandii (a very common gradening tree) is a hybryd, a cypress like its ancestor the Cupressus macrocarpa is not.
Coming to humans, maybe some ancient remains, like the Lagar Velho kid, were hybrids of different human species but Uyghurs are 100% Homo sapiens, not “hybrid”. They may be heavily admixed but never “hybrid”: their components are all of the same species.
Note: it seems the term is also used in artificial breeding of same-species breeds or cultivars. But again this is not the case of Uyghurs, whose admixture wasn’t directed by some mad scientist.
…
Otherwise it’s somewhat interesting, specially the estimate date for the main admixture event that seems to coincide with Turkic expansion through Central Asia, some centuries BCE.

Everyone is “hybrid” then. You know perfectly that no one belongs to any pure stock, right?
But it’s a wrong choice of words in any case.

Aren’t Chinese a quite “atheist” people that believe (for the most part) in no god? Neither Buddhism, nor Confucianism nor Daoism are theistic at all and Islam and Christianity have only got so far in that country… 
 
I suspect Chinese culture is a good evidence that theism is not necessary at all.  
 
Anyhow, I think theism fulfills the following psychological functions: 
1. Imaginary parent. Let’s be frank: all gods and godesses are imaginary parents and are treated as such.  
2. Dealing with fear of death by promising a (often better) imaginary life after the real life. 
3. Dealing with fear of life by providing an imaginary protector/councilor. This works like a fetish but is also much like point 1: the imaginary parent. 
 
Sociologically, religion, rather than a mere personal theism, provides moral codes and authority ready to be manipulated by those power-hungry enough, who often will claim to be protected by such god/s. Additionally it helps keeps the masses content in spite of all their sufferings because they are brainwashed into the belief that after this life their reward will come somehow (Marx’ peoples’ opium).  
 
Is it evolutively fit? Certainly (at least it used to be in older proto-technological contexts): societies that embrace such ideologies are more easily manipulated according to the will of their leaders and make more effective ant-like societies, with many members ready to kill and die for a dream. And ants are definitively a very succesful genus.  
 
Problems? Lack of innovation can get any fanatic society deeply stagnant, unfit and rip for takeover by more open (and therefore more advanced) civilizations.

Not Western Indoeuropean for most linguists, Pconroy but a branch of its own that apparently kept the archaic “centum” feature also present in some Western IE languages (but not Slavic nor Baltic) and other non-affiliated IE languages such as Greek. Centum/Satem is not anymore accepted (in most cases) as a fundamental devision within IE tongues, but just a phonological change that took place in the steppes after the earliest expansion of his prolific ethno-linguistic group.
In brief: there is Western IE (most European IEs), there is Eastern IE (Indo-Iranian) and there are other IEs, among them Tocharian (but also Hittite, Armenian, Greek, Albanian). Classification trees vary somewhat depending on who you read (is Latin closer to Celtic or Germanic? Are Armenian and Greek related in spite of one being satem and the other centum?) but this basic branching is generally not affected. And Tocharian always ends up branching out near the root.

Neither Hirsi Ali is Muslim nor I am Catholic. Sects tend to inflate their numbers by not allowing apostasy or at all: if I write to “my” bishop demanding them to remove me from their lists, they’d shrug and say “no way: you were baptized when you were a few days old and hence you are a Catholic for life”.
I know that poor semi-literate communities are more likely to keep religion high among their priorities and hence Third World countries, either Muslim, Catholic, Hinduist or whatever, are very likely to keep large crowds of such ignorant adepts of either religion. That problem has an easy cure: education, but adly most local and global tyrants are more interested normally in keeping the masses ignorant and fanatic.
But still there’s a large difference between nominal adepts and actual followers. Depending on who you read, Albania is 75% or just 12% Muslim, for instance.

… in many societies gods are mischevious or even malevolent 
 
Hmmm… I don’t know of any, at least in which the main gods are that way. There may be secondary deities or “anti-gods” (like Christian Satan or Nordic Loki) that are that way, or the gods are more strictly patriarchal (authoritarian), like Zeus or Allah, than the modern Christian mainsteam perception. But which are those societies in which main gods are malevolent? Papuan? Papuan culture is pretty weirdo in general, I admit – but I don’t know much about their ancestral religion.  
 
Ah, I guess which religion you mean now: Aztecs, right? I suspect these beliefs are rather exceptional, not the norm. Anyhow, if looked in depth it was surely an adequate ideology for a society that lived on permanent war and risk of death. In their peculiar ways they also hoped for a blessed netherword even if for that purpose one had to die in combat or as voluntary human sacrifice maybe. 
 
… it isn’t the normal state of ‘primitive religion,’ which posits a less benign afterlife (like sheol or hades). 
 
But it’s a promise of an afterlife after all. Not sure about Sheol but Hades offered distinct status for the death: it was not the same to be Sisifo than Semele, for instance. Additionally, if you were a hero you could even hope to ascend to Olympus as a demi-god, and also there were many mysteric aspects that we don’t understand well but are generally interpreted in that sense of overcoming fear of death and are related to death and resurrection myths (Christians were definitively not the first to invent the blessed afterlife, believe me).  
 
19th century Christian preaching in Madagascar failed strenuosly because it was impossible to make the natives believe in Hell. Ancient Egyptian civilization orbited around the belief in just gods, the hope of an afterlife and holy cows. 
 
I think that when dominant deities have a dark aspect to them (human sacrifices maybe) that reflects something very meaningful in their collective psyches, though it’s difficult to determine because most of those societies don’t exist anymore (what probably means they resulted less fit after all).  
 
a universal empire probably demands a universal religion…. 
 
Agree. 
 
That’s what Christianity and Islam are (and probably Buddhism too): they make no distinction re. people (at least in theory) based on their ancestry, ethnicity, caste or whatever. Only their faith matters. Some also used to consider Marxism as a sort of godless religion – and it was universalist as well.  
 
But even before any of these “new” universalist types of religions arose, polytheisms managed to be pretty universalist. Before Christiniaty arose, Greeks and Romans had already managed to create a significative theological consensus (Ta Theia) via syncretization and cultural (and religious) assimilation. What you need is actually an open mind and a strong willpower: Romans eventually solved that problem by declaring everybody equally “Roman citizens” (and only a few minorities, significatively Jews, resisted such integratonist attempt, as the conditions of the deal were generally quite reasonable and distinctiveness was normally not punished but rather absorbed).

What seems to have been almost always absent from Chinese thought was a belief in an all-powerful monotheist god and a single universal order centered on Him and his will. But that’s far from atheism. 
 
Would you consider pantheism as a type of theism? I tend to think it’s more like a mystic form of atheism, where the absolute negation of god is replaced by a more flexible acceptance that everything is god. Pantheism is as distant from monotheism as atheism, though it can hybridate somewhat with polytheism, I guess.  
 
Daoism is pantheistic (post-shamanistic), Buddhism is agnostic tending to atheism but accepting traditional religious expression (normally polytheistic and is actually a foreign import from India), Confucianism is maybe the closest to a theism (it mentions Heaven too often) but it’s rather a lacist moral philosophy. Of course superstition and all kind of unstructured beliefs can coexist even with the more atheistic of societies but the popular beliefs in China are normally of the pantheistic/shamanistic type (feng shui fits well within Daoism, for instance, as does acupuncture, tai chi, astrology…) – or some polytheistic remnant.  
 
Belief in the ancestors and cult to them is important all around the world but maybe specially in East Asia. Ghosts should indeed belong to their imaginary therefore. 
 
But there’s a lack of “god”. Tien (Heaven) is too abstract and has not a religion around it, Sung Wukong is an imported deity, probably an evolution of Hindu Hanuman, later absorbed by Buddhism… I fail to see theism in China, really. Religion there is, superstition certainly, but not god or even a significative presence of plural gods.

http://www.religionstatistics.net/noreleng.htm
Spain:
Usual statistics: 95% Catholics
…
– New statistic: 3% Atheist; 18% Agnostic; 3% Pseudoatheist (ISSP98 computing); 18% Deist; 14% Christian deist; 21% Neodoukhobor; 24% is really catholic (and conservative and with weekly attendance).
– New statistic II: 11.5% Atheist; 12% Agnostic; 3% Pseudoatheist (ISSP98 computing); 11% Deist; 25.5% Christian deist; 14% Neodoukhobor; 22.5% Catholic.
– New statistic (WVS 2000): 12% Atheist; 5.5% Agnostic; 2% Pseudoatheist; 37% Deist; 2% Christian deist; 14% Neodoukhobor; 27% Catholic.
(Note: Neodukhobor is a catch-all term used in that site for people who may believe in things like reincarnation or astrology with no partcular structured religious faith).
It’s all the same all around the world when you look at what people really belief and what people actually practice (such statistics are not availble for many countries, certainly):
– Austria: 12-15% Catholic
– Greece: 27% Orthodox
– Finland: 25% Protestant
– Albania: 12% Muslim, 4% Catholic, 2% Orthodox
– UK: 16-23% Christian (several sects)
– Portugal: 13% catholic by belief or 37% by regular church attendance
– Netherlands: 10-16% Christian (various sects)
– Belgium: 13% Catholic
– Germany: 15% Christian (Protestant and Catholic almost evenly)
– Ukraine: 9% Christian (mostly Orthodox)
– Russia: 1% Orthodox, 1% Muslim (though guess it may have increased since 2000).
– France: 5.5-12% Catholic, 1% Muslim
– Serbia & Montenegro: 0-5% Orthodox, 1% Muslim
– South Africa: less than 20% Christian
– D.R. Congo: Christians (Catholic mostly): 5%
– Canada: 10% Protestant, 15% Catholic
– Mexico: 7% Catholic
– Brazil: 1-5% Catholic
– Venezuela: 20% Catholic, 11% Protestant
– Bolivia: 31% Catholic or Protestant (but mostly sychretic with native beliefs)
– Argentina: 15% Catholic, 2% Muslim, 1% Judaist
– Australia: 25% Christian (several groups)
– Turkey: 30% “true” Muslim
The USA is a mayor exception: 54% Christian!!! Other countries with large nubers of “true” Christians are Puerto Rico (40%), Philippines (56%) and South Korea (40%).

@Razib:  
 
1. God as parent: You’re seeing only the positive side of parenthood: parents can perfectly be tyrants, specially in Patriarchal societies (most). I never meant “parents” as in an idealized something: but as creator and/or authority figure. Sometimes a protector and advisor, sometimes who kicks you out from what you used to think your home, sometimes a drunkard that beats the hell out of you, sometimes an incestuous rapist.  
 
But the figure of authority in any case: the father (less commonly the mother too). 
 
2. Afterlife: Certainly different religions had different approaches to it. But what you see as something exclusive of the elites, it was surely a more widespread belief. Elistist societies often had elitist concepts of afterlife: an afterlife that mirrored this one but not that excluded the masses. The “good” thing about polytheisms was that several beliefs and doctrines could go hand by hand: a doctrine for the elites to spend heavily in temples and religious funerals could well be along a less spectacular, a lot cheaper but equally “comforting” one for the masses. Naturally we’d know much less about it.  
 
Egyptians could not agree if the afterlife was in a celestial or ctonic netherworld, they had thousands of gods, each one with his/her own mythology and doctrine… It’s not like we know everything about ancient Egypt nor like the tombs of the rich reveal all.  
 
But you may be right that, in a different context, a ghostly afterlife dependant on the gifts given by the living, as is believed in many non-theistic (or lowly theistic) societies may not be particularly desirable and therefore not a product so much of propaganda as of the psychological needs of the living, who need to express such feelings to their dead relatives and loved ones, and who may also fear those that were “evil” or whom they offended in life. Fear and love are emotions, and therefore irrational. 
 
3. Marxism: god-less, the leaders may be “saints” but not gods. If Marxism has a god it’s Humankind: after all it’s an atheistic humanism.  
 
4. Ta Theia: I did not mean elitist philosophies about a single god behind the gods: I meant pure polytheism. Polytheism is much better than monotheism at synchretism and tolerance towards other beliefs. If the Jews would have allowed they would have easily assimilated Yaveh as another god of their pantheon, maybe assimilating it to something pre-existent (Saturn?) – they did that with Phoenician, Celtic and Egyptian ones. Polytheisms are typically tolerant and inclusive, “multicultural” if you wish. 
 
The problem with monotheisms is that only their own belief, their own true doctrine, is acceptable and all the other are necessarily heressies. That’s why Christians and Muslims (and the different sects inside them) have been banging heads with each other along history: because they own the truth. 
 
4. China:  
 
… the ethnographic evidence for buddhism for example is only elite practioners are non-theistic. 
 
The ethnographic evidence for Christianity is that only elite practicioners are monotheistic… 😀 
 
The case is that the Christian doctrine is monotheistic and the Buddhist one is agnostic/non-theistic.  
 
mozi promoted a sort of theos. 
 
Maybe but he never had many followers anyhow. 
 
i will be OK with switching to ‘supernatural agents’ if that suits you more. 
 
It’s different. Your original post talked about the theistic phenomenon (i.e. the belief in god or gods) and that’s what I’ve been discussing so far. Genies, magic, ghosts… are paranormal (supernatural if you wish) but do not necessarily imply the existence of any god by themselves. They can for instance exist perfectly in a sort-of-pantheistic mentality, as the world is not really just material but essentially magical too.  
 
A very interesting point is for me that most religions of old (pre-monotheistic, polytheistic or pantheistic or whatever) don’t have the theistic concept of a single all-powerful being that is responsible of all (creator) but that the reality just unfolds as sort of perpetual creation, often at the hands of different agents (specially in polytheistic paradigms). It’s very different.  
 
Trying to get all together into the concept of theism is, I’d say, dangerously “modern” and surely false. What is surely inborn is the magical phenomenon: the belief that things may happen for reasons that we don’t understand. This is surely derived both from an intuitive (non-rational) way of thinking that we all have and from the fact that we ignore so many things (even today), for which magical explanations can give a feeling of certainty (like a tale to a kid).

@j:  
 
Successive waves of European male immigrants would also increase the percentage European X-chr. In such cases, it would be (roughly) European guys mating with every generation more Europeanized American Mestizo women. This is an oversimplification, of course, but was suggested in some older study on Colombia.  
 
But certainly you are right on the story not being as simple as “the white males took the native females and killed the native males”. There’s a tendency in that article’s interpretation to oversimplify and exaggerate. You are also possibly right in the problem of lack of definition of what is “Mestizo”. I assume they asked the sampled people for their self-identification as such but obviously a vast majority of Latin Americans self-define themselves as “Mestizo” (mixed race, specially from European and Native American).  
 
I also noticed that some of the less “white” groups (4 out of 5) seem to be paternally more Native than Euro, while the sex bias is constant for the African input in all samples. I assume that these groups are very rural and had “problems” getting new (socially more acceptable, at least in the past) white males over time (possibly local mestizo males emigrated, while women stayed), so after an early standard mestization, native male input became bigger.  
 
It’s not like all natives were wiped out nor anything close to that, though the situation varied a lot. What is clear is that the arrival of European women was for long very limited.

Native mothers would mean the offspring look more like natives than European, wouldn’t it? 
 
Why? They should look exactly intermediate in the simplest case of a European father and a Native mother, with the natural random variation. Of course, both Europeans and Native Americans show different phenotypes (it’s not like they are all made out of the same mould, you know) and some Mediterranean Euros are pretty dark featured, while some Native Americans approach somewhat the West Eurasian looks, so it’s not always easy to say.  
 
Some of my cousins (half Basque, half Spaniard) look very very dark (for European standards) but it’s impossible to tell (at least without genetic analysis) if that’s because of Mediterranean ancestry or some other exotic one, like Native American or (as my mother has some times suggested) Filipino.  
 
Looks can be very misleading.

Saints are like nobel prizes: they may be “great” but mortal after all. I mean, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, St. Paul, Einstein, Lenin… nobody thinks of them as gods: they are just “great men”. Mortals are not gods – even if in some cases they can be deified.  
 
Polytheistic Romans and Agnostic Chinese have not been known for “killing each other” in the name of religion (at least not often). Only monotheists do that on regular basis – and that’s because only monotheists tend to be truly intolerant (because they own the truth) 
 
I think that extending the term “theism” to everything supernatural is fundamentally incorrect and shows a western bias (and for this case, India is surely “western” too).  
 
We can agree 100% if the case is that the belief in supernatural is universal (or nearly so) – but not the “god phenomenon”, that is just a particular form of the supernatural one, that is not quite as universal, even if quite common.

Saints are not gods: they are not immortal nor all-powerful (or nearly so, in the case of polytheisms). They are just celebrated humans that, in the case of religions with belief in an afterlife (hence not in Marxism) are supposed to be closer to God/the gods.  
 
I know that in monotheisms they often take the place of displaced pagan deities, but they are not gods in any case: any magical power they may have attributed is only because of divine favor, not their own. And they are not worshipped but just (optatively) venerated, btw.  
 
Guess it’s like ancestors in China: they are (imaginarily, emotionally) between two worlds but hey are never gods nor are expected to act like these.  
 
I think monotheistic believers trust them because they have that feeling that God is too abstract and distant, while saints (as humans) should be more receptive to human wishes (like finding a boyfriend/girlfriend, for instance), and they can (presumably) intercede for such petty human caprices that are not really of the interest of “allmighty God”.  
 
But there are many secular (unofficial) “saints” that are not expected to work miracles but are respected, admired and imitated anyhow. That’s what I meant by Marxist “saints”. One can admire Lenin or Che and behave towards them somewhat like towards a Christian saint: seeking inspiration in heir words or deeds, maybe having a picture of them on the wall… things like that. Other kind of people can maybe have a bust of Beethoven, or a poster of Malcom X, or… That’s a secular saint: someone admired and inspiring – but not a god in any case.

I’m also quite atheist (somewhat pantheist maybe – I don’t make much difference between the two) and I don’t think gods are the same as deceased people with a ghostly presence anyhow.  
 
Gods are not super-people or ghosts or even angels: gods are (virtual) pillars of reality (for the one who believes in them). A Christian’s perception of the world would be about the same with or without St. Thomas but it would be totally different without his/her God. For a polytheistic ancient Greek, Herakles or Achilles were certainly certainly human references, sort of “supermen” of their time, but Zeus, Hermes, Poseidon or Dyonisos were the ones that made the world spin. For Hindus, a revered guru is not the same as Vishnu or Durga. For Daoists, Lao Tzu or their most venerated granfather is not the same as the Dao (that is not a personal god but anyhow).  
 
Gods provide the essential mythical parameters that define the world in a given religious cosmological paradigm. Saints, ancestors, genies and heroes are accesory. There can be borderline cases (Jesus, for instance – or minor gods with a peripherical role) but they are the exception rather than the norm.  
 
The tendency to believe in supernaural phenomena, including some sort of soul immortality maybe, does not necessarily include the concept of god(s). Superstition is probably universal, theism is not.  
 
As certain Amazonian tribe say: “God is great, but the Jungle is greater”. 🙂

@John Emerson: 
 
Perhaps the distinction we’re looking for is the status of the high God. In monotheistic religions God transcends all other things and controls them. In most other religions (shamanistic, polytheistic, etc.) god does not have this transcendence and control, but must respond to his own context which preexisted him. 
 
I think this is a good point. It estabilishes a clear difference between the all powerful mono-theos and the less so poly-theos, to describe it some way.  
 
To me, though, any belief in gods or spirits is a form of theism. 
 
That’s what I don’t really agree with: a human ghost is not a god in any case, nor I think that lesser genie (nymphs, for instance) or angels can be classified as god. And by definition “theism” is the belief in gods (theos).  
 
According to Wikipedia: Theism is the belief in the existence of one or more divinities or deities. There is also a narrower sense in which theism refers to the belief that one or more divinities are immanent in the world, yet transcend it, along with the idea that divinity(s) is/are omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. 
 
Obviously neither of these definitions refers to lesser spirits, human or genie.  
 
The article goes to describe Theism as opposed to Deism (belief in a non-intervening god) and to Pantheism and Animism, as well as Nontheism (agnosticism, atheism).  
 
Just to check the accuracy of Wikipedia’s definition, I looked the term at MerriamWebster online and it reads: 
 
: belief in the existence of a god or gods; specifically : belief in the existence of one God viewed as the creative source of the human race and the world who transcends yet is immanent in the world 
 
So it’s pretty clear that using the term “theism” for anything else can only cause confusion. Use “spirituality”, “mysticism”, “superstition”… whatever – but some better term.

It is interesting to point out that Americans and the French both come out as the least fixated on religious homogeneity despite the fact that among Western societies they come out at opposite ends in terms of secularism.
In the US, as long as you mention God all the time, it doesn’t matter which are your private beliefs; in France (and other places in Europe), as long as you don’t mention God all the time, it doesn’t matter which are your private beliefs.
I suspect.

@Razib: 
 
and btw, in terms of cognition this [super-people] is exactly what gods are 
 
Ok. You are right – but I was thinking in terms of Superman. Gods are much more above Superman. In Monthy Python’s celebrated line: “Oh God, thou who are so super!” 
 
But certainly theistic gods are super-people in a very loose sense: they are personal gods after all. 
 
excising words like “god” because they don’t fit a philosophical definition seems inconvenient  
 
Obviously this is a matter of opinion. But as I understand it, “God” in a philosophical (not religious) approach is the ultimate cause of everything, same for believers as for atheists. For some it’s the Big Bang (or whatever mystery behind it) and for others a Jewish legend. But the only real difference is that the former don’t normally like to use the term “God” for the very same fundamental concept.  
 
So even atheists would be theistic in this sense. Why? Because we all have the same fundamental questions about this curious phenomenon of Existence: cause, origins, reason, destiny. The answers are variegated though.  
 
Maybe using the term god is what really causes confussion, specially in the West, where it’s tightly attached to the JCI supreme deity.  
 
I’d rather prefer that people, at least when tryig to think philosophically, would use more precise terms: 
– Origin/essence of the Universe (presumpt) 
– Spritiual/ghostly being (presumpt) 
– Mythological character  
– Supreme moral authority (presumpt) 
– Being with superpowers (presumpt) 
 
These are maybe only some of the attributes of gods, ghosts or genie. But not all them have all. Certainly Yaveh does, but Zeus lacks the first one, while a nymph may lack several of these characteristics. The Pan-Theos would instead have only the first attribute if I’m not wrong, though it’s maybe mentioned vaguely in a handful of mythologies here and there, and that would be also the case of the Big Bang in the modern cosmological paradigms (that is what most atheists “beieve” in).

@John Emerson: 
 
Ancestors do not become gods in Chinese traditions. Ancestor “worship” is more properly refered to as ancestor veneration.  
 
We all know that in many cultures some people have been divinized (Herakles is the first one that comes to my mind, but some Egyptian pharaos too, and even Roman Emperors – and Jesus, btw). But that’s a border case of a very high regarded saint or hero. 
 
The very Emepror Guang Yu is refered as: an indigenous Chinese deity, a bodhisattva [enlightened] in Buddhism and a guardian deity in Taoism. He is also held in high esteem in Confucianism. These are not necessarily contradictory or even distinguished.  
 
It’s a matter of terminology rather than this person being a real god, as Zeus could be.  
 
As for peoples believing in souls and not in gods, I can’t be sure without further research but probably there are more than one. Pygmies for instance have a pantheistic belief in the Jungle (the Universe for them) and also have typical animistic beliefs (that everything has a soul). Colombus mentioned that the Tainos had no gods and that they made statuettes only for artistic reasons (for the beauty of them). I can’t say much more from memory right now but I’m pretty sure that other peoples, specially hunter-gatherers with similar belief systems must exist.  
 
And I don’t think Pantheism is a modern Western elaboration only. It does happen naturally a lot, but, not being into philosophy nor academic discussions, these peoples do not have an articulate description of such belief – but an intuitive one.

@Erasmus: Nonsense. 
 
Human right: freedom of religion 
JC commandment: worship only Yaveh 
 
Human right: freedom of speech 
JC commandment: prohibition of using the “name of God” 
 
Human right: sexual freedom 
JC commandment: no adultery 
 
Human right: right to the basics of life (food, clothes, house, a dignified job) 
JC commandment: no stealing 
 
Generally speaking, Human Rights are clearly against Christian doctrine and mythology as much as they are against the Islamic one. Just read what Yaveh does to the Canaanites and other peoples who do not bow to such ghostly tyrant.

@Razib: 
 
most people are stupid and don’t think philosophically 
 
That stinks to elitism, really. Of course not all people are equally intelligent or have the same inclinations or have been educated to think critically. But I normally start from the opposite viewpoint: most people are at least somewhat smart and can think on themselves. I get a few surprises now and then but not systematically. That doesn’t mean that they end up thinking my way (nor vice versa), of course. 
 
But well, this is a matter of how each of us sees the ones around him.  
 
… they think intuitively 
 
We all do, luckily. Otherwise we’d be very slow.  
 
these sorts of arguments are why many psychologists who study this topic just talk about “supernatural agents.” 
 
Which is a good choice of words.  
 
“It may not just be generic religion that was a natural outgrowth of evolution. Could we go even further and say that the largest religions, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism are themselves products of evolution by natural selection? That specific religions themselves exist as competing fitness maximisers and are not just accidents or parasites?” 
 
did you read my whole post? i get to that at the end pretty clearly, don’t i? 
 
Ehm… I believe you were quoting someone else. I did not write that. Never mind.  
 
there is a very big difference between the philosophical monism of someone like spinoza and the intuitive animism of primitive peoples. the latter are supernaturalists obviously. 
 
Sure. But animistic or not, if they both are Pantheistic they are coincident in that. The essence of Pantheism is not the existence or not of the supernatural or souls but the perception of the Universe and God as one and the same thing. In that Spinoza and the typical Pygmy are in full agreement.  
 
Again the problem lies in placing the emphasis in the concept of “theism” (pantheism in this case) or in that of spiritualism/supernaturalism. Spinoza is surely much more naturalist than supernaturalist (he was even accused of mere atheism in spite of his use of the term “God” once and again) but he is exactly as pantheist as the anonymous little guy of the African jungle. They are different in the rationalist/magical perception of reality but they are not different in the overall cosmological perception.  
 
Also, when “primitives” think in terms of everything having “souls”, that is not as irrational as we may think apriori anyhow: they deal with such items (animals, plants, rocks) from a very different view than ours; for them humans are not different from other things: they have an horizontal relation with their enviroment; for us instead humanity and the natural world are two almost different things and have an unequal relation with us humans on top – this is deeply embedded in the mind of the civilized people and is not very correct probably.  
 
Their approach may be more intuitive but also very practical for the most part. And certainly respectful, a respect for the enviroment that we should learn from.  
 
Obviously if you think that being rational is essentially superior (and not just superior in its kind), you’ll find very hard to deal with nature in terms of equality and immersion, as there are probably no other beings on this planet that are as rational as we are. But if you think about it, it is not much different from the prejudices an octopus could have for non-elastic beings as us. 
 
For me there’s more problem in this pseudo-humanist arrogance than in percieving souls in the trees. After all it’s this attitude which created the human-like gods, wether polytheistic or monotheistic. Even if we don’t believe in them anymore, we have the same attitude that those JCI faithful who believe that some imaginary guy called variedly Yaveh, God or Allah gave us the right to rule over “creation” in “his” name.  
 
This marks a line for me: those who believe in humankind apart from nature (possibly to be inherited by super-intelligent robots some day) and those who believe in humankind as an indivisible part of nature.

@Erasmus: 
 
The basic of Human Rights is that we would like them to be applied to ourselves, so better make sure they are applied everywhere and for everyone. That’s intelligent egoism.  
 
The attitude of a “Hitler” is either: 
 
a) there are no ruler 
b) the rules applies to “us” (the ubermenschen) and not to “them” (the untermenschen) 
 
The attitude of the classical Papuan is most likely B: they are not “us”, so we can eat them.  
 
Human Rights have set a major precedent by being acknowledged “universally” and diffunded massively. It won’t be easy to put them down and no alternative ideology can be as universal, really.

@Razib: 
 
That you may have a high IQ (I figure) doesn’t mean that most are “retards”, just that you are “special”, “gifted”. Average is normal: gifted and limited are the special ones – by definition. And normal intelligence is pretty smart anyhow.  
 
I can have pretty intelligent conversations with people of plain average 100 IQ – it’s not such a problem if we share the interest. But guess I don’t mind playing the “teacher” role when needed, and I also feel an intense respect for not so intelligent criatures like bonobos or octopuses. They can outwit me in aspects I’m not so strong at in any case.

Very interesting discussion. I can only say that when I was a exchange student in inner Virginia (two decades ago) I was quite shocked by the subtle but very solid divide between white and black people (and the emphasis in racial classification in all sort of official papers, unheard of for me and that I found quite repulsive).
Anyhow, I read this yesterday: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7329768.stm . The article deals with a curious research that found that some (UK) English accents make people be percieved as much more or less intelligent. Bristol accent in particular gave much worse intelligence perceptions than mute photos.
It’s somewhat related: stereotypes seem to be deeply embedded in subjective perceptions. I think it may serve as contrast, not just because it’s about stereotypes of white Britons but also because it’s not about looks but sounds.

AFAIK: cider, beer and mead (so typical of Germanic peoples), are probably much older than wine in Central and Northern Europe (and possibly Western and Eastern Europe too).  
 
Also much earlier than Romans, Greeks and other Mediterranean civilizations (Etruscans, Phoenicians) were already exchanging wines and other luxury items by the products the Celts could offer: slaves, grain, amber (imported from Northern Europe)… 
 
Wine was therefore a luxury import. Also Greek wine specially was typically not just wine, but some hallucinogenic mix (at least that’s what many authours believe). That’s why Greeks drank it extremely diluted in water, because otherwise it was just way too much. Maybe what the Belgians feared was those other psychoactive components, while typical alcohol-only beer or cider was not a problem for them – rather the opposite.

Just in case there is any doubt, I’ve searched for some online documentation: 
 
1. http://www.eat-online.net/english/habits/beer_in_ancient_times.htm#TEUTONS 
 
Says that Tacitus expressly mentions beer among Germanic tribes. Also that there is archaeological evidence of beer-making in Hallstatt (proto-Celtic) sites.  
 
2. http://www.thracepublishing.com/brenach/historyofbeer.htm 
 
Mentions that Strabo and Pliny mentioned beer making in all Western Europe, from Spain northwards. According to these classical sources, Celts made a beer called “curmic” and also cider and mead. 
 
Just a couple of mentions because I don’t want to bore you nor myself.

You’re talking of globalization (in the cultural sociological plane). The case is that religions are not the only elements to be globalized, nor is their “orthodoxy” either. I rather see it as billions of people “talking” to each other and, maybe for the first time in history, having the opportunity to understand each other.  
 
Of course, who you prefer to engage with, who are you willing to listen to… that’s still largely optional. But the same that Islamic orthodoxy is being globalized, so is for instance feminism and these are bound to clash.  
 
I would not think it anyhow as “clash of civilizations” but as clash of ideas. Traditions are bound to be shaken in this context and certainly that will spark two opposite poles: radical reformists and radical reactionaries (with many in between, of course). The same happened in the West in the last centuries: the French Revolution was contested by a Holy Alliance of conservative monarchs, only to be defeated in due time because the past models cannot be perpetuated when conditions change so radically.  
 
Ethnic conflicts may easily get into the mix. We Basques were quite “Taliban” in the 19th century, even if it was largely just because the “reformists” threatened our historical freedom. Similarly Palestinians may get attracted to Hamas, as the only one who offers them some hope. And so on.  
 
But thinking that reactonary unninovative ideologies will in the long run succeed is, I believe, fundamentally wrong. Capitalism has drastically changed the world, it’s still changing it, often without proposing a viable social model. That sparks alternative ideologies, be them revolutionary Marxist (still alive in many places) or reactionary neo-traditionalist ones. I’m not sure about the first but the latter, even if they have some circumstantial successes, are bound to fail in the long run, as they can’t really offer what the new globalized socio-cutural reality demands.

“But thinking that reactonary unninovative ideologies will in the long run succeed is, I believe, fundamentally wrong.” 
 
can you name what you’re talking about? the ideologies that is? 
 
Fundamentalisms basically. Of course Islamic fundamentalism but also Christian fundamentalism, like that so in fashion in some parts of the USA (creationism in school and all that junk). I guess I can think of other sorts of fundamentalisms elsewhere too.  
 
Creationism is a good example of why these kind of ideologies just add nothing but doctrinal conformism and lose all the good stuff of rationalism and critical exchange of ideas and information. In the end, a society that would embrace such ideas, can only end up as the most freaky and backward entity: you can’t forbid the truth and not pay a price for it.  
 
That’s the kind of attitude that has sunk every empire, from Chistian Neoplatonic Rome to closed-doors China passing by Inquisitorial Spain. An the opposite attitude: an open-minded and innovative one is which has placed all sort of countries ahead of the rest.  
 
The choice is obscurantism, autocracy and corruption or open debate, democracy and at least some fairness under the law. Not idealizing, of course, and in every case there is some balance, but one plate is much more favorable than the other, specially in the long run.  
 
Rather than normal scales, where both plates are the same, it’s more like a dinosaur: if the weight falls on the tail, the beast can’t move.

“I would not think it anyhow as “clash of civilizations” but as clash of ideas”. 
 
Huntington’s thesis is that WW2 and the Cold War were the age of clashing ideologies (and just a small number of them). The modern clash of civilizations is not about ideas as much as cultural identity. I discuss the book more here. 
 
The supposed clash of civilizations is just different manifestations in the globalized world of the increasing but irregular independence of “the South”, the former colonies and semi-colonies, from “the North”.  
 
Nobody talks of “clash of civilizations” when dealing with the growing power of China, yet China is much more different from the West than the Muslim World and, in objective economical terms it’s much of a menace to five centuries of Western global hegemony. After all, West and Middle East have the about same roots, even their historical religions (their main difference) are basically the same: modified Judaism.  
 
What is happening in the Muslim World is a passing wave. Surely won’t pass without causing much more trouble (fascism always causes troubles) but will eventually vanish and be replaced by something much more open and democratic. They have no choice: if they want to be competitive, they need education and educated people, in the long run, won’t conform to such rigid ideological parameters. Literate and connected people necessarily will get dissident information and will eventually be seduced by it.  
 
If they choose to keep the masses illiterate, they can’t become a global power (or anything even close). It’s not illiterate peasants who design nuclear reactors, rockets or telecommunication systems, for instance. Nor can illiterate masses be formed into able industrial workers with high productivity.  
 
Of course, some in the West (multinationals specially – and in China too) are rather happy with keeping such a large, geostrategical and oil-rich fraction of the world submitted through ignorance – but it’s not in THEIR best interest. Besides, from experience: a long-lasting fundamentalism regime creates hatred for religion, specially among the young. 
 
It’s a war of ideas and it’s not, like some have put it, a war of the West vs. the Middle East basically but a war between Muslims (including non-Muslims of Islamic roots). And also that war of ideas happens elsewhere: the creationism-in-biology-classes debate that roams the USA is exactly the same war but in a different battlefield. And surely you can find other examples in other latitudes as well.

What are the mechanisms by which the multinationals generate Islamism? 
 
Supporting countries like Saudi Arabia (or Pakistani military) (widely acknowledged to be the main support of Fundamentalism at least before 9/11 attacks. Supporting militias like the Taleban. It seems that everybody forgets that Bin Ladin himself was known as “the CIA man in Afghanistan” until well after the Soviet retreat.  
 
How do they benefit from large increases in Oil prices? 
 
Certainly oil multinationals benefit very directly from it, right? (And we cannot forget that the Bushes are directly involved in such industry).  
 
Nevertheless, rising oil prices are not just a product of fundamentalism but rather a product of increased “southern” independence, economic developement and therefore demand of resouces. China and India are about to topple the West in demand for raw resources, you know.  
 
Is there a report somewhere, or any documentaion, that proves that modern day multinationals are responsible for creating Islamism? 
 
Just read James Petras (for instance) and find out by yourself. 
 
Being illiterate means not being able to read. The Islamic countries are literate. 
 
Some are, some are not. Morocco, Pakistan or Niger are in the lowest triers of global literacy, indeed. When you consider literacy not just as the mere ability to read even poorly but with more serious standards, you can see that the education levels of the Muslim World are generally low.  
 
Of course, fascisms usually have a nationalist component and Iranian fascism is not going to be different. Hence education is important for them, as long as they can keep it under strict ideological surveillance, what is not always possible, specially in our time.  
 
I was born under a fascist fundamentalist regime: a country ruled by a ridiculous dictator, the Army, the Catholic Church and a bunch of oligarchs. This regime developed the country in some aspects, trying to keep it backward in others. In the mid-run the result was merely untenable and the autocracy succumbed to its own and international contradictions. Its ideological legacy? Widespread hatred for the church and the military. I have no reason to believe that Iran will be different – in the mid-run, of course.  
 
… suffering from observer bias given the century and country you live in … 
 
I don’t live in the USA, if that’s what you mean. My country (my people, not the state that has been imposed on us) is probably much older than China. One of our blood was a celebrated Caliph, another accomplished the first circunavigation of the World with a rotten ship against all odds, another was leading the first American colonial rebellion when Jamestown had not yet been founded, our ancestors fought Caesar and defeated Charlemagne, our iron fed the English industrial revolution and our sailors docked in Canada before any empire had laid claim over it.  
 
Easy riddle, right? 🙂

but fundamentalism is new and somewhat innovative. that’s why i asked. they conceive of themselves as timeless, but they’re really not. this goes for both christian and muslim fundamentalists. i don’t think in our analysis of these movements we should, or need to, accept their own propoganda about how ancient they are. 
 
Totally agree. But that doesn’t mean they are not reactionary. It’s the same as classical fascism (specially Francoism, that was the most religious of all): they try (and sometimes manage) to fuse two contradictory elements: traditionalist ideology with the necessary modernity. This involves all sorts of internal contradictions that will eventually resolve in accordance with the needs of Capitalism (national capital possibly but Capitalism anyhow).  
 
Wahabbism anyhow is a century-old movement, and the islamist laws and values all sort of fundamentalists are trying to impose are certainly nothing new. As Omar points very well, what is new, modern, is not “Islamic”. Many of these laws are counter-productive, specially all those sexist/familiarist measures that can only produce a very problematic population boom (low quality desperate ill-employed worker masses).  
 
also, do note that illiteracy doesn’t predict islamic fundamenalism within a society. look at at indonesia. the trends are pretty complicated and nested within each other. 
 
Certainly. I just meant to point out that low quality religious education can only create a low quality unstable socio-economical reality.  
 
Fundamentalism can be a form of nationalism, at least it is in the case of Iran (but not in Saudia or Morocco). The trend is complex certainly but very comparable to 20th century Western fascisms and fascist-like regimes. The main difference may be that since the Soviet (communist) “threat” seems to have vanished, such fascisms are less interesting for the neocolonialist powers to promote, specially if they display nationalist pretenses.  
 
i think you need to consider that you need to do the same sort of analysis with religious fundamentalism; your narrative is way too whiggish IMO. there is more to the world than the light & the dark. 
 
I’m sorry if my discourse looks too B&W to you. I do not mean to be so simplistic. I guess that the space that this kind of discussion allows for is only so big and, after all, when one wants to make a point, he/she needs to simplify somewhat, in order to be able to emphasize what is central to that discourse.  
 
I just meant that the so-called “clash of civilizations” is like the “end of history”: a simplistic shallow bestselling piece of junk. That there are other maybe less obvious issues behind and that, when one looks at it with some historical perspective, things are not so different from other more familiar (“western”) realities. Just that they have their own “local time” (and circumstances too).

I wonder if the very opposite may not be true: increasing literacy as a driver of Islamic fundamentalism. 
 
Partly you must be right: education and cultural globalization are not unrelated to the growth of Islamic Fundamentalism. I’m a little sad that I’ve been misread in that, what I meant is that increased fundamentalism and specially when this is applied in the law and socio-political control, when the state is fundamentalist, may cause lesser education.  
 
Fundamentalist states are not just Iran, most Muslim countries, speacially Arab Muslim ones are. Egypt or Morocco are nearly as fundamentalist as Iran, no matter they are allied with the USA. Saudi Arabia is much more fundamentalist than Iran. Etc. The practical rule of thumb is: is civil law really civil (secular) or is it some version of sharia? Is the state separate from religion as in Turkey or are both deeply intermingled?  
 
You’ll have to acknowledge that in most cases Islamism has been around since decolonization (or even before). Just that it wasn’t a prestigious political current that had a name then.  
 
I wonder if the increased organization of Islamist politics is not just a reaction to the percieved “danger” of losing such values actually. For a time the opposite trend was actually more popular: many currents were ideologicaly westernizing (secularist, specially pan-Arabism) but as they failed both to achieve successes or to attract the support of Western powers, that often prefered more backwards traditionalist regimes and even attacked them directly (Egypt, Palestine, Iraq) or indirectly (Indonesia, Afghanistan, Syria, South Yemen), and eventually lost also the support of the ill-fated USSR, they have been replaced (at least by the moment) by another type of “nationalism”, the one that for a time was supported by the West and its local allies (specially Saudia): Islamism – that has the apparent advantage of “owing nothing to anyone” but “ourselves” (Muslims).

you need to distinguish the state and society. iranian society is arguably more secular than morrocan society, but the state is not (the king of morocco is a relatively liberal monarch in his social views who has had to drag the population along when it comes to issues such as equity in divorce laws) 
 
You have a very benevolent view of the Moroccan regime, really. It’s a (religiously guided) police state with a pretense of parlamentarism. There seems to have been some increase in tolerance and some reforms under the new king but still people is getting in prision or even murdered for expressing dissident views, like Berber or Sahrawi nationalism/regionalism, criticism of Islam or the monarchy, etc.  
 
Morocco is basicall its king, the secret police and a lucrative cannabis-production business.  
 
Not sure if this happens with the new king but with “good ol’” Hassan II, the whole railway traffic was stopped often to give preference to the royal train.  
 
I have been in Morocco several times and I know people fear talking freely, specially when discussing religion or politics. Some dare when with trusted people (including turists sometimes) but the fear is very marked, really.  
 
We don’t want to acknowledge that the autocracies that West has supported for decades are precisely the most fundamentalist regimes. In Egypt, for instance, your ID card must state which of the three authorized religions you supposedly belong to. What happens if you are atheist or, say, Hinduist? You cannot – not officially. And different civil law applies depending of your official faith. Of course, freedom of speech or democracy are not really values that the Egyptian state upholds at all, but even in somewhat democratic Malaysia you also have that kind of sharia and religious “caste” issues all the time. 
 
Comparatively even Saddam Hussein’s Iraq stood as relatively progressive leader (not democratic but certainly laicist, at least until the first Gulf War). But it was kind of too nationalist… pan-Arabist… a threat for the status quo.

“Certainly oil multinationals benefit very directly from it, right?” 
 
No. Sheesh. That makes no sense whatsoever. Why does Middle Eastern nastiness increase oil prices? Because it makes Middle Eastern oil more costly: you have to pay for security and bribes for all the corrupt levels of dictatorial government you have to get through to get to it. What’s driving up the cost of oil is the increased cost of getting it to the market and that doesn’t help oil companies at all, in fact it hurts them because of the price elasticity. Paying $10 to get a barrel and selling it for $30 is worse than paying $30 to get a barrel and selling to for $40. 
 
You have avoided the main part of my comment when I said that increased demand (specially from fast developing countries like China and India) was the main drive. What you say may be a factor but it’s certainly a minor one. Other issues are that the offer is not increasing at all, with one of the problems being the lack of reffineries. It’s complex but I seriously doubt that the Iraq war alone has done what the Kuwait war didn’t. Nope. 
 
Anyone involved in Western oil companies has a motivation to keep these countries secure and as non-corrupt as possible.  
 
I guess you mean as corrupt as possible, right? If they are non-corrupt and focused in their national interest they might even dare to nationalize their oil, c’mon! 
 
So, for the central figure of your conspiracy, you should try Hugo Chavez or Vladimir Putin, not George Bush. 
 
I didn’t suggest any conspiracy. I just stated that Exxon or Shell are surely not worried just because oil is more expensive. Not if they are making increased profits certainly.  
 
… 
 
Of course it’s pure comedy that a guy like Chavez would think that his country is so wealthy that he can fund a leftist takeover of all of South America, when in fact their GNP is less than that of a tiny county like Ireland. 
 
You are an ignorant of Latin American reality if you thnk that Chavez alone is pushing the changes in Latin American politics. What is driving them is the relaxation of the US grip, more focused in the Middle East than anything else right now. Socialist movements have been relatively strong in most of Latin America since many decades ago (certainly you can’t blame the Cuban revolution on Chávez, can you? – nor the Soviets can be blamed either) and the military dictatorships promoted by the USA in the Cold War (and before too), plus the brutally neoliberal policies promoted by the IMF/WB (US-dominated entities) have only created a widespread feeling of hatred for both the USA and capitalism in Latin America.  
 
We are talking of peoples of (mostly) Western values, largely literate and educated, who find themselves dumped into abject poverty and corrupt regimes (democratic or not) at least partly because of the colonialist policies of their large northern neighbour.  
 
Their only realistic alternative is some form of nationalism and continental nationalism rather than state nationalism, as only Brazil is large enough for the latter. Bolivarianism, either in its traditional form or the Socalist version promoted by Chávez and others is therefore a natural reference. 
 
You may look down upon Cuba… but this country is admired by many of similar status in the global scale because, even if poor and totalitarian, nobody is hungry, homeless or lacks of healthcare. For the poor of Latin America (and they are a large majority), such achievements are certainly enviable. So promises or projects to imitate Cuban achievements are not a nonsense for them. Instead they had already more than enough of promises of imtation of the USA that only end up in semislavery and international robbery.

I’m quite skeptic too. Why? 
 
1. Cereals and legumes are protein-rich (though they have to be balanced in order to make up a good diet: cereals alone would not make it).  
 
2. Romans did not drink raw milk, partly because of the lactase intolerance issue. Instead they were very fond of eating cheese, which can be preserved and transported much more easily. Equally you can easily preserve and transport many types of dried meat. Even fish can be treated that way (semi-conserves), and Romans certainly ate a lot of fish-based strange dishes. 
 
3. Instead the main sources of vitamins: fruits and vegetables do need to be consumed near their source. They can be preserved but that is a huge loss to vitamins. Availability of fresh vegetables can therefore be a real nutritional issue. 
 
4. Another issue may the phosphorus-calcium balance. Most foods are phosphorus-rich, specially meat and eggs and poor in calcium. Vegetables are more balanced generally but the only real calcium-rich foods I know of are milk (and derivates) and (oddly enough) figs (specially dried figs). I have no reason to think that Romans had no availability of cheese or dried figs, even in the most crowded of cities – though they might not be at the reach of all pockets. Calcium-phsophorus balance is very important for bone developement and plays a central role in osteoporosis. Excess of phosphorus (lack of calcium) has also been tentatively associated with rhenal problems and even cancer.  
 
Also I think that the cities of the Roman age, at least before the feudalizing decline, were well communicated (and most not so large anyhow) and surely most products arrived from neighbouring or distant rural areas without problems. Cattle could perfectly be brought to town alive (even from distant places) and slayed there (and that was probably what happened). Butchers definitively existed in ancient Rome and there are no butchers without meat.

Great post, Razib. I wholeheartedly agree that “human developement” markers such as literacy and nutrition are the essential fundaments for a society being able to develope also economically. Add maybe corruption to the list, though this may be more variable.
I suspect that India (unlike Bangla Desh) has some positive elements too (as mentioned: a quite stable democratic system, for instance) but (like China too) it largely relies (must rely?) in an internal division of the country in two layers: one that approaches developed standards and another that is deeply “third-worldly”. Internal colonialism in other words (and that may be fueling increasing Maoist guerrillas, btw).
I wonder also if cultural aspects, like the “karmic fatalism” that I have read from some Indian online friends can be a factor too. Though not sure if that could apply to Bangla Desh.

but you judge retards by the retard IQ distribution, not that of normals. (…) i’m comparing in terms of rank order within the muslim world. 
 
Guess I tend to think in terms of global comparisons. Otherwise it’s like comparing apartheid South Africa only with its equals, like Nazi germany or Jim Crow SE USA. I am not ready to give the Islamists the acknowledgement that there is a distinct reality called the “Muslim World”, the same that I’m not ready to give the Pope the acknowledgment of the existence of a “Catholic World”, much less with clear borders they could feel authorized to rule exceptionally in.  
 
I think this exceptionalist attitude is very Anglo-Saxon but it only fuels communitarianism, sectarism, not integration. We live in a globalized world and we are all equally humans “in rights and dignity”. Morocco is therefore not different from Spain, at least in the fundaments. 
 
… 
 
Yes I have and that’s because it’s not relevant: the oil companies have no influence on Chinese development. They cannot drive up prices by some behind the scenes plot to make China develop really fast (if they could, that would be just great, actually).  
 
High oil prices do not push ahead the developement of China. The developement of China pushes up oil prices instead.  
 
Look: Earth is small and finite and so are its resources (at least most of them). The more the developement, the greater the demand and, with roughly the same offer, the higher the prices (and eventually a global structural crisis like the one we may be sinking into). Historically Capitalism has grown through expansionism but there’s nowhere else to go and “the dwarves are growing”. Result: all sort of problems, specially scarcity and high prices of some basic stuff.  
 
Nothing conspirative in it: just basic economy (serious economy, not Reaganomics).  
 
Nationalization is a typical move of a corrupt authoritarian regime, precisely because it isn’t in the national interest but is of course in the interest of any leader capable of pocketing the profits. 
 
Not at all. Excepting the very peculiar cases of UK and the USA, every single developed country has used some socialist means along its history to protect its national capital (private or public). Just giving away your precious natural wealth in exchange for crumbs is not the kind of policy that makes any country rich and developed. When the national capital is not strong enough to take care of a sector, nationalization may be a very pragmatic alternative. The only problem that may bring is growing foreing intervention lobbied by the companies you have expelled or brought into discipline.  
 
Corruption is (sadly) a very common human fault but certainly giving away your national treasures for a small rent (and a huge private bribe) is the worst form of coruption, and something any nation should arise against.  
 
I tried Googling something just out of interest and ended up with a very amusing chart: 
 
http://i61.photobucket.com/ album…ust3rdQ2005.gif 
 
Buying politicians does seem to work for *some* industries… 
 
Aha! Pharmaceuitcals are a very interesting and dubious industry, certainly. Banks… well, they rule the system, don’t they?  
 
But oil industries are still above average. (No conspiration theories: just “business as usual).

But I’d still say that if you wanted a healthy diet and had to choose between all animal products and all vegetable products, you’d be better off with the former. 
 
You can certainly have a very healthy diet (low in cholesterol, high in fiber and vitamins) going vegetarian. Non-strict vegetarianism (or semi-vegetarianism) is surely the easiest way of having a great diet (veganism is much more dificult). But guess you are right and you can also have a reasonably good diet based on meat and entrails. Some veggies now and then are not surely in excess anyhow. 
 
What you can’t do is to live only on cereals. Cereals are certainly the staple food of most societies and they are very important – but they need to be complemented one way or another. If poor people of any society and time are bound to eat just bread or rice, typically scarce and virtually nothing else available… then you have a serious nutritional problem.

I plead ignorance; is there any case of a population in which Islam is well-rooted converting to Christianity (or anything else)? Did it happen in Iberia? 
 
Two cases I would say: the elites easily moved from one sect to the other according to circumstances. When Islam was powerful many certainly converted to it conveniently, when the tide turned around, many did the opposite.  
 
But, after centuries of Christian domination (the reconquista was virtually over in the 13th century), there were still many many Muslims in the different Iberian realms, mostly among the peasants in the south and the east. For some reasons (increased relgious zealotry, Ottoman growth, fear of Muslim pirates) the Iberian rulers (except Navarre) decided to force conversion after 1492, among both Muslims and Jews. Many converted and others chose exile. Those converted were often secretly still Muslim or Judaist for generations, what was tackled partly via the Inquisition. 
 
There was anyhow some resistence to expulsions: Morisco peasants were a most important workforce and many did not want to prescind of them. There was also an important Morisco rebellion that named a couple of Muslim kings but was quelled.  
 
The very first developement of standard Castilian (Spanish) was part of a policiy to assimilate the people of the just conquered Kingdom of Granada: the first Spanish dictionary was written for that purpose of culturally assimilate the Moriscos. It was more than just a religious issue: it was a cultural genocide (with some ethnic cleansing too) for the sake of the national homogeneity, then largely measured in religious terms. 
 
So most Andalusians, Extremeños, Valencians and Low Aragonese are actually descendants of Muslim converts – but it was a forced conversion in most cases anyhow. Most had earlier converted to Islam not so forcibly (as far as Medieval documentation can tell). 
 
Christianity is MUCH MORE effective in converting pagans by evangelism than is Islam. Anyone who denies this really cannot be paying the slightest attention to geopolitical history. 
 
Not really true: when Islam was powerful many “pagans” converted to it: large chunks of Africa, Central and South Asia, Malaysia and Indonesia. Sometimes the conversion of rulers would precede that of his people, but often it was the opposite: a good fraction of people was already Muslim when the sovereign converted (case of Mali and later Songhay, for instance). This latter case is very rare in historical Christian proselitism, I believe, where top->bottom conversions were the norm nearly everywhere.

Your link is broken, Dienekes, but the article is certainly in Oxford Journals. Through search, I got this link for the abstract: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/510464?prevSearch=de+la+Rua (not sure if it’ll work continuously anyhow).
Aldaieta (near Vitoria-Gasteiz, in the ab Asturicam-Burdigalam classical “Atlantic axis” route) has been researched once and again, specially by Basque researchers like Alzualde, Izagirre and de la Rúa herself. It may be a new research, but with such a scarce notice it’s hard to say.
A quite comprehensive list of papers on Basque and Iberian aDNA, including several on Aldaieta, was posted here: http://z6.invisionfree.com/man/index.php?showtopic=1506 (Quetzacoatl Anthrpology Forum).

if you read brian catlos’ The Victors and the Vanquished: Christians and Muslims of Catalonia and Aragon, 1050-1300 you do note though that there was a lot of conversion of muslims to christianity before 1492 without force. 
 
Didn’t know that but it’s interesting. There were also many people in Muslim Spain that were old Christians (Mozarabic), so maybe I exaggerated using the adjective “most” (“many” would be better maybe). 
 
i would be willing to agree more moriscos were forced after 1492 then converted of their own will & interest before, but i don’t think the difference was multiplicative. 
 
Not sure: the sources are not very precise nor I am so well informed either. But the fact that Moriscos were still a very important fraction of the workforce in 1492 is pretty clear, because many local authorities were very very reluctant to apply the “conversion or expulsion” decree out of fear of losing too many workers. 
 
note: also, “force vs. free will” is too stark a dichotomy. consider muslim villages in aragon who accepted mass baptism because they were subject to depredation and harrassment by christian nobles who felt that there were few consequences to despoiling muslims. in this case the conversion was one driven by self-interest and no one forced them to convert directly, but it isn’t as if their hearts were miraculously opened to christ. 
 
Agree here. Though guess that, if you were a serf, it didn’t matter that much to which temple you went. Conversion did not erase servile status, that was widespread until the 19th century in the southern half of Spain. Even today much of that area is basically made up of aristocratic latifunds.  
 
Anyhow, Islam allows to hide one’s faith in case of persecution, this caused many converts not to be really so – and there is where the Inquisition and the “blood purity” laws (discriminating between “old Christians” and converts) intervened.

While somewhat informative, two-dimensional plots are by themselves often misleading. The main reason being that components that are small for the whole continental or global sample can be very important and even dominant locally, and vice versa: components that are large globally can be ridiculously small locally, creating a very distorted graph (in relation with reality). 
 
A relevant illustrative case is Bauchet et al, 2007 (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pubmed&pubmedid=17436249) (that also has autosomal data on Askenazi Jews, btw) where (fig 4) you can see how the PC1/PC2 plot happens to be meaningless for many populations when contrasted with the K=5 or K=6 Bayesian graphs.  
 
Basically the two main components in the European sample are Eastern Mediterranean and Finnic but, when you look at the Baysian structure, you see at least three other clusters (Central-Northern, Iberian, Basque) that are not visible at all in the 2-PC diagram.  
 
In the 2-PC diagram, for instance Basques tend to be very spread around but when looking at the K=5 structure you see that’s just because they have virtually none of the two main components, being instead internally very homogeneous (the main admixture would be with Iberians, but that’s also not visible in the PC1/PC2 diagram).  
 
In Baucher’s study, Askenazis look virtually the same as Greek or Armenians. But this may be due to lack of sampling and resolution in West Asia. I wonder why in Baucher’s they fall side by side with Eastern Mediterraneans, while in this new study they are totally apart. Choice of markers? US Askenazis genetically different from Euro-Israeli ones?

Regarding southern Spain and Sicily: I think I read somewhere that foreign “Arab” (or “north African”?) genetic contribution to the two regions was very marginal following the islamic conquest. The result for Sicily was about 1% (I wonder if that amounts to background noise). 
 
Sicily was only like one century under Muslim control, what is quite anecdotic. In Iberia (where Muslim domination lasted like 5 centuries, 8 in Granada) there’s more confusion because there is a secondary, yet important, North African genetic element (E3b clades) in the south. Most of it is probably Neolithic or Chalcolithic but it’s maybe hard to tell what came in one period or the other. Berbers were certainly the main immigrant element in any case. 
 
Assuming these studies are correct one could argue that most muslims (if they were more than a few percentage points of the population) in these areas were Christians converted to Islam and then back to Chrisitanity. 
Any other estimates? 
 
Probably. Berbers were strong in would-be Kingdom of Granada tough and ruled several emirates there in the Taifa period. Another element were the “Slavs” (descendant of Eastern European slaves, not necessarily slavic though) who ruled also several taifas in the East. But being important among the elites does not necesarily ammount to be important among the masses.

I think it was pretty easy to spread Islam to formerly Christian areas however. If people and their leaders were told that “it is not a completely different thing, it is the same but there is now also the biggest and last prophet, you should update your religion”, I think the conversion is much easier.  
 
Actually Islam benefitted of the Greek Orthodox (trinitarian) attempts to homogenize Byzantine Christianity under the Patriarch of Constantinople. Many monophysitic Christians of Syria and Egypt basically just prefered Islamic tolerance and monophisitic creed than Byzantine persecutions. Also the Arabian marches of Byzantium were under control of Christian Arabic tribes that eventually betrayd them 
 
Conversion happened later for the most part. The early Caliphate was not too keen in converting submitted peoples, as taxation of Muslims was still a taboo issue, so they lived on dhimmis’ taxes.  
 
More complex may be the case of Zoroastrian Persia. Zoroastrians were not “people of the book” so at times were tolerated but in other cases fiercely persecuted. Nevertheless, Persian culture had a major impact in Islamic one (though one should not disdain Byzantine influence either). 
 
The same tactics is used to some extent by modern Catholics, who allow the locals to keep their religious traditions alive in some form.  
 
Indeed, one of the keys of early Christian (Caholic and Orthodox) success among Pagans was their ability to incorporate their traditional beliefs in form of saints. They carried that tactic to America and other places too. But the result is sometimes more like Voodoo with a Christian cover than anything else anyhow.

One interesting result from surveys of Y chromosomal lineages is the finding that Jews may have more affinities with northern Levantine & Anatolian Middle Eastern populations than with southern Levantine and Arabian ones. (…) recent work suggests that the impact of historical events (e.g., the Arab conquest) might have been more demographically significant than we had previously assumed, and so Jewish affinity with northern Middle Eastern populations may reflect that these groups have been less affected by exogenous genetic inputs within the last 2,000 years. 
 
But there’s another possible twist to this data: Jewish diaspora, particularly Askenazi one did not really begin in Palestine/Israel but in what is now Turkey speacially. During Hellenism and the Roman Empire, millions of Jews had already begun their diaspora, largely for economic reasons, and Anatolia was their main destination. It was from there that they spread into Europe, not so much from the Levant, that had been largely depleted of Jews by the Roman genocide.  
 
Jews were not so closed to proselitism and assimilation of gentiles (converts preferably) in old times, the cases of many Jewish populations in North Africa, Yemen, Ethiopia or Russia (Khazars) shows that very clearly. We don’t have enough historical data on the Jewry of Asia Minor to judge but it’s very possible that they also assimilated many other locals, before parting to the European heartland.  
 
Remember that Hebrews are Semitic-speakers and that their arrival to Canaan in the late Bronze Age happened inside other Semitic migrations that preceded the Arab one but had probably the same origin anyhow. The genetic contrast between Arab and non-Arab West Asians can well be product not just of the Arab conquest (after all Arab seminomads were few and the agriculturalists of the Fertile Crescent many) but of the many succesive waves of Semitic input since the 4th milennium BCE: Akkadians, Amorites, Canaanite-Phoenicians, Chaldeans, Hicsos, Assyrians, Arameans, etc. 
 
Based on on Baucher, I would think that is the case, at least as a serious possibility: that the differences between Palestinians and Askenazi Jews are not just caused by Arab input in Palestine but also by Anatolian (and other) input in Jews. 
 
Proabably we would need further more focused studies to discern clearly anyhow.

Apart of possible genetic factors, I might have a (luckily mild) form of asthma because I was raised in a rather polluted city, because I was given antibiotics almost for any silly cough, because of overprotection against microbiological “dangers” and maybe also because of stress.
Country people very rarely have asthma. They may fall from a tree though.

note: i’m sure there was plenty of non-trivial conversion to judaism by those who were not descended from the people of the kingdom of judah during antiquity. that being said, of late i’m a touch more skeptical of extreme claims of jewish proselytism… 
 
We are in agreement, I think. It’s just how you understand the term “proselytism” (as something very aggreive or less so. Certainly there are enough well documented cases of non-Hebraic or mixed Judaists (“Hebraic” as ancestry and “Judaist” as religion, “Jewish” is way too ambiguous) to think of more than just accidental assimilation of very particular people. Historians seem to agree that Judaist “missions” attracted many converts in certain areas (Ethiopia specially but it seems also in North Africa, Yemen – that was once a Judaistic realm – and the really curious case of Khazars) Christianism is in fact nothing but a hyper-proselytistic form of messianic Judaism actually, but surely there were others maybe not so “aggresive” but also open to gentiles.  
 
I would expect that Greeks are closer to, say, Italians than to Armenians or Jews… 
 
Why? Italian archaological history is basically Western European – though with very important Greek/Anatolian/Balcanic inputs since Neolithic, affecting specially the south of the peninsula. Greek Neolithic (at the origin of nearly all European one) is probably of Asian origin (Anatolian most likely) and Greeks and Anatolians have been in narrow contact since “always”. Genetically Greeks (and some other Balcanic peoples maybe) tend to stand out in the context of Europe. 
 
Probably the closest thing genetically to the Carthaginians are the modern Maltese. 
 
Again why? Malta was densely populated long before the arrival of Phoenicians (and we know little about the origins of these first settlers) and their language is derived from Arabic anyhow, not from ancient Phoenician.  
 
I think there is probably an “Italian” group (the people of central Italy probably have the strongest membership in this group). 
 
Hmmm… Remember that Etruscans (and partly modern Tuscans) show great affinity with Anatolia. In Baucher’s study, Italians seem very mixed, but unlike Spaniards, they don’t seem to show a cluster of their own – what I admit is kind of weird, even if considering that Italy has been very open to all kind of outer influences since at least Neolithic times. Maybe with greater clustering depth there would appear such Italian core, even if mixed.

This PC graph has the same peculiarity as the one in the previous post: SE Europeans/”Anatolians” are completely opposite to NE Europeans on one PC, but line up almost perfectly on the other. 
 
I can’t find any reasonable explanation for this pattern. 
 
It doesn’t really make much sense to me either: when looking at the K clusters that PC2 dimension is not visible at all (while PC1 correlates almost perfectly with K=2), but that’s what Fig 5 also shows: that Armenians and Finnish are on the right side of PC2, being low on it Basques and Spanish, so maybe it’s some element that decreases westward. Fig 3 shows that the PC1/PC2 graph is very stable, even when almost half the data is removed. 
 
The only thing that makes sense is K=3, if we take the blue and red components as one. But in that case, I’d expect the “component” to be the yellow one, not the amalgamation of the other two (i.e. Basques and Spaniards would be high in PC2 and Easterners low, a horizontally mirrored graph). Hmmm… 
 
Anyhow, I understand much better the K structure than the PCs, that are almost esotheric in design.

I’m starting to realize that the number of samples of each population are extremely important on how the PC1/PC2 graphs end up. In most of the graphs above, Askenazis (being a very numerous sample) appear as separated (probably defining one of the two PCs themselves), while in the first one and in Baucher’s (posted in the other gnxp blog), they don’t stand out because their numbers are small in comparison with the total sample (as these two studies are focused in European structure).  
 
This can also apply to other elements: if you study 82 Spaniards and almost 2,000 US people of European ancestry (like Seldin does), most of which have no Spanish ancestry whatsoever but likely high North European one, the PC and cluster result will notice no peculiarity that Spaniards may have.  
 
In this regard, I think that Baucher’s paper is more representative of real European clustering, even if it also has important blanks (France, Eastern Europe, West Asia).

Which “one” do you mean? 
 
In Baucher’s paper (link in original post), the PC graph posted here by Razib is accompanied by a (in my opinion more interesting) Bayesian K-means structure (depth up to K=6). I am refering to that parallel clustering, where you can see at least five geographically organized clusters: K=2 contrast the “Eastern Mediterranean” (red) with the “Finnish” (blue) one, coincident with PC1 dimension, but there are other three clear clusters that can be called: “Basque”, “Iberian” and “Central-Northern European”.  
 
If in the K=3, we make the two main “populations” (red and blue, “Eastern Med” and “Finnish”) become one, then we get PC2 (or something very very similar). Paradoxically, what we are seeing is not something that Finnish and Eastern Mediterraneans share, but something they lack: a SW component that, in deeper resolution, happens to be basically the Basque characteristic one.

All of this is well and good except if “northern” non-Arab middle Eastern population were descended in large measure from “southern” Akkadians, Amorites etc. they would appear “southern” and cluster with the other “southern” middle eastern populations. 
 
But that is not the case. For instance for Y-DNA J, you have basically two regions in West Asia: the Arab “lowland” countries and the non-Arab “highland” ones. Of course both regions and the subregions in them have been in contact since “always” and they do share a lot but there’s some of a divide, I think.  
 
Anyways linguistic affiliation doesn’t seem to mean much in this part of the world, at least in Persia (1) the Caucasus (2) or Anatolia (3). 
 
Don’t get me wrong: what I am saying is that, since almost 6,000 years ago, Semitic peoples have been pouring into the lowlands of West Asia (Lebanon too, ok), in succesive waves. But these waves had almost no impact in the highlands (Anatolia, Iran, Caucasus). That the descendants of Elamites became Arabized “recently” doesn’t mean that Semitic genes flowed intensely in that area, that was not previously of Semitic language or culture (first Elamite, then Iranian). It’s a case like Morocco maybe, where “Arabs” are genetically mostly Berbers genetically.  
 
I also know that linguistic adscription in Anatolia and the Caucasus has little correlation with genetics. I do not mean to make a blanket correlation between language and genes: not at all. But rather a historical correlation between pretty well known persistent migrations of Semitic-speaking peoples and the genetic peculiarities of the Fertile Crescent, that was always the main affected area, specially in the Y-DNA aspect.

I’d been vaguely assuming that the different PC’s were simply synthetic and probably artificial, corresponding merely to the largest eigenvectors. Is it generally believed instead that they usually represent something “intuitive”, like a particular ancestry-group? 
 
You are right, I think. But the layperson can get confused about that, and surely they often do. Myself have only recently discovered the fact you mention (with some relief, btw).  
 
Rading Cavalli-Sforza, for example, he gives the impression (or at least did in the 90s) that the PCs are something “real”. So maybe the confussion begins with geneticists themselves.

How does that explain the Jews closer relations to the Anatolians and Armenians? Are you positing that despite the relatively larger sizes of the late antique Babylonian and Alexandrian diasporas, the majority of Jews today descend from the Anatolian diaspora with a heavy admixture from the locals? 
 
I don’t know for sure, of course. But wasn’t the Babylonian diaspora cause of the Samaritans distinct group, who were shunned upon by “purebreed” Jews? I guess these are not anymore among Jews, at least in significant numbers, but mutated into other ethinicities, Palestinians specially. As for the ones who remained in Mesopotamia, they are at the origin of the legend of the “lost tribes”, right? Nothing to do with real Jews we know of. 
 
I am unaware of any Alexandrian diaspora, unless you mean the natural dispersion of Jews in the Hellenistic (and later Roman) world, for mostly economic reasons. In this case, they went specially (not only) to Anatolia, and that could explain their apparent affinity with Anatolian-Aegean peoples, if they mixed with the locals there.  
 
Of course, another possibility to be entertained is that Hebrews would not be really Semitic in (genetic) origin but some Anatolian/Kurdish/Armenian group that became semitized prior to their migration to Canaan. But this is highly speculative and would imply that Jews would have remained hyper-pure through milennia, even before the first diaspora, even before their presumed stance in Egypt (as part of the Hicsos?), even before mythological Abraham departed from Ur, what I think is extremely unlikely, even for such an endogamic people. Their culture and mythology is very Semitic (pastoralist-nomadic, patriarchal) in any case. 
 
Part of the problem may be in the fact that these studies focus in Askenazis (a group with a marked bottleneck – founder effect, who did part from Anatolia, via Italy, according to all I’ve read). Maybe studies on Sephardites could shed more light. Real Sephardites (not all Jews of Spanish rite, that also include many Amazigh Jews, who are largerly Berber genetically) could be closer to the historical Hebrews maybe – though I guess they are not lacking admixture anyhow.

I wonder the impact of the 1st century Jewish kingdom of Adiabene (in modern-day Kurdistan) on Jewish demographics. 
 
I was totally ignorant of this historical state but is another example of the many different people that converted to Judaism in old times. On that light, assuming that modern-day Jews are genetically closer to old-day ones than, say, Palestinians, is assuming a lot. It’s not just the European inputs, but the likely input before they even arrived to Europe.  
 
Btw, if my memory doesn’t fail, there was an “old” Y-DNA study on Jews that showed some apparent affinities specifically with Kurds. Probably it’s very obsolete but still maybe worth mentioning.

I’d say that Bible-believer and Born Again sound as more fanatic categories than merely theologically conservative, that actually sounds more erudite. I f I’m not wrong, US President, G.W. Bush himself is (or was claimed to be) Born Again, while I would not expect him to be theologically anything, really.

I’d expect less developed countries like India to have a higher homicide rates than reported.
Heard of “accidental death”? I doubt is so much a problem of bureaucracy as of corruption. This was highlighted by the recent murder and rape of a British girl in Goa – would she have been a local, or even would the mother not have moved all strings, the murder would not have been even investigated at all. That’s much less likely to happen in a developed country.
Still, one of the problems in the USA is weapons availability. Ok, you can kill with a kitchen knife or a hammer… but it’s a lot easier to just pull a trigger, and it’s also easier to kill more people, more efefctively with one of those.
And note that I am in favor of free weapons for all (in spite of being a leftist – or maybe because of that) – but I know it can increase violent crime too. The Bosnia war, for instance, would have been much more difficult without the territorial militia system of old Yugslavia that had everybody with a riffle at home. It can serve for self-defense and national defense… and it can serve for butchery as well.

@Razib: that’s what I meant: that South Asians are different (in looks) from West Eurasians but often (it depends on which two individuals you may compare – and with whose eyes) not as strikingly distinct. The picture you posted for instance does not suggest “difference” to me but surely you can find much more “ethnic-looking” South Asians too.
Anyhow, I’m starting to think that factors that for others are important (like skin tone, unless extreme maybe) are not really that striking to me while other less commonly mentioned elements like non-slanted eyes or elongated faces may be more important when intuitively defining “affinity”. In this sense your “typical white California doctor” looks to me as akin or maybe even more than a hyper-pale white-blond round-faced North European with partial epicanthic fold. Surely that’s not the typical definition of “white” in the USA or elsewhere. But for me is a very valid intuitive grouping.

I find that moist, salty air, like wind blowing off the ocean is best for me – it seems to get rid of most symptoms.
There may be a difference between mere moist and salty one. I know from childhood that a salty solution (and sea water) are good for respiratory symptoms. It was even sold in pharmacies but can’t recall its name right now. My mother, who was born in a family of physicians, gave it to me now and then: drops directly to the nose. And sea water works the same.
But that’s not apparently contradictory to my experience that, when living in drier climates (Madrid, inner Virginia, Serbia…) the allergy symptoms disappeared in a matter of days or weeks. In contrast Bilbao is almost as wet as London or Ireland – and my nose too. 🙂

there is also the documented association of celtiberian dialects with goidelic dialects in the british isles, as well as irish legends of emigration from the north coast of spain which attests to long term connections between the two areas along the maratime fringe. 
 
While the rest of your post is correct, Razib, this part is totally speculative:  
 
1. Iberian Celtic is very poorly known and only two languages have left some (few) short texts:  
 
1.1. Celtiberian: Q-Celtic (i.e. like Goidelic or rather closer to proto-Celtic. 
 
1.2. Lusitanian, that may not even be Celtic after all. Lusitanian it’s P-something. But P-Celtic languages are believed to be of much later evolution, so some speculate it’s some other Indo-European, not exactly Celtic, or such an old proto-Celtic that had not yet lost its P into Q. 
 
The issue is that linguists believe that original Indo-European P evolved into Q (written as K or C) in proto-Celtic and early Celtic but latter evolved again into P in Brithonic and Gaulish (but not in Goidelic or Celtiberian). Lusitanian would be too old to be P-Celtic, but the coincidence of Q sound between Celtiberian and Goidelic is probably just a remnant of the original Celtic pronuntiation.  
 
2. Iberian Celts had no direct connection with the British Islands (at least no connection that makes any sense archaeologically). Celts arrived to NE Iberia long before (c. 1300 BCE) their cousins arrived to Britain and were evertually cut off from the continent in the 6th century BCE by some Iberian “reconquista”. Isolated in Central and Western Iberia they never obtained the La Tène culture nor Druidism.  
 
Instead there’s a lot of archaeological evidence for connections between Iberia and the British Islands (and other Atlantic areas) before Indo-European conquest: Megalithism and Bell Beaker phenomenons, certainly, but also as recently as the Late Bronze Age (Atlantic Bronze). Once the Celts invaded Western Iberia c. 700 BCE, these contacts were broken, except for the occasional Phoenician sailor (tin traders).  
 
If the Irish legends mean something, they must refer to events prior to Celtization (i.e. Indo-Europeization, as Celts were the western avant-guard of Indo-European penetration) of the island.

On the issue of PC-mapping.  
 
I find that when comparing Cavalli-Sforza’s PC1 with the much more work of Baucher et al., you get the same component (more or less). Yet when you dig the alternative/parallel Bayesian K-means clustering, you realize that the PC1 is quite the equivalent of the red Eastern Med component in the K=2 level. But this component is not equally present in all groups that show (apparent) high apportion of it at K=2 level. When you look at K=5 or K=6, you realized that the relatively high apparent PC1/red component is actually extremely low for some of the samples.  
 
So it’s not just that PC1 is what you see (either in the map of the PC graph) but something very shallow, that only considers the main elements continent-wise, ignoring the specific main elements regionally, at population or ethnic level. The most striking case is surely the Basque sample, where the red component (equivalent to PC1) and the blue one (equivalent, together with the red, to PC2) are virtually absent. What is “major” for all Europe, happens to be “trivial” for the Basques (and pretty minor for other western groups).  
 
So, while PCs may reflect something, that something is way too diffuse and hard to interpretate. In comparison, K-means clustering, specially when deep enough, seems to give a lot more clear results. Yes or yes?

A lot of Smiths change their names. I used to be a Smith. Seemed like no name at all. 
 
That’s a very logical explanation and the only reasonable one so far.

Luis: 
 
“”A lot of Smiths change their names. I used to be a Smith. Seemed like no name at all.” 
 
That’s a very logical explanation and the only reasonable one so far.” 
 
C’mon—30% of ALL the Smiths in America changed their last names during a single six year period???!!! 
 
I think my own Martian anthropologist suggestion is a little more plausible… 
 
Ok, it sounds extreme, really but I understand that it’s easy to change one’s name under US law. Just some paperwork.  
 
Also Luke Lea claims to be a former Smith, so he should know something about the matter directly. I can understand well why someone with a too common name may want something more personal – and eventually make it official too, specially if that is legally easy and socially acceptable.

Anyway reminds me of the rapidly disappearing blue eyes: 
 
“About half of Americans born at the turn of the 20th century had blue eyes, according to a 2002 Loyola University study in Chicago. By mid-century that number had dropped to a third. Today only about one 1 of every 6 Americans has blue eyes, said Mark Grant, the epidemiologist who conducted the study.” 
 
That should be more easily explained, probably: socio-biological reasons such as immigration, admixture and even simple adaptation to a sunnier climate than the original North European one (assuming there’s an evolutionary reason for blue eyes or that they are directly linked to other traits such as very pale skin) can account for it somewhat easily.  
 
I just don’t believe in “Martian” explanations. Sorry.

…the answer has to do with very low population densities verging upon nil in Central Asia.
Certainly, specially north of the “oasis area” of Uzbekistan and neighbours. This does not just apply to IE expansion eastward but also to Turco-Mongol expansion westward later on. Kazakhs apparently are surprisingly low in Western genetics and that can only be explained because of those extremely low population densities in the steppe and semideserts that constitute that country, that allowed Turco-Mongols to replace almost totally whatever peoples were there before.

… one of Lincoln’s theses is that the success of Indo-European expansion around the world results from a certain sort of “imperialist DNA” built into its religious belief that all the earth’s cattle belong to the Proto-IE tribes. The Hindu reverence for cattle could be an atavistic reminder of the original “those cows are my cows” mindset. 
 
The Hindu reverence for cattle has its best comparison in ancient Egypt, in fact. Egyptians of old did not even buy knives or pottery to the Greeks out of fear these could be polluted by cow meat. They even forced Lybian nomads (who did not have such custom) under the Pharaoh rule not to eat them.  
 
Instead the only comparison of “all cows belong to us” I can think of are the Masai, who are a little bit too distant in space and culture to make much sense.  
 
I’d say that the religious respect for cattle, specially milk-giving cows, is rooted in Neolithic practices that pre-date the Indoeuropeans by milennia. Cattle just was of much better use alive than dead: it provided milk and manure, and it ploughed the fields. Instead all cattle-herder peoples I can think of do kill and eat some animals even if sparsely.  
 
Also, maybe the most specific husbandry of Indoeuropeans was surely the horse, and in ancient Hindu religious literature you do find such element – sometimes as the holiest of sacrifices. I would not expect that IEs that were making all kind of animal sacrifices elsewhere, and were doing that with horses in India (and elsewhere too), would spare cows.

I had thought the pygmies broke off rather earlier than 70000; same time as the Bushmen. 
 
At least by Y-DNA, Pygmies clearly “belong” to the YxA branch that has many (at least 6) mutations separating it from A. Instead B nd CR (or CT, as some cal it now) are separated by only 2/3 mutations, what suggests that Pygmies and other B-Africans are much closer to the Afrasian CR bunch than to Khoisan (most directly associated with A).  
 
Maybe it was earlier than 70K but not much earlier anyhow, specially if mtDNA studies are convergent into this kind of genealogy. Not as old as Khoisans in any case.

there’s no signature of pre-turco-mongol ancestry in the kazakhs?
There is but it’s a lot lower than in neighbours like Uzbekistan. Of all former USSR Central Asia, Kazakhs seem the least “westerner” (and more “easterner”) of all (maybe together with little Kirgizisan), and the difference is very marked.
I’ve seen some other stuff that goes in the same line but the handiest example may be the Mc Donalds’ world maps (2005), where Kazaks are like 50% “easterner” (mostly C, but also O and Q), while Uzbeks are only like 15% that. Such contrast can’t but be caused by the difference of density in the semidesertic Kazakhstan and the more hospitable Uzbekistan, settled since at least Neolithic times.
The difference is even more marked if you look at haplogroup R (thought to be associated with the previous rulers of the area: the Indoeuropeans): Kazakhs are like 5% R, while Uzbeks are like 25% (in both cases R1a makes up the larger share). Instead, if you look at clades like J or H, the difference is irrelevant (what might mean they are a recent Silk Road arrival or that they were shared by groups not displaced by the Turks).

@daveinboca:  
 
What do you mean? The only minimally well known pre-IE languages of that area (Etruscan, Hattic) are not Semitic nor other Afroasiatic. The fememine Sun is something you also find in Basque mythology (but Basque lacks gender except in the colloquial 2nd person singular, so this is not found in actual language). You seem to be bulding a castle on thin air.  
 
It’s like that people that claim that the substrate of Celtic would be “Semitic” just because some specific gramatic item. Semitic is not known of in its historical area (lowland West Asia) until c. 4000 BCE and it’s not known at all north of Syria-Iraq, except for a handful of trading colonies. The fact that Semitic languages (Arab, Hebrew) are relatively well known and therefore easy to compare with, does not mean that every minimal coincidence means “Semitic substrate”. It could be anything else: extinct language families (without going too far, Sumerian is an isolate, for instance), other Afroasiatic languages (alive, like Amazigh, or dead), other live unrelated families that just nobody has bothered comparing with (say, NW Caucasian or Nilo-Saharan or Burushaski – whatever).  
 
The structural features could also perfectly pre-date the expansion of Afroasiatic languages into the Fertile Crescent (or even West Asia as a whole) and be as much substrate element in Semitic languages, as in Greek or Celtic.  
 
Building castles on thin air: just that.

Jim: we really don’t know for sure. In my not so humble opinion, the formation of the caucasoid type is part of the colonization of West Eurasia, though until the late UP (Magdalenian) we don’t really find skulls that are more or less the same as now. Earlier types (Co-Magnon, etc.) are surely related but more archaic (and somehwat distinct) in appearence (suff like very marked cheeks, much stronger jaws, overall more archaic look).
As for pygmentation, I would think that blond hair may be older than other traits (and evolutionarily trivial), and could have been present since soon after the OOA event, as it’s not just found in West Eurasia but also in Australia and Melanesia. But the focus here is pale skin, that is not any absolute trait, but gradual and enviromentally modifiable (tanning). Some degree of pale skin could well have evolved in the UP, though, as noticed by the graph above, it was not such a dire evolutionary need as later in the Neolithic, specially among groups that practiced fishing (the main dietary source of vit. D). Apparently, recent genetic research suggests that the main change in this happened rather recently, in or near the Neolithic period, allowing possibly for the palest types among “whites”, who were best adapted to live in the darker conditions of Northern Europe and to need less dietary input of vit. D, even in such enviroment.
Anyhow (and this goes for all), I am of the impression that the evolution of whiter types was probably gradual: first UP humans in Europe (at least non-Mediterranean Europe) would already benefit from such adaptation, then some more northern areas like Central but also Eastern Europe also give a plus to lighter skin, then, in the Epipaleolithic, when Northern Europe (properly speaking) begins to be colonized, the benefit is even greater, and finally Neolithic, with the alteration of diet, would give the final (and maybe decissive) impulse to this process, consolidating the dominance of “Nordic” (pygmentation-wise) types in Northern Europe specially, and of lighter (less brownish) types in the rest of West Eurasia and North Africa (and Central Asia before the Turkic migrations too).
I’d like to discuss the known (or speculated) timing of the different pygmentation mutations, as I really think that the process was not sudden but gradual (step by step maybe). I suspect that you could surely speak of “white” West Eurasians already in the late UP, even if the “Nordic” (whitest) types were still undeveloped or rare.

Hmmm… vitamin D is not just to “boost the immune system”: it is essential for bone formation and its lack causes rickets and other health problems not directly related with the immune system. Also recenly Razib posted on some new research that strongly suggests that it’s most important in correct brain development. According to Wikipedia the main sources of vit. D in food are fatty fish and mushrooms, and to a lesser extent eggs. Ground meat and vegetables have negligible inputs of vitamin D, so unless hunter-gatherers in shadowy climates fished or gathered mushrooms frequently, or ate a lot of eggs, they were bound to have serious lack of this essential vitamin. So, almost necessarily, they should have started to evolve towards lighter skin (the only alternative source) early on as they moved away from the tropics.
In fact it’s a “classical” rationale that East Asians are not as light pygmented as West Eurasians because they traditionally eat more fish, what may be correct or not, but sounds very persuasive in any case.
Also I don’t think that farmers excercised much less than huntergatherers. They were more sedentary, of course, but they had to care their fields and animals almost every day too – and that’s a lot of excercise. What they may have experienced is a decrease of meat and fish in their diets.

Uh… great. I feel like I’m basically getting an accidental inside view into some weird internal dispute within the right over which group of outsiders to look down on 😐
Almost exactly my thoughts: conservative vs. conservative = meaningless ranting.
Sadly that seems the road that overall socio-political discussion is heading towards in the West, and that’s reminds me of the Greco-Roman decadence between Neoplatonic sofistic arguments, once they had already ostracized all critical thought. Then it came the Inquisition, not yet with that name, the “known world” became pious to the point of fanaticism, the political institutions and society went back many centuries, ancient philosophical works were overwritten with prayers, and the outcome is celebrated by historians with a very appropiate name: “the Dark Ages”.
I may sound somehwat like Derbyshire here but, unlike him and Kipling, I know that if “northwest Europe” (sic – what about France and Switzerland, what about Renaissance Italy?) eventually became the hub of rationalism and science, it was precisely because they were quite liberal. Otherwise they would have burned Kepler and, specially, Darwin at the stake.

The other graph is also interesting: only Eastern European countries (mostly Orthodox) approach US levels of credulity but even these are significatively more rationalist. Only Turkey (the only polled Muslim, and largely underdeveloped, country) is more credulous than the USA.  
 
As (Western) European, I am always flippant of the very existence of the “creationist debate” in the 21st century USA. It looks like something of very old times: a 19th century debate, with aftertaste to witch-hunt. Would they be discussing the law of gravity I would be equally flippant, really.  
 
Anyhow, it does seem that the main factor on both sides of the Atlantic is religious beliefs. If it’s less important in Europe, it’s surely because even religious people has since long accepted evolution and make of teleology (ID) just a “private” explanation for it. Another related reason is the lack of emphasis in literalism, even among Protestants. If the Bible, specially the Book of Genesis, can be metaphorical, there’s no real problem between faith and evolution (and other scientific facts, like heliocentrism). This brand of illustrated (and somewhat relativistic) Christians, dominant in Europe among those that still fit into organized religion (a decreasing minority, in any case), still enjoy scientific discoveries like genetic “Adam” and “Eve” but it’s mostly a private self-satisfying meditation, not an educational or political issue. 
 
Possibly the problem in the USA is that, unlike in Europe, you never really had to resort to guillotine and the likes, because you never really suffered feudalism and theocracy like in the old world. Also the USA is maybe founded on religious minorities, often dogmatic. In Europe you don’t find a bible in each hotel room (crazy idea) nor read anything like “In God We Trust” on banknotes (probably even religious Europeans could consider that blasphemous: “to Caesar what is of Caesar…”). Even if official churches are still subsidied in some states that’s something rather controversial and overall society is very laicist. You don’t see politicians talking normally of their religious beliefs (it could alienate potential voters and it’s not a major political issue anyhow) and being atheist or agnostic is something absolutely normal.

Intelligent design is instead an appeal to decadence: Holocaust denial is mere “historical review”, 9/11 conspiracy theorising is only “asking for the truth”. 
 
That’s mixing apples and oranges. Historical review of the exact figures of the Holocaust is (when it’s serious, not typical denialism) a very reasonable proposition. After all, in the aftermath of WWII and around the foundaton of Israel, there was a lot of emotions and presumably propaganda around this issue. The usual 6 million figure is the highest estimate and the real figure is surely around 4.5 million. It doesn’t ethically matter after all but it’s important for History (as scientific discipline) to get the facts straight. Banning discussion on this is more like making creationism official. Much of the same about 9/11 conspirationist theories: research should be done to clarify it trhoughtly. Only a “believer” can reject to discuss calmly and scientifically what is being questioned with more or less reason. I understand that both issues are emotionally challenging but that’s no reason not to debate them, just a reason to relax and stop overreacting.  
 
The problem with creationism is that it doesn’t provide any valuable scientific evidence. First of all they are unable to prove the existence of God, second they are unable to prove the veracity and divine inspiration of the Bible (or whatever other holy book), and finally their criticisms to the estabilished paradigm (always changing anyhow) is just nitty-picky ignorant pseudo-science. The debate can be going on all you want, what makes absolutely no sense is to insert mythology or theology into the science curriculum, or to suggest that creationism (or ID for the case) is a finished elegant mainstream scientific theory when it is not anything of that.  
 
I’d sincerely suggest to introduce Philosophy in the curriculum of US secondary education (as it’s generally in those of Europe) and place ID and some other relevant theology in it… along with all other philosophical stuff, western or not. That would surely enrich the cultural background of US students and silence fanatics a little bit, while leaving the curriculum fundamentally secular.

@ Barry: 
 
Some clearly tendentious inaccuracies in your statements: 
 
In Germany, a militantly secular country… 
 
Since when? The Federal Republic of Germany (BRD) has been ruled through most of its post-war history (that it’s all its history actually) by a party called Christian Democratic Union (and their Bavarian allies the Christian Social Union, often accused of being too close to the extreme right). Germany, like most European states, is not “militantly secular”, only France and Turkey approach that since the fall of the socialist bloc. What may be is reluctant to give free ride to presumpt destructive brainwashing cults like Scientology, what is a very different thing.  
 
Greens across Europe have also taken militant anti-scientific stands against nuclear energy and against any kind of assaults against Mother Nature such as genetic modification of plants, animal testing, cloning of all kinds, and even genetic medicine. 
 
This is a very wide blanket statement. And it’s quite dubious that questioing the safety of nuclear energy is “anti-scientific” in any case. Nuclear energy is certainly very problematic, ignoring that fact is not being scientific, but having blind faith in technological progress, what is religion rather than science. 
 
Much of the elite is in the grip of a new pantheistic Earth religion… 
 
That’s absolutely nonsensical propaganda of the (Christian) religious far right, fearful not only of their evident loss of power but also, more secularly, of the danger to their petty economical interests that somewhat increased ecological awareness may pose. All very hysterical and would be laughable if it would not remind of the infamous “Protocols”.  
 
But nuclear plants continue to be shut down in Europe as we speak. 
 
I wish you were right. Totally obsolete nuclear plants, that have radioactive escapes now and then are not just being kept active for much longer than scheduled and paid largely by the taxpayer but the current trend, on light of increasd fuel prices, is that they will be allowed to operate indefinitely. The next Chernobyl is just a matter of time with such policies, of course. I just can hope it’s not too close to my home.  
 
Where still talking about a moralistic movement that has succeeded in limiting science and technology to a shocking and harmful degree. 
 
Are you telling me that Germany or the Netherlands, the kind of countries where green parties can be somewhat influential, always as minor force, have reduced science and technology investment in the last decades? That is laughable to say the least. Are you telling me that southern European countries, where green influence is non-existent (ol’ good commies occupy that political sector mostly instead) are more advanced? That the UK, that is all the time cutting down its science investment and has a very low investment in scientific European projects like ESA, is doing that because of the non-existent “british green party”? Absolutely ignorant nonsense. 
 
Anyhow, science is not just about playing Dr. Frankestein or, worse, Dr. Mengele. Surely there is that possibility but it has obvious social and ethical problems that our societies are adressing in general with quite an open mind (what is not the same as a blank cheque). Wether it is worth to “play God” with our embryos to briefly expand the life (hypothetically) of some ailing people that naturally will have to face death anyhow, is a major ethical problem with no easy answers. But still the most vocal sectors against such research are, of course, the remnant religious right, more mobilized by such issues than by the distant and quite trivial “creationism debate”.

Certainly Altai is, like Uyghuristan, an eastern pocket of partly western ancestry (assuming R1a is “western”, as it’s also very high in South Asia – but yes: I tend to accept the Kurgan model as very valid).
But haplogroup N needs not to be Finno-Ugric at all. That’s only in Europe (and maybe Western Siberia). N has a wide distribution mostly through Northern Eurasia and it is markedly strong also among Mongols (specially “old Mongols”, like Buryats), among other Siberian peoples. N is also found in lesser ammount, but occasionally with high diversity, in East Asia and it’s directly related to typical East Asian haplogroup O. So your conclussions in this aspect are surely wrong. Most probably Fino-Ugric ethnicity was formed at the Urals, maybe in direct correlation (but diferent male ancestry lines) with the formation of Indo-European one (it’s been posited once and again that Uralic and IE languages are related or at least were for long in intimate sprachbund, what is coincident with what we know of their adjacent archaeological urheimats).

Does “Asian” mean East Asians, South Asians or a composite of the two groups? Or something else maybe?
Asia is a lot larger and more diverse than Europe (or even all the West Eurasian area) and South and East Asians (not to mention West Asians) are very different from each other, genetically, phenotypically and culturally.
Also I am somewhat wary of global genetic studies based on US samples, because these often represent specific fractions of the original populations. Even white Americans hardly represent all Europe but have a strong bias towards the NW quarter of the continent. African Americans are a local subset “filtered” by centuries of slavery (with all the selective mortality associated to it) and localized breeding. Asian Americans also often represent specific subsets of their original populations, with maybe marked founding effects. Etc.
A most incredible sample in this regard is the CEU one, a Utah white sample that has surely a marked bias to local founder effects (I’m not wrong in this, right?). In this study it also looks strongly different from the other Euro sample, being oddly closer to both non-Euro ones at the same time (in the detail). This is in itself interesting because it does suggest that the overall “continental” (or “racial” if you wish) differences surely hide a much wider diversity.
Still it’s not the first study that proposes that East Asians (specifically) are genetically inbuilt as calmer (and more submissive/conformist/gregarious). But, even if this is true in the general picture, it’s probably overlooking many individual and groupal differences.

“For the purposes of this section an ?animal? is an animal other than man.” 
 
Hmmm… that spells doom for women, I’d say. Sure that some can argue that “man” is generical for human, but sure that others can argue the opposite at convenience, as often happens with theologians and religious jurists, be them Christian, Judaist, Muslim or whatever.

I do realize. And I also realize that many people don’t realize that. So, yes, good post, Razib.
Northern Europe is unique in having relatively warm weather and being at that ultra-high latitude, allowing for a population density nowhere else in the planet isfound so far North. That’s because of the Gulf Stream. That alone seems a good reason for paleness of Northern Europeans.
Add to that the usual cloudiness because of sea influence (in comparison, most of Siberia is probably a lot sunnier, even if much cooler too).
For adequate Vitamin D synthesis you need sufficient UV exposure at least a couple times a week, so really what should matter is what the available UV is in the depths of winter and whether you can get enough outdoor time to soak it up (and then whether your skin is pale enough to soak up enough).
Are you sure about that?
Anyhow, I assume that pre-Modern people were a lot of their time outdoors, even in the depths of winter. There was no TV nor Internet, heating needed to have the wood fetched and almost anything needed someone to move out and aroudn. Same in Hebei as in Sweden.
Also, vit. D synthesis is not just the B&W extremes. People with brown or beige skin can actually synthetize it a lot better than people with black skin, while they are also better protected against UV damage than people with very pale skin (who often can’t even tan or have a hard time with that). It’s a gradual adaptation and probably most people have the best balance for the enviroment and diet of their ancestors. It may sound kind of “Mediterranean supremacist” (something I am not) but the fact is that people with intermediate skin tones and who can tan and untan easily are the ones who can adapt better to varied enviroments for this crucial health aspect. The extremes are of course “best adapted” for their ancestral enviroments… but they are less versatile too.

The fish story sounds very fishy.
Ok. I take your explanation as much more plausible and scientific. I have indeed noticed that Mongols for instance are often quite pale and have rosy cheeks. But you also find very septentrional Siberians (I’m thinking in Nenets right now) who are rather light brown (“moreno”). So maybe there’s something in the fish after all (it is in fact the main dietary source of vit.D in any case).

i think that question is poorly worded. there’s no way to tell if the respondents believed in naturalistic evolution or a guided one like intelligent design. by that measure, 40% of americans would agree. 
 
It doesn’t matter. You can accept the scientific facts of naturalistic evolution and philosophically believe whatever you wish about it (that has a goal directed by some hidden god, that dolphins are smarter than humans, that we should never have got down from the ancestral trees…). That’s a personal interpretation. What matters is that science is not challenged with that.  
 
Btw, they should also make Sumerian mythology compulsory: most Biblical unfathomable legends are just distorted versions of earlier Sumerian ones. I think that creation precisely is more of a version of a Lower Egyptian legend but there are many others (Eve as rib, the flood, the confusion of tongues) that are all of Sumerian origin.  
 
Of course the most fanatics could always argue that Sumer did not exist, because it’s older than “creation”… but well. We all know that Abraham allegedly was from Ur, an ancient Sumerian city itself. Some could think about all that if they knew the facts – in this case the origins of the most obscure Hebraic legends.