Ancient DNA yields surprising findings on earliest seafarers | Hacker News Reader

Ancient DNA yields surprising findings on earliest seafarers

phys.org

35 pointsthedday17 comments

One of the authors of this paper, David Reich, published a book on genetic research into human prehistory, which I found quite good: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2605841954

The book for the interested is Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past, and I thought it was excellent. It's a bit controversial but in a way that seems good given how many apple carts it turns over.

The "Clovis cartel" interference in the study of New World genetics will never stop striking me as bizarre. If someone discovered that, say, Germans from three thousand years ago were genetically unrelated to Germans from ten thousand years ago I think it would barely be noticed, let alone reacted to so defensively.

Careers, reputation at stake. And who wants to be wrong? But yeah, I think there should be no "sacreds" in research.

For example, in the good reads article: " if you get people to voluntarily donate their DNA, for the explicit purpose of using it in scientific research, taking care to get informed consent forms signed, and then their tribe announces that they do not give consent for anyone in their tribe to take part in such research, what do you do? Ignore the issue of tribal-level consent, or deny the individuals the same right to self-determination (on having their DNA sequenced)"

That should not be controversial. If you're being scientific and you get consent from the individual, then yeah, go ahead!

It's as if you gave the police consent to your DNA and then some relative gets identified through your DNA and they try to toss out the case because they did not give consent.

I'm sympathetic to some extent that they want to keep some things private, like the Vatican wants to keep some things private, but still the Vatican nor anyone else should be above science.

Ignore the issue of tribal-level consent

I don't understand how that's even an issue. A tribe has no more right over its members DNA than someone's parents or pastor do.

If you have rights to keep your own DNA private, doesn't that practically require restrictions on relatives rights to publish their DNA?

At this time, I don't think there is such a right --otherwise Ancestry/genomics and other companies would exist in completely different form.

I mean, I agree it is a very valid question; however that genie is out of the bottle and I don't see it going back in.

No more than someone can stop their identical twin from doing porn.

I loosely agree in principle. However, tribal groups in the US operate as their own little semi-autonomous ethno-states with a bizarre amount of oversight from the Bureau of Indian Affairs but still have a lot of latitude. There's a dodgy history of researchers lying to native groups in order to get DNA samples(including promising but not delivering medical services, so there's a lot of reticence around participation. There's also issuers around ancestral rights to land which could be complicated by DNA testing, and all of the tribes are intimately familiar with how the government handled the Osage Indian murders, which involved odd elements of heredity and weird legal stuff. Tribes, in places, with all of this stuff swirling around want to embargo participation in this research. The only way to keep their groups DNA out of the research is to stop any and all members from participating.

TL;DR it's complicated and researchers in the past shit in the pool.

These are good points but still a person fully informed should be able to share of themselves whatever they want to share without group approval —otherwise it appears to be similar to cult restrictions on member participation with the outside world.

While I agree more or less, we are talking about people who have a totally different system of values who are historically put upon so I’m not quick to judge them. Scientists who have approached tribes differently have had better luck.

Sometimes pluralism means accepting that other people have values you don’t think are good and valid.

I would like to read more about the Clovis Cartel phenomenon, but finding more info about it is tough thanks to lots of clutter regarding criminal cartels. Got a good link I can check out?

This doesn't really seem supported by the evidence. The evidence (as I understand it) is that men traveled to different islands and subsequently impregnated women. Wrapping that up in marriage seems to be quite a leap and hard to believe given what we know about humanity.

This is a pretty clickbaity title. Just say it

They missed the earliest seafarers by at least 40,000 years.

Australians could only have got there by at least several open-ocean crossings.

The opening chapter of James Michener's "Hawaii" is both relevant and inspiring.

Neat. Reminds me of Beak of the Finch and Darwin's thoughts

Reply on news.ycombinator.com