Archaeologists extract DNA of ancient Israelites
haaretz.com
haaretz.com
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent?wpr...
It is trivial to demonstrate the likely existence of a common ancestor. It’s far from trivial to find them.
Are you absolutely sure they weren't engineered by some alien mad scientist? Or even a sane one, just for giggles?
I've been waiting for 10+ years for followup but haven't heard anyting about it. Does anyone have any updates to that? Were they able to dig up any other information from that discover?
[1] https://www.science.org/content/article/700000-year-old-hors...
I'll let you do the math on how much would remain if we had 1 million tons of horse DNA with a 500 year half life. I'll even let you assume we have 1 trillion tons of horse DNA.
I know that feeling, my man. My shelves are covered in Jurassic Park memorabilia too. It's just not going to happen, though.
The 521 years is just the half-life they estimated for their samples. Those are the empirical results, so it makes sense to highlight those in the title, as opposed to estimates from their model.
I don't mean to be rude, but please read the fine manuscript. It's open access, so you don't need to pay
And, no you are not being rude. But since you seem to have read the article, can you give me a few pointers why you think it's a good investment of someone else's time to go ahead and read it too? And don't be shy to use Machine Learning or Statistics jargon, we are on Hacker News here, everyone understands concepts like in-sample, out-of-sample, goodness of fit, overfitting and such.
It's worth remembering that the half-life paper dealt with samples that had "an effective burial temperature of 13.1°C", while the horse sample was obtained from the permafrost. The half-life paper even talks about DNA obtained from ice-core samples in that age-range:
> The rate of depurination is influenced by temperature, among other factors, which explains why the most extreme survival of DNA was documented in approximately 450–800 kyr ice cores.
And if you look at Table 1 in the half-life paper, you'll find estimated half-lifes for a range of temperatures, with an estimated half-life of 9.5k years for a 500bp DNA fragment at -5C and 47k years for a shorter 100bp fragment at the same temperature:
> Still, the results indicate that under the right conditions of preservation, short fragments of DNA should be retrievable from very old bone (e.g. greater than 1 Myr).
The horse paper also cites the half-life paper, but not as a refutation.
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adh8140
Also headline is slightly misleading, it's not 'a first':
"Ancient DNA from Chalcolithic Israel reveals the role of population mixture in cultural transformation" (2018)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-05649-9
One clear conclusion is that modern popular concepts of human racial and ethnic groups have little connection with the actual biological-genetic history of individual modern humans, they're mostly artificial (which is why claims about 'race-based biological weapons' are nonsense, for example).
When you said "race-based biological weapons" you mean weapons that target specific races?
Because this isn't possible.
Some conditions are /correlated/ with some groups, under the condition that you're only examining members of that group who already have symptoms of the condition.
This isn't really clear at all and there is plenty of evidence to the contrary. For example, consumer DNA testing pretty reliably agrees with self-reported genealogical claims. Race has become a loaded word, but we understand population genetics pretty well and the effects of long periods of genetic isolation between different population groups are very much measurable.
The claim that it's impossible to develop a bioweapon that targets some genomic pattern that's common in descendants of some formerly long term isolated population and uncommon in others doesn't appear well-supported. In fact, nature already did this herself, as is well attested by the introduction of Eurasian diseases to the Americas.
Saying that...shamefully it was consciously used as weapon in some instances.
The effects of European diseases on native American populations is a red herring in this context, as modern populations are increasingly interbred and not isolated, and even with that case, it's not entirely clear that it was genetic vs. developmental, i.e. European children who survived to adulthood likely had been exposed to those diseases when young, while native American adults had not - so if they had been exposed as children, there could have been no difference in susceptibilty.
The DNA testing is associating you with a cluster; that cluster could be any "size" and isn't based on specific patterns. (And it's fundamentally not causation; you can more or less move anywhere you want and have children with anyone you want.)
There's also a selection effect that they don't show you the clusters that they can't make work.
Also often not true; for fun, look at /r/23andMe for white people from Oklahoma and you'll see it's surprisingly common that their parents told them they were part Cherokee when they aren't even 1% native. Famously happened to Elizabeth Warren, but it's not just her.
Last I checked you can’t legally have children with anyone you want in any jurisdiction. You have to get consent and that’s often withheld on the basis of apparent ancestry. Cultural and social factors also make it less common than it would be by random chance.
Elizabeth Warren tested out something like ~1/64th Cherokee I thought? And thanks to the wonders of meiosis you could genealogically have relatively recent ancestors of some group without any genetic markers.
In the end, "legitimacy" of a group claiming exclusive access to a piece of land comes down to might-makes-right.
The other stuff is usually window dressing.
Makes for good grievance politics though, eh?
Sadly there are places in the world, a lot of them in Africa, where nobody can look beyond their superficial traits to classify criminals apart from their victims.
The greater the genetic differences, the more likely a population will survive a pandemic.
Interesting research, but people forget one thing about Human Genetics.
Outside of Africa, genetic differences between people are not that great. People in Africa have far greater genetic differences than everyone in the Americas and Eurasia.
There is also some immigration directly from africa, but that can only increase it to at most the same as exists there. Almost certainly somewhat less, in practice.
cough mysterious 1:4:9 monolith cough
I've heard that humans were at some point reduced to a very small number, like thousands of individuals.
So how did a few thousand individuals become such great genetic diversity? Does genetic diversity come from being isolated, instead of mingling with other migratory groups?
There is small amounts of "multiregionality" since some peoples are part Denisovan and most everyone is part Neanderthal, but it's not even a plurality in anyone we've ever found.
Same for humans during migrations. Only a small percent of humans left Africa, and then only a smaller percent kept going, etc. So as long as not much time has passed to generate new variation in the areas they settle, only a small fraction of local variation ever leaves is low. And that's what we see, Africa is extremely diverse, Europe/Central Asia less, east Asia even less, etc. It's neither bad nor good, just a number.
There are some other factors, such as mixing with people already present at the destination for a long time (Neandertals, Denisovans) which balance it out slightly.
The US has lots of diversity, but there were a lot of groups in Africa for a very long time (maybe 10k+ separate groups). It's unlikely that people from each one have made it here, or even out of Africa at all, in significant numbers.
Let's say 100,000 years ago, a small group of humans left Africa for the other places of the world. That small group of humans represent a very small fraction of genetic diversity--it's effectively genetically identical. Assuming no more admixture over the millennia, the out-of-Africa humans will get more genetically diverse. But so are the original Africans, who also have the genetic diversity they started with--they're getting diverse no less quickly than the out-of-Africans, and since they started more diverse, the entire out-of-Africa can't ever catch up.
Real genetics is of course more complicated than this simple picture, but the basic principle holds that you find more diversity the closer you get to the origin.
Someone would have a lot of explaining to do. Or maybe a lot of denying and covering up to do.
This would flip the scripture so to speak.
As I understand it, that is the expectation: The consensus among archeologists seems to be that ancient Israelites were simply another group of Canaanites who came to dominate the region. The Exodus is not a historical event.
Nothing I said suggests otherwise. I was simply looking at potential aftereffects of the unveiling --- and why any such unveiling might be vehemently opposed by entrenched non-scientific interests.
I think the world is less run by logic than people generally think. I don't think there will be an aftereffect. There is an Status quo and that's it. This observation is general and in anyway targeted in the context of the article. The Status quo involves any of us.
Yes.
> The Exodus is not a historical event.
This does not follow from your premise at all. (Nowhere does it say that people of the Exodus weren't Canaanites genetically.)
Rather, the statement about the Exodus was meant to expand on the "who came to dominate the region": It was meant to convey that they did not come to dominate through systematic genocide of the other Canaanites as depicted in the bible. It is my understand that there is little to no evidence of this event (or the preceding events) having occurred.
The overall understanding that I was trying to communicate was simply that the ancient Isrealites were Canaanites who stayed in Canaan.
That does not follow either. Civil wars happen all the time, and are usually accompanied by large-scale ethnic cleansing.
It is my understanding that there is little to no evidence of such an event having occurred.
The Bible's testimony itself, along with conclusion that people believed in this historical event at some point in time, is at least a some evidence towards it.
Like, you shouldn't take the events of the bible literally, but you could probably reasonably infer that the nations demonized in it probably were historical enemies of the people who wrote it, etc
There were probably dozens of different West Semitic speaking cultures/groupings, with plenty of cultural mixing. Hebrew (and Aramaic) speakers were only one of many in the region, all with competing claims over grazing and growing lands, etc. The Bible basically alludes to this all over.
What you have there is the stories of various fragments of it that distilled into more or less powerful tribal federations and, eventually, kingdoms. Told from their vantage, because the others did not commit theirs to writing.
And by the 3rd or 4th century AD, all West Semitic languages had basically gone functionally (but not liturgically) extinct, but the cultural and religious traditions of one of them tenaciously held on through the diaspora.
Genetic evidence could eliminate this.
Aramaic lived for a longer period, but then slowly died out. As a liturgical language western Aramaic / Syriac lived on, and eastern variants for longer but as a widespread, spoken lived language in the Levant I believe Greek replaced it, and then Arabic. I understand that "Jewish Palestinian Aramaic" lingered on for some time in some smaller communities.
I think that was only the case in urban areas and/or amongst the more educated upper and middle classes. Syriac and other Aramaic languages were still widespread amongst local Christian population well into the Islamic perod.
Between that, the sojourn to Egypt, and the constant complaints about intermarriage in the OT, you’d already expect these to be roughly the same gene pool.
More interesting may be the connection (or lack thereof) between OT-era Jews to modern Jews, which plays into political and racial arguments.
You're presuming some historicity there that I don't think is warranted. A lot of the stories in Genesis had their origin in stories from Mesopotamia, and I wouldn't read much more into that than you'd read into the Aenead claiming that the Romans originated in Troy. They're just borrowing legitimacy from an older historical tradition.
Just like yours is trying to, but with competing information
The simple, adult, quantifiable reality is that there is always cross drift between populations by mere nature of humans being compatible species to produce viable offspring with one another
The early Israelites were polytheists but had some affinity for Yahweh which was one Canaanite god among many. Why, how and when the Israelites became monotheists and why Yahweh became their only god is unknown. My guess (speculation follows) is that the Israelites were influenced by the Babylonians and Zoroastriansim. Zoroastrians worshipped fire and Yahweh was the god of fire (and smoke). Perhaps the many conflicts with other Canaanites caused them to adopt foreign practices to distinguish themselves from their enemies. Ritual circumcision perhaps was borrowed from Egypt.
There is not a shred of evidence of an emigration from Egypt and archaeologists have been searching for it for over 200 years. So why the Exodus is in the Bible is unknown. At the time these stories were written down Egypt was a regional super power, so perhaps whoever wrote it felt that "having been to Egypt" was something to brag about? Perhaps the story is allegorical?
Establishing a pious fraud ex nihilo as late as the Babylonian Exile is also a little too pat. You really think that a) the Babylonian Exiles convinced themselves of this with no surviving refutation or debate and b) they managed to impress it on the entire non-Exile population when they returned?
This Smithsonian article on the discovery of mining operations by a semi-nomadic people is a great read and ends on this note, with which I wholeheartedly agree:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/archaeological-dig-re...
> What Ben-Yosef has produced isn’t an argument for or against the historical accuracy of the Bible but a critique of his own profession. Archaeology, he argues, has overstated its authority. Entire kingdoms could exist under our noses, and archaeologists would never find a trace. Timna is an anomaly that throws into relief the limits of what we can know. The treasure of the ancient mines, it turns out, is humility.
Stories of Arthur uncontroversially predate the 12th century, and it is an open debate as to whether Arthur was based on a historical figure or not. (I vote yes.) Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.
> he Swedish 16th century king Erik XIV proclaimed himself the 14:th (hence the suffix XIV) king of Sweden
Some kings assuming a different regnal number on the basis of a semimythical history is not the same as convincing an entire population to change their origin myths.
The bible states they were from the island of Crete (Caphtor) and my understanding is there is also archaeological evidence (pottery etc) that suggests they were a Minoan (Indo/European) people in origin.
I believe they were part of the sea people migration during the bronze age collapse referenced by the Egyptians.
> just with religious differences
I think that was before Judaism/Christianity. Islam is much more recent though. The region did not have that until hundreds of years later.
You mean modern Hebrew speakers?
> “The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living.”
Hope someday we can move on from whatever team we were born into
As Christianity became dominant, it began to schism internally with much the same pattern, fractally defining parts of itself as things like "not Arian" or "not Catholic." Judaism, embedded within Christian society, still primary organizes around being "not Gentile" which ranges from simply Christian to full blown anti-semitism and pogroms.
I never heard of that theory, but I don't think it makes a lot of sense. I would think early christians mainly defined themself by believing in jesus christ, meaning they believed Jesus from Nazareth was the Messias and the other jews did not believe jesus was the messiahs.
And then you had christians who believed jesus resurrected from the death and those who did not. Then you had those who believed it was only a jew thing and then you had Paulus, who made it a universal religion, ... so all in all, plenty of different things people believed in. So surely some groups of people define themself by what they are not, but I don't think this was valid of early christians.
Isn't that definition in opposition?
group A believes in X
group B believes in Y
What the parent poster seemed to imply was
group A believes in not Y.
Or a more concrete example of today, many people today define themself by being anti green, anti progressive, anti woke, antifashist etc. but often struggle to define what they are standing for.
And because beliefs tend to be on a bit of a continuum, what starts with A believes Z <= 4 and B believes Z >=5 evolves to A believes Z <=1 and B believes Z >=9, and both believe anyone who believes 3<=Z<=7 is not part of their group.
Children under the age of 15 in Palestine make up 50% of the population. In Gaza, it's 45%. One thing I've noticed is news media equating Hamas with the majority of Palestinians, they weren't even born when they came into power.
Apartheid Israel and Palestine are not the same. Israel is the aggressor. They've ethnic cleansed so many Palestinians that there are 5.9 million refugees in Jordan and Lebanon. That's half of Israel's population.
* Illegal Settlers living in Palestine can vote in Israel but not Palestinians. Apartheid South Africa did the same, they put the people in their own "country" and so couldn't vote. Israel doesn't want 1 state as that would mean millions more voting. And it doesn't want 2 states as that would mean giving up valuable land.
* Israel has ethnically cleansed and fragmented areas into [isolated cantons divided by Israeli settlements](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_enclaves), and implemented [lebensraum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensraum) tactics. This was called [Bantustans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantustan) in South Africa.
* [It denies Palestinian fishing past 3 nautical miles in some areas, and not past 15 nautical miles](https://www.ochaopt.org/sites/default/files/styles/inline100...)
* [The Apartheid Separation wall](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/d0/73/81/d07381fffef632350bcb...)?
* The settlers kill and burn homes to get rid of people: [stealing homes](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNqozQ8uaV8) and destroying olive tree groves. They pour concrete into Palestinian farmers' water wells.
* [They control the water completely](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_and_sanitation_in...).
* [They get 12 hours of electricity a day](https://www.ochaopt.org/page/gaza-strip-electricity-supply).
* Palestinians didn't have 3G until 2018, their access is also restricted.
* They [blockade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip) Gaza, making it a concentration camp of 2.2 million people where 44% are children.
* [Not All Israeli Citizens Are Equal](https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/24/opinion/not-all-israeli-c...)
* There were `5,248,185` Palestinian refugees in 2020; that's equal to half the population of Israel.
* [Israel dictates who you can marry](https://preview.redd.it/1k7jnev0pq971.jpg?width=1024&auto=we...)
* [Segregated road system](https://s3.amazonaws.com/VP2/visuals/en/4db97391fe7cb2462249...)
* [Israel Forcibly Injected African Immigrants with Birth Control](https://www.forbes.com/sites/eliseknutsen/2013/01/28/israel-...)
* 50% of Palestinians are children.
As someone from South Africa, I've seen ethnic cleansing and Israel is doing worse. Israel is absolutely an Apartheid state. Various human rights organisations have already stated this.
But you are arguing disingenuously, you know it, and I'd rather not continue this farce.
Like many things with him, the quote can also be turned on its head when read in full context. Just like when people quote "Religion is the opiate of the masses" they rarely read the rest of the sentence "the heart of a heartless world". Negative judgement was not being cast on religion just a description of the reality of the situation: the world sucks for the mass of people and people reach for God to save them from it.
Likewise the traditions of the dead generations can also be beautiful dreams. The powerful can and do use the past or religion or whatever to build a mythos for the purpose of domination, but the weak can reach for it as a tool of liberation, too.
Good book: https://www.amazon.com/Fatherland-Mother-Earth-National-Ques...
(early journal-article version here: file:///home/ryan/Downloads/titusland,+SR_1989_Lowy.pdf)
"Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people."
Either way, I think it's time to strike that from my list of presumed anti-religion sentiments.