The 'Black' Viking of York

The eye and nasal cavity shapes of the Roman-era Ivory Bangle Lady from York indicate she may have had some black ancestry too... 

A skeleton found in a coffin in North Yorkshire in 1989 and labelled as SK 3379 was identified as an adult male based on shape of the skull and the pelvis. It was dated to the 10th/11th century so this is regarded as a pre-Norman conquest body. He was quite twisted, with deformity of the spine and shoulder alignment, and with two crushed vertebrae as well as evidence of joint disease in the spine. He also had five abscesses in his gap-toothed mouth. An analysis of skull morphology led researchers in 2015 to conclude that he “may have been of African or mixed ancestry and may have migrated to York or descended from those that did”

Craniometry is actually a pretty good way of identifying race, however it isn’t always perfect, as some skulls, like this one, are a bit ambiguous and it gets much harder when it comes to mixed race individuals. A simple DNA test would make the race of the man who this skull belonged to very clear but no such test has been done - something that also holds true for every other allegedly black skeleton from ancient Britain; eg. Beachy head lady and Ivory Bangle Lady. Yet as with these two, the usual suspects have declared this a black person, and not only that, have started to say it is racist to say anything else!

One explanation for why a black man would be living in Anglo-Danish Yorkshire was suggested by Keefe & Holst with reference to an eleventh-century Fragmentary Annals of Ireland that describes a Viking raid on Morocco in the 860s. Any readers who are knowledgeable about human diversity and DNA will know that Moroccans aren’t really Sub Saharan Africans. Although some of them do have SSA admixture these days, we would expect to see far less (if any) of such admixture 1000 years ago, before the North African Muslims really got stuck into their centuries of black (and white) slave trading. A recent genetic analysis of skeletons from a Moorish cemetery in Al-Andalus showed that none of the early Moors had ANY black ancestry at all until the 10-16th century and then only two samples have black ancestry, and both of them are less than half black! Looking at the table below you can see that Iberian ancestry is more common than SSA (black) ancestry. Analysis of cranial morphology wouldn’t be accurate enough to identify the ancestry of such mixed individuals - which is why autosomal DNA analysis is so helpful.



So maybe Vikings went to Iberia or Morocco and kidnapped a Moroccan, possibly (though statistically unlikely) one who had some black ancestry, and then took him back to Yorkshire where he lived a hard life of back breaking labour. This is unlikely but possible, and even if true, it wouldn’t make him a “black Viking” just a mixed race labourer in Yorkshire. He was put on display at the Jorvik Centre in York where he was described as an ‘Arab’ and this is apparently a colonialist decision according to Paul Ramirez, who describes himself as a “Decolonial heritage specialist” who comes from the “occupied land” of Nicaragua but who lives in York where he works at the Humanities research centre of the university.

 

I suggest that rather than paying a grievance monger to whine about how an untested skeleton is represented in a museum, that the University of York instead pay for an aDNA analysis of said skeleton, which I understand the Reich lab are able to do for about $100, and thus end the debate once and for all. But perhaps they won’t like the results?

EDIT: since writing this blog post I have learned that Beachy head lady was indeed DNA tested in 2019, and as I predicted she was not black. She did not have any black ancestry!


Watch an interview with a co-author of a paper on Viking DNA who questions "woke" interpretations.

The Genetic Impact of Christianity on Ethnocentrism

A new paper (LINK) has caused quite a stir! Schulz et al 2019 relies on the observation that Europeans are more trusting of outsiders and less nepotistic. I recall a study on the reactions of diverse babies left in the care of people that were markedly different genetically from the baby, with the result that most babies got very upset. The baby that was least upset by this was one from Saxony. Despite the evidence, any study that asserts that Europeans are distinguishable from any other population is likely to raise eyebrows and hair among those in the Humanities (especially a study like this that implies the differences are actually culturally advantageous or superior).

The study attributes this European tendency to the Western Church:

"they focus on how the Church broke down extended kin-based institutions and encouraged a nuclear family structure. To do this, the authors developed measures of historical Church exposure and kin-based institutions across populations."

It argues that the rise of agriculture in the Neolithic favoured kinship based societies in which forms of cousin marriage (not just 1st cousins which would be genetically problematic, but also 3rd and 4th cousins which pose no genetic threat), but that "The Church’s family policies meant that by 1500 CE, and likely centuries earlier in some regions, Europe lacked strong kin-based institutions and was instead dominated by relatively independent and isolated nuclear or stem families."

This church-led social change is thus, they argue, the reason for higher rates of openness to strangers, individualism and independence among Europeans. I have no doubt there is some truth to this but I can see a major flaw, which I will get to later. First let's see how other people reacted. The left wing historians threw their toys out of the pram, of course. Here'e one guy who has blocked me even though I don't know who he is:

this is very, very bad scholarship. @sciencemagazine should be absolutely ashamed for publishing this. #medievaltwitter #twitterstorians https://t.co/ayQ61ju1I2

— Mashed Potato Gabriele (@prof_gabriele) November 8, 2019

He says the scientists should have consulted historians (they obviously did though).

holy shit am I angry

— Mashed Potato Gabriele (@prof_gabriele) November 8, 2019

Geneticists seem somewhat bewildered by the reaction of historians...

i'm moderately skeptical of the paper in question because it aims to answer an audacious observation re: western europe's special path. we should always be cautious.

but the historians expressing rage/"I can't even" ... smh https://t.co/V87Kt90Xgt

— Razib🥥 Khan (@razibkhan) November 9, 2019

However, I must say this historian below makes some good points in her counter argument against the geneticists. She throws up numerous obfuscations, which, although a frustrating left wing technique for clouding an argument, actually includes some valid points in this case.

I see the paper as fundamentally misunderstanding causality. Seeing a pattern: European societies gradually became less structured around kinship groups at around the same time the church focuses on consanguinity. Ok. How do we know these two things are connected?

— Georgia Henley (@georgiahenley) November 9, 2019

My area is the conversion of the Germanic peoples and I can give the example of how the church banned, as incestuous, the custom among the Norse whereby sons would inherit their step-mothers. That shows a concern with breaking up kinship ties, but it isn't at all related to biological incest. In fact the prohibition against incest was not introduced to the Germanics by the church at all. Although incest occurs in mythological contexts, such as the gods Freya and Frey, or the incestuous relationships among the Volsung clan which were intended to create a supernatural semi-divine being by distilling the blood of Odin through incest. In both cases, the incest is quite a shocking and unusual element and associated with taboos that even gods aren't supposed to break (Loki shames the divine twins Frey and Freya for the alleged incest).

I do not recall any discussion of consanguineous sexual relationships in any of the papers on Viking or Anglo-Saxon DNA I have read. This could easily be determined from existing samples. I doubt incest was at all common even before Christianity arrived. One Germanic region where people have been marrying third or fourth cousins for centuries is Iceland - this occurred out of necessity due to isolation and a small population. 

Icelandic researchers reporting in a 2008 issue of Science, found that marriages between third or fourth cousins in Iceland tended to produce more children and grandchildren than those between completely unrelated individuals. The researchers suggested that marrying third and fourth cousins may be optimal for reproduction because this degree of genetic similarity may produce the best gene pool. Really close relations like siblings and first-cousins would have detrimental inbreeding mutations, whereas couples genetically far-removed from each other could have genetic incompatibilities. Third- and fourth-cousin couples, though, are the goldilocks middle ground genetically, tending to be more genetically compatible while having no serious inbreeding problems.

Iceland not only produces more published authors per capita than anywhere else, but also more of the world's strongest men! Their breeding practices have certainly not hurt them, in fact they seem to have been beneficial and if these marriages result in more children, then those who favour them will outcompete those who don't in terms of number of children. That suggests selective pressure FOR consanguineous marriages, at least in Iceland...and the church did not break them up.

I am sure some right wing pagans would like to use this study as evidence for how the church destroys ethnic identities and prepares the world for globalism but I am not sure that this has been proven. I believe these prohibitions against close inbreeding were always there in many places in Northern Europe, that third cousin marriages still occurred long after conversion and that kinship networks were not maintained by third cousin marriages anyway, but by complicated rituals of gift exchange, and feasting.

It may surprise the reader to learn I dislike Western chauvinism, particularly arguments for the uniqueness of Western civilisation based on our supposedly more progressive outlook. But if we accept this premise, we must also conclude that the aforementioned tendencies of openness, individualism and independence, are higher in the North than the South of Europe, despite the North being the last place to receive the Christian doctrine. Clearly the argument falls flat. I personally consider such traits to be socially disadvantageous (in the current environment) mutations that actually emerged long before Christianity arrived in Europe, and which are more likely adaptations for small populations distributed over large areas in harsh regions of Northern Europe, where there was a selective pressure favouring those willing to cooperate with whoever they came across and also for more independent and individualistic people who would find long periods of isolation more tolerable.

  

The History of Britain and her People

Cheddar man and other Mesolithic Europeans

Big-brained Barbarians! with Dr. Edward Dutton (The Jolly Heretic)

Cognitive evolution and European history.
Modern population genetics shows that enormous genetic replacement occurred in Neolithic Europe which, as well as changing the religions in Europe, surely had an effect on heritable traits like intelligence and behaviour. I am speaking to Dr Edward Dutton aka The Jolly heretic about what the implications of these genetic shifts are in terms of the cognitive evolution of Europeans - can cognitive archeogenetics help us to understand the massive success of the Indo-European cultures over the Bronze Age compared with their Neolithic predecessors? Were the Indo-Europeans really clever chaps? Watch and find out!

Galatian DNA - Evidence of Celtic expansion

This map show's Greek geographer Strabo's account of the migration of the Tectosages, one of three Celtic (Gaulish) tribes, descended from the Volcae tribe which originates in Germany, that migrated East to Phrygia to form the Galatian Celtic group. Even Saint Paul wrote that there were Celts there in his Epistle to the Galatians ("you Celtic goyim don't need to get circumcised") so their presence is well attested. But now we have their DNA! (one sample at least)

The Iron Age sample called Anatolia_IA_MA2197 can be modelled as 57% Bell Beaker derived (signifiant because although Beaker folk didn't speak Celtic, we know the Celts were Beaker descended), it also shows a strong affinity with a sample from the Halstatt Proto-Celtic culture of Austria.

 Interestingly, if we assume the Hallstatt and Urnfield people to be genetically similar to the Celts who expanded East and West in the 3rd century BC and to the ones who brought Celtic languages to Britain in 6th BC we can see that in all the modern day "Celtic" regions, their genetic influence is small (UK, Brittany and Ireland) to negligible (Galicia - where there are greater amounts of medieval Arabic admixture than Iron Age Hallstatt).

The paper
Eurogenes blog post on the modelling

Where Did Celts Come From?

While Germanic language is widely agreed to have emerged around 3000 years ago in Northern Denmark, amongst a people who were genetically like modern Danes, and then to have spread from 750BC as neighbouring peoples adopted the language for some reason, it is harder to pin point who the first Celtic speakers were or explain how their languages got to Britain.

As I have said in videos, the modern British genetic profile emerged 4500 years ago with the arrival of the beaker folk from Holland, but these people did NOT speak a Celtic language, as linguists agree Proto-Celtic isn't that old (maybe 3000 or 3500 years old). This means that either: 

a) The peoples of the British Isles adopted a Celtic language due to trade with continental Celts
b) A small Celtic elite took over Britain and Ireland and somehow changed the culture and language but not the genetics
c) A continental population of Celts took over Britain and Ireland and did change the genetics, but this change is only very slight because they were already closely related to the people of the British Isles.

Archeologically, the Hallstatt culture of the 8th to 6th centuries BC, is seen as the first proper Celtic material culture. The two black stars on the PCA chart above, made by Eurogenes, represent two skeletons from the Hallstatt culture, and it can clearly be seen that one plots among the Dutch and one among the Northern French, but neither among modern "Celtic" areas. However, the purple Iron Age Celts on the chart are between the older Bronze age British samples and the Halstatt samples indicating there WAS an invasion of continental Celts to Britain who were related to these Halstatt samples and that they changed the DNA of Britain and Ireland.

Modern English people plot between these purple Iron Age Celts and the red Anglo-Saxon samples, but there is always the possibility that other 5th century Anglo-Saxon invaders from Frisia, Holland etc would have plotted like modern Dutch people just as the much older Halstatt sample does - thus making the job of distinguishing "Celtic and Germanic DNA" very complicated! Especially when you also see that the Anglo-Saxon samples are closer to the Bronze Age Britons than the Halstatt Celts are.

EDIT: Eurogenes actually said there may have been as much as 10% admixture from a Celtic source in the iron age.

Read more

Origins of Horse Domestication: Botai, Yamnaya, Sintashta

Sardinians are like Early Neolithic Farmers

Who were the Proto-Indo-Europeans?

Documentary: Brainwash, Sociology Vs Biology

The NIKK Nordic Gender Institute was the institutionalised manifestation of “Gender Theory”, providing a pseudo-scientific basis for social and educational policies that, from the 1970s onward, transformed the Nordic countries to become the most “gender sensitive” societies in the world.

The following videos are from episodes of a Norwegian television documentary called Hjernevask "Brainwash" in which a comedian called Harald Eia balances the arguments of sociologists and gender theorists with those of real scientists like geneticists. The TV series exposed the falsehood of the NIKK and resulted in The Nordic Council of Ministers (a regional inter-governmental co-operation consisting of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland) deciding to close down the NIKK.


Part 1 – ”The Gender Equality Paradox"
Part 2 – ”The Parental Effect”
Part 3 – ”Gay/straight”
Part 4 – ”Violence”
Part 5 – ”Sex”
Part 6 – ”Race” (password: hjernevask)
Part 7 – ”Nature or Nurture”

Autistic Neanderthals

The frequency of autism in modern humans follows certain patterns. Why is it that autism is more common in boys than girls? Why is autism more common in some populations than others? There seems to be a relationship between autism and exposure to testosterone in uterto. Although no proper scientific research exists devoted exclusvley to this subject, people have begun to speculate that there is a relationship between autism and neanderthal DNA. We know that all non-African humans have neanderthal DNA, but how does this DNA effect us?

It is now thought that the 2-4% of neanderthal DNA found in the average Eurasian today is different in each individual so that as much as 20% of the neanderthal genome exists in modern human populations. It doesn't manifest itself in the same way in all people, but rather is more pronounced in some than in others. Certain hormonal conditions during gestation may in fact cause latent neanderthal genetic tendencies to develop in children. Such tendencies were an evolutionary benefit to neanderthals existing on the edge of arctic regions during the ice age but are diagnosed as medical conditions today. There is evidence to suggest that lactose intolerance, crohn's disease, gluten intolerance, IBS, aspergers and autism may in fact be related to neanderthal traits passed on in mitochondrial DNA (that's the Mother's side) and then manifested physically as a result of high exposure to testosterone during foetal development.

In the future, research will show whether all this is nonsense or not, but the following video includes clips of scientific discussions on neanderthal DNA and how it effects modern humans, autism and its efffects and potential causes, and the nature of mitochondrial DNA. The juxtoposition of the different clips is intended to show that there is a relationship between said conditions and neanderthal DNA. Judge for yourself if you happen to have 2 hours and 18 minutes spare.



There is more information in this PDF

Legacy of eugenics: mini-lecture

the exhibit on francis galton is at UCL now

New Mural in Whitechapel

Taken from East London Advertiser

"A 40ft high mural painted on the side of a building showing characters like the Krays and the Elephant Man has been unveiled along the ‘2012 Olympics Highway’ in London’s East End.

The mural telling the story of Whitechapel took six weeks of painting by artists Mychael Barratt, Nicholas Middleton and Jim Glover, commissioned by TV Edwards solicitors for their new offices in the Mile End Road.

People depicted on the mural include Captain James Cook who kept a house in the Mile End Road, Salvation Army founder General Booth whose monument is outside the building, and George Bernard Shaw who chaired the Fabian Society in Whitechapel, as well as the Krays, the Elephant Man, artists Mark Gertler and Isaac Rosenberg and TV Edwards himself who opened his first law office in Stepney in 1929."

George Bernard Shaw is the most prominent feature of the mural, depicted shielding his eyes as though looking into the far distance. He was an outspoken socialist eugenicist, it is interesting therefore that his head partially conceals John Merrick, the Elephant Man.