Disgusting Europeans

[shkrobius]

I remember reading that the Chinese found the smell of the first European travelers intolerably offensive, combatting it with burning incense. When these first impressions were compounded with the observation of ear wax leaking from the filthy ears of the pale skinned barbarians, the image was complete. Interestingly, a single nucleotide

Comments

[shkrobius]

The problem with this story (demic infusion by Europeoid invasions) is that it goes against the genetic evidence suggesting FEWER Europeoid markers over the last 2500 years, see

[i_eron]

Actually, China did invade India, in 1962 (if my memory serves me right), causing a short-lived but very significant panic in New Delhi. True, this modern war does not illuminate the previous long-term history much, but these countries never had even a common border before modern times. The way from India to China is long. Still, China was conquered by the Indian-born Buddhism, and Chinese and Indian cultural influence fought long-term battles in Central Asia, Indo-China and Indonesia. But all this cultural stuff is not relevant to the genetics

[shkrobius]

They do not divide Europeoids from Mongoloids by facial features because the genes for these features are not present in mitochondrial DNA or the Y chromosomes (pure maternal & paternal lines). Nuclear DNA is a mess. In this sense you are right, that their definition of race is different from commonsense. But it does not mean that it is incorrect. On blind tests, the race can be inferred with 90+% fidelity (these was a recent UCLA study on that) assuming self-identification as 100% fidelity. So it is not arbitrary. Having seen what passes as hard historical evidence in our own time, I reserve my skepticism. Genes do not lie, people do.

[i_eron]

No, of course it is not arbitrary. But this 90% fidelity is presumably for the "major races". What about the more subtle difference, say, between Russians and Poles, which is about as obvious to me as the one between Northern and Southern Chinese? I mean, I would guess it with, say, 50-80% fidelity... So genetics has a long way to go

[shkrobius]

Y chromosomal material makes a lot of sense if you consider the invasion scenarios. The general idea is that male warriors would marry into the local population. Since Y is patrilineal you would still be able to trace the origins. The rest is hopelessly mixed up to follow the migrations. If you see mtDNA showing up, this means women were following the men and it is population replacement rather than mere invasion. I relate to your criticism, but the approach more often than not bodes well with the historical evidence. Your are not asking why the Poles and the Russians have not been mixing as much as could've been expected in modern history. Religious differences nicely explain why, but these would not be found in the genes. Yet you find it incredible that the Europeoids and the Mongoloids could have coexisted for hundreds of years without much genetic mixing. The genetics does not answer why, it just establishes the fact. It will be scrutinized in the future, I am sure of that. I think you are being impatient, wanting all of your