New genetic study of Asian-Americans

I saw a post earlier mentioninga recent study of the DNA of Asian-Americans ("American Indians"), and was working on a reply when the thread went away. It seemed that someone with an overly-active imagination was reading things into it which were not there. But here's the abstract, and a link to the full paper, which has been covered widely, and which was the subject of a recent slashdot thread.

"We examined genetic diversity and population structure in the American landmass using 678 autosomal microsatellite markers genotyped in 422 individuals representing 24 Native American populations sampled from North, Central, and South America. These data were analyzed jointly with similar data available in 54 other indigenous populations worldwide, including an additional five Native American groups. The Native American populations have lower genetic diversity and greater differentiation than populations from other continental regions. We observe gradients both of decreasing genetic diversity as a function of geographic distance from the Bering Strait and of decreasing genetic similarity to Siberians—signals of the southward dispersal of human populations from the northwestern tip of the Americas. We also observe evidence of: (1) a higher level of diversity and lower level of population structure in western South America compared to eastern South America, (2) a relative lack of differentiation between Mesoamerican and Andean populations, (3) a scenario in which coastal routes were easier for migrating peoples to traverse in comparison with inland routes, and (4) a partial agreement on a local scale between genetic similarity and the linguistic classification of populations. These findings offer new insights into the process of population dispersal and differentiation during the peopling of the Americas."
THE FULL PAPER IS HERE.

 

Can you save me some time and just point to where it says Asians are more evolved than blacks and whites?
:wank:

 

Ha, there's really no such thing as more evoloved, just differently evolved perhaps. We're all just a subset of the genetic diversty in Africa anyway. We're all transplanted East-Africans

 

Consider the original population of humans, living in Africa. That population had certain genetic markers. (Or a distribution about averages.)

Take a modern genetic population. Compare their genetic markers with those of the original population. Count the number of mutations from those differences.

Do that with two modern populations.

The population whose genetic make up is closer to the original population's can be said to be "less evolved".

(In practice, the original population's make-up is deduced by "averaging" the totality of modern genomes.)

There has always been a tendency to confuse "more evolved" with "superiority".

In the evolutionary arena, "superior" is defined by "able to make a copy". Every person who has a child is equal on the genetic superiority scale.

On the social side of genetic superiority, I have yet to hear a convincing argument why the geneticly superior should rule the inferior. Demonstrated ability is more important than genetic potential.

 

The whole 'more evolved' thing is a good example of when a scientific word has a different meaning in everyday life. Take the word theory, when a scientist uses it, he more often than not is refering to a body of work, with observable hypothesis, and laws governing the hypothesis, and ways of making accurate predictions based upon the body of work. Newton's theory of gravitation, Einstein's theory of relativity, Germ theory, and Darwin's theory of evolution, are all 'theories'. However, in day to day life, the word theory means an unproven hypothesis "i have a theory as to who ate the last donut".

Like evolved, in day to day life, means something superior(usually). a more evolved vaccuum cleaner, a more evovled car, a more evolved philosophy, etc...

while in science terms it means greater genetic diversity since the last common ancestor.

Chimpanzees are technically more evolved than humans. since our last common ancestor, they have mated more, and created more diverse offspring.
I wouldn't rate a chimp superior than a human in almost every situation (they probably have better balance, can see in the dark, and pick stuff up with their feet better, but we have guns and ipods.)

 

"Humans claimed that the invention of digital watches proved their superiority over dolphins. Dolphins cited the same evidence for their superiority."