The Twists and Turns of History, and of DNA

NY Times Week in Review ^ | March 12, 2006 | NICHOLAS WADE

[Pharmboy]

EAST ASIAN and European cultures have long been very different, Richard E. Nisbett argued in his recent book "The Geography of Thought." East Asians tend to be more interdependent than the individualists of the West, which he attributed to the social constraints and central control handed down as part of the rice-farming techniques Asians have practiced for thousands of years.

A separate explanation for such long-lasting character traits may be emerging from the human genome. snip...

If so, scientists and historians say, a fresh look at history may be in order. Evolutionary changes in the genome could help explain cultural traits that last over many generations as societies adapted to different local pressures.

snip...

But like phrenology, a wrong idea that held a basic truth (the brain's functions are indeed localized), the concept of national character could turn out to be not entirely baseless, at least when applied to societies shaped by specific evolutionary pressures.

In a study of East Asians, Europeans and Africans, Dr. Pritchard and his colleagues found 700 regions of the genome where genes appear to have been reshaped by natural selection in recent times. In East Asians, the average date of these selection events is 6,600 years ago.

Many of the reshaped genes are involved in taste, smell or digestion, suggesting that East Asians experienced some wrenching change in diet. Since the genetic changes occurred around the time that rice farming took hold, they may mark people's adaptation to a historical event,

[CobaltBlue]

I looked this up the last time you wrote about fish allergies = 48%, and I think you are misreading the statistics.

1 in 50 of the general population have a fish allergy and 1 in 250 have a shellfish allergy.
http://allergies.about.com/cs/seafood/a/blfaan032204.htm

[CobaltBlue]

2% of the population has food allergies. 48% of people with food allergies are allergic to fish.

[CobaltBlue]

fair skinned people do not need much exposure

The exercise that produces the greatest longevity in English women is gardening. Why? After all, it's light work, especially if you get a man to do the heavy lifting, not at all aerobic.

My guess -- they are out in the sunlight and get a lot of Vitamin D, so don't get osteoporosis.

[CobaltBlue]

Please post something that shows that Scandinavians have a gene for fish allergy that doesn't express itself.

I would be fascinated.

[Tevin]

That is pretty creepy about the Jews. I once heard that the Catholic Church created the "stereotypic Jew" by making them do its dirty financial deeds that were deemed beneath Christians...

[Aliska]

The normal population exhibits an inherited allergy to seafood or fish in about 48% of its members.

That percentage seems rather high. Where did you get that figure? I've only known one person who was deathly allergic to fish. I've known lots of people just don't like it, but it seems even that is changing since saltwater seafood has become more popular and plentiful in the interior (of course, devoted fishermen who fish the rivers, streams and lakes for freshwater fish have for the last couple centuries at least provided some to a greater or lesser degree of it for the family table, many probably almost none).

Nobody in my family is allergic to it (yet anyway), and our genetic heritage has included ancestors who for centuries did not consume much fish because it wasn't available. My grandparents and greatparents particularly would have had to go miles to fish, and I only remember my one grandmother occasionally cooking canned salmon patties. My mother's father is the only one I know of who liked to fish. My mother would eat it but didn't enjoy it if she had to cook it, refused to clean it.

Sometimes if I eat cold salmon, something goes into a spasm and I can't swallow any more of it. It passes. I can't remember what it's called.

[Pharmboy]

Indeed...thanks for your clarification. Of all food allergies, fish is the most common, but certainly half the population are not allergic to fish--or anything else, for that matter.

[Pharmboy]

And, as you may know, vitamin D has other functions in the body aside from helping to regulate calcium metabolism. Immunomodulation, for one...

[Mercat]

But what is creepy is doing genetics to explain behavior traits... too much like eugenics for me.

[SunkenCiv]

Duplicate, and crap. :')

[SunkenCiv]

alas:

Still Evolving, Human Genes Tell New Story
New York Times | 3/7/06 | Nicholas Wade
Posted on 03/06/2006 10:29:42 PM EST by CobaltBlue
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1591389/posts

[aruanan]

Many of the reshaped genes are involved in taste, smell or digestion, suggesting that East Asians experienced some wrenching change in diet. Since the genetic changes occurred around the time that rice farming took hold, they may mark people's adaptation to a historical event,

This is quite a bit like a proposal I made for a thesis project when I was looking for a new thesis advisor. I tried pitching it to a big name in anthropology here at the U of Chicago who had been receptive via email. Turns out she wanted to talk about the symbolism of food. The only other guy on our committee from anthro who was doing work with the Indians near Lake Titicaca never responded. There is similar work already going on among the Hutterites. They're looking at founder effects and the resulting genetic profile of a relatively isolated community .