Entine barely even addresses the surge of European players into the NBA. It's quite true that many eastern euros have been dominating for the past few years, often overtaking the black players.

But that's not just one flaw with Entine's taboo. This review has a few devestating critiques, though I warn it's mostly garbage- IE, the man thinks all IQ testing is biased, that there's some massive media conspiracy to bring about a second holocaust against blacks because, well, Entine is a nazi: http://www.hirhome.com/rr/rrintro.htm

For example, scroll down to the tidbit on the map Entine cites: http://www.hirhome.com/rr/rrchap1.htm

That's really not even the tip of the iceberg. Rarely does Entine cite a SINGLE heritability study- the simple fact is that physical differences are NOT AT ALL as substantially deep-seated as he cites. Try it out. Look up the heritabilities of any of the physical traits that supposedly separate blacks from other groups in sports ability, and *gasp*- they all have varying average heritabilities.

Let's also not forget how, with the exception of extremities like the Kalenjin and other rift valley ethnic groups, the major sports athletes are quite above their average ethnic group's athletic ability.

Let's also not forget how, with the exception of extremities like the Kalenjin and other rift valley ethnic groups, the major sports athletes are quite above their average ethnic group's athletic ability.

sure, but small differences in means can result in big differences on the tails.

my own recollection of taboo is that jon overstated a bit how good african ancestry athletes are. e.g., i think he came close to saying that black athletes had an advantage in almost any sport they put their mind to (perhaps swimming was an exception).

in any case, i would prefer that the earlier comments on this thread be focused jews. (did i type that?!?!)

As for the more nuanced narratives that have emerged from the study of Jewish genetics-such as the fact that most Ashkenazi Jews are descended on their maternal line from Christians or pagans who more than likely never went through a formal conversion

What is your source for this "fact"? Papers such as this one directly contradict razib's/entine's assertion:

Both the extent and location of the maternal ancestral deme from which the Ashkenazi Jewry arose remain obscure. Here, using complete sequences of the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), we show that close to one-half of Ashkenazi Jews, estimated at 8,000,000 people, can be traced back to only 4 women carrying distinct mtDNAs that are virtually absent in other populations, with the important exception of low frequencies among non-Ashkenazi Jews. We conclude that four founding mtDNAs, likely of Near Eastern ancestry, underwent major expansion(s) in Europe within the past millennium.

I believe the confusion initially arose from a Nicholas Wade article about a paper which did not directly address Ashkenazi maternal origins. One of the authors of that paper offered his personal speculation about the Ashkenazi to Wade, which various internet types have taken for "fact" ever since.

Dr. Goldstein said it was up to historians to
interpret the genetic evidence. His own speculation, he said, is that most Jewish
communities were formed by unions between Jewish men and local women, though
he notes that the women’s origins cannot be genetically determined.

“The men came from the Near East, perhaps as traders,” he said. “They established
local populations, probably with local women. But once the community was
founded, the barriers had to go up, because otherwise mitochondrial diversity would
be increased.”

This speculation has never been supported by the scientific literature, as I far as I know. And that's putting it mildly.

Correct link for the first quote above: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu...3026/ 43026.html (Behar et al.)

The link in my comment above points to the Goldstein paper.

Great quote from "Taboo" (pp. 323-324):

When stripped of the drug factor, what appears in the history books as a decades-long duel between European and African American female sprinters has been a fraud. Black female sprinters are a cut above, much like their male counterparts.

Marion Jones is the indisputable top female sprinter...the epitome of an elite athlete...gifted with the explosive speed and jumping ability that mark the prototypical athlete with West African ancestry.... Although she now trains feverishly, Jones is as close to being a born athlete as exists in sprinting.

The sterling logic which leads Entine to write off white female comptetiveness in sprinting as "fraud":

To guage the impact of drugs, it's instructive to compare the top all-time one hundred times against the best times over the past decade, when presumably drug use was less prevalent. (Taboo, p. 322)

I wish Razib had asked a question about Cochran, Harpending and Hardy's paper on the evolution of Askenazi intelligence. When most people think about issues of Jews and genetics, the intelligence issue is generally the first one that comes to mind (even if they are afraid to ask it).

Re Taboo, I agree that Entine is far too simplistic. The book could have been so much better if he spent more time on reviewing the research on the physiological, genetic and biomechanical differences that contribute to racial difference in athletic performance and spent less time agonizing over (in some cases) relatively contrived sociological issues (or unwarranted criticism of Arthur Jensen). (There is, by the way, a fairly comprehensive body of research on the racial differences and sport, but to my knowledge, no book or article that brings it all together in an effective summay). This being said, Entine's basic point that people of West African ancestry have an average advantage over people of European ancestry in most sports that are popular in the US and Europe is largely correct, even if he exagerates and one notes that there are exceptions (e.g., Jeremy Wariner).

Concerning those four Ashkenazi mtDNA types, which together account for about 40% of Ashkenazi lineages: three are probably from the Middle East, but the largest, which accounts for about 20% of Ashkenazi lineages, has sister lineages only in the western Mediterranean - in Italy, north Africa, and the Iberian peninsula, if memory serves. No sister lineages from the Middle East - so it's not from the Middle East.

As for the other 60%, I can't tell. But I'd guess that a lot are European, since if you look at autosomal genes, the Ash look about 40% European, as we said in our paper.

As for Goldstein: in the cases I've looked at, he's competent and honest.

This speculation has never been supported by the scientific literature, as I far as I know. And that's putting it mildly.

see what greg said above. your tone is unwarranted by your evident ignorance. if you aren't milder in your follow ups all your comments will be deleted.

I wish Razib had asked a question about Cochran, Harpending and Hardy's paper on the evolution of Askenazi intelligence. When most people think about issues of Jews and genetics, the intelligence issue is generally the first one that comes to mind (even if they are afraid to ask it).

why don't you ask greg? he's around. jon isn't an expert on greg's paper more than greg is.

greg,

I didn't question Goldstein's competence or honesty. Goldstein did not try to pass off his clearly-labeled personal speculation as "fact". I do question the reading comprehension and/or integrity of people who do. Goldstein et al. found clear evidence linking Jewish maternal lineages to local populations in Ethiopia and India. Goldstein found no such evidence for Ashkenazim/Europe, and he never claimed otherwise.

three are probably from the Middle East, but the largest, which accounts for about 20% of Ashkenazi lineages, has sister lineages only in the western Mediterranean - in Italy, north Africa, and the Iberian peninsula, if memory serves. No sister lineages from the Middle East - so it's not from the Middle East.

Does not follow. Here's the quote you're thinking of:

The Ashkenazi K1a9 and K1a1b1a lineages were not found in non-Jews, with the exception of the former in a single Hungarian and the latter in a single Ukrainian, both of unknown ethnicity. However, it is of interest that K1a1b1a sister lineages, which share with it a common ancestry at the internal nodal level of subclade K1a1b1 (fig. 2), can be found in Portugal, Italy, France, Morocco, and Tunisia (table 6). This reveals that this particular limb of the Hg K phylogenetic tree is of a wider Mediterranean presence and origin. Likewise, the distribution of Hg N1b in southwestern Asia and North Africa (Rando et al. 1998; Richards et al. 2000) supports a Near Eastern, rather than a European, origin for this Hg.

Considering the Circum-Mediterranean distribution of K1a1b1 lineages and the essentially exclusively Jewish distribution of K1a1b1a, a Middle Eastern origin for the common ancestor is entirely plausible. Only a dozen K1a1b1 lineages are found out of something like 10,000+ samples. I wouldn't read too much into absence of K1a1b1 in ME populations in Behar's database. No K1a1b show up in Behar's database anywhere. But if we back off another step, Behar finds K1a1 lineages among Armenians, Cretans, Croatians, French, Iranians, Jordanians, Lebanese, and Turks, among others. Where we don't see K1a1b1 or K1a1 is Germany. Thus, the fantasy that is being proffered by Entine and the like (Jewish traders showing up in the Rhineland and taking German wives) is not supported. Maybe they got wives from S. Europe or N. Africa, but even that's not certain.

As for the other 60%, I can't tell. But I'd guess that a lot are European, since if you look at autosomal genes, the Ash look about 40% European, as we said in our paper.

Ashkenazim look about 12.5% European according to:

Motulsky, A. G. (1980) in Population Structure and Disorders, eds. Eriksson, A. W., Forsius, H. R., Nezanlinna, H. R., Workman, P. L. & Norio, R. K. (Academic, New York), pp. 353-365.

Having been brought up Jewish, it's difficult to appreciate the metaphysical power of Jewish religious and ancestral archetypes on so many non-Jews. Is it religious? Cultural? Genetic? It's baffling and fascinating.

I feel that way too.

Well that's all very well, but what about the Finnahim?

How neat, a human genetics reference from 1980.
Motulsky didn't have ~150 autosomal gene frequencies to work with: we did. Today you could do better yet, using SNPs.

" Considering the Circum-Mediterranean distribution of K1a1b1 lineages and the essentially exclusively Jewish distribution of K1a1b1a, a Middle Eastern origin for the common ancestor is entirely plausible"

Except that all the evidence you've got suggests it originated somewhere else. I'd guess Roman - from the geographic distribution and from history.

It is not surprising that the NBA has gone from 25% white to 23% white in a decade despite the European influx. As European players have entered the league, white Americans have left, to the point that today they account for less than 10% of active players.

Actually, an even more interesting sports story is the way the NFL has become a largely black league. It's currently about 70% black and is likely to be over 75% within a few years.

Who are the chosen people and why they were chosen. When were they chosen and who chose them?

"why don't you ask greg? he's around. jon isn't an expert on greg's paper more than greg is."

Perhaps I should have made myself clearer. What I was getting at was whether Jon will cover the Cochran, Harpending, Hardy paper in his book on various issues around Jewish genetics and, if so, how he will present it. I have no doubt that Greg would be a better source to ask questions re technical aspects of the paper, however, since far fewer people in the general public are likely to read Greg's technical paper than Jon's book directed towards a popular audience, I was more intersted in how the issue of genetics and Jewish intelligence will be presented to the public. I apologize if I created confusion.

I thought that Jon's book Taboo was fairly courageous (though, as noted in my previous post, I thought it could have been better if it focused more on the sports science before moving on to sociological questions) and I do not blame him from somewhat ducking the whole race-genetics-intelligence political bomb because it would only have served to create controversy and distract from and hurt the efficacy of his book's central point. (Though again, I think he was too rough on Arthur Jensen). However, given his answers here, particularly to questions 10 where he says he is going to be looking at the implications of the DNA revolution re education and 6 where he says "evolutionary forces played a role in shaping distinctive characteristics-physically and mentally," I thought he might be ready to take on even more controversial topics (which any public discussion of Jewish genetic exceptionalism that influences socially important characteristics is bound to be).

Except that all the evidence you've got suggests it originated somewhere else.

A dozen lineages scattered across a half-dozen populations on both sides of the Mediterranean does not offer much evidence as to origin, period. I'd think if we want to do more than guess, we'd need a database at least 5 or 10 times as large as Behar's.

I'd guess Roman - from the geographic distribution and from history.

How about Phoenician/Carthaginian.

How neat, a human genetics reference from 1980.

I suppose it's better than citing yourself.

Motulsky didn't have ~150 autosomal gene frequencies to work with: we did. Today you could do better yet, using SNPs.

Glancing at your paper, I have to wonder how you decided the markers you looked at are "neutral". As I recall, the names of most loci reported at ALFRED don't sound all that neutral. Also, what is the ethnic breakdown of "Mixed Europeans" and why only choose small, bottlenecked Middle Eastern populations for comparison? Considering you used a large mixed sample on the European side, the logical ME comparison would seem to be "Mixed Levantine".

Anyway, others have done better:

Using a genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) panel, we observed population structure in a diverse group of Europeans and European Americans. Under a variety of conditions and tests, there is a consistent and reproducible distinction between “northern” and “southern” European population groups: most individual participants with southern European ancestry (Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and Greek) have >85% membership in the “southern” population; and most northern, western, eastern, and central Europeans have >90% in the “northern” population group. Ashkenazi Jewish as well as Sephardic Jewish origin also showed >85% membership in the “southern” population, consistent with a later Mediterranean origin of these ethnic groups.

Ashkenazi Jews cluster near Greeks and (probably Southern) Italians. I recall a similar study which also showed Armenians clustering with Jews, Greeks, and (some) Italians.

Unfortunately, Middle Eastern populations are not included in this study, but Ashkenazim and Sephardim show comparably high affiliation with the "Southern" cluster, which is not the pattern we'd expect if Ashkenazim have high levels of Northern European admixture.

What I was getting at was whether Jon will cover the Cochran, Harpending, Hardy paper in his book on various issues around Jewish genetics and, if so, how he will present it.

i've read the book. he covers it in relative detail.

Romans settled in North Africa a lot more than Carthaginians settled in Italy.

Romans settled in North Africa a lot more than Carthaginians settled in Italy.

Irrelevant. It only takes one woman. We're talking about two hits in Italy.

I am confused, so now the Italians can claim they are chosen people. Holy Cow.

Wow, check out the tags for the book on amazon:

disinformation
propaganda
israeli lobby
apartheid
neoconservatism
the big lie
anti-american
lies
entangling alliance
dyslexia
linguistics

He's ruffling feathers once again.

Razib: Of course, I know that's the whole point of averages. It's just that Entine treats nearly all blacks as amazing athletes.

The book wasn't that bad, really. It's message was clear, though quite too brash for something so politically explosive. The real problem was how he treats physical differences as so deep-seated, and with scant- and outright contradictory evidence.

There simply exist few fixed physical and biochemical differences between ethnic groups, atleast ones that can change greatly in a period of a few to several generations compared or one's lifetime compared to ones that take on the scale of thousands of years when left alone- IE, skin color, hair structure, cranio-facial structure, a few other skeletal differences, etc.

Really. Even we don't differ all too much compared to closely related hominid species, such as Neanderthals.

There simply exist few fixed physical and biochemical differences between ethnic groups, atleast ones that can change greatly in a period of a few to several generations compared or one's lifetime compared to ones that take on the scale of thousands of years when left alone- IE, skin color, hair structure, cranio-facial structure, a few other skeletal differences, etc.


i think one can make the argument that skin color might have changed in hundreds of years. look at the selection coefficients for SLC24A5 in some areas (around 10%).

Reply to Dresidian:

It appears you haven't read Taboo, or if you did, you read it sloppily. I certainly did not "treat .. nearly all blacks as amazing athletes."

First, I distinguished populations, not groups designated by skin color. Relatively isolated (culturally or geographically) population groups were shaped by differing evolutionary forces. So though most blacks share SOME characteristics on average--skin color and lower natural body fat levels, for exampe--they differe on others depending upon their ancestral origins and history. Blacks from the Rift Valley are terrible sprinters, as a I write. They are lousy at sports that put a premium on quickness as opposed to endurance (for example, soccer). They are terrible at weight lifting, for any number of reasons, including becasue of their relatively long limbs. In fact, few blacks are "world class" at field events--a point which I make clear numerous times.

I guess you missed that.

And you're point that few physical or biochemical traits could be changed in a matter of a few hundred years is both problematic -- we now have numerous examples of 'fast evolution'--but totally irrelevant to the points I made in Taboo. Most of the body type and biochemical patterns were forged over many hundreds or thousands of years--that't the whole thesis of Taboo. The isolation--cultural and geographic--is quite extended. And the differences are, in many cases, rooted in the deep history of different popultions.

I guess you missed that.

Having been brought up Jewish, it's difficult to appreciate the metaphysical power of Jewish religious and ancestral archetypes on so many non-Jews. Is it religious? Cultural? Genetic? It's baffling and fascinating.

Nietzsche had some insight on this in The Anti-Christ.

Regarding the supposed "metaphysical power of Jewish religious and ancestral archetypes on so many non-Jews." How many is "so many"? Can we really generalize from a few Mexican Americans to "so many non-Jews"?

It's well known that ethnic Jews join cults and other fringe religious movements in disproportionate numbers. From whence comes the hold of fringe religious archetypes on so many Jews?

"From whence comes the hold of fringe religious archetypes on so many Jews?"

I cannot prove this, but I posit that it stems from a desire to escape the stigma of being Jewish without caving in to Christianity.

Razib writes: "My own recollection of taboo is that jon overstated a bit how good african ancestry athletes are. e.g., i think he came close to saying that black athletes had an advantage in almost any sport they put their mind to (perhaps swimming was an exception)."

Not that you'd feel it worthwhile to review the book, Razib, but I made no such claim, not every close. The only definitive claim I made was that the world's best sprinters and athletes in sports that put the highest premium on quickness and speed as opposed to endurance or strength are more likely to be of West African ancestry; athletes in which endurance is key are more likely to be of East African ancestry; and strength related activities are more likely to be of Eurasian extraction. I first made this point in a GQ article that appeared 5 months before the book came out.

The implication of course is that there are a raft of sports and events within various sportsin which African athletes, East or West, should have no apparent advantage based on genetically endowed physiology or physicality.

Jon:

"It could provoke some intriguing soul searching among Jews, especially Orthodox Jews, about what determines Jewishness. I'm looking forward to my talks to Jewish groups to see how this prickly issues plays out."

The relevations that maternal Jewish lineages may not be "Jewish" in origin will have no effect on Orthodox Jews and their identity whatsoever. Their conception of their identity is entirely religious-mythical. If facts mattered, then the historical facts uncovered by archaeologists would have made a difference. But they don't. So why should DNA?

GCochran,

Regarding those "near eastern lineages" - even those might not have been "Jewish." According to Shaye Cohen and Seth Schwartz "Jewishness" is something that got invented from the 2nd to the 6th centuries BCE (Schwartz dates it later than Cohen). So a maternal lineage is traceable to the Middle East? The Middle East is a place, not an ethnicity.

Diana,

I believe you confuse different strains of Orthodox Jewry. There is certainly a mystical element to some Orthodox sects, but not all or even most.

According to Israeli law, drafted by Orthodox Jews, Jewishness is defined by maternal ancestry--you must be the son or daughter of a Jewish woman---a woman born into Judaism from a line of confirmed Jews (meaning the "first mother" was Jewish) or the son or daughter of a woman who went through formal conversion.

Jon

Jon,

Define mysticism.

Then distinguish mysticism from magical thinking.

I can assure you that I am fully aware of virtually all strands of Orthodox Jewry, from the Upper West Side Modern Orthodox, to the Bermuda triangle Boro Parkniks, to Shlomo Carlebach Ortho-hippies, to the Satmars in Orange County and Williamsburg, to the settlers in Hebron.

And I know about matrilineality, too!