Why are people in the middle east considered white?

A new preprint on the bioRxiv reports ancient DNA from a Mesolithic European hunter-gatherer from Luxembourg whose mtDNA was published a few years ago and a Neolithic European LBK farmer from Germany, as well as several Mesolithic hunter-gatherers from Sweden.



The Luxembourg sample is similar to the Iberian La Brana samples and the Swedish Mesolithic samples are similar to Swedish Neolithic hunter-gatherers. The LBK farmer is similar to Oetzi and a Swedish TRB farmer and to Sardinians. The authors also study the recently published Mal'ta Upper Paleolithic sample from Lake Baikal and find that it is part of an "Ancient North Eurasian" population that also admixed into West Eurasians on top of the Neolithic/Mesolithic mix.



It seems that the estimates go all the way to "almost pure" Early European farmer ancestry but "West European Hunter-Gatherer" and "Ancient North Eurasian" ancestry isn't found unmixed in any modern populations. The model seems to agree with Raghavan et al. that Karitiana are "Mal'ta"-admixed but also finds the most basal Eurasian ancestry in the European Neolithic farmer. The authors write:
The successful model (Fig. 2A) also suggests 44 ± 10% “Basal Eurasian” admixture into the ancestors of Stuttgart: gene flow into their Near Eastern ancestors from a lineage that diverged prior to the separation of the ancestors of Loschbour and Onge. Such a scenario, while never suggested previously, is plausible given the early presence of modern humans in the Levant25, African-related tools made by modern humans in Arabia26, 27, and the geographic opportunity for continuous gene flow between the Near East and Africa28.

The Swedish/Luxembourg Mesolithic hunter-gatherers are all mtDNA-haplogroup U and Y-chromosome haplogroup I, so again no R1a/R1b in early European samples. An interesting finding is that the Luxembourg hunter-gatherer probably had blue eyes (like a Mesolithic La Brana Iberian, a paper on which seems to be in the works) but darker skin than the LBK farmer who had brown eyes but lighter skin. Raghavan et al. did not find light pigmentation in Mal'ta (but that was a very old sample), so with the exception of light eyes that seem established for Western European hunter-gatherers (and may have been "darker" in European steppe populations, but "lighter" in Bronze Age South Siberians?), the origin of depigmentation of many recent Europeans remains a mystery. Ancient DNA continues to surprise at every turn.

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2013/12/europeans-neolithic-farmers-mesolithic.html

 

You forgot about Anthropologists, most of whom reject the label race as applicable to human biological variation. And biologists actually do use the term race they just equate it with subspecies. I agree with you that claiming there are biological races is not racist. I disagree that you have to be a sociologist, crackpot or ideologue to deny that there are human races. Joseph Graves, who I have been in communication with for some time, is an evolutionary biologist who has written books (such as The Race Myth) debunking the concept of biological human races.

He is neither a sociologist, crackpot or ideologue but a respected scientist who has looked at both the sociological and biological aspects of the race question. His conclusion is that human biological variation exists but it's not structured in to races.

This is an email he sent me on the topic of biological differences and race:

Here too is a very good article on the subject by Scott MacEachern, an Anthropologist who I have also talked to about this subject.

The Concept of Race in Contemporary Anthropology

 

OK, what I got from his email are two important statements:

1. physical traits may not match genetic variation which is why races based on physical traits (as was the case in the past) can be inaccurate.

This is true and I agree, altough they may correlate quite a bit. Which is why I said that genetic differences should be crucial for biological definion of race in modern times.

2. Parker et al. 2004 showed that the population subdivision statistic for dogs is FST = 0.333. This exceeds Sewall Wright’s threshold for the existence of biological races (0.250), and as I said in my presentation, FST for humans is less than 0.150

So races in humans are less differentiated than in dogs. Not surprising. Doesnt mean they dont exist at all. They just dont exist to such a degree as in dogs. When you put your race threshold at 0.250 then yes there are no human races, yet that is an arbitrary choice.

 

Are you of the opinion that any genetic differentiation between geographic populations requires that those populations be considered races?

Mikemikev also made this argument that the threshold for racial classification provided by Graves is arbitrary. This is what he had to say:

 

thank you!!!!!!

 

The Fst between humans and chimpanzees is 0.18.

 

wrong, its 1.14 and up to 2%, which is 20 times higher than between humans.

 

Do you think Caucasian and Caucasoid mean the same thing or there is a difference?

 

There is no reason to turn this into a moral discussion. Biologically speaking, "race" has no moral implications whatsoever and no one in here has used the term to rank people based on the colour of their skin and their set of dna.

 

It's because they have achieved many things. And they have a close proximity to Africa. And we all know that nothing that comes out of Africa can be good. So as a result white people need to feel that anything that has been useful to mankind could have only come from white people. As such the narrative is that even arabics are white. Except when they commit acts of terrorism and violence, then they're not white in that case. They're only white when they invent stuff. See when you're white, you just cherry pick the good and bad things. Even when a "black" person achieves something it's because "they have white blood". but if the black person is a screw up, then it's totally because they're black. That's how race works. Try not to overthink it or find any logic in it. There is none. The motive here is "anything that makes white people look good"

 

It's because your whole string is based on a Bogus and over-simplified representation of 'White'.
[Your] Wiki link says they are sub-race of Caucasians, and if you'll note your own differently [striped] illustration above, containing a Gradation of other races, but Genetically closest to Caucasian. Of course one can use technically more precise sub-races to include dozens of peoples.
One can consider ALL Asians as 'Mongoloid' if one wants to use just 3, but NE Asians and Pacific Islanders are separate races in most more informed literature.

That's it.
You misrepresented Macro Race Caucasian (of only the big 3) as being All 'white'.
We had to have a whole string just because you failed to understand basic language and illustration, or intentionally twisted semantics for partisan purpose.
It's that simple.

PS: this 3 year Old string was bumped up by the OP, 'The Amazing Sam's Ego,' in the middle of the last page.
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