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Genetics of the Oligarchs: Eloi, or Upstarts?postflaviana.org
/elite-sub-species/
Jerry Russell
In H. G. Wells classic novel The Time Machine, the Time Traveler
is translated to the year 802,701 AD. Inthis future world, the
human race has evolved into two completely distinct species, the
Eloi and theMorlocks. The effete Eloi elite live in comfort above
ground and do no work, while the brutal Morlocks toilendlessly at
their underground industry. Wells wrote:
At first, proceeding from the problems of our own age, it seemed
clear as daylight to methat the gradual widening of the present
merely temporary and social difference betweenthe Capitalist and
the Labourer, was the key to the whole position. No doubt it will
seemgrotesque enough to youand wildly incredible!and yet even now
there are existingcircumstances to point that way. the exclusive
tendency of richer peopledue, no doubt,to the increasing refinement
of their education, and the widening gulf between them and therude
violence of the pooris already leading to the closing, in their
interest, of considerableportions of the surface of the land. About
London, for instance, perhaps half the prettiercountry is shut in
against intrusion. And this same widening gulfwhich is due to the
lengthand expense of the higher educational process and the
increased facilities for andtemptations towards refined habits on
the part of the richwill make that exchange betweenclass and class,
that promotion by intermarriage which at present retards the
splitting of ourspecies along lines of social stratification, less
and less frequent. So, in the end, aboveground you must have the
Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and belowground
the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the
conditions of theirlabour.
However, neither the Eloi nor the Morlocks have remained fully
human. The Eloi have grown lazy and dull,while the Morlocks, crude
as they are, have somehow regained the upper hand in the war
between thetwo species. In a sort of comic reversal, they have
taken to cannibalizing the Eloi that they feed and clothe.
In an earlier version of this post, The Eloi and the Morlocks, I
argued that the elite of our planet maysimilarly represent a
distinct race or sub-species of humanity. That is, they are
descended largely from asmall founder group, such as a tribe or a
small set of tribes. If so, they may have an ethnic, xenophobic,
oreven nepotistic sense of their own power and entitlement. This
could be the beginning a trend that couldeventually culminate in a
situation similar to the nightmare vision of the Wells novel.
This has proven to be a controversial view even at this website.
Forum member Collectivist suggestedinstead that the oligarchs from
the feudal era have been overthrown by a small vanguard of
verypowerful Jews and crypto-Jews. These Jews would be the Upstarts
in the title of this post. We claim thatsince ancient times, the
Jews have been in the role of a buffer (scapegoat) class between
the gentileelites and the commoners. How, then, could this tiny
minority launch a coup dtat against theirmasters? When and where
did this take place? Was it before or after the Jews were
emancipated fromCatholic-originated legal strictures in Europe, and
also in relation to the liberal rise of the democraticnation-state
system? The proposal raises as many questions as it answers.
Meanwhile, we are also concerned that casual or out-of-context
discussion of the ethnic or racial
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characteristics of the oligarchs can easily take on an unsavory
Aryan Nazi White Supremacist aspect.The suggestion that the true
core group might be Jewish could add the appearance of a dark, ugly
shadowof anti-semitism, to use this genetically over-freighted
term. Unsupported or unsupportable racistallegations could easily
result in the marginalization of our entire Postflavian project.
(That is, if ourrejection of all major organized religions and
national political parties is not sufficient in itself to result
inthat fate.) Therefore, racial or ethnic statements about elite
secret societies must be fully supported by theevidence, and placed
in proper context.
Elsewhere, we have argued that the trumped-up conflict between
Gentiles versus (Romanized Rabbinic)Jews has been the single
biggest false dialectic underlying Western Civilization. So now we
are beingtold that these downtrodden and abused Christ Killers have
emerged as the new (secret) masters of theuniverse? This would be
supremely ironic, to say the least. We must at least consider what
sort ofevidence would be required to establish the truth or
falsehood of the proposition.
Given these concerns, the statistical null case also deserves
careful consideration. Wells supposition, thatpromotion by
intermarriage at present retards the splitting of our species along
lines of socialstratification may very well be correct. Or in other
words, perhaps upward and downward social mobilityswamps any tribal
organization of the elite. If so, there may be no demonstrable
genetic, racial or ethnicdistinction between the oligarchs of our
planet, versus the rest of our species. Or, even if there is
somedifference which can be theoretically defined and proven from
genealogy charts or DNA testing, thatdifference might have no
functional effect. According to this view, the elite criminality
discussed on this sitemust be explained entirely on the basis of
the persistence of cultural memes; institutional continuity;
socialselection; scientific and technical knowledge; and many other
factors unrelated to genetics. Obviouslysuch factors must be very
important, regardless of whether or not genetics, race and
ethnicity play a role.
This is obviously the beginning of a long-term research project.
The context is that these are not racistallegations, certainly not
directed against particular individuals, but rather they are
genetic, genealogical ðnic questions which we hope to
resolve in the future. The earlier post is being revised to further
developa conceptual basis for the research, and to describe some of
the tools which could possibly be brought tobear.
The Eloi Model of Elite GeneticsThis theory would claim that
throughout history, the class of oligarchs (that is, the wealthy
& powerful) arefar more likely to have chosen their mates from
among other wealthy & powerful people, rather than fromthe
lower classes. Because of international politics, opportunities for
travel, and cosmopolitan values, thewealthy and powerful are far
more likely to choose their mates (or have mates chosen for them by
theirelders) among individuals from far distant locations,
different religions, different cultures, or differentlanguages,
compared to low-class people with far more limited options.
However, all of these mateschosen from all these different
locations, regions and cultures would have one thing in common:
that theywould have been wealthy and powerful.
If this is correct, the oligarchs may by now have become a
distinct ethnicity or breeding pool, which is nowincreasingly
diverging from the rest of humanity. By the same token, the members
of this wealthy andpowerful ethnic group are becoming increasingly
more genetically similar to each other, than they arerelated to any
of the peoples that they rule over.
According to this Eloi model, it is also highly likely that the
oligarchs are descended primarily from a smallfounder group. That
is, near the beginning of agricultural civilization there was a
single tribe, or asmall number of tribes, that became
extraordinarily successful in either insinuating control or
conqueringthe various nations, so to speak, of the ancient Near
East (Eurasia and North Africa). Thus, they became
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the rulers over the members of the less fortunate ethnic
groups.
Michael Hart, in Understanding Human History, argues that at the
end of the Paleolithic era, the peoplesliving in arctic climates
had evolved a cluster of genetic characteristics including pale
skin and greatertechnological skills required for survival in
adverse conditions. Meanwhile, the people living in southernregions
(with darker skins) had the misfortune of living in lands that were
far more fertile and thus morevaluable. Thus, Hart argues, tribes
from the North had both the capability and the motivation to
becomedominant over people of the South, either by conquest or by
infiltration. The northern tribes spoke Indo-European and / or
Uralic languages. As they became rulers over the various nations of
Semites,Africans and Asians, the invaders would have been highly
motivated to breed only amongstthemselves. Having originated from a
distant location, these pale-skinned rulers would have had a
verydistinct sense of their peculiar racial identity in contrast to
their subjects.
It is difficult to say to what extent these ancient tribal
genetics have actually been preserved to the presenttime by the
elite. Over deep time, many factors militate against it. One factor
would be the rate of intrusionof random breeding partners from
outside the elite class into the core bloodlines. Another factor
wouldbe the loss of members of the bloodlines because of downward
social mobility, death of entire familylineages, or other
misfortune. If the elite view themselves as a distinct class, this
may be a matter ofcultural memes and/or self-deception as much as
anything else.
Nevertheless, there are signs that at least some of the elite
have an awareness of themselves as a classwith a familial, ethnic
or xenophobic nature, as well as a nepotistic sense of entitlement
to wealth andpower. As such, they also have access to a wealth of
knowledge and experience regarding the science andart of
maintaining control over the masses. This knowledge is certainly
preserved in colleges anduniversities which are accessible
primarily to the elite and their middle-class collaborators, but it
might alsobe maintained as family lore, or held in secret libraries
within the innermost circles of elite secret societies.
If this oligarchical sub-species still exists, it must have also
had a significant amount of genetic materialintroduced from local
elites all over the world from every racial background. There have
also been distinctevolutionary pressures arising from the unique
environment of the elite. As it is often said: uneasy is thehead
that wears the crown. In other words, there has been some selection
pressure for raw survival toreproductive age, based on cunning in
social relations and in battle.
The elite also have a very powerful sense of the importance of
family connections and genealogy. It ispossible, at this point,
that the elites do not view themselves as any more akin to Nordic
or Caucasian orJewish commoners, than any other race of hoi polloi.
According to the strong version of thiseloi hypothesis, they are a
distinct racial entity unto themselves. Or, if the null hypothesis
mentionedabove is correct, then we can still propose a weak version
of the Eloi model: that many elite think ofthemselves this way,
even if it isnt literally genetically true.
For example, under the British Israel doctrine, the British
consider themselves to be Lost Tribe Hebrewsand, as such, part of
Gods chosen people even though historical or genetic support for
this claim is farfrom obvious. That said, we have our own
interpretation of biblical history where there can indeed besome,
rather varnished, contextual credence to such claims. And which we
will use to complement thiseffort.
In either case, we have an Earthly model for the Abraxas family
in the recent movie, Jupiter Ascending. Aswe showed in our recent
review, the Abraxas are portrayed as a close-knit family which
rules over manyherds of humanity, each of which lives on a
different planet, an allegory here for races and tribes living
indifferent Earthly regions.
The Upstart model: Judaism Ascending?
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According to this view, the ancient eloi as discussed above may
well have been in control during the timeof the Roman Empire and
indeed throughout feudal times and even up until recently. However,
the conflictbetween the Flavians and other Roman emperors, versus
the Jewish rebels, may not have ended with theutter defeat of the
Jews in the many wars against them, and the Roman dominance over
rabbinicalJudaism. Instead, is it possible that the Jews maintained
a grim determination to reverse their humiliatingdefeat and to
establish world domination over their rivals, a plot which is now
nearing consummation?
There are some basic facts which form the core of this
speculation, and which are not in dispute (or atleast, not
here.)
The story seems to date back to the first Crusade, which was
organized as a European response toIslamic conquest of the holy
lands of the Middle East. French noblemen related to participants
of the FirstCrusade organized the Knights Templar and set up shop
at the newly conquered Temple Mount, andwere given the blessing of
the Roman Catholic Church in 1129. The Templars became very
successful asbankers, introducing innovative practices which they
may have learned from the Islamics. It is suspectedthat the
Templars were not orthodox Christians, but that some of the
organizers were Cathars. The Catharsemerged at about the same time
as the Templars: first reports of Cathar theology in France
emergedaround 1143. The beliefs of both the Cathars and Templars
are obscure (their writings having beendestroyed) but are believed
to have been basically gnostic, or perhaps Kabbalist. The Templars
wereaccused of worshiping Baphomet, although there is little if any
evidence that this is true, or who theythought Baphomet was. Images
of Baphomet as a man with a goat head apparently originate from
the19th century.
The Cathars came under severe pressure from the Albigensian
Crusade beginning about 1208, and wereutterly crushed by 1330. The
Knights Templar were terminated and suppressed in 1307,
althoughremnants were merged with the Knights Hospitaller (of whom
later became todays Roman CatholicKnights of Malta), the Portuguese
Knights of Christ, the German Teutonic Knights, and so forth.
Thevacuum left in the banking industry was taken up mostly by
Italian and Venetian bankers.
The intolerance of the medieval Catholic church extended also to
the Jews. The Inquisition, which initiallytargeted the Cathars,
impacted Judaism as well beginning about 1242, and intensified in
the SpanishInquisition beginning in 1481. Many of the Jews were
forced to convert to Christianity. However, some ofthese conversos
(converts) continued to practice Judaism and/or Kabbalism in
secret, and so the loyaltiesof the conversos were always open to
suspicion. The name Marrano (pig or swine) was also attached as
apejorative to these people.
The invention of the printing press in 1440 enabled many
commoners, craftsmen and merchants toread the Bible (and to a
lesser extent, Josephus Flavius) for the first time. This led to a
realization that thebeliefs and practices, such as indulgences, of
the Catholic Church were not entirely compatible with theancient
scripture. This, as well as the excesses of the Inquisition, may
have led to the advent of theReformation. As a popular attack on
the Catholic Church, the Reformation was actually in full swing by
thetime of Martin Luthers Ninety-Five Theses of 1517.
The overt counter-reformation of the Church was led by the
Jesuits, an order formed by Ignatius of Loyolawith the authority of
Pope Paul III in 1540. Curiously here, the archbishop of Venice,
who supported thefounding of the Jesuits and the Council of Trent
(whose purpose was to hear and rule upon the Protestantcomplaints)
also wrote letters of encouragement to the Calvinist Protestants.
The center of the Calvinisttheological dispute was over the means
(works versus grace) of Salvation and the related doctrine
ofPredestination, of which we proclaim was a manufactured
controversy.
However, although nominally Christian, the theology of the
Jesuits was in some ways more similar to thethat of the Alumbrados
(that is, the illuminated or enlightened ones), a group of
Spanish
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gnostic conversos denounced in 1525 by the Inquisition. Ignatius
of Loyola himself was a converso, aswas the prior Spanish
Inquisitions Torquemada, and had been accused of sympathies with
theAlumbrados, although he was acquitted. The Jesuits became the
main educational and missionary (that is,propaganda) arm of the
Catholic Church and became increasingly powerful from the 16th
through the 18thcentury, until 1773 when they were suppressed and
largely disbanded by the order of Pope Clement XIV.
Strangely coincidental with the alleged termination, or rather
the Disestablishment, of the Jesuits,came the rise of the
Rothschild banking empire, and the creation of the Bavarian
Illuminati by AdamWeishaupt, a Jesuit professor of Catholic canon
law at the Jesuits University of Ingolstadt. MayerRothschild
obtained the position of court factor for Crown Prince William of
Hesse in 1769, beginning hismeteoric rise to become the primary
banker to European royalty. Weishaupts group was founded in
1776,and took up the function of Illuminist propaganda and
missionary work more or less where the Jesuits leftoff, and also
worked to influence the Freemason lodges of the time. There are
allegations that Weishauptwas also from a converso family and was a
crypto-Jew.
Whether contrived, as Tupper Saussy claimed in his Rulers of
Evil, or not: his claim is that the timely, andsupposedly bloody,
Disestablishment of the Jesuits is what enabled the Catholics to
garner the goodgraces of the highly Protestant American colonists,
who otherwise hated them. The enemy of my enemy ismy friend, and
thus Jesuit based Catholicism is ironically the vastly predominant
form found in the UnitedStates of America, and the most powerful
block in American national politics, with some considerable
helpfrom the JFK assassination.
The Jesuits were restored to the good graces of the Catholic
Church beginning in 1801 in Russia.Meanwhile, the Bavarian
Illuminati were officially condemned in Prussia in 1785, but
continued to infiltratethe Freemasons whose work continues to this
day.
These events were watersheds. Ever since then, these influences
can be seen in the banking system, inFreemasonic dominance over
democratic governments in America and Europe. In the mass media,
theuse of illuminati symbolism as well as reversed Gospel typology
can be seen as a trademark of thisinfluence.
According to the Judaism Ascending model, characters such as
Ignatius of Loyola, Adam Weishaupt andMayer Rothschild should be
seen as vanguards of their own race, upstarts from the humble
ghettos wherethe Jews lived as an oppressed minority. Shakespeare
(that is, perhaps, Emilia Bassano) may also beseen as part of this
cabal. Any question whether the Shakespearean literature is more
Jewish or Jesuit incharacter is basically irrelevant, as both
Jesuitism and Kabbalist Judaism are manifestations of one evil.This
entire movement is essentially Jewish (Kabbalistic), ethnic, and
targeted to reverse the humiliationssuffered by the Jews at the
hands of the Romans. According to this model, the New World
Orderconspiracy must be seen as fundamentally racist, and it is now
targeted towards genocide of all otherraces aside from the Jewish
chosen people.
Eloi model, revisitedThe Eloi model of elite genetics (discussed
above) does not deny any of these events, but gives them adifferent
interpretation. Just as the Roman Emperors were pagans hiding
behind a Christian front, theRoman Catholic church throughout its
entire history may have been, at its core, an illuminati
institutionand not a Christian one. Christianity itself has never
been anything more than an exoteric, populist congame to be foisted
on feudal subjects. Similarly, Rabbinical Judaism has been a con
game foisted bythose same elite insiders onto the Jewish
commoners.
Eloists would say that the emergence of the Jesuits, Bavarian
Illuminati, modern Freemasons, and theRothschild banking empire,
were all manifestations of the old elite coming out from behind
their Catholic
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cover story, re-asserting Imperial control under cover of
stealth. If this is correct, we would expect to findthe
institutions of old feudal Europe such as the Catholic Church, the
various Royal courts, and the nobility,all covertly collaborating
with the Jesuits, Illuminati, Freemasons, and Jewish Bankers.
By the same token, Kabbalism should not be viewed as uniquely
Jewish, but rather part of a greaterHellenistic trend, and going
back even further in time and geographically widespread with roots
inshamanism. Philo was incorporating Platonism from the Greeks into
Judaism, and the same seems to bethe case for wider gnosticism. All
of this can be traced back ultimately to the Mesopotamians
andEgyptians. In general, these esoteric religions may have been
reserved for elites, as the inner church. TheCathars may have been
an unapproved stream, via such as the Bogomils, that escaped the
clutches of thechurch until it became predominant and thus
dangerous to the Roman churchs monopoly in theLanguadoc and
eventually even wider.
Its possible that at least some, if not all, of the founders and
elite leaders of the crypto-Jewish Illuminatiwill turn out to be as
closely related genetically to the noble class of Europeans, as
they are to the commonclass of Ashkenazi and / or Sephardic Jews.
These Hofjuden or Court Jews tended to intermarry withthe royals
and nobles, or favored close cousin marriages.
I will not try to hide my own views here. I believe that the
Roman Catholics and European royalty andAmerican democracy have
collaborated far too closely with the Jesuits, Freemasons and
JewishInternational Bankers, for the latter to be seen as an
upstart rebellion. I believe it has been a cooperativeventure from
the beginning, and continuing to the present day. This includes the
strange alliance of JewishZionists, Christian Zionist Neocons and
American and European military intelligence, which seems to beat
the heart of the New World Order Conspiracy today.
Nevertheless, it has been proposed that genetics and/or
genealogy might be a key to resolving thisparticular dispute, and
revealing the true nature of the secret society. Accordingly, I
would like to reviewsome concepts that might prove helpful.
The concept of species and sub-species in modern
biologyBiologically, a species is defined as a group that can
successfully interbreed and produce fertileoffspring. Thus, all
human beings are considered part of the same species. We can choose
a mate fromanywhere on the planet, without hurting our chances of
reproductive success.
If a species is separated into two or more groups which are not
allowed to interbreed, they will start to driftapart genetically.
If they are subject to different selection pressures, then the
process of geneticdivergence is accentuated and directed. Thus, the
separated populations may start to becomeanatomically and
functionally distinctive as well. Yet this can go on for quite some
time, before matingbetween the groups becomes impossible. As long
as most or all pairings are fertile, the populations areconsidered
to belong to the same species. But, because they have distinct
local characteristics, they arecalled sub-species.
A good example of sub-species are the various breeds of purebred
dogs. These populations areseparated by their human breeders, so
that there is little if any genetic exchange between the breeds.
Ifdogs from different breeds do mate together, the result is called
a mongrel and is excluded from theentire category of purebred dogs.
Although of course mongrels are still members of the species of
dogs,they are not considered a part of either of the sub-species of
their parents.
Races and ethnic groupsThe terms race and ethnic group are
similar but not identical in their connotations. Ethnic group
tends
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to be more associated with groupings based on culture, religion
or nationality, while race has a moregenetic and physical
connotation. In practice the terms overlap for reasons which I will
explain.
A modern concept of race and ethnicity is shown in this graph
from Out of Africa Again and Again by AlanTempleton (Nature 416,
4551, 2002).
The figure illustrates that humanityconsists of a number of
lineageswhich have descended in parallelthrough many generations.
Humansnaturally fall into groups which areseparated by factors such
asdistance, geographical barriers,language, and culture. Such
barriersserve to delineate the populationsand limit the amount of
genetic cross-flow at each generation. Thus, eachlineage is inbred
to some degree.However, all couplings betweenhuman beings are
potentiallyfertile. Miscegenation can and doesoccur in spite of all
obstacles to thecontrary. Major events denotingvast migrations of
peoples from placeto place (shown in red in the diagram)have
contributed additionalintermingling.
The biological concepts of sub-species or breeds are
potentiallyapplicable to such human groups.However, because of the
amount ofinterbreeding among human groups,the physical and
geneticdifferences between groups of peopleare far less significant
than thedifferences between the variousbreeds of dogs. This is in
spite of thefact that these subspecies of dogshave been created in
a relatively short period of time compared to mans evolution. (Most
modern breedsof dogs have been created by breeders in the last 150
years or less, and are still diverging rapidly.)
Rather than crisply defined breeds, humankind consists of an
undefined number of lineages that blendimperceptibly together, with
no clear edges. Accordingly, efforts to use such concepts to create
clearboundaries in legal or nationalistic contexts have often ended
as intellectual and/or politicalfiascos. However, this does not
mean that the concept of race is meaningless.
Genetics and family treesTo further help explain what we mean by
these concepts of subpecies and inbreeding, I would like tobring in
some figures and information from the excellent blog article Your
Family: Past, Present and
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Future by Tim Urban.
Your Ancestor Cone
So lets start with the past, and see what happens if we keep
going up the family tree, orwhat Ill call your Ancestor Cone:
You can see that things get hectic pretty quickly when you start
moving back generations.The top row is the 128-person group of your
great5 grandparents, or your grandparentsgrandparents
great-grandparents. The thing that I find surprising is how
recently in time youhad such a large number of ancestors.
Estimating an average generation at 25-30 years,most of those
people were your current age around 1800-1825. So the early
19th-centuryworld contained 128 random strangers going about their
lives, each of whose genes makesup 1/128th of who you are
today.
With respect to this drawing, it is possible to define three
lines of descent: paternal ancestry along thepurely male line,
maternal ancestry along the purely female line, or what I might
call general ancestry,that is, the entire cone. In genetic
research, data may be extracted from either Y-chromosome DNA
(aprobe for paternal ancestry), mitochondrial DNA (a probe for
maternal ancestry), or autosomal DNA(which derives from the entire
ancestral cone.) The vast majority of DNA in the human genome
isautosomal DNA.
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Notice that as we go higher in the ancestral cone, the maternal
and paternal lines represent a smaller andsmaller sample of the
total ancestry of each person. That is, at the 7th generation back
(as shown in thediagram above) the paternal and maternal lineages
each represent less than 1% of the total geneticheritage of the
individual. In genetics, these lineages can be explored using Y-DNA
and mt-DNArespectively, establishing relationships going deep back
into time. Y-DNA and Mt-DNA can be used to traceancestries all the
way back to Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosome Adam, the most
recent maternaland paternal ancestors of all living humans.
Autosomal DNA draws information randomly from the entire general
ancestral cone, but gives less andless information about each
individual ancestor as time recedes. At each generation, segments
of DNAfrom each parent are snipped and recombined at random. Thus,
in comparisons of DNA genomes amongclose family relations, segments
of varying length may be found to be identical by descent, that is,
IBD.As relations become more distant, the IBD segments get chopped
into smaller and smaller pieces, untilthey either become too short
to detect, or are randomly omitted altogether by therecombination
process. Analysis of IBD segments can reveal family relationships
very reliably to the 5thdegree, and sometimes up to the 11th
degree. That is, we can trace three to five generations up to
anancestor, and back down his or her family tree another two to six
generations through another child of thatancestor to find distant
cousins.
Inbreeding and pedigree collapseGetting back to Tim Urbans blog,
he notices that as we continue going back in time, the number
ofancestors in everyones family tree continues to explode, reaching
~68 billion ancestors at 1100 AD. AsUrban explains:
The reason thats problematic is that the world population goes
like this:
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So how do we explain this?
With a concept called pedigree collapse, which is what happens
when people end up with amate who is somewhat or very closely
related to them. So for example, if two cousins had achild, that
child would only have six great-grandparents, not eight. Or, to put
it another way,there are eight filled great-grandparent spots on
that childs family tree, but two of the spotsare duplicates of two
other spots
Before youwince, absorbthis fact:according
toRutgersanthropologyprofessorRobinFox, 80% of allmarriages
inhistory havebeen betweensecondcousins orcloser.
The reason forthis is that formost of humanhistory, peoplespent
most of their lives in the same five mile radius, and the other
people in that samearea tended to be immediate and extended family.
To get away from their extended familywhen courting, men would have
to walk over five miles away, which after a long day ofhunting you
just dont feel like doing.
In the Western World, this is largely a phenomenon of the past,
but in many parts of theworld, this is still a common practicefor
example, in most of the Middle East and NorthAfrica, over 50% of
todays marriages are between second cousins or closer.
I would add that according to Foxs research, another important
reason for the prevalence of these 2ndcousin marriages is because
they are specifically favored according to the laws and customs of
manytraditional societies. This may be because they preserve some
family cohesiveness, without the well-known genetic downsides of
marriages among even closer cousins or siblings.
This is what we mean by inbreeding: the shrinkage of the
ancestor cone due to pedigree collapse. Thisoccurs when distant
cousins are intermarrying at a rate higher than would happen by
chance in a largepopulation. Returning again to Urbans blog, he
offers this further explanation of distant cousinrelationships:
every stranger in the world is a cousin of yours, and the only
question is how distant a
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cousin they are. The degree of cousin (first, second, etc.) is
just a way of referring to howfar you have to go back before you
get to a common ancestor. For first cousins, you onlyhave to go
back two generations to hit your common grandparents. For second
cousins,you have to go back three generations to your common
great-grandparents. For fifthcousins, youd have to go back six
generations until you arrive at your common pair of
great-great-great-great-grandparents.
Since a lot of people get confused about cousin definitions, I
made a little chart illustratingwhat a second cousin is.
So notice that for you and your second cousin, A) your parent is
a first cousin of their parent,B) you have grandparents that are
siblings, and C) their parents are your common great-grandparents.
For third cousins, everything just goes up a levelyour parentsare
second cousins, your grandparents are first cousins, your
great-grandparents aresiblings, and you have a common pair of
great-great-grandparents.
The number of cousins you have grows exponentially as the degree
of distance goes up.You may have a small number of first cousins,
but you likely have hundreds of third cousins,thousands of fifth
cousins, and over a million eighth cousins.
Measures of inbreedingUrban explains his computations for the
number of distant cousins as follows:
The formula is (n-1) 2d nd
where n is the average number of children being had by a family
and d is the degree ofcousin you want to find the total number
of.
It boils down to a simple multiplication of the number of
top-level siblings [(n-1) 2 d] times thenumber of eventual
offspring on your generation level each of those top-level
siblingsultimately produces (nd).
This is correct for modern national populations that have been
choosing mates more or less at random formany generations. However,
as mentioned above: in paleolithic times, and to a large extent up
until theindustrial revolution, most people lived in small villages
or towns, and chose their mate from within that
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town. Some were directed by tradition to chose a 2nd cousin,
while a few of the more adventurous mighthave gone a few towns away
at most, but marriage was generally a very local affair.
Even now, there are populations in which the size of the
breeding pool is severely limited, and has been formany generations
into the past. In such populations, the number of relatively close
cousins in the localarea is increased, and the number of distant
cousins depleted, compared to the formula. In a town of ~500people,
it might be that the breadth of the ancestor cone continues to
increase into the distantpast, but an increasingly high percentage
of the slots in that cone would be filled by only 500individuals at
each generation, no matter how far back. At a sufficiently isolated
island, the ancestorcone might theoretically never have included
more individuals than the population of the island. So, thechances
of a new marriage occurring between close cousins is increased,
perpetuating the inbreeding.
The degree of inbreeding leaves an unmistakable signature in the
genome of an isolated population. Hennet al (2012) studied IBD
between random pairs of individual DNA samples collected by the
23andMecustomer database and the Human Genome Diversity Project,
and found:
With data from 121 populations, we show that the average amount
of DNA shared IBD inmost ethnolinguistically-defined populations,
for example Native American groups, Finnsand Ashkenazi Jews,
differs from continentally-defined populations by several orders
ofmagnitude.
The data table from the Henn study shows their measure of
population mean pairwise IBD ranging from1870 for the Surui, an
indigenous Brazilian tribe of ~1100 individuals, to 54.3 for
Orcadians (population~22,000); 23.0 for Ashkenazi Jews; and 12.3
for Icelanders compared to figures of 0.1 for continentallymixed
populations such as the United States, France or the UK. These
estimates can be calculated forsample populations as small as five,
although 10 to 20 samples or more provide better accuracy.
Inbreeding can sometimes be demonstrated in a DNA sample from a
single individual, by looking for IBDsegments from maternal and
paternal sources within the same gene. This measure is called ROH,
orRuns-of-Homozygosity. McQuillan et al (2008) measured ROH in DNA
samples from the North OrkneyIslands and an island in Dalmatia,
comparing them to continental populations from Scotland and
NorthernEurope (sampled in Utah). In the case of the Orkney
samples, they were able to compile accurategenealogical data to
directly calculate the degree of inbreeding, for comparison with
ROH. They foundthat 28% to 30% of Orcadian and Dalmatian samples
contained ROHs greater than 10 megabits, whileonly 1% or 2% of
continental samples contained ROHs as long as that. However, it is
not clear whetherthis method would detect intermediate degrees of
inbreeding, such as Ashkenazi or Icelanders.
Of course, very high levels of inbreeding can also be detected
directly by genealogical pedigree. CecilAdams noted, for example,
that Alfonso XIII of Spain (1886-1941) had only ten of the
expectedsixteen great-great-grandparents. The pedigrees of European
nobility have to some extent been availablein books such as Burkes
Peerage, and additional data of this type may be coming on line.
The LondonSchool of Economics explained:
Newly available genealogical records are helping to provide
insights into the lives theEuropean nobility
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) practice
of the baptising the dead byproxy has resulted in the church
developing the largest genealogical library in the world.
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These extensive historical records have been put together by the
LDS Church to enable itto baptise all who have died without
undergoing the rite. It believes, in doing so, that it givesthe
deceased the opportunity to enter the Kingdom of God.
Now this huge database is being digitised and made publicly
available online, givingeconomic historians like Dr Neil Cummins of
LSEs Economic History Department access togenealogical big data for
the first time.
Describing the significance of the newly digitised information,
he says: Individualdemographic data before 1538 in England is
extremely rare thats the time of Henry VIII,Cromwell and the
English reformation. Before that we only had scraps.
Now the digitisation has allowed Dr Cummins to construct the
family trees of Europeannobility a group that has left behind
abundant evidence about itself and analyse trendsin how long they
lived between 800 and 1800.
When he looked at the age of death of 121,524 nobles during this
time period he found thattheir lifespans began increasing long
before the Industrial Revolution, with a markedincrease around
1400, when life expectancy went from around 50 to 55. After 1500,
lifespans seem to decline again until around 1650 when an
uninterrupted rise begins.
This data, presumably, can also be reviewed to determine the
degree of inbreeding that occurred during allthat time, and the
extent of social mobility in and out of the noble class. In many
cases, it would be astraightforward matter to assess suspected or
known modern-day oligarchs and secret society membersto determine
their connections into the European class of nobility as it existed
in the year 1800.
Significant amounts of genealogical data for Ashkenazi and
Sephardic Jews may also be available foranalysis from LDS records
and other on-line sources, to complete the analysis.
Who were our ancestors?Tim Urban said:
You can see why its not really that impressive when someone
tells you they are descendedfrom famous royalty who lived a few
hundred years ago. Look how many people youredescended from only
about 300 years back! Within [those ~4000 people], theres
probablysome royalty, in addition to some peasants, scholars,
warriors, painters, prostitutes,murderers, lunatics, and any other
kind of person who existed back then.
Cecil Adams similarly remarked:
Pedigree collapse explains why its so easy for professional
genealogists to trace yourlineage back to royalty go far enough
back and youre related to everybody.
But, nevertheless: all of us are not alike in this regard. The
indigenous Brazilian Surui are obviously notgoing to have any
European royalty in their pedigree, no matter how far back you go.
Most Americans andEuropeans might have one or two noble ancestors
among their thousands of peasant ancestors of 300
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years ago. Of those thousands of ancestors, most of us can only
trace a few if any, and know nothingabout them, unless we are
indeed able to find a royal.
But if the Eloi hypothesis is correct, members of that elite
class would be able to look back 300 years or1000 years, and might
very possibly be able to fill in much of their ancestor cone with
the names ofillustrious individuals straight from the history
books, each repeated many times in a web of ancestralpaths.
Or if the situation is similar to the Judaism Ascending
hypothesis, the ancestor cones of the elite would befull of
repeated names of Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews from the ghettos of
Europe.
Race and LocalityIntuitively, Americans tend to define race in
terms of a few visually salient properties of human beings,such as
their skin color (black, yellow, red or white), facial features
(broad, long or hooked nose, forexample), hair color and texture,
and so forth. Such concepts tend to correlate broadly with
continentalorigin. Black-skinned folks are from Africa or
Australia, yellow-skinned from Asia, red-skins from theAmericas,
and whites from Europe. Although Africans and native Australians
both have dark skins, they arevery different in other aspects. This
results in a short list of five races based on the five
continents.
We might try to make this into a practical definition by
applying fuzzy-set math. Supposing we design aninstrument to
measure skin color, another to measure nose shape by width and
breadth, another tomeasure hair color, and so forth. Using these
instruments, we would be able to characterize everyindividual on
the planet in terms of these measurements. Next, we could assign a
fuzzy score (from zero toone) for the similarity of each individual
person, with some prototypical ideal of a typical individual
fromeach of the five races.
Some individuals would receive a high score (near 1.0) in a
single race category, and very low scores(near 0.0) in all other
race categories. However, many other individuals would receive
middling scores inseveral race categories. This might be because
those individuals came from areas near cosmopolitanseaports, or
because some of their ancestors had migrated from one global region
to another.
Scientists from the Romantic era attempted such measurements and
classification, using not only skincolor and other readily
distinguishable characteristics, but also craniometry and
phrenology. Then theyattempted to draw correlations with other
measures such as intelligence, whatever thatmeans. Unfortunately,
any subtlety of scientific nuance was lost in jingoism with
imperialist and/orcolonialist agendas. And the entire efforts were
generally used to help justify those Romantic agendas,revealing
perhaps a hidden motivation for a particular outcome.
But from the fuzzy point of view, it is all right that many
people dont fit neatly into one or another of thesecontinental
racial categories. Also, while intelligence and other aspects of
personal character may bedetermined to some extent by genetic
factors, race plays only a small and fuzzy role. Epigenetic
andenvironmental factors are just as important if not more so.
The blogger Steve Sailer suggests that while race is a fuzzy
concept, nevertheless it can be useful at amuch finer-grained level
than the five continental races. In support of his view, Sailer
poses the followingquiz:
Which of these four conflicts are between different races and
which are merely clashesbetween some other kinds of groups?
1. President Mugabe`s black supporters vs. white farm-owners in
Zimbabwe
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2. Sudan`s civil war between the brown people in the North and
the black people in theSouth
3. Rwanda`s civil war between the tall black Tutsis and the
short black Hutus
4. The Troubles in Northern Ireland between Catholics (often
red-headed) and Protestants(often red-headed).
And if you think you know the answer to which of these fights
are between races and whichare not, please try to explain to
yourself why you drew the line where you did.
Contrary to Sailer, I would suggest that while the concept of
race might make most sense for case 1(black vs. white in Zimbabwe),
the other conflicts are between what I would prefer to define as
ethnicgroups. An ethnic group would be any distinguishable subset
of one of the larger continental races.Whether an ethnic group is
defined by geographic, political or religious boundaries, all of
these boundarieslead to a degree of inbreeding. This is the key
genetic definition of an ethnic group.
There are a great many distinguishable ethnic groups on Earth,
and the processes of history tend toalternately raise and lower the
barriers between these groups. Thus, those ethnic groups which
areneighbors (either geographically or in some other shared
history) tend to be relatively similar to eachother; while those
drawn from far-distant regions are more distinctive. When we
compare, say, an ethnicgroup from Africa, against another from
Northern Europe, the differences are undeniable. So, we
feelcomfortable with the conclusion that the groups are from
different races as well as different ethnic groups.When it comes to
Scotsmen and Irishmen (even including the effects of Viking and
other invaders), thegenetic boundary is far less clear, and so we
consider that the difference is ethnic rather than racial.
Butagain, the difference between race and ethnic group is a fuzzy
concept.
America is essentially a melting pot of mixed ancestry going
back many generations, so most or all localstructure is probably
lost, aside from the continental racial makeup: even today only
about 5% of couplingsin the USA are inter-racial. However, in
Europe, it is still not that hard to find individuals who can say
thatall four of their grandparents were born within a few miles of
their present place of residence. People suchas these living in the
UK were thetarget of a recent study by Leslieet al. They found that
theautosomal DNA samples fromthese individuals could beclustered
into a fine structure ofseventeen groups whichcorresponded to
geographiclocality with very few outliers, asshown in the figure
below. Thesamples from southern / centralEngland were
morehomogeneous over a broaderarea than any other region.
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An early 20th century view of the Five Races of Man.
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Similar techniques, of course, can readily be used to
distinguish groups such as Ashkenazi or SephardicJews, not only as
to their Jewish aspect, but also as to their particular European
region of origin. EranElhaik (2012) was able to show that European
Ashkenazi Jews, whose autosomal genetic signature haslong been
known, are more similar to Georgians and Armenians from the
Caucasus and contain morerecent DNA contributions from that region,
compared to Palestinian populations. The European Jews arealso
related to Palestinians, but at a more ancient distance. Elhaik
concludes that this supports the theoryof a Khazarian sojourn for
these European Jews.
While this result is historically interesting, for the purposes
of this article it is mainly relevant to note that
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the technology is readily available to ascertain whether the DNA
of any individual is strongly related to theEuropean Ashkenazi
Jewish population, or for that matter any other ethnic group
located nationwide.
But
The Oligarchs are also a fuzzy set!Based on most available
objective criteria (political power, wealth, influence) the set of
oligarchs blendssmoothly into the set of merely important people,
which in turn blends smoothly into the upper class, andfrom there
into the middle class. Many secret societies exist, and in many
cases we know something aboutthe membership of these societies, but
not necessarily who their core policymakers or beneficiaries
are.Thus, there is no particular boundary unless there is some
secret list of names in the book of life that ismaintained in some
secret library, but we are not going to get access to that library
any time soon. Geneticand/or genealogical analysis may reveal a
surprise, that there is some small set of people who are nearlyas
conscientiously inbred as the Surui tribe.
But whats more likely is that some sort of fuzzy relationship
will be revealed between the nobles ofEurope, the Jews, and modern
oligarchs; and that the historical hypotheses discussed above will
beverified or falsified to some extent.
Discuss in forum!
Revision history: rev 1.0, 10/22/2014
Genetics of the Oligarchs: Eloi, or Upstarts?The EloiModel of
Elite GeneticsThe Upstart model: JudaismAscending?Eloi model,
revisitedThe concept of species and sub-species in modern
biologyRaces and ethnic groupsGenetics and family treesInbreeding
and pedigree collapseMeasures of inbreedingWho were our
ancestors?Race and LocalityThe Oligarchs are also a fuzzy set!