The other day I read an interesting post in A Replicated Typo about the role of blogs in scientific research. We could be debating this issue for hours, even days, without really reaching any kind of conclusion, but at least one thing seems true: the interaction between popular science and formal scientific discourse is now at a different level, and that's interesting. This reminds me of a quote by archaeologist Catherine Hills (2007: 18): "Popular presentations, because simplified for clarity, often show more immediately the outlines and implications of an argument which may be nuanced, modified, even fudged, in scholarly writing". And she's quite right.
Who knows? Maybe blogs are already playing an important role in redefining scientific practices and discourse. I have been publishing posts in this blog for more than two years and now I am also working on my own dissertation about historical linguistics, so I am in an intermediate position between those two spheres. In my case, there is no doubt that the blogging experience has influenced the way I approach the task of researching. The problem, now, is time. I have a full-time job as a teacher and a full dissertation to write, which means I will probably have to stop blogging, or at least I will not be able to publish long elaborate posts for some time. We'll see.
References:
- Hills, Catherine (2007). "Anglo-Saxon attitudes", in N. Higham, ed., Britons in Anglo-Saxon England. Rochester: The Boydell Press.
Showing posts with label Human Sciences. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Human Sciences. Show all posts
3 October 2010
8 November 2009
Migrations in prehistory
The concept of c
ontinuity/discontinuity is essential in any science attempting to study human past. Archaeologists, for example, try to determine whether a given material culture had a local origin or was brought from somewhere else, producing a break in the the continuum of cultural elements. For historical linguists it is essential to establish the length of time that a given language or group of languages was or has been spoken in a given territory, and whether they're the result of continuity or 'substitution'. On the other hand, population geneticists try to produce maps where genes and human populations are distributed along a timeline of thousands of years, trying to reveal the actual story of human origins and migration. In principle, the results obtained in these scientific disciplines are independent of each other; establishing the continuity of a prehistorical material culture does not necessarily imply the continuity of a language; population discontinuity caused by migration does not necessarily involve language discontinuity, and so on. However, it is sometimes possible to put the various types of data together in search of common patterns. This, in fact, is possibly one of the main challenges for the human sciences at present and in the future.
In this blog I have often written about continuity/discontinuity in language, and have also drawn some paralellisms with population studies and archaeology. Today I want to focus on population genetics in particular. Or more exactly, on the patterns of genetic continuity/discontinuity in Europe.
Are modern Europeans the descendants of the people who lived in their area in the Paleolithic, or is their genetic heritage the result of later migrations? This basic question has kept a couple of generations of population geneticists quite busy, and it seems that a general agreement is far from being reached. Some authors, e.g. Bryan Sykes and Steven Oppenheimer, have proposed that most of the genetic material of modern Europeans can be traced back to local Paleolithic populations. Others think that the percentage of genetic input from later migration is higher. One of the most important factors affecting this issue is the type of technology or methodology used in the analysis. The pioneering studies of Cavalli-Sforza in the 1960s, which seemed to support the Neolithic demic diffusion model, may now be considered obsolete, especially because of the dated technology used then. These technologies are improved and multiplied constantly, including for example the possibility of analysing 'old bones', i.e. the genetic material found in ancient human remains; as a consequence, the debate on the origins of European populations has become more complex, and indeed quite interesting. A new theory is proposed one day and the next there is new contradictory evidence found by means of a more accurate technique. Needless to say, it is difficult for a non-geneticist to follow the
se developments, but ayone studying language prehistory must be aware of this debate.
As I said earlier, Steven Oppenheimer can be seen as one of the proponents of the indigenist theory of European populations. I have recently read a couple of blog posts (this one and this one) whose auhtor, Dienekes Pontikos, provides evidence against the indigenous theory and the validity of Oppenheimer's methodology. He goes as far as to say that the indigenous theory has definitely been 'demolished', and that the genetic components of modern European populations derive mostly from post-Paleolithic migratory events. He offers links to some recent articles written by geneticists who would support this migrationist view. What do I make of all this? I am sure that there must be some faults in Oppenheimer's methodology, and that some of his conclusions can be revised or even refuted, as usually happens in the scientific domain, but I am not so sure that the counter-arguments used by Dienekes are as conclusive as he claims them to be. These two posts have generated a massive amount of comments (222 in one case), sometimes from people who are currently researching on population genetics, and it seems that the indigenous/migrationist debate is still open. And it will be so in the future, with the development of newer techniques. Now we are in November 2009. What can we say about European population genetics? Can we give numbers, percentages of 'indigenous genes' versus 'migration genes'? Let's take the Basque Country, Switzerland, Lazio, Greece or any other European area. Is it possible to determine whether the current populations of these areas are to a greater or lesser extent the descendants of the people who lived there in the Paleolithic? Or is the role of migration greater than some cholars thought a few years ago? I think the answer to these questions is not clear yet.
ontinuity/discontinuity is essential in any science attempting to study human past. Archaeologists, for example, try to determine whether a given material culture had a local origin or was brought from somewhere else, producing a break in the the continuum of cultural elements. For historical linguists it is essential to establish the length of time that a given language or group of languages was or has been spoken in a given territory, and whether they're the result of continuity or 'substitution'. On the other hand, population geneticists try to produce maps where genes and human populations are distributed along a timeline of thousands of years, trying to reveal the actual story of human origins and migration. In principle, the results obtained in these scientific disciplines are independent of each other; establishing the continuity of a prehistorical material culture does not necessarily imply the continuity of a language; population discontinuity caused by migration does not necessarily involve language discontinuity, and so on. However, it is sometimes possible to put the various types of data together in search of common patterns. This, in fact, is possibly one of the main challenges for the human sciences at present and in the future.In this blog I have often written about continuity/discontinuity in language, and have also drawn some paralellisms with population studies and archaeology. Today I want to focus on population genetics in particular. Or more exactly, on the patterns of genetic continuity/discontinuity in Europe.
Are modern Europeans the descendants of the people who lived in their area in the Paleolithic, or is their genetic heritage the result of later migrations? This basic question has kept a couple of generations of population geneticists quite busy, and it seems that a general agreement is far from being reached. Some authors, e.g. Bryan Sykes and Steven Oppenheimer, have proposed that most of the genetic material of modern Europeans can be traced back to local Paleolithic populations. Others think that the percentage of genetic input from later migration is higher. One of the most important factors affecting this issue is the type of technology or methodology used in the analysis. The pioneering studies of Cavalli-Sforza in the 1960s, which seemed to support the Neolithic demic diffusion model, may now be considered obsolete, especially because of the dated technology used then. These technologies are improved and multiplied constantly, including for example the possibility of analysing 'old bones', i.e. the genetic material found in ancient human remains; as a consequence, the debate on the origins of European populations has become more complex, and indeed quite interesting. A new theory is proposed one day and the next there is new contradictory evidence found by means of a more accurate technique. Needless to say, it is difficult for a non-geneticist to follow the
se developments, but ayone studying language prehistory must be aware of this debate.As I said earlier, Steven Oppenheimer can be seen as one of the proponents of the indigenist theory of European populations. I have recently read a couple of blog posts (this one and this one) whose auhtor, Dienekes Pontikos, provides evidence against the indigenous theory and the validity of Oppenheimer's methodology. He goes as far as to say that the indigenous theory has definitely been 'demolished', and that the genetic components of modern European populations derive mostly from post-Paleolithic migratory events. He offers links to some recent articles written by geneticists who would support this migrationist view. What do I make of all this? I am sure that there must be some faults in Oppenheimer's methodology, and that some of his conclusions can be revised or even refuted, as usually happens in the scientific domain, but I am not so sure that the counter-arguments used by Dienekes are as conclusive as he claims them to be. These two posts have generated a massive amount of comments (222 in one case), sometimes from people who are currently researching on population genetics, and it seems that the indigenous/migrationist debate is still open. And it will be so in the future, with the development of newer techniques. Now we are in November 2009. What can we say about European population genetics? Can we give numbers, percentages of 'indigenous genes' versus 'migration genes'? Let's take the Basque Country, Switzerland, Lazio, Greece or any other European area. Is it possible to determine whether the current populations of these areas are to a greater or lesser extent the descendants of the people who lived there in the Paleolithic? Or is the role of migration greater than some cholars thought a few years ago? I think the answer to these questions is not clear yet.
22 August 2008
Paul Shepard
Some time ago I read a very interesting article written by Matteo Meschiari: Terra Sapiens. Per una preistoria del paesaggio (in Quaderni di Semantica, LVII, 1/2008). You can read the text in Italian here, and the English translation here. The topic of this article is the connection between landscape and prehistoric mind, in the context of Human Ecology. It was here that I first heard about the American ecologist Paul Shepard and his original ideas about the mentality and ideology of prehistoric humans. Needless to say, if we want to understand how human langua
ge emerged and evolved during the Paleolithic it is necessary to try to imagine the characteristics of human life and ideology at those early times. I have just read Paul Shepard's Coming Home to the Pleistocene, a book that he finished shortly before his death in 1996 and that was published posthumously in 1998 (you can find more information about the author’s life and works here). In this book, Paul Shepard summarizes some of his ideas about human ecology and the mind of hunter/gatherer societies. It is not only a book written by a scientist, but also the work of a thinker who is concerned with the ecological and social problems of our age, for which he provides interesting insights.
The central idea of this book is that our genetic endowment as humans, our genome, was formed in the Pleistocene, in the context of hunter/gatherer societies and the ecological environment of those times. Therefore, Paul Shepard argues, later developments such as the invention of agriculture and the rise of cities and urban life have detached us from the kind of life and environment that our species was designed for. The misadjustment between human genome and modern urban life can be seen, for example, in the emergence of all kinds of medical and psychological problems that affect our society, and also in the environmental crisis that we have caused throughout millennia of non-ecological existence. Paul Shepard gives many examples of this and insists once and again that the reason behind these phenomena is our detachment from the original adaptive niche of our species.
I find his ideas about human ecology really illuminating, in the sense that they help us understand prehistoric society in connection with our own. However, I also see some weak points in his analyses, which are sometimes a bit too speculative and philosophical. For example, I find his chapter about the emergence and expansion of pastoralist societies quite erroneous. He assumes the traditional theory that sees Indo-Europeans as a Late-Neolithic pastoralist group that expanded throughout Europe and Asia in the 3rd millennium BC, and draws many conclusions from it. Unfortunately, Shepard’s opinions are misled by this traditional (and basically wrong) corpus of theories about IE origins; on the other hand, he tries to explain something as complex as the emergence of pastoralist societies in a simplistic ways. In any case, however, it must be said that the weaknesses in the exposition of some of his ideas do not invalidate the main lines of Shepard’s proposals. Possibly, they are in need of further development, and there are some authors, such as Meschiari, who are presently researching in this direction.
Coming Home to the Pleistocene is, on the whole, an appealing book. It touches the heart of our own human existence. Let’s see an example from the text:
(p. 143): “Wildness, pushed to the perimeters of human settlement during most of the ten millennia since the Pleistocene, has now begun to disappear from the earth, taking the world’s otherness of free plants and animals with it. The loss is usually spoken of in terms of ecosystems or the beauty of the world, but for humans, spiritually and psychologically, the true loss is internal. It is our own otherness within.”
ge emerged and evolved during the Paleolithic it is necessary to try to imagine the characteristics of human life and ideology at those early times. I have just read Paul Shepard's Coming Home to the Pleistocene, a book that he finished shortly before his death in 1996 and that was published posthumously in 1998 (you can find more information about the author’s life and works here). In this book, Paul Shepard summarizes some of his ideas about human ecology and the mind of hunter/gatherer societies. It is not only a book written by a scientist, but also the work of a thinker who is concerned with the ecological and social problems of our age, for which he provides interesting insights.The central idea of this book is that our genetic endowment as humans, our genome, was formed in the Pleistocene, in the context of hunter/gatherer societies and the ecological environment of those times. Therefore, Paul Shepard argues, later developments such as the invention of agriculture and the rise of cities and urban life have detached us from the kind of life and environment that our species was designed for. The misadjustment between human genome and modern urban life can be seen, for example, in the emergence of all kinds of medical and psychological problems that affect our society, and also in the environmental crisis that we have caused throughout millennia of non-ecological existence. Paul Shepard gives many examples of this and insists once and again that the reason behind these phenomena is our detachment from the original adaptive niche of our species.
I find his ideas about human ecology really illuminating, in the sense that they help us understand prehistoric society in connection with our own. However, I also see some weak points in his analyses, which are sometimes a bit too speculative and philosophical. For example, I find his chapter about the emergence and expansion of pastoralist societies quite erroneous. He assumes the traditional theory that sees Indo-Europeans as a Late-Neolithic pastoralist group that expanded throughout Europe and Asia in the 3rd millennium BC, and draws many conclusions from it. Unfortunately, Shepard’s opinions are misled by this traditional (and basically wrong) corpus of theories about IE origins; on the other hand, he tries to explain something as complex as the emergence of pastoralist societies in a simplistic ways. In any case, however, it must be said that the weaknesses in the exposition of some of his ideas do not invalidate the main lines of Shepard’s proposals. Possibly, they are in need of further development, and there are some authors, such as Meschiari, who are presently researching in this direction.
Coming Home to the Pleistocene is, on the whole, an appealing book. It touches the heart of our own human existence. Let’s see an example from the text:
(p. 143): “Wildness, pushed to the perimeters of human settlement during most of the ten millennia since the Pleistocene, has now begun to disappear from the earth, taking the world’s otherness of free plants and animals with it. The loss is usually spoken of in terms of ecosystems or the beauty of the world, but for humans, spiritually and psychologically, the true loss is internal. It is our own otherness within.”
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