On the Need for More Interdisciplinariness in "Interdisciplinary" Studies

Ah, if they were all as good as Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza.  The pioneer of interdisciplinary studies, and a Renaissance man, he would thoroughly immerse himself in genetics, demography, history, archaeology, and linguistics -- or find collaborators who could augment his knowledge.  Thus, his work SAW THE BIG PICTURE. 

A new paper out shows that modern "interdisciplinary" studies aren't so interdisciplinary at all.

It's called Mapping European Population Movement through Genomic Research by Patrick J. Geary and Krishna Veeramah.  You can read it by clicking here.

The authors show that many geneticists writing about history simply pick up some bogus two-bit history book.  That is why you get so much pseudo-science out there.

I once talked to a guy, a fairly educated scientist from another discipline, who felt he saw some marker in European genes.  So he did some google searches as to which tribe had ever moved in the rough place where he found the markers.  He then published a paper claiming he found a Cimbri-specific marker.  But he didn't read the rest of the history; had he done so, he would have grasped perhaps that that tribe was wiped out by Gaius Marius in the first century BC....

The paper also points out that there isn't enough precision in genetics, because geneticists don't bother to understand that different regions have different histories.  What good is knowing some person was French, without logging if that person is Provencal or Norman?  Very little....

Best quote from the paper: "The Ralph and Coop study, while highly rigorous at the level of the population genetic analysis, included no historians or archaeologists, and the only historical literature cited, presumably to »identify« the Hunnic contribution to European population, was a general history of Europe, a survey of Slavic history, and two articles in the New Cambridge Medieval History. The Busby et al. study also included no historians or archaeologists on its team, and the only historical literature cited was a Penguin History of the World, Peter Heather’s survey of the Early Middle Ages, and a survey of Muslims in Italy. Unlike these studies, designed and executed  exclusively by geneticists who then look through a few general historical handbooks to try to find stories that might explain their data..."

In other words, many scientific papers suffer from the same thing that plagues the Anthrogenica or even worse, Maciamo's horrifically bad Eupedia: "a LITTLE knowledge is dangerous."  They don't bother grasping the big picture in genetics, demography, history, archaeology, and linguistics...

The Sad Case of the Orthodoxy and the Posth Article on Pleistocene Demographics

Just a couple months ago, in the context of the peopling of Ireland, I emphasized on Eupeida (and here) how important it is to put all the Theories Du Jour that are based on modern uniparental distributions through a model based on population demographics and sound logic.

Specifically, I emphasized that ancient population sizes were minuscule compared to modern ones, and that if a population started a long long time ago, with a size that was way way small -- compared to subsequent waves -- that it would give a false signal that the original population was "conquered" or "outcompeted" or "never existed" or originated somewhere incorrect.   I cautioned against those four errors.  

This engendered quite the debate on Eupedia forums.  When backed into a corner and shown the weakness of his "R1b Were Studly Conquerors Theory," the "blindly following the current orthodoxy" folks react badly.
 
Many "Interwebz Scientistz" fail to grasp these concepts.  They favor their own wacky, biased theories based on what they see today only.  If a land is populated by one people, they must be all conquering studs, right?

Today, Posth et. al put out an extensive paper on Pleistocene demographics.  

Its shocking discovery?  Just like Y DNA Hg C existed in Europe in tiny numbers among the very first Europeans, so did mtDNA Hg M.

M disappeared eventually, due to the simple fact that its initial population size was tiny, and that because it had been there so long, the odds that certain women didn't have daughters, each generation, eventually meant it was not passed on.  Remember, we're talking uniparental markers here.  

The authors commented exactly as I did: up to now, people mistakenly believed that Hg M never set foot in Europe -- or that if it did, it was killed off or whatever by a new wave.  Sorry, both theories are wrong.

It is WONDERFUL to see another peer-reviewed, scholarly paper making this exact same point, and backing it up with newfound data.

As the paper indicates:

-These first hunter gatherers started with a TINY initial population size.

-There is a loss every generation of males having males or females having female offspring.

-I've calculated the approximate odds of a male not having a male child or a female not having a female child (i.e. looking like their uniparental marker was "conquered") at 12.5%, each generation, totally random.

-The longer a population has existed in a locale (and being free of mutations), the more generations go by, the greater the chance that random happenstance, chance, etc. will make it appear that a Hg either never existed or was slaughtered in a mass killing/enslavement/mate preference.

Now you have further proof of it.

I'm waiting to hear how Hg M died out because of some studly new more beautiful females who moved in.  Oh woops, Maciamo doesn't post here.  And he doesn't himself bear Hg M.  And M is not linked to R1b...