[extropy-chat] Why Progress Might Slow Down

[kevinfreels at hotmail.com]

> Especially since the claim is wrong. Historically, rural America, which
> was most of America prior to the 20th century, was heavily homogenous
> and inbred. Social instruments prevented ethnic, religious, and caste
> cross breeding. Catholics, Jews, Orthodox, and Protestants all looked
> down on marrying outside one's religion. Same thing with ethnic groups,
> some times to very violent degrees of enforcement (lynching for whites
> and blacks marrying). Well educated parents looked down on marrying
> uneducated, wealthy looked down on marrying beneath ones own kind.
> There was little upward mobility by marriage in pre-20th century
> America, all socio-economic mobility occured via industriousness, but
> still did not remove social pressures against crossing ethnic and
> religious barriers.
>
> Even with the westward migration, ethnic groups tended to cluster unto
> themselves. Germanics, Norwegian, Swedes, Dutch, Scotch, Irish,
> Hispanics, Italians, etc all tended to cluster, and when the clustered,
> they inbred.

OK. I know I am sticking my neck out to be chopped off, but I have to
totally disagree here. History has shown that at each and every opportunity,
human beings will have have sex with anything that moves.

In "Mapping Human History: Discovering Our Past Through Our Genes" Steve
Olson takes an in depth look at both the male Y haplotypes and mitochondrial
DNA. Both show the extensinve outbreeding of various ethnic and religious
people's of the world. Yes, inbreeding and isolation created much of the
races we see today, but since the dawn of language and trade, this has been
reversing itself. When you look at people such as the Jewish community, you
see that although their religion doesn;t allow for breeding outside their
group, it has happened frequently enough that their DNA is almost
indistinguishable from others in the larger middle-eastern region. As you
leave the region, the spread of the genes "feathers" into the next region.
People from regions a long distance away may share little with each other,
but as you get geographically closer, the genetics become more similar
regardless of the religious or ethnic affiliation.
Although whites and blacks were "lynched" for being together, it happend
frequently enough that most whites have a little black in them and
vice-versa. In fact, many whites share more DNA similarities with blacks
than with other whites.
Unless a population were totally isolated for a long period of time, you
wouldn;t have this. One man walking past an isolated community and raping a
woman from that community in the forest can completely disrupt this
isolation.
Heck, all you have to do is look at the number of people willing to have sex
with farm animals and you will know just how promiscuous humans beings are.
Although mating with people outside their religion and/or ethnic groups has
always been looked down upon, and the tendency to "cluster" cannot be
denied, a look at the DNA shows that outbreeding happens much more
frequently than it is admitted to.
Kevin Freels