Our personality is, at least in part, determined by our genes--and therefore has a heritable basis. Biologically, personality (and its individual components, such as levels of empathy, courageousness, capacity for compassion, and so forth) must be governed by extremely complex genetic and epigenetic interactions--in addition to environmental factors. It is likely that the precise genes and biological mechanisms which determine personality will not be known for many decades, and perhaps centuries. Environmental factors which can affect personality and behavior (such as childhood trauma, disciplining the mind and body through martial arts, constant exposure to advanced persuasion/manipulation techniques (e.g. as are found in advertising, schools, and child-rearing manuals), and consciously attempting to emulate the qualities of someone we admire) have been studied in greater depth; but ultimately the raw material which places some constraints on us and innately places us into some 'mold' to begin with (no matter how malleable this mold might be) is our DNA.
So, while it is not possible in the present day to test someone's DNA to directly determine if they are an Aryan,* we can estimate the probability someone might possess Aryan heritage by examining the traits that have been affected by selection for a farming lifestyle--which we know from the archaeological, historical, and mythological record to be closely correlated with the emergence of Aryan moral and spiritual traits.
Therefore, we use terms such as "Aryan lifestyle" to refer to the farming lifestyle which emerged during the Neolithic era, because such a lifestyle selected for Aryan spiritual and personality traits (via removing the necessity for violence against animals and inter-group competition for food resources, thereby decreasing tribalism and increasing empathy for other human and non-human individuals); and "Aryan-looking" to refer to individuals who have gracile ectomorphic skeletons and Oval-shaped faces, because such skeletal traits have been found in Neolithic farming populations across the globe (including ethnically unrelated groups) in contrast to the more robust and Square-faced skeletons of Paleolithic hunting groups (including groups which were ethnically similar to the farming populations!) But we must always remember that that an individual is not an Aryan merely because of how they look or how their ancestors may have lived, but by whether they express noble qualities such as empathy, selflessness, and universal compassion. We hope that one day it will be possible to directly search for and select for these personality and spiritual qualities, rendering it unnecessary to use correlated traits which do not directly affect nobility as estimators of potential Aryan blood memory, but until then it is useful to study them. Indeed, individuals with adaptations for a farming lifestyle will find it easier to live an Aryan lifestyle (which demands eating a vegan diet).
* [If it wasn't obvious from the paragraphs above, I want to make it absolutely clear: BEING AN ARYAN AND/OR POSSESSING ARYAN HERITAGE/DNA/BLOOD HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH ETHNICITY!!! Aryan traits can be found in individuals on every continent from every ethnic cluster (which are erroneously called "races" in common speech). By definition, White Supremacists and others who ignobly discriminate against individuals based on arbitrary tribal lines CAN NEVER BE ARYAN!]
The Seeds and Fruits of the Neolithic Revolution
Contrary to claims made by advocates of the "Paleo diet" and other people who possess Paleolithic blood memory, humans did not stop evolving at the end of the Paleolithic era. In addition to centuries of skeletal studies and decades of genetic studies proving that some populations evolved in a unique direction during the Neolithic era in response to adopting a farming-based economy, cutting edge genetic studies are just recently beginning to shed light on specific genes which have changed in response to a plant-based diet. These changes did not affect all human groups, however. So, Paleo fans are not being totally disingenuous when they say some people are still stuck in the stone age stage of evolution.
Aryanists believe that the continuous selective pressure from a farming lifestyle (where there is no need to kill animals, unlike hunting and herding lifestyles which require it; and where there is more efficient use of land and therefore less necessity for conflict with other humans over hunting or grazing territory), over the course of thousands of years managed to forge populations with higher amounts of empathy, compassion, and preference towards a transcendental-based rather than worldly-based spiritual sense. After some time, however, hunting and herding populations also adopted farming due to its higher efficiency, and the complex economies which came with city-states and civilizations lessened the power of farming-lifestyle selection and allowed mixing between hunting, herding, and farming populations which had previously been mostly isolated.
Since everyone alive today is the result of thousands of years of genetic mixing between populations, there is no such thing as a "pure Aryan" (anyone who claims they are "pure" or has a test a test to "prove" it is probably a WN). We believe that present-day individuals who possess mutations which proved advantageous during the transition to farming in the Neolithic era are more likely to possess Aryan heritage and therefore express Aryan blood memory.
There have been countless number of skeletal and genomic studies done to demonstrate that farming technology was transmitted largely through migration of farming populations, and subsequent mixing with earlier non-farming populations. However, these studies on their own don't tell us which particular genes were responsible for adaptation to an agricultural diet. Knowing that "haplogroup whatever" was predominant in a certain group of ancient farmers might be of useful academic interest on the population level, but on the individual level (which is what Aryanists care about), haplogroups, which are just junk DNA, are meaningless and vary widely even within single ethnic groups. We must study the genes that actually matter.
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One interesting gene connected to a plant-heavy diet is the salivary amylase gene (AMY1), which aids in the digestion of starch. Cultivated foods which are high in starch are abundant and include cereal grains (as well as their derivatives, such as flour), rice, corn, potatoes, peas, and beans. The number of copies of AMY1 varies greatly among individuals and has been positively selected for in populations which consume a starch-heavy diet.
Copy number of pancreatic amylase (AMY2) is correlated with AMY1 copy number, but its copy numbers do not vary as greatly as AMY1 (Carpenter et al. 2015).
"The digestion of dietary starch in humans is initiated by salivary α-amylase, an endo-enzyme that hydrolyzes starch into maltose, maltotriose and larger oligosaccharides. Salivary amylase accounts for 40 to 50% of protein in human saliva and rapidly alters the physical properties of starch." (Mandel et al. 2010).
"Comparisons with other loci in a subset of these populations suggest that the extent of AMY1 copy number differentiation is highly unusual. This example of positive selection on a copy number–variable gene is, to our knowledge, one of the first discovered in the human genome. Higher AMY1 copy numbers and protein levels probably improve the digestion of starchy foods and may buffer against the fitness-reducing effects of intestinal disease." (Perry et al. 2007).
"Notably, the proportion of individuals from the combined high-starch sample with at least six AMY1 copies (70%) was nearly two times greater than that for low-starch populations (37%)." (Perry et al. 2007).
"The among-population patterns of AMY1 copy number variation do not fit expectations under a simple geographical region–based model of genetic drift: our high- and low-starch samples include both African and Asian populations, suggesting that diet more strongly predicts AMY1 copy number than geographic proximity. Based on this observation, we hypothesized that natural selection may have influenced AMY1 copy number in certain human populations." (Perry et al. 2007).
Copy number of the amylase gene was significantly different between populations with low starch diets (in this study: hunters, pastoralists, and fishers) and populations with high starch diets (in this study: modernized countries which have historically relied on agriculture and a hunter-gatherer population which makes high use of starchy roots and tubers). The fact that one of the hunter-gatherer groups showed high AMY1 levels may provide insight into why certain groups successfully adopted agriculture 10,000+ years ago while others presumably had the opportunity to upgrade their gathering and attempt fullscale agriculture, but instead abandoned any rudimentary attempts at farming and continued primarily hunting.
In addition to differences in copy number, it has been observed that the activity of the AMY1 gene is upregulated (increased) when individuals eat diets high in starch, regardless of how many copies they have to begin with. Of course, individuals with higher copy numbers will be able to produce more amylase proteins (and therefore have more efficient starch digestion) overall.
"The question however arose as to whether such differences in salivary amylase concentration were really due to diet or whether some racial factor was also involved. Owing to the impossibility, under present circumstances, of arranging for the groups described above to live on a different diet for a suitable period of time, this question cannot yet be answered completely, and at one time the dilemma appeared insuperable.
Fortunately, however, a rare opportunity arose of examining the saliva of five Bushmen who had been held as court witnesses. At the time of the examination they had lived for 3 months on a ration which included ...far more carbohydrate than these subjects were accustomed to consume. Examination of their saliva gave the following mean results for amylase activity: ...95 units[/ml]. This figure is more than 4 times that recorded for the Bushmen of group II..." (Squires 1953).
"Group II, ten in number, was composed of Bushmen of the Kalahari desert. These little people, who are purely nomadic, are almost entirely carnivorous..." (Squires 1953).
(Admittedly, this study had a low sample size, but it seems more detailed and recent studies are lacking.)
Copy number of the AMY1 gene is not the only factor affecting the amount of amylase protein produced. A recent study shows that, while AMY1 copy number is an important factor in salivary amylase expression, other yet unknown factors also have significant effects (Carpenter, Mitchell, and Armour 2017). As seen in the Squires (1953) study, current diet is likely one of these factors.
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"FADS genes encode fatty acid desaturases that are important for the conversion of short chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) to long chain fatty acids." (Buckley et al. 2017).
"The FADS genes seem to have been frequent targets of natural selection throughout human history as our diet has been changing as a consequence of new hunting or agricultural practices", says Rasmus Nielsen, a professor of Integrative Biology at UC Berkeley, and co-author of a new study on selection on FADS genes in Europe.
...
They found that certain single DNA mutations (SNPs) have been targeted by selection in Europeans since the Bronze Age, and likely before that as well, to increase the production of the long-chain PUFAs: arachidonic and eicosapentaenoic acid. This pattern mirrors the one observed in some Indian populations but is exactly opposite of that observed in the Greenlandic Inuit. Individuals on a more vegetarian diet ingest more short-chain PUFAs, while individuals having a high intake of animal fat ingest more long-chain PUFAs. The need for additional production of these PUFAs, therefore, depends on the dietary intake. As Inuit switched to a diet based on marine mammals, they would need to produce fewer long-chain PUFAs, but when people in India switched to a more vegetarian diet they would need to increase the production.Source: https://phys.org/news/2017-03-agriculture-dietary-fat-metabolism-ancient.html
"We hypothesize that Europeans may be in the process of adapting to a diet rich in fatty acids derived from plant sources, but relatively poor in fatty acids derived from fish or mammals," said Nielsen. "The introduction and spread of agriculture in Europe likely produced a radical dietary shift in populations that embraced this practice. Agricultural diets would have led to a higher consumption of grains and other plant-derived foods, relative to hunter-gatherer populations. Alleles that increase the production long-chain PUFAs would, therefore, have been favored."
"We hypothesize that the selective patterns observed in Europeans were driven by a change in dietary composition of fatty acids following the transition to agriculture, resulting in a lower intake of arachidonic acid and eicosapentaenoic acid, but a higher intake of linoleic acid and α-linolenic acid." (Buckley et al. 2017).
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While many individuals with Paleolithic blood memory are WNs who like to boast about the uniqueness of their pale skin (which is not actually unique to Europe, nor do all Europeans even have pale skin), recent studies have found that Paleolithic hunters tended to have darker skin than the average modern European. In Europe outside of Scandinavia, lighter skin only became prevalent after the spread of farming necessitated that individuals get more vitamin D from sunlight, since plant-based diets provide less vitamin D than meat-based diets.
When it comes to skin color, the team found a patchwork of evolution in different places, and three separate genes that produce light skin, telling a complex story for how European’s skin evolved to be much lighter during the past 8000 years. The modern humans who came out of Africa to originally settle Europe about 40,000 years are presumed to have had dark skin, which is advantageous in sunny latitudes. And the new data confirm that about 8500 years ago, early hunter-gatherers in Spain, Luxembourg, and Hungary also had darker skin: They lacked versions of two genes—SLC24A5 and SLC45A2—that lead to depigmentation and, therefore, pale skin in Europeans today.Source: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/04/how-europeans-evolved-white-skin
But in the far north—where low light levels would favor pale skin—the team found a different picture in hunter-gatherers: Seven people from the 7700-year-old Motala archaeological site in southern Sweden had both light skin gene variants, SLC24A5 and SLC45A2. They also had a third gene, HERC2/OCA2, which causes blue eyes and may also contribute to light skin and blond hair. Thus ancient hunter-gatherers of the far north were already pale and blue-eyed, but those of central and southern Europe had darker skin.
Then, the first farmers from the Near East arrived in Europe; they carried both genes for light skin. As they interbred with the indigenous hunter-gatherers, one of their light-skin genes swept through Europe, so that central and southern Europeans also began to have lighter skin. The other gene variant, SLC45A2, was at low levels until about 5800 years ago when it swept up to high frequency.
The type of light skin possessed by the farming populations is distinct from the type of light skin possessed by the Arctic hunters because the farming populations had the ability to tan (that is, to change the levels of pigment in the skin). Skin pigmentation is a defense against UV radiation, and seasonal UV intensity varies strongly in latitudes between 23° and 46°, making it beneficial to change the amount of pigmentation as needed (Jablonski and Chaplin 2010). This happens to be where many centers of ancient agriculture were located.
In addition, vitamin D is an essential nutrient which can be obtained through diet or synthesized in the skin (using energy from UVB radiation). Individuals eating a plant-heavy diet get less vitamin D from diet than individuals eating a meat-heavy diet. For example, Inuit hunters near the Arctic circle actually have skin many shades darker than other ethnic groups living at lower latitudes, because their diet consists almost exclusively of meat; additionally, the Saami of northern Scandinavia who rely heavily on herding are also darker than non-herding Scandinavians to their south. As we would expect, the rapid spread of light skin genes throughout southern and central Europe corresponds with the timing of farming (and hence adoption of plant-heavy diets), as such genes would be beneficial for warding off vitamin D deficiency.
Genes related to Herding and Hunting lifestyles
Farmers are not the only ones who developed specializations to their lifestyle. Groups which relied extensively on herding and hunting did as well. Like genes related to an agricultural diet, research on specific genes related to herding and hunting are still in the early phases. Individuals with these genes are more likely to have Paleolithic (hunting) or Turanian (herding) heritage and blood memory.
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By the Bronze Age, many groups had adopted a mixed farming-ranching economy, as this was more efficient than farming or herding alone. Because of this, the process of raising animals for food is often erroneously included under the concept of agriculture. In correct usage, agriculture refers solely to the cultivation of plants, coming from Latin "agri" (field) + "cultura" (cultivation). In ancient Europe, the groups which helped the farm-ranch system reach near-universal popularity came long after the first farmers had become established. Indeed, recent studies show adult lactose tolerance evolved many thousands of years after farmers first arrived on the scene, correcting the long-held belief that agriculture and herding were introduced contemporaneously.
The origins of Europeans have come into sharp focus in the past year as researchers have sequenced the genomes of ancient populations, rather than only a few individuals. By comparing key parts of the DNA across the genomes of 83 ancient individuals from archaeological sites throughout Europe, the international team of researchers reported earlier this year that Europeans today are a mix of the blending of at least three ancient populations of hunter-gatherers and farmers who moved into Europe in separate migrations over the past 8000 years. The study revealed that a massive migration of Yamnaya herders from the steppes north of the Black Sea may have brought Indo-European languages to Europe about 4500 years ago.Source: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/04/how-europeans-evolved-white-skin
Now, a new study from the same team drills down further into that remarkable data to search for genes that were under strong natural selection—including traits so favorable that they spread rapidly throughout Europe in the past 8000 years.
...First, the scientists confirmed an earlier report that the hunter-gatherers in Europe could not digest the sugars in milk 8000 years ago, according to a poster. They also noted an interesting twist: The first farmers also couldn’t digest milk. The farmers who came from the Near East about 7800 years ago and the Yamnaya pastoralists who came from the steppes 4800 years ago lacked the version of the LCT gene that allows adults to digest sugars in milk. It wasn’t until about 4300 years ago that lactose tolerance swept through Europe.
"The strongest signal of selection is at the SNP (rs4988235) responsible for lactase persistence in Europe, Our data (Fig. 3) strengthens previous reports that an appreciable frequency of lactase persistence in Europe only dates to the last 4,000 years. The allele’s earliest appearance in the dataset is in a central European Bell Beaker sample (individual I0112) dated to between 2450 and 2140 B.C." (Mathieson et al. 2015).
This study reveals farmers in Europe spent nearly 4 millenia without developing lactose tolerance, but lactose tolerance quickly became prevalent across the entire continent only a few centuries after a herding population (who likely developed this adaptation before they came to Europe, but this was not observed due to low sampling size) moved in. In other words, it seems unlikely that the farmers were under high selective pressure to develop adaptations favorable to milk drinking other traits indicative of a herding lifestyle, but selective pressure became quite high after the pastoralists moved in.
To give evidence that the steppe migrants to Europe likely already had lactose tolerance, individuals with tolerance in central Asia today have the same allele as Europeans, and the timeframe of its spread in central Asia predates the Yamnaya migration into Europe (meaning the Yamnayas couldn't have picked up the allele from Europe and then brought it back over to central Asia).
"Moreover, we have shown that the allele responsible for lactase persistence in Central Asia is the same as the one in Europe (-13.910*T). Indeed, with the use of both BH and BG (“gold standard” phenotype), we found that all lactase persistent individuals carry this allele in the Kazakh as well as in the Tajiko-Uzbek population." (Heyer et al. 2011).
"We propose here the first genotype-phenotype study of lactase persistence in Central Asia based on 183 individuals, as well as the estimation of the time of expansion of the lactase-persistence associated polymorphism. Our results show a remarkable genetic-phenotypic correlation, with the causal polymorphism being the same than in Europe (-13.910C>T, rs4988235). The lactase persistence trait is at low frequency in these populations: between 25% and 32% in the Kazakh population (traditionally herders), according to phenotype used, and between 11% and 30% in the Tajiko-Uzbek population (agriculturalists). The difference in lactase persistence between populations, even if small, is significant... Using the surrounding haplotype, we estimate a date of expansion of the T allele around 6,000-12,000 yrs ago, which is consistent with archaeological records for the emergence of agropastoralism and pastoralism in Central Asia." (Heyer et al. 2011).
If the Yamnaya migrated eastward and replaced local populations in central Asia (persisting there from c. 5,500-2,000 years ago), as some researchers suggest, then they would have certainly been carrying the C>T lactose tolerance allele, because it seems unlikely that pre-Yamnaya groups living in central Asia would have somehow been able to migrate all the way to Europe (in order to spread the C>T allele there), while somehow avoiding diffusing the allele into the Yamnaya bulwark inbetween! It is of course possible that the Yamnaya and ethnically unrelated groups in central Asia had been mixing before the massive migrations took place (given the estimated time of expansion of the C>T allele in central Asia was 6,000-12,000 years ago); in this case, it could have originated in either group.
But in a new twist, one of the studies also found that the Yamnaya headed east from their homeland in the Eurasian steppelands, moving all the way to the Altai Mountains of Siberia, where they replaced local hunter-gatherers. This means that this distinctive culture of pastoralists, who had ox-driven wagons with wheels and whose warriors rode horses, dominated much of Eurasia, from north-central Europe to central Siberia and northern Mongolia. They persisted there until as recently as 2000 years ago. “Now we see the Yamnaya is not only spreading north into Europe; they’re also spreading east, crossing the Urals, getting all the way into central Asia, all the way into the Altai, between Mongolia, China, and Siberia,” says evolutionary biologist Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen, author of one study.Source: http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/06/nomadic-herders-left-strong-genetic-mark-europeans-and-asians
...In one of the new studies, Willerslev’s international team sequenced the genomes of 101 ancient people from across Europe. They found that the Yamnaya of the Samara Valley in the northern steppe of Russia were genetically indistinguishable from the Afanasievo of the Altai in the Yenesey region of southern Siberia, which confirms archaeologists’ suggestions that there was a vast migration of steppe pastoralists to the east. But unlike in Europe where the Yamnaya interbred with local farmers, the Yamnaya moving east completely replaced the local hunter-gatherers—perhaps because this region was only sparsely populated, Willerslev says.
Does this map look familiar?
Confirming our suspicions, a different study appeared shortly after demonstrating that the Yamnaya did indeed have the lactose tolerance mutation:
Interestingly, the cultures with the most individuals with this mutation [lactose tolerance] were the Yamnaya and their descendents. These results suggest that the mutation may have originated on the steppe and entered Europe with the Yamnaya. A combination of natural selection working on this advantageous trait and the advantageous Yamnaya culture passed down alongside it could then have helped it spread, although this process still had far to go during the bronze age.Source: http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press/think-leicester/science-and-environment/2015/ancient-dna-reveals-how-europeans-developed-light-skin-and-lactose-tolerance
Lactose tolerance did not just evolve in Europe and the Eurasian steppe, but elsewhere around the globe where populations faced selective pressure for a herding lifestyle. This is convergent evolution, similar to how populations facing selective pressure for farming also displayed convergent evolution of traits--despite any ethnic or geographic dissimilarities.
"We conducted a genotype-phenotype association study in 470 Tanzanians, Kenyans and Sudanese and identified three SNPs (G/C-14010, T/G-13915 and C/G-13907) that are associated with lactase persistence... These SNPs originated on different haplotype backgrounds from the European C/T-13910 SNP and from each other. ...These data provide a marked example of convergent evolution due to strong selective pressure resulting from shared cultural traits—animal domestication and adult milk consumption." (Tishkoff et al. 2007).
"However, some individuals, particularly descendants from populations that have traditionally practiced cattle domestication, maintain the ability to digest milk and other dairy products into adulthood. ...The frequency of lactase persistence is high in northern European populations (>90% in Swedes and Danes), decreases in frequency across southern Europe and the Middle East (~50% in Spanish, French and pastoralist Arab populations) and is low in non-pastoralist Asian and African populations (~1% in Chinese, ~5%–20% in West African agriculturalists). Notably, lactase persistence is common in pastoralist populations from Africa (~90% in Tutsi, ~50% in Fulani)." (Tishkoff et al. 2007).
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Due to the rapid upswing in obesity in recent years, there has been much research into the genetic causes of obesity, diabetes, and other so-called "diseases of civilization". One of the most notable hypotheses as to why some people seem to have a greater tendency towards obesity and other diseases is the Thrifty Gene Hypothesis, originally proposed by James Neel. This hypothesis predicts that individuals who have genes adapted to a Paleolithic hunting lifestyle (where readily-abundant calories are scarcer and the food supply is less stable than in an agricultural society), are predisposed to becoming obese, developing diabetes, and other health problems when eating a diet high in carbohydrates and sugars.
In turn, we've seen the popularization of the "Paleo diet", which is based around what hunter-gatherers would likely have been eating. This diet intentionally excludes many plant foods, such as grains, which became a significant part of the human diet after the development of agriculture, and emphasizes meat. Many adherents to the Paleo diet report health improvements compared to when they were eating a "modern" diet (i.e. an agriculture-based diet). It seems rational to assert that the health detriments of a carb-heavy diet will only strongly affect individuals with Paleolithic (hunter) genes which are lacking in ability to process plant-based food (e.g. low number of AMY1 gene copies, short-chain PUFA producing FADS genes: see previous section on farming), whereas a Paleo diet will have no health benefits to individuals with Neolithic (farmer) genes (in fact, such a diet may be deleterious to health for such individuals--not to mention morally deleterious for necessitating animal exploitation).
Over the past few centuries, political dominance by industrialized Western nations has resulted in the spread of farming technology across the globe (which both supplemented already existing small-scale intensive farming, and introduced large-scale fuel-machine-reliant farming and food-processing methods). Due to the fact that much of the modernized farming technology spread from Western nations, combined with the resulting decline in reliance on traditional hunting and herding lifestyles in non-Western nations in preference for Western-introduced farming techniques, the high carbohydrate agriculturalist diet is sometimes referred to as the "Western Diet".
This is highly disingenous because (1) countless Westerners are striken by obesity and other diseases which are supposedly caused by this so-called "Western Diet" and (2) farming independently arose multiple times across the globe, with various groups eating high carb agriculturalist diets for thousands of years (meaning this so-called "Western Diet" is not exclusive to nor did it originate in the West. Indeed, such a diet existed in Europe for thousands of years before the concept of "Western Civilization" ever came into being, but that is another story).
An agriculture-based diet is an Aryan diet, not a "Western diet".
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As our understanding of genes related to metabolism and causes of disease becomes more refined, Neel's original Thrifty Gene Hypothesis has faced scrutiny for the grandness of such a simple explanation for diabetes and other diseases. Yet, the fact remains that populations around the globe ill-suited for metabolizing a high-carbohydrate diet have indeed developed high rates of obesity and other illnesses after shifting to an agriculture-based diet. Whatever the accuracy of the Thrifty Gene Hypothesis, it has been instrumental for jump-starting interest into researching the causes of metabolic differences among humans.
As more research has come to light, there have been many modifications and tweaks of the Thrifty Gene Hypothesis proposed by other researchers. Below I highlight one example.
"Some researchers explain these discrepancies by taking a flipped view of the TGH, arguing that instead of recent selection for thrifty genes, it is actually genes conferring resistance to obesity and other metabolic disorders that are a modern adaptation. This modified TGH posits that adaptations for thriftiness are ancient, but populations that have switched to richer food sources since the advent of agriculture have gained some adaptations to prevent metabolic disorders. Riccardo Baschetti’s genetically unknown foods hypothesis argues that Europeans have become partially adapted to a diabetogenic diet [Baschetti 1998]. Introduction of a European-style diet to populations that are not used to it, such as Native Americans and Pacific Islanders, creates a mismatch between their modern diet and the diet they have evolved with, leading to metabolic dysfunction. This potentially explains the recent dramatic increase in diabetes and obesity in these populations." (Genné-Bacon 2014).
"Cues for a new hypothesis come from Eaton and colleagues. Their underpinning concept suggests that 'the range of diets available to preagricultural human beings determines the range that still exists for men and women living in the 20th century the nutrition for which human beings are in essence genetically programmed'. Accordingly, it can be said that humankind is still genetically unequipped for some foods that were unavailable to hunter-gatherers. Those foods, therefore, are genetically unknown and, as such, they may be responsible for chronic degenerative diseases such as atherosclerosis, hypertension, and diabetes." (Baschetti 1998).
(Note: as we have shown previously, some humans are indeed genetically equipped for handling agricultural diets. Evolution did not stop during the onset of the Neolithic era 10,000 years ago! If anything, it accelerated in populations facing selective pressure for a farming lifestyle).
"In terms of clinical management of obesity and other metabolic disorders, the TGH implies that a return to the traditional lifestyle of a population would be beneficial for treating the metabolic syndrome. If obesity is caused by a mismatch between our genes and the environment we currently live in, changing the environment to match how our genomes have adapted should reverse the obesity epidemic. Obviously, returning to the traditional hunter-gather lifestyles of our ancestors is not practical. However, it is possible to restrict calories and increase exercise to more closely mimic various traditional lifestyles. Current medical guidelines for the management of obesity and diabetes are based on this strategy." (Genné-Bacon 2014).
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Conclusion
While the precise genetic, epigenetic, and environmental causes and mechanisms are still being discovered, it has become clear that different people can have significantly different metabolisms, which have evolved in response to selective pressure for differing survival strategies (namely: hunting, herding, and farming lifestyles).
Any population affected by selection for one of these lifestyles will eventually converge upon the same 'location'--i.e. quality--(whether it be long-chain-PUFA-producing FADS genes for farmers, or lactose tolerance for herders, or any other myriad of gene-lifestyle combinations). This means that different populations within the same ethnic group will diverge if they face different selective pressures, and will converge (i.e. share more in common, with respect to these genes which actually matter) with populations in different ethnic groups that face the same type of selective pressure.
Understanding this, we can once and for all establish that "race" in the true biological sense means qualitative similarity (arising from the same evolutionary trajectories), and not ethnic relatedness (arising from coincidental circumstances of the past). The era of racial identity (based on arbitrary ethnic groupings) is over, and the era of racial idealism (based on non-arbitrary biological qualities) is dawning.
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References (in order of appearance)
Danielle Carpenter et al. (2015). Obesity, starch digestion and amylase: association between copy number variants at human salivary (AMY1) and pancreatic (AMY2) amylase genes. Human Molecular Genetics, Vol 24(12): pg 3472–3480.
https://academic.oup.com/hmg/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/hmg/ddv098
Abigail L. Mandel et al. (2010). Individual Differences in AMY1 Gene Copy Number, Salivary α-Amylase Levels, and the Perception of Oral Starch.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0013352
George H. Perry et al. (2007). Diet and the evolution of human amylase gene copy number variation. Nature Genetics, Vol 39, No. 10. pg 1256–1260
http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v39/n10/abs/ng2123.html
Bernard T. Squires. (1953). Human salivary amylase secretion in relation to diet. The Journal of Physiology, Vol 119: pg 153–156.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/jphysiol.1953.sp004835/pdf
Danielle Carpenter, Laura M. Mitchell, and John A. L. Armour. (2017). Copy number variation of human AMY1 is a minor contributor to variation in salivary amylase expression and activity.
https://humgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40246-017-0097-3
Matthew T. Buckley et al. (2017). Selection in Europeans on Fatty Acid Desaturases Associated with Dietary Changes. Molecular Biology and Evolution.
https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article-lookup/doi/10.1093/molbev/msx103
Agriculture, dietary changes, and adaptations in fat metabolism from ancient to modern Europeans. Oxford University Press, published on Phys.org (March 16, 2017).
https://phys.org/news/2017-03-agriculture-dietary-fat-metabolism-ancient.html
Ann Gibbons (April 2, 2015). How Europeans evolved white skin. Science.
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/04/how-europeans-evolved-white-skin
Nina G. Jablonski and George Chaplin. (2010). Human skin pigmentation as an adaptation to UV radiation. PNAS, Vol. 107, pg 8962–8968
www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0914628107
Ian Mathieson et al. (2015). Genome-wide patterns of selection in 230 ancient Eurasians. Nature, (528): pg 499–503
http://genetics.med.harvard.edu/reichlab/Reich_Lab/Welcome_files/2015_Nature_Mathieson_selection_concatenated.pdf
Evelyne Heyer et al. (2011). Lactase Persistence in Central Asia: Phenotype, Genotype, and Evolution. Human Biology, 83(3): pg 379-392.
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