john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

myths

  • Tortoises down

    Sun, 2011-03-27 20:48 -- John Hawks

    John Wilkins comments on an old fable, often attributed to William James, in the service of commenting on the snooty attitudes toward common folk beliefs ("Turtles all the way down"). The anecdote in question is well-known enough that I need not recount the whole thing (I think I first encountered it put to humorously literal effect in a Terry Pratchett book).

    These anecdotes serve to legitimate the narrative of the teller of tales, to show they are on the right side of history, and to lessen our appreciation for the ordinary person. And they are pernicious. The weak minded have failed and we strong minded have succeeded, and history was always moving towards this point. This is the positivistic narrative of Comte: society has shrugged off the superstitious and theological and achieved enlightenment. Except that it is a lie.

    I am glad that Wilkins points out that these stories are intended to make the benighted look stupid -- often an exercise in kicking the powerless while they are down.

    In both versions of the story (also told by Stephen Hawking, whose literary and historical skills re not so good as one might think, given how often he is quoted authoritatively on this subject), the flat earther is a member of a despised and ridiculed group – blacks and old ladies – and in both they stand in for the stupidity of the folk belief and believer, overcome by the truths of science.

    I hate it when I encounter (all too often) this snooty superiority attitude. Great comments after the post so far, including Nick Matzke finding an instance of the story from 1856.

    Tags: 
    history of psychology
    religion
    myths

  • Bigfoot and Darwin together at last

    Wed, 2009-06-17 00:02 -- John Hawks

    No, that's not a snark on Jennifer Connelly. Although she was in Labyrinth...

    A release from ScienceDaily has a headline I can't resist:

    Darwin Killed Off The Werewolf

    It was Darwinian theory that did away with the werewolf. For much of recorded history, humans have reserved their greatest fears for dog-human hybrids like the werewolf. These beasts were once thought to be real, hiding behind every tree waiting for the unsuspecting traveler.

    But, argues Brian Regal, assistant professor of the history of science at Kean University in Union, New Jersey, USA, the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species 150 years ago focused minds on a different kind of monster – ape-men such as the Yeti, Bigfoot and Sasquatch.

    That's an interesting take on it. I think that greater contact with exotic places, including exhibitions of apes, probably had more influence than Darwin's ideas. Nineteenth-century travelogues and lectures caused a sensation with their description of gorillas and chimpanzees. Later on, people started to record myths and stories of indigenous peoples -- including Sasquatch, ebu gogo, orang pendak, and others. Those raised the possibility of unknown creatures in unexplored parts of the world. Meanwhile, industrialization and associated development markedly reduced the potential that supernatural creatures were roaming Europe.

    Still, if public education about hybridity made a difference, so much the better!

    (via Gene Expression)

    Tags: 
    Darwin
    Bigfoot
    myths

  • "Historians Gone Wild" on Oprahbulations

    Fri, 2009-03-06 10:29 -- John Hawks

    I think that this NY Times story by Noam Cohen, titled "In Douglass Tribute, Slave Folklore and Fact Collide," is just fascinating. It's an old story (from early 2007), but I was pointed to it this morning.

    At the northwest corner of Central Park, construction is under way on Frederick Douglass Circle, a $15.5 million project honoring the escaped slave who became a world-renowned orator and abolitionist.

    Beneath an eight-foot-tall sculpture of Douglass, the plans call for a huge quilt in granite, an array of squares, a symbol in each, supposedly part of a secret code sewn into family quilts and used along the Underground Railroad to aid slaves. Two plaques would explain this.

    The only problem: According to many prominent historians, the secret code — the subject of a popular book that has been featured on no less a cultural touchstone than “The Oprah Winfrey Show” — never existed. And now the city is reconsidering the inclusion of the plaques, so as not to “publicize spurious history,” Kate D. Levin, the city’s commissioner of cultural affairs, said yesterday.

    Read the story if you're interested. I really have no opinion, other than to point out that Oprah's programs have often promoted pseudoscience and myths. In this case, the story comes from a 1999 book, Hidden in Plain View. According to Cohen's article, the authors do not currently claim that the secret codes really existed at the time of the Underground Railroad or were widespread; they say that this was one family's story.

    What I think is interesting is that the story has developed such a following among educators and otherwise knowledgeable people:

    There are currently 207,000 copies in print, she said. The codes are frequently taught in elementary schools (teachers have been eager to take up the quilting-codes theory because of its useful pedagogic elements — a secret code, artwork and a story of triumph), and the patterns represent a small industry within quiltmaking.

    I suppose many historians find this maddening -- sure, there's no documentary evidence, a believer would say, because the codes were secret! But then, that's the defense for most conspiracy theories, from UFOs to the Illuminati.

    Oprah aired the story along with the Jefferson DNA descendants, in the news at the same time:

    On Ms. Winfrey’s show, Dr. Dobard appeared with the black descendants of Thomas Jefferson. That relationship was preserved in oral history across the centuries, even as historians of the past generally dismissed the claim. DNA tests published in 1998 are considered to have confirmed Jefferson’s paternity.

    So, Oprah helped make an anthropology link for me to hang the story on. A family story, doubted by the historical establishment, yet proved with DNA. Well, maybe at least -- in the DNA case, there are other paternal Jefferson relatives who might have been the ancestor.

    No doubt a good historian could test this hypothesis too. I would look at the question as an opportunity to study a lot of interesting quilts and other folk art. Do a phylogenetic analysis on elements included in early quilts. Few of these will date to the pre-Emancipation period, but if the elements of the story -- a star, zig-zags, monkey-wrenches -- were sufficiently common and co-associated in later quilts, say, from the 1930's, it would be an argument in favor of the widespread existence of the pattern at an earlier time.

    Tags: 
    myths
    social
    history
    pseudoscience

  • Myths about Neandertals

    Mon, 2008-11-24 12:08 -- John Hawks

    Tyler Cowen comments on last week's "Let's clone mammoths, and OOH OOH Neandertals too" article. I'm pointing to the post because the commenters embody so many popular myths about Neandertals.

    OK, so they "parrot," not "embody"...but that was too juicy a mistake not to make.

    Anyway, the myths go both ways:

    1. "[H]e'd probably grow up into a kick ass middle linebacker."

    Neandertals were hunter-gatherers, and males had an average mass of around 80 kg (176 pounds). College linebackers weigh around 240 pounds -- they're not the real big players, because they have to run and move with great agility. Most college linebackers are around 6-2, Neandertal men were around 5-6.

    Weight training and diet routinely make good high school linebackers weighing 180 into college linebackers. So there's nothing impossible about making a Neandertal into a linebacker, albeit a relatively short one. But their frame wouldn't give them any inherent advantage that I can see.

    Now, wrestling on the other hand, matched for weight, might be interesting...

    2. "The problem is they're going to look a little funny, and I think their coordination is kind of lousy."

    Looking funny? Sure, every different group of people in the world looks a little funny, and Neandertals would be no exception. On the other hand, I hear from many readers (and wives of readers) to know that there are men out there who are phenotypically Neandertal-like. No surprise; the modern human population varies extensively.

    Coordination: Try hunting a bison with three other guys armed only with spears, and tell me that Neandertals were uncoordinated.

    3. "My understanding is that neanderthals probably had the same cognitive capacity as sapiens."

    The range of human cognitive abilities is large, and Neandertals did many things that fall within that range. But it doesn't logically follow that the Neandertal average was within the range of today's population averages. The archaeological record really doesn't support any conclusions at all, other than to point out that Neandertals behaved in ways that overlap with modern human hunter-gatherers, but somewhat differently from later Upper Paleolithic Europeans.

    4. "Whether Neanderthals could be integrated into modern society seems to me to be very much an open question."

    The range of human cognitive abilities is large, and we seem to be able to integrate almost everybody into modern society. The point here is that we deal with human variability every day. Regardless of the average cognitive talents of Neandertals, there are almost certainly many people of equal abilities around us now.

    5. "Would Neanderthals be allowed to compete in the Olympics? There are events such as fencing where they would do exceptionally poorly, but there are other events such as weight lifting where humans would have no chance."

    I wouldn't rate their fencing chances so poorly -- their agility in ambushing large animal prey may have given them a great fencing stance.

    Olympic weightlifting, on the other hand, is an activity that only a very small fraction of the Earth's population can excel at. We are starting to have evidence that it takes a very strange combination of genes, diet and training to make the muscle growth and strength happen. Those genes may not be limited to any single human population, but it's not very likely that all of them would have been in Neandertals, or that they would have others to take their place.

    It's always misleading to compare averages (in this case, Neandertal muscle mass and bone strength relative to skeletal human populations). Take a look at the bones of a weightlifter, at the extreme of the human distribution, and you'll find them to be quite a bit stronger than Neandertals. Who knows, with training, but we're not talking about a natural population of weightlifters here.

    Tags: 
    myths
    metascience
    Neandertals
Subscribe to myths

Neandertals

For years, I've worked on their bones. Now I'm working on their genes. Read more about the science studying these ancient people.

Denisova

From a finger bone of an ancient human came the record of a completely unexpected population. My lab is working on the science of the Denisova genome.

Acceleration

The advent of agriculture caused natural selection to speed up greatly in humans. We're uncovering some of the ways that populations have rapidly changed during the last 10,000 years.

Malapa

Just outside Johannesburg, the Malapa site is producing some of the most exciting finds in human evolution. This site is the headquarters of the Malapa Soft Tissue Project.