DNA and race

[MARIPOWER716 at aol.com]

In a message dated 7/11/03 7:05:08 AM Pacific Daylight Time, lnp3 at panix.com
writes:


>I had my DNA examined by a prominent genetic specialist here, and what
do you know! It turns out I'm African-American.

The mitochondria in my cells show that I'm descended from a matriarch
who lived in Africa, possibly in present-day Ethiopia or Kenya.

O.K., this was 70,000 years ago, and she seems to be a common ancestor
of all Asians as well as all Caucasians. Still, these kinds of DNA
analyses illuminate the raging scientific debate about whether there is
anything real to the notion of race.

"There's no genetic basis for any kind of rigid ethnic or racial
classification at all," said Bryan Sykes, the Oxford geneticist and
author of "The Seven Daughters of Eve." "I'm always asked is there Greek
DNA or an Italian gene, but, of course, there isn't. . . . We're very
closely related."<




Comment

Here is why Marxline is a great place to be. I laughed my ass off because in
the last instance science and the compounding curve of human knowledge - which
moves from the absurd to the less absurd, is all we have to clarify social
ideology posing as serious inquiry. There has never been a such thing as "race"
as a classification of humanity, although the color factor in history is very
real.

Actually, one is African American that traces their roots to the specific of
Southern slavery although millions of people can be mistaken for African
American because it is an economic and social category. Rather, the author of the
article above traces his ancestry to the woman called "Eve," who in all
probability appeared roughly 300,000 years ago in Africa.

I was extremely interested in the "new studies into DNA" when the science
really got off the ground in the 1980s and abandoned following this research in
the early 1990s.  My interest was the color factor as emergence of distinct
peoples and material collected by Engels as Origin of the Family Private Property
and the State, in addition to the outline, "The Part Played by Labor in the
Transition From Ape to Man."  The development of science has outstripped much
of "the Transition" but Engels fundamental logic is profound.

The key to the mother called "Eve" theory is the alleged technique employed
to rediscover her. I am no scientist and just read books - sometimes. A
person's DNA keeps getting mixed from one generation to another by the genes of the
father - someone has to be the weak kink. :-)

Comparisons of DNA in the nucleus of the cell (half comes from dad and half
from Mom) do not work well after several generations. It was discovered that in
addition to DNA in the cells nucleus, some DNA exists in the mother's cell
but outside the nucleus bodies called "mitochondria." This DNA does not get
mixed with the father's DNA; instead it passes more than less "unadulterated" from
mother to daughter to granddaughter and so on through generations. This
discovery, by Douglas Wallace of Emory University in the 1980s led him to compare
the "mtDNA" of about 800 women and his conclusion was that they must come from
single women as female ancestor. The research was picked up by others and on
the basis of comparing twenty-one women from diverse geographical and "racial"
backgrounds led to the conclusion that they owed their origin to a "single
mitochondria Eve" that had lived in Africa between 300,000 and 100,000 years ago.

Other picked up the research and said given a 2-4 percentage per million
years mutation, the woman called Eve is at last 250,000 years old. In an old
article in Science (September 1987) that reviewed the research it was concluded Eve
appeared about 200,000 years ago.

The story becomes more complex when the various legend myths are viewed
alongside of modern science. These legends range from the early Native American
stories of "the people who drive their planet," "the three comings of the earth,"
to the legends of the peoples of the Andes Mountains who insist the Gods hand
down to them the coca leaf through their ancient structure of leaders -
administrators or the old aristocracy, 10,000 years ago. There are of course the
ancient Sumerian legends handed down in various sacred texts. Still other
writers claim modern man appeared 400,000 years ago and was settled in the area we
call the Middle East and later was given the ability to procreate - the
difference in the Biblical story of Adam and Eve in Genesis 1 and the Adam and Eve
the emerge in Genesis 2, with the power of procreation. In Genesis 2, Adam is
given all he needs while the Elohim (plural Gods) informs him he shall not be
given the gift of immortality.

Needless to say Adam is hurled unto the earth - with Eve, and becomes a
farmer or tiller of the land and on this basis the first revolution in agriculture
would unfold. In other worlds it was the invention of agriculture implements
that begins the first great division of labor and not "the quest for fire," or
hunting.  Given man alkaline biology, there has to be a compelling logic -
historical impulse to consume flesh, when natures bounty is plentiful.

Contrary to what Engels state, it is not meat that revolutionizes man's brain
power and power of observation but vegetation and fruits. The ancient myth of
the struggle between Abel and Cain - the herder of animals and the tiller of
the land, takes on new meaning; even it animals were slaughters only for
clothing.

The spread of humanity across the globe presupposes a crisis on earth that
compels people to leave their settlements and caused a rupture resulting in
general even and specific uneven development of branches of humanity based on the
environmental factor. This is so because we have to discover a motion to leave
a self-contained environment under conditions when the productive forces do
not drive development. What rivets man to earth is alkalinity and here is the
story of Africa as a self-contained biosphere from which human kind emerges.

The current destruction of the environment can be reduced to the destruction
of the earth's alkalinity and the unraveling of the relationship of
acid-alkaline. Perhaps we are a thousand years away from completing the picture and make
never definitively solve the puzzle, but the outline to frame the question is
slowly emerging.

Much interesting research is emerging including the tentative thesis that the
strongest genetic coupling is a half sister and a half brother with the same
mother in common. The same mother and different fathers is claimed to produce
stronger off springs - greater longevity, than common father different
mothers. In the legend of Gilgamesh, he claims to be 3/4 God based on his mother
being a God, not the dad. The Mormon doctrine, which traces it aristocratic roots
to the "seven tribes of Israel" through Ephraim, is getting ready to take a
hit, along with the Aaron Gene, as a genetic trait connected with a specific
doctrine.

Needless to say the national question in its essence is not biological but
social. The theory of race and racial approaches to history are being
obliterated under our noses. What has been in the past called "racial antagonism" and
"racism" is actually something else that is called "race" by the bourgeoisie.

Although it will not and cannot happen overnight or in several generations,
the national factor is being obliterated. All the concepts and categories
defining the national question are products of social history and tool development
and as such will lose their force as antagonism. The color factor in history
is much larger than colonialism and the modern epoch of commodity production,
but within itself does not contain class antagonism.

Not African American but the women called Eve. Yep, she's my mother also.
Would she be proud of all of us right now?

Melvin P.