Genetic Origins Of Celiac

[gfp]

In On Our Minds, Stephen Pinker discusses the heritability of many human personality traits that are generally considered to be acquired.

Clearly, if you breed animals for certain traits, other traits may become uncontrolled. So a dog bred for appearance may be vicious or stupid or nervous. Why is it considered that people are exempt from this? People often choose to marry partners who have similar personality traits, and if this is heritable, it is passed to the children more effectively than the effects of childrearing.

The book was very controversial, but after having read it, I'd have to say that most of the controversy seemed to be carried on by people who hadn't read the book.

Yes I think we rather treat humans as a special case (I bet the dolphins think the same about them) ... and yet we breed passive animals (and agressive ones) .. humans can perhaps cover up the excesses better than dogs but they are still there below the surface and in the genes.

I think this is a very close analogy to the "domestication of humans" ... those whom adapted best to "city life" (when that meant 1000 people) presumably did better ... those who didn't ended up as village idiots and outcasts.

Individualism had no part in a feudal system ... etc.

The inbred herding ability of collies is more than aquired. Its a specialisation of the wolf's instinct to a very high degree. Domesticiating foxes is very much harder... (but has been done)...

However some fox litters inexplicably do not leave the litter and actually stay and bring up the next cubs...

The start of pack mentality? How about those that become comfortable in cities? Is this also hereditory or aquired or both?

[debmidge]

Steve

One more question....my memory is rather vague on this topic, but if you could please tell me origin of:

1) Saxons

2) Normans

3) Gauls

I am mixing these 3 up and want to get it right

Also while we are on genetic topic, how then do the Scilians fit in the picture of Italy and Morocco and Libya? Would you say that these 3 groups exhibit celiac gene as well?

I am fascinated every time we go into a connecting area on this topic. I have another question and will post it when/if I remember it.

Thanks

Deb

[gfp]

Steve

One more question....my memory is rather vague on this topic, but if you could please tell me origin of:

1) Saxons

2) Normans

3) Gauls

I am mixing these 3 up and want to get it right

Also while we are on genetic topic, how then do the Scilians fit in the picture of Italy and Morocco and Libya? Would you say that these 3 groups exhibit celiac gene as well?

I am fascinated every time we go into a connecting area on this topic. I have another question and will post it when/if I remember it.

Thanks

Deb

Saxon's: very little is known of their origins before the 1st C b.c.

At this time Roman historians placed them between the Weser, Elbe and Eider rivers.

However Roman historians were not exactly great at classifying barbarian tribes. They could write volumes on peoples they considered educated and washed but frequently mixed up barbarians.

Normans: Again early history is a little vague.... They regarded Danes and Norwegians as fellow kinsfolk and originally shared a language... but also had homeland claimed connections to Neustria.. (present day mid France)

Both the Saxons and the Normans were opportunists in the fall of the Roman Empire and at the same time shuffled around by movements of nomadic peoples such as the Goths and visigoths.

The Normans were granted a duch from the King of France (France wasn't very big then) and this expanded to what is today Normandy. The adopted Northern French (based on akadian) as their language and in many ways emulated the gallo-roman culture remaining.

Their shallow bottomed boats were light and could be carried and they never really lost their "Viking" seafaring heritage nor love of war and fighting. Viking boats are found in Russia (the Rus) and the mediterranean though often they made the trips via rivers and carried the boats inbetween. (antioch was at one time a Norman colony, as was Sicly)

a contempory expert and historian Goffredo (or Geoffrey) Malaterra was an eleventh century Benedictine monk and chronicler of Norman origin. wrote:

"specially marked by cunning, despising their own inheritance in the hope of winning a greater, eager after both gain and dominion, given to imitation of all kinds, holding a certain mean between lavishness and greediness, that is, perhaps uniting, as they certainly did, these two seemingly opposite qualities. Their chief men were specially lavish through their desire of good report. They were, moreover, a race skillful in flattery, given to the study of eloquence, so that the very boys were orators, a race altogether unbridled unless held firmly down by the yoke of justice. They were enduring of toil, hunger, and cold whenever fortune laid it on them, given to hunting and hawking, delighting in the pleasure of horses, and of all the weapons and garb of war."

From Wikipedia

Geographically, Normandy was approximately the same region as the old church province of Rouen or Neustria. It had no natural frontiers and was previously merely an administrative unit. Its population was mostly Gallo-Roman with a small Frankish/Germanic people admixture, plus Viking settlers, who had begun arriving in the 880s, and who were divided between a small colony in Upper (or eastern) Normandy and a larger one in Lower (or western) Normandy.

In the course of the 10th century the initial destructive incursions of Norse war bands into the rivers of Gaul evolved into more permanent encampments that included women and chattel. The pagan culture was driven underground by the Christian faith and Gallo-Romance language of the local people. The small group of Vikings that settled in assimilated to the Gallo-Romance majority. After a generation or two, the Normans were generally indistinguishable from their French neighbours. With the zeal of new converts they set forth in the 11th century from their solid base in Normandy. Characteristically it was younger sons like William the Bastard, largely dispossessed at home, who headed the adventurous raiding parties.

In Normandy they adopted the growing feudal doctrines of France, and worked them, both in Normandy and in England, into a logical system.

The Norman warrior class was new and different from the old French aristocracy, many of whom could trace their families back to Carolingian times, while the Normans could seldom cite ancestors before the beginning of the 11th century. Most knights remained poor and land-hungry; by 1066, Normandy had been exporting fighting horsemen for more than a generation. Knighthood before the time of the Crusades held little social status, and simply indicated that a man was a professional warrior and wealthy enough to own a war horse. Many Normans of France and Britain would eventually serve as avid Crusaders.

The Norman language forged by the adoption of the indigenous oïl language by a Norse-speaking ruling class developed into the regional language which survives today.

Gauls:

The first literary reference to the Celtic people, as keltoi is by the Greek historian Hecataeus in 517 BC. He locates the Keltoi tribe in Rhenania (West/Southwest Germany) ... the gauls are often used interchangably with Celtic in the region North of the Alps! (a pretty board definition) ...

The Romans really didn't care about where a tribe came from if they didn't wash everyday.

Thier principal interests were price as a slave and what art work they might have and any lands they could conquer.

Julius Caesar's comments on these people from his book, Commentarii de Bello Gallico, are worth quoting:

"All Gaul is divided into three parts, one of which the Belgae inhabit, the Aquitani another, those who in their own language are called Celts, in our Gauls, the third.

All these differ from each other in language, customs and laws.

The river Garonne separates the Gauls from the Aquitani; the Marne and the Seine separate them from the Belgae.

Of all these, the Belgae are the bravest, because they are furthest from the civilization and refinement of [our] Province, and merchants least frequently resort to them, and import those things which tend to effeminate the mind; and they are the nearest to the Germanic people, who dwell beyond the Rhine, with whom they are continually waging war; for which reason the Helvetii also surpass the rest of the Gauls in valor, as they contend with the Germanic people in almost daily battles, when they either repel them from their own territories, or themselves wage war on their frontiers. One part of these, which it has been said that the Gauls occupy, takes its beginning at the river Rhone; it is bounded by the river Garonne, the ocean, and the territories of the Belgae; it borders, too, on the side of the Sequani and the Helvetii, upon the river Rhine, and stretches toward the north.

The Belgae rises from the extreme frontier of Gaul, extend to the lower part of the river Rhine; and look toward the north and the rising sun.

Aquitania extends from the river Garonne to the Pyrenaean mountains and to that part of the ocean which is near Spain: it looks between the setting of the sun, and the north star."

Additionally rome had an outstanding debt... when the sacked Rome in 390BC.

but it should be noted

The first book deals primarily but not exclusively with the Helvetian War in 58 BC. In it, Caesar describes Gaul and the campaign against the Helvetii, a conglomeration of peoples numbering in excess of 300,000, who decided to migrate by force of arms from the Alpine regions through the centre of Gaul to the west to alleviate population pressures. This would require the crossing either of Provence, or of areas held by tribes allied to Rome. When Caesar made it clear he would not allow this, the Helvetians formed an alliance of tribes to fight him. This drew the Romans out of Provence. Later books are about the campaigns against Veneti, Aquitani, Germans and Bretons; Caesar's invasions of Britain; the insurrection of Gaul (VII, 4) and the defeat of Vercingetorix at Alesia (VII, 89).

At the same time Thrace was also being over run by "celts"

DNA analyses with both mtDNA and Y-chromosome have shown that Celts were kin to the Basques. It has been pointed by J.F. del Giorgio, in The Oldest Europeans, that practically the whole post-glacial European population proceeded from almost the same genetic stock, due to a genetic bottle-neck or human near extinction during the coldest episode of the Ice Age in Europe. Celts evidently mantained their isolation as much as possible, but there was an obvious addition of Indo-Europeans as shown by Celtic language and religion.

The Y-chromosomes of populations of the so called Celtic countries have been found in one study to primarily belong to haplogroup R1B, which makes them descendants partially of the first people to migrate into north-western Europe after the last major ice age. According to the most recently published studies of European haplogroups, around half of the current male population of that portion of Eurasia is a descendant of the R1B haplogroup.

Argument rages in the academic world as to whether or not the Celts in England were mostly wiped out/pushed west as the lack of evidence for influence of the Celts on Anglo-Saxon society suggests. Many historians now argue that the Teuton migration was smaller than previously believed or may have consisted merely of a social elite and that the genocide was cultural rather than physical due to such relatively few numbers of Anglo-Saxons mixing with the larger native population. A recent DNA study on Y-chromosome inheritance has suggested that the population of England maintains a predominantly ancient British element. The general indigenous population of Yorkshire, East Anglia and the Orkney and Shetland Islands are those populations with the least traces of ancient British paternal continuation [8]. Ironically, it may be Viking genetic influence and not Anglo-Saxon which has had a more profound impact on paternal British bloodlines, or it could very well have been a combination of both groups.

__________________________________________________________________-

WOW.. so still confused?

Take hese all together.... the celts already mixed blood with Angles and Saxons .. or at least the Romans regarded the belgae as a mixed tribe. (according to Julius)

The Saxons and Angles were also Northern Germanic/Scandanavian....

The whole lot of them were given to frequent raiding, rape and stealing women... soits hardly surprising if they cannot be easily seperated 1000 yrs later !

____________________________________________________________________

Sicly.... really where to start.

It was a greek colony at Syracuse but equally the Cartheginians (present day Tunis) also controlled it and indeed its control was partly reponsible for the Punic wars.

From wikipedia again

The Berbers (also called Amazigh people or Imazighen, "free men", singular Amazigh) are an ethnic group indigenous to Northwest Africa, speaking the Berber languages of the Afroasiatic family. In actuality, Berber is a generic name given to numerous heterogeneous ethnic groups that share similar cultural, political, and economic practices. It is not a term originated by the group itself, and indeed the word may have been derived from the Greek 'βάρβαρος', the forerunner of the English word 'barbarian'.

Then read.....

Open Original Shared Link

and compare with the origins of the Celts.

It starts to sound like cooking....

[gfp]

Ok,

This is weird... its OT but

Open Original Shared Link

Belgian town bans school French

A school in Belgium.

Belgium's regions enjoy a wide degree of educational autonomy

The mayor of Merchtem in Belgium has defended a ban on speaking French in the town's schools.

Note this isn't in class, this on on the school premises....

[DingoGirl]

What I want to know is.....

HOW DO YOU GUYS REMEMBER THIS STUFF????? my mind is an utter sieve....I have read all of this and it just falls right through. Can't remember endings (or beginnings) of books I've read within the last couple of years, even (except Grapes of Wrath - who can forget that one).....can't follow complex movie plots..... don't remember conversations I've had the same day, or, emails I've sent.....

Sorry. Just jealous of your brains and sad about my own growing ineptness. Will have to read this thread about.....50 more times just to retain even a modicum of information. It is fascinating, though.

[mle-ii]

I have another idea about the genetic origins of Celiac in my blog.

I'm guessing that since it's on this site it's ok to promote it.

Open Original Shared Link

[wonkabar]

They are also quite strange dogs .... lovely but strange temperaments and many suffer mental conditions perhaps not so far from autism spectrum .... they can be quite intellegent and yet do the stupiest things .. forget what they are doing and joyfully start something else like running in circles for 30 mins...

HUH??? Autism is NOT a mental condition. Using a term such as that when describing a Pervasive Developmental Disorder is a mis-characterization of the issues involved with that Dx. Autism, or the other "spectrum disorders", are NOT psychological disorders. But, the implied message is there when you use a term such as mental condition while discussing it. Yes it is a Dx disorder in the DSM, however it is quite different than being Dx with Bi-Polar Disorder or something of that nature.

Speaking as a parent-my son has a mild language delay and mild Sensory Modulation Dysfunction-and a special education teacher who has worked with many children of varied abilities and disorders within the Spectrum, I find your statement to be both inaccurate and highly offensive in that you would compare a dog's temperament and actions to that of a child/adult who is Autistic.

You're obviously a very knowledgable man, and I don't believe it was your intention to be offensive. However it was, very much so, to me. Pervasive Developmental Disorders have an emotional, human side to them and are far more complicated than a dog who "can be quite intellegent and yet do the stupiest things .. forget what they are doing and joyfully start something else like running in circles for 30 mins..."

That statement simply struck a cord with me, and I was compelled to respond.