That is the best way to characterize Reich's and other ancient DNA researchers' findings. He calls it major migration and mixture. He leaves out population replacement here. Most populations went extinct.
"Ancient DNA has established major migration and mixture between highly divergent populations as a key force shaping human prehistory....We need to embrace it, not deny that it occurred." p 121, p 97.
When he talks about major migration and mixture, expecially, as he admits, between highly divergent populations, don't start to get warm and fuzzy prehistoric human fellow feelings.
"Mixture is fundamental to who we are. We need to embrace it, not deny that it occurred." p 97
"...The Whig historian thinks that the course of history, the passage of centuries, can give judgment on a man or an age or a movement. In reality there is only one thing that history can say on this matter...it is, that provided disaster is not utterly irretrievable-- provided a generation is not destroyed or a state wiped entirely from the map--there is no sin or error or calamity can take place but succeeding generations will make the best of it...." Butterfield, The Whig Interpretation, p.88.
Reich's position shows, contrary to Butterfield's position above, that even utterly irretrievable disasters in the prehistory can appear in retrospect to be "happy readjustments and acquired advantages" by his Whig interpretation of them, finding it easy to assert that the original tragedies were no tragedies at all.
As Butterfield notes, it is rather like suggesting embracing the Black Death, or the Fire of London.
Reich's account of the super volcano near Naples 39,000 years ago, and its aftermath, and the pneumonic plague that carried away almost all European farmers, are analogous to Butterfield's description of Whig interpretations of events in Europe like the Fire of London and the Black Death.
For Reich, the volcano was an opportunity for more migration and mixing, in its aftermath, both good things from his ideological perspective.
Some of Reich's major migrations, especially following the collapse of an established preexisting population, caused, as he postulates, from the pneumonic plague, are not a cause for celebration or embracing of mixing or migration.
So some Neanderthals and non Neanderthals went extinct? Those populations that replaced them were on a march to greater genetic homogeneity on Reich's analysis.
I think that prehistory should be viewed factually where possible, and without the moral baggage of current left postmodernist (post post Enlightenment) thinkers.
Not that prehistoric humans had nothing we would call morality, but that it was not of the kind Reich espouses, tries to ascribe, and telescopes back into distant events where it played no part.
I don't think it appropriate to lumber the account of prehistory here with modern liberal multiculturalist ideology, which had no place in prehistory itself, and only a tenuous one here now, and gives a false and misleading Whiggish interpretation of otherwise straightforward experimental findings which would have been better served neat.
Reich's account of the super volcano near Naples 39,000 years ago, and its aftermath, and the pneumonic plague that carried away almost all European farmers, are analogous to Butterfield's description of Whig interpretations of events in Europe like the Fire of London and the Black Death.
For Reich, the volcano was an opportunity for more migration and mixing, in its aftermath, both good things from his ideological perspective.
Some of Reich's major migrations, especially following the collapse of an established preexisting population, caused, as he postulates, from the pneumonic plague, are not a cause for celebration or embracing of mixing or migration.
So some Neanderthals and non Neanderthals went extinct? Those populations that replaced them were on a march to greater genetic homogeneity on Reich's analysis.
I think that prehistory should be viewed factually where possible, and without the moral baggage of current left postmodernist (post post Enlightenment) thinkers.
Not that prehistoric humans had nothing we would call morality, but that it was not of the kind Reich espouses, tries to ascribe, and telescopes back into distant events where it played no part.
I don't think it appropriate to lumber the account of prehistory here with modern liberal multiculturalist ideology, which had no place in prehistory itself, and only a tenuous one here now, and gives a false and misleading Whiggish interpretation of otherwise straightforward experimental findings which would have been better served neat.
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