Category Archives: Pacific

by | August 12, 2017 · 10:32 PM

Fake News: North Korea Has an ICBM that Can Hit the US

Here.

Bottom line – the whole thing is a massive lie, apparently based on false analysis of the rockets fired. The rockets fired were “fake ICBM’s” – made to seem like ICBM’s but not real ICBM’s because the only way they got their extreme altitude and possible range was by putting a very light dummy warhead on the tip. With a normal 600-1,000 pound atom bomb warhead that would be needed for such a flight, the missile would not have gone as far as it did. And even if they were able to get a warhead of the 600-1,000 pounds needed to hit the US, the Hwangsong-14 could not have carried it – they would need to build a new and better rocket.

However, they could certainly hit South Korea, Japan and Guam with a nuclear missile. That’s not even under debate.

You must understand that the government always lies to us about the capabilities of the states it deems enemies.

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Filed under Asia, Geopolitics, Government, Japan, Journalism, Micronesia, Military Doctrine, NE Asia, North Korea, Nuclear Weapons, Pacific, Regional, South Korea, USA

by | July 16, 2017 · 1:59 AM

A Look at the Valman Language

Method and Conclusion. See here.

Results. A ratings system was designed in terms of how difficult it would be for an English-language speaker to learn the language. In the case of English, English was judged according to how hard it would be for a non-English speaker to learn the language. Speaking, reading and writing were all considered.

Ratings: Languages are rated 1-6, easiest to hardest. 1 = easiest, 2 = moderately easy to average, 3 = average to moderately difficult, 4 = very difficult, 5 = extremely difficult, 6 = most difficult of all. Ratings are impressionistic.

Time needed. Time needed for an English language speaker to learn the language “reasonably well”: Level 1 languages = 3 months-1 year. Level 2 languages = 6 months-1 year. Level 3 languages = 1-2 years. Level 4 languages = 2 years. Level 5 languages = 3-4 years, but some may take longer. Level 6 languages = more than 4 years.

This post will look at the Valman language in terms of how difficult it would be for an English speaker to learn it.

Torricelli

Wapei

Valman

Valman, spoken in Papua New Guinea, is a bizarre case where the word “and” that connects two nouns is actually a verb, of all things, and is marked with the first noun as subject and the second noun as object.

“’John’ (subject) and ‘Mary’ (object) went to the store.”

“John” is marked as subject for some reason and “Mary” is marked as object for some reason, and the “and” word shows subject agreement with “John” and object agreement with “Mary”.

Valman gets a 6 rating, hardest of all.

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Filed under Applied, Language Families, Language Learning, Linguistics, Pacific, Papua New Guinea, Regional

by | April 4, 2017 · 5:04 PM

More on the Remains of Ancient Australoid “Indo-Pacific” Languages in India

Jm8: Might there have also been more than one language family among the proto-Australoid peoples of India I wonder (including Austroasiatic) (like there are in Australia and Papua today), since India is big and had been inhabited for a very long time (being among the longest inhabited areas outside Africa)?

It would be interesting to investigate the distribution of Austroasiatic influence over the various Dravidian languages to see where in India it is stronger.

This article suggests that Austroasiatic is not indigenous to India (but rather to south east Asia).

I had though that the Veddoid/early Australoid languages of India might be lost forever and only (maybe) partly reconstructible (in as few aspects) from their influences on other languages that replaced them. But if they were Austroasiatic (and represented by those languages surviving in Andra Pradesh), then that is not the case.

“The Vedda/Australoid people are speakers of the Munda branch of Austroasiatic. There is an Austroasiatic layer in both Dravidian and Indic. It is the oldest layer.”

That’s interesting. I thought Austroasiatic was associated with Southern Proto (Paleo?)-Mongoloids (like some of the Northeast Indian tribes — and Vietnamese is Austroasiatic). But maybe it predates the split between Australoid and Proto-Mongoloid peoples (some Paleomongoloid descendants of course still somewhat resemble Australoids, or did not that long ago in prehistory), which would be interesting. It’s it a very old and deep language family? I know there are some tribes in East Central India (Andra Pradesh I think) that speak Austroasiatic, and they look phenotypically a bit like something transitional between South Mongoloid and Australoid.

“I am not aware of theories showing Dravidian close to Australian languages.”

It might be discredited now (I’ll try to look into it, and the Austroasiatic influence on Dravidian, which is interesting). The theory (I think) was only that there might be a substratal influence of something like one of the Australian families on Dravidian (but still that Dravidian came mostly from somewhere the Middle East — or consistent with that idea anyway).

It might make sense that there is a substratal influence from “Indo-Pacific” languages such as those from the Andaman Islands and West Papua in Dravidian, but I have never heard of it. That would be an older layer underneath even the Munda layer in Dravidian.

There was no split between Australoids and Proto-Mongoloids. The former simply transitioned into the latter. Austroasiatic is associated with the Paleomongoloids and Neomongoloids of SE Asia. Austroasiatic is indeed old and deep, and the evidence for Austroasiatic is about as good as the evidence for Afroasiatic and Altaic. This doesn’t make sense because Afroasiatic and Austroasiatic are generally recognized families, but Altaic is not, although there evidence for the two former is no better than the evidence for the latter.

They were not lost forever as Kusunda, Nihali and the Vedda language substrate seem to be the remains of the tongues of the original Australoid speakers. The original tongues were not Austroasiatic – those languages came later. However, at the moment, most of the highly Australoid people in India speak a Munda language like Santhal. Apparently the Munda languages were once widespread over the whole continent, but most of them were replaced by Dravidian and Indic intrusions. In the more settled people, Dravidian and Indic replaced Munda languages, but in the tribals, the earlier Munda tongues lingered perhaps due to their inaccessibility living in the forest and the fact that the scheduled tribes are mostly outside the caste system.

Yes and the split between the Munda languages and the rest of the Austroasiatic is very deep. Austroasiatic can almost be split into Munda and non-Munda as two basic parts of the family. And there is not a lot left connecting the Munda languages to the rest of the family.

Kusunda, Nihali and the substrate of the Vedda language of Sri Lanka are thought to be the remains of the languages of the original Australoid speakers. These languages may be related to the Andaman Islands languages and Papuan languages. I know there is a connection between Kusunda and Andaman Islands languages and West Papuan tongues. There is some theorized relationship with such “Indo=Pacific” tongues and Nihali and the Vedda substrate also.

Yes, the Mundas came into India relatively lately and surely replaced nearly all of those original Andaman/Papuan languages of the Australoid people.

At the moment, Kusunda and Nihali are isolates, and even the Andaman tongues are split into two different families, so right now there are already separate language families among these Australoid people.

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Filed under Afroasiatic, Altaic, Anthropology, Asia, Austro-Asiatic, Cultural, Dravidian, India, Indic, Indo-European, Indo-Hittite, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Irano-Armenian, Indo-Irano-Armeno-Hellenic, Isolates, Language Families, Linguistics, Pacific, Physical, Regional, South Asia, Sri Lanka

by | April 3, 2017 · 9:29 PM

The Influence of the Tongues of Australoid/Vedda People in India on Dravidian Languages

Jm8: I wonder what influence the languages of the proto-Australoid/Veddoid peoples had on modern Dravidian languages. It seems pretty clear that Dravidian came primarily from a Near Eastern family also ancestral to Elamite (Elamo-Dravidian) in Iran and reached India around the Neolithic. But I wonder if Veddoid peoples’ languages could have a substratal influence on Dravidian (or at least some Dravidian languages—esp those farther south or the tribal ones), even perhaps playing a role in its divergence from its Elamo-Dravidian root; depending on where Dravidian truly diverged (e.g: If it diverged within the Indian subcontinent—like around Pakistan/NW India—, where proto-Australoid peoples lived).

The influence of those peoples might be hard to assess. I recall a while ago reading about an old theory that Dravidian had some grammatical similarities to certain Australian Aboriginal languages (Northern maybe?).

But did these similarities also exist I wonder in the one surviving Dravidian language of the North, Brahui in Pakistan, whose speakers presumably have much less native proto-Australoid ancestry?

One might possibly also check for similarities to Andamanese languages (a bit of a long shot I know).

The Vedda/Australoid people are speakers of the Munda branch of Austroasiatic. There is an Austroasiatic layer in both Dravidian and Indic. It is the oldest layer.

I am not aware of theories showing Dravidian close to Australian languages.

There is a moribund language spoken in Nepal called Kusunda which appears to be related to West Papuan the Andaman Islands languages.

Keep in mind that in mainstream Historical Linguistics (which has deviated far away from anything sane anymore anyway), there is no Papuan language family. Instead, Papua is divided into 37 separate language families and 20 isolates. They also say there is no Australian language family,  although I believe R. W. Dixon made a case for one. Instead we have 20 different language families and four isolates in Australia. And they do not posit that the Andaman languages form a coherent family. There are two separate families even in the Andaman Islands, with Ongan and Greater Andamanese, with no demonstrated relationship between them. I have looked at the Andaman languages, and trust me, some of them are extremely far apart.

The people positing that Papuan, Australian and Andaman are language families or even that all three together form a single family called Indo-Pacific (Joseph Greenberg’s hypothesis) are all long-rangers whose views are not accepted in mainstream linguistics. However, Steven Wurm accepts a much-modified and more conservative view of Greenberg’s theory.  In addition, it appears that Trans New Guinea, West Papuan, Greater Andamanese and some Timorese languages, all included in Greenberg’s Indo-Pacific, show striking similarities which to my mind could only be genetic.

At any rate mainstream Linguistics is very conservative as far as Historical Linguistics goes. The existence of Elamo-Dravidian, which should be obvious to anyone looking, is not even regarded as proven.

I have looked at Dravidian quite a bit, and I did not think it was even close to the putative Nostratic family of Northern Eurasia. Instead it seemed to be closer to Afroasiatic than anything else. If Elamite was spoken in Western Iran, and before that the proto-Dravidians were in the Levant (according to the old theories), then it would make sense that Dravidian would be closer to Afroasiatic than anything else.

Keep in mind that Afroasiatic is a very old family – it may be 13-15,000 years old. And the fact that it is even regarded as proven at all (yes there are some ultra-splitters who are now saying that Afroasiatic is not even real) shows how wrong Historical Linguistics is when they say that any relationships older than 8,000 years cannot be proven because they are beyond the means of the comparative method of Historical Linguistics. If anything over 8,000 YBP is unknowable as far as the comparative method is concerned, then how did we prove Afroasiatic which goes back 15,000 YBP?

But Comparative Linguistics has gotten totally offtrack. Whereas traditionally, we simply observed languages and threw them into families based on obvious similarities and only after that reconstructed, now they have it backwards. No matter how much the languages look alike, we can’t put them into a family unless we have reconstructed all the way back to the proto-languages and found regular sound correspondences. Only then do we prove relatedness.

But Linguistics never worked that way before. Relatedness was posited simply on observation, and only later was the hard reconstruction work with regular sound correspondences done.

According to Lyle Campbell, Joanna Nichols and others unfortunately at the top of Historical Linguistics nowadays, Sir William Jones could not have even posited the existence of an Indo-European family because we had not yet reconstructed Proto-Indo-European and its regular sound correspondences yet. See? They’ve got it backwards.

Anyway even IE is not well understood. How’s that Laryngeal Theory working out for you guys? Coming right along, right? Didn’t think so. Just as I thought.

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Filed under Aborigines, Afroasiatic, Anthropology, Asia, Australia, Comparitive, Dravidian, India, Indo-European, Indo-Hittite, Iran, Isolates, Language Classification, Language Families, Linguistics, Nepal, Pacific, Pakistan, Race/Ethnicity, Regional, South Asia

by | December 23, 2016 · 4:31 PM

The Old “Arab Israelis Have It So Good” Argument

Malla: Well, I did some research on this and it seems the Mizrahi had a more realistic opinion about Arabs and non Whites in general, while the Ashkenazim (and maybe Sephardics), especially during the early days of Israel, had a more idealistic opinion of the Third World. But the Mizrahi themselves are non-Whites. If Arabs and non-Whites then so are Mizrahis because Mizrahis are just Arabs. Besides, many Ashkenazis came with socialistic ideas of kibbutz farming and hippieness, while the Mizrahi were more realistic.

Check this interesting video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f80NnYflDU8

Check out the Ashkenazi/Mizrahi couple at 6:52. So it seems more Mizrahi (Middle Eastern Jews) are more right wing and support predatory violent behavior towards Arabs and Palestinians, while the Ashkenazis (Euro Jews) vote more left and are friendlier to Arabs (idealistic mindset). I do not know how the Sephardics and Ethiopians Jews vote.

Besides, Israel has a massive poverty rate, one of the highest in OECD countries. No wonder they get pissed by migrants from Africa taking way their jobs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SSd0rgTc1E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPuQwFX2J2A

But Israel has an overall high standard of living. Arabs in Israel, in spite of whatever racism they face, have a higher standard of living and social freedoms than most other Arab countries. Only Tunisia and Christian-dominated Lebanon come close in social freedom, and the Gulf states are the only ones who have more income among Arabs.

This is similar to the case in Rhodesia and South Africa where the Blacks had a higher standard of living than Blacks in the rest of the African continent. Or Singapore, where the Indians and Malays have a higher standard of living than Malaysia and definitely (much, much, much) higher standard of living than India thanks to the huge Chinese population. Singapore’s quality of life is comparable to other Chinese majority developed places like Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. One may ask that if Anglo-Celts and other Northern Euros never came to Australia would such an Australia (Australia full of only aborigines) be so developed as it is today or it would be more like Papua New Guinea.

It’s pretty bad to compare the surrounding Arabs with New Guineans and Aborigines. The whole Arab World is built up to Hell. They’re all modern countries over there. I have seen photos of Libya before the war, and it looks like Miami. I saw a recent photo of Casablanca, and it looked like LA. I have seen photos of the rest of the region, even war-torn Syria and Iraq, and they look like regular modern countries. There’s not a lot of difference between in the ordinary street scene between Amman, Beirut, Damascus or even Cairo and Tel Aviv. It all looks the same, like any modern built-up country.

There is none of the horrible poverty you see in India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Latin America or Black Africa.

Arabs will not tolerate that sort of abject shantytown type poverty. They are basically socialist people who don’t care about money too much and believe that everyone should be well taken care of. Social safety nets are ordinary things in every Arab country. There’s no debate about this sort of thing. They are not individualists. They are collectivists. And they don’t think rich people are better than poor people. They are not particularly greedy, and they have a “We are all part of one village” mindset wherever they live.

Semi-feudalism came late to the Arab World via the Ottomans, and it never worked well. There were landed gentry and fellahin, or landless peasants. Nasser was the man who confiscated the land from the land barons and gave it to the landless peasants. If you went around the whole Arab World back then, even in say Yemen, there was a portrait of Nasser on every wall. Now in Western or Latin American culture, doing that is called Communism, and everyone hates it. But the Arabs love this sort of thing.

Baath nationalist parties came in in Syria and Iraq around 1960, a revolutionary socialist state arose in Libya in 1969, and another one was birthed in Algeria in 1964. Land was confiscated from feudal latifundiaists in all of these place and distributed to the peasants. The governments were all officially socialist, secularization was enforced even at gunpoint if it took that, huge safety nets were set up, and the state even got involved in quite a few of the larger industries and became a major employer. All of this was wildly popular all over the region.

US style radical individualism and Libertarian free market capitalism is totally anathema to all of those societies. For one thing, it goes against Islam, as Islam is a socialist religion. In feudal times, large Arab landowners enlisted the help of the local imams in interpreting parts of the Koran where it said, “Some are rich, and some are poor, and that’s all just fine” or something to that effect, but it never worked well. It ended up turning the local imams into hated figures like the priests of Catholic Church in the West and Latin America who always sided with the rich against the people.

So this whole idea that the Israeli Arabs have it good for having some extra money falls flat on Arab and even Arab Israeli ears. Standard of living is not number one on their list of the most important things in life.

If the Arabs are all so jealous of Israel, why are the non-oil Arabs are not jealous of the oil Arabs? Typical Jews to reduce everything down to money. Arabs don’t care that much about money. They don’t revolve their whole lives around money or sit around hating Jews for having more skyscrapers. That’s not important to your average Arab.

I have never in my life heard one Arab tell me they were jealous of Israel.

In Palestine, White European racist fascists invaded the region, started wars with everyone around them, and, being high IQ, produced a developed economy. So what? These jerks get brownie points because they are rich? I’m supposed to love them because they’re rich and hate those Arabs because they’re poor?

The commenter is an Indian, that’s why he thinks that way. We are socialists here; we don’t think like this. Actually I think the more money someone has, the worse of a person he tends to be, but that’s just me.

All of these arguments were used by the South Africans who practiced a very similar White settler-colonial project far after this stuff went out of style.

Arabs in Israel are not happy people. They’re angry, and they have no loyalty to the state at all. The Jewish fascists say the Arabs are traitors, and the Jews are actually correct on that score. Indeed they have no loyalty to the state and do not even see themselves as Israelis.

The similarities between Israel and apartheid South Africa are striking. It’s notable that Israel was long one of South Africa’s strongest allies, and towards the end, it was one of their only allies. Arab Israelis are are institutionally treated as second class citizens in exactly the same way the Blacks were under apartheid. 

Were those Blacks happier on their South African Nigger Plantation because they had a higher standard of living? They were not, but this was the argument that was used to show that they were happy Negroes toiling away cheerfully in the sun for their beloved White slavemasters. Similarly, South Africa moved into the neighborhood and in a matter of time, like Israel, it was soon also embroiled in wars with most if not all of its neighbors. Similarly, South Africa, like Israel, had zero friends in the region.

Blacks in South Africa and Arabs in Israel don’t want money and stuff. White Gentiles and Jews only care about money, and they don’t care about humans, so they think everyone else feels that way too. But they don’t. People want to be free, even if being free means not having as much stuff. Stuff doesn’t make people happy. You can keep giving your slave the latest gadgetry in his slave quarters, but he’s still not a free man.

Same with South Africa. Hey look, these White European racist fascists came in here and built up the region and made a big economy because they have higher IQ’s! So what. I am supposed to like them more because they are rich and hate those Africans because they are poor? I realize this is Indian thinking, but we socialists do not think that way.

Arabs have more political rights in all of the Arab World. In the Arab World, they are not systematically discriminated against due to their religion or ethnicity.

I would argue that those Arabs in Israel do not want all of those social freedoms. Freedom to do what?

And what social freedoms do they have there that they do not have in the rest of the region? How are the social freedoms of Arab Israeli Christians better than those of Arab Christians in Lebanon or Syria? Someone needs to clue me.

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Filed under Aborigines, Africa, Algeria, Arab Nationalism, Arabs, Asia, Asians, Australia, Blacks, Chinese (Ethnic), Christianity, Colonialism, Culture, East Indians, Economics, Egypt, Europeans, Fascism, Government, History, India, Iraq, Islam, Israel, Jewish Racism, Jews, Lebanon, Libya, Malays, Malaysia, Middle East, Middle Eastern, Modern, Morocco, Nationalism, North Africa, Pacific, Palestine, Papua New Guinea, Political Science, Politics, Race Relations, Race/Ethnicity, Racism, Regional, Religion, SE Asia, SE Asians, Settler-Colonialism, Singapore, Social Problems, Socialism, Sociology, South Africa, South Asia, South Asians, Syria, Taiwan, Tunisia, Whites

by | October 25, 2016 · 7:22 AM

Veddoid Skulls, Genes and Phenotypes

Ultra Cool writes:

The Ainu are related to the Japanese, I assume that makes Veddas Mongoloid by genes, Australoid by skull and Caucasoid by looks, correct?

Not really. I mean Veddoid genes either look NE Asian or Malaysian in the case of the Senoi in Thailand or South Indian in the case of South Indian tribals.

So Veddoid genes have no particular quality. They simply assimilate to the genetics of whatever larger group they are around.

Negritos are similar. The pure genetic Negritos are in the Andaman Islands, and indeed their genes are very distinct. However, the rest of the Negritos simply have genes that look like whoever they are around. Thai Negritos have genes that look Thai. Filipino Negritos have genes that look Filipino. Indonesian Negritos have genes that look Indonesian. New Guinean Negritos have genes that look Papuan. Australian Negritos have genes that look Aborigine, and so on. This is because everywhere they went, the Negritos, a small group, bred in the much larger group until their genes began to resemble the larger group.

Yes, Veddoids do tend to have similar looking Australoid skulls everywhere they exist.

And yes, they do tend to have a “Caucasoid” phenotype everywhere they exist simply because this is somehow what they evolved in India, which then carried on to other places they went to. This Caucasoid phenotype is a result of convergent evolution and in way whatsoever proves that any of these peoples are actually Caucasoid.

I feel that the range of possible human phenotypes is small, so “Asian”, “Caucasian”, or “Negroid/African” are three of the most common phenotypes resulting in humans. These phenotypes can probably evolve just about anywhere because the range of possible end-types for phenotypes may be small. If it’s small, sooner or later, you will have people who look “Negroid” or “Caucasoid” simply due to the law of averages. There are a lot of “Negroid” looking people in Melanesia, among Negritos, among Papuans, and even among some Central Americans such as we see in the Olmec statues. “Negroid” just appears to be a sort of phenotype that may evolve in very hot or tropical weather, possibly because a lot of Negroid attritubes are adaptive in the tropics.

Veddoids may have evolved in India over 18,000 YBP, so they are a very archaic race.

After that, they appear to have gone from India to Thailand, possibly by sea. Skulls from Thailand 18,000 YBP look very much like Jomonese skulls from Japan and Ainu skulls today.

Before 18,000 YBP: Veddoids evolve in India.

18,000 YBP: Veddoids go to Thailand. Their descendants become the Senoi.

13,000 YBP: Veddoids show up in far southern Japan (possibly Okinawa) as the Jomonese, the ancestors of the Ainu and the first people to settle Japan that we know of. They arrive here from Thailand. They appear to have gone from Thailand to Japan by boat. No one knows when they left Thailand or how look it took them to get to Japan, but sometime in that 5,000 year period from 18,000 YBP to 13,000 YBP, they move in between Thailand and Japan by boat. Old anthropological theory said that a long time ago, one of the early peoples of the Philippines resembled what to me look like the Ainu, so they may have stopped in the Philippines at some point between 18,000 YBP and 13,000 YBP en route from Thailand to Japan by sea.

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Filed under Ainu, Anthropology, Asia, Asians, Australia, Genetics, India, Indonesia, Japan, NE Asia, Negritos, Northeast Asians, Pacific, Papua New Guinea, Papuans, Philippines, Physical, Race/Ethnicity, Regional, SE Asia, SE Asians, South Asia, Thailand

by | October 15, 2016 · 7:31 PM

Cultural Left Idiocy of the Day

14650499_1779469268938636_7011084955539063466_n

This stuff is just getting nuttier and nuttier all the time, you know?

I am going to start posting this sort of insanity on a regular basis I think.

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Filed under Animals, Cultural Marxists, Gender Studies, Heterosexuality, Left, Man World, Pacific, Psychology, Regional, Ridiculousness, Romantic Relationships, Scholarship, Sex

by | August 27, 2016 · 12:27 PM

Repost: The Moriori and the Dangers of Pacifism

Repost from the old site. This is a popular post for some time on this site. I like this post a lot, as it shows the sheer folly and suicidal insanity of a philosophy of pure pacifism. At some point, you either wait for the enemy to come out and murder you, or you pick up a weapon so you can at least take some of them out in the process. It’s better than being murdered with your hands in the air. At least fighting back offers a dignified death.

The saga of Moriori is instructive.

The Maori have long been known as ferocious headhunters and cannibals who had one of the cruelest and evillest cultures on Earth. The Moriori seem to be a Maori split dating back to about 1500 or so when they left New Zealand and colonized the Chatham Islands. The Chatham Islands are small, very cold and isolated, and there is not a lot of food other than from the sea.

Moriori legend has it that initially, widespread tribal warfare, headhunting and cannibalism was practiced as the normative cruel Moriori culture. On such a small island, this savagery was disastrous, and soon the population plummeted to near-extinction. A leader arose among the Moriori, Nunuku-whenua, who preached a new doctrine of extreme pacifism, Nunuku’s Law. Nunuku’s Law was strictly adhered to 300 years.

Fighting was allowed between males, but it had to be conducted with each armed with a stick the width of a finger. At the first sign of blood, the duel was called off, and the dispute was considered settled. Homicide, rape and other crimes were reportedly rare to absent among the Moriori for centuries.

In 1835, the Chatham Islands were invaded by Maori warriors, who promptly proceeded to slaughter, cannibalize and enslave the Moriori. When the fighting began, the Moriori gathered for a meeting to decide whether or not to fight the invaders. Many young men argued for fighting back, but the elders decided that Nunuku’s Law could not be violated for any reason. The Moriori ran away and hid and were found and dealt with by the Maori.

From 1835-1862, the population declined from 1,600 to 100. Those not murdered and eaten were enslaved. Moriori slaves were forbidden to marry each other, and Moriori women were forced to marry Maori men. It was a true genocide.  Tommy Solomon, the last pure Moriori, died in 1933.

Tommy Solomon on his yearly visit to Christchurch. He was definitely a big fellow! He married a Maori woman, so his descendants are technically not pure Moriori.

 

Although popular myth says the Moriori were exterminated by the Maori, several thousand mixed-race Moriori still exist today. The Moriori language is extinct, but efforts are being made to raise it from the dead.

Rightwingers have used this episode to exemplify the folly of pacifism.

The saga of the Moriori gives the lie to the notion that race is destiny, at least among Polynesians.

It is commonly thought that Polynesians selected for extreme aggression on their long sea voyages to colonize distant islands. Food may have run low on these voyages, and the survivors may have killed others and cannibalized them to survive. Perhaps the biggest and strongest were the ones most likely to survive the voyages, and this explains the huge size of Polynesians, probably the largest race on Earth, and possibly their high levels aggression and outrageous cruelty.

In modern Westernized societies, Polynesians characteristically become an Underclass with high crime, violence, gang membership and general pathology. In traditional societies, they often do well.

Whatever Polynesian genes look like, the saga of the Moriori shows that they are not doomed to high crime rates or Underclass pathology.

Genetics is the clay, culture is the sculptor.

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Filed under Anthropology, Cultural, Maori, Moriori, Oceanians, Pacific, Philosophy, Polynesians, Race/Ethnicity, Regional

by | June 29, 2016 · 3:00 PM

Polynesians and Amerindians

Found on the Net.

AMERICAN INDIAN HLA GENES ON EASTER ISLAND

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 19 March 2012 vol. 367 no. 1590 812-819

The Polynesian Gene Pool: An Early Contribution by Amerindians to Easter Island

Erik Thorsby

Abstract. It is now generally accepted that Polynesia was first settled by peoples from Southeast Asia. An alternative that eastern parts of Polynesia were first inhabited by Amerindians has found little support. There are, however, many indications of a ‘prehistoric’ (i.e. before Polynesia was discovered by Europeans) contact between Polynesia and the Americas, but genetic evidence of a prehistoric Amerindian contribution to the Polynesian gene pool has been lacking.

We recently carried out genomic HLA (human leucocyte antigen) typing as well as typing for mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y chromosome markers of blood samples collected in 1971 and 2008 from reputedly non-admixed Easter Islanders. All individuals carried HLA alleles and mtDNA types previously found in Polynesia, and most of the males carried Y chromosome markers of Polynesian origin (a few had European Y chromosome markers), further supporting an initial Polynesian population on Easter Island.

The HLA investigations revealed, however, that some individuals also carried HLA alleles which have previously almost only been found in Amerindians. We could trace the introduction of these Amerindian alleles to before the Peruvian slave trades, i.e. before the 1860s, and provide suggestive evidence that they were introduced already in prehistoric time. Our results demonstrate an early Amerindian contribution to the Polynesian gene pool on Easter Island, and illustrate the usefulness of typing for immunogenetic markers such as HLA to complement mtDNA and Y chromosome analyses in anthropological investigations.

Comment: Erik Thorsby’s study appears to be the first clear documentation of a genetic contribution of Amerindians to Polynesians that happened prior to the Peruvian slave trade in the 19th century. He detected two Amerindian-specific HLA alleles (A02:12 and B39:05) among unadmixed Easter Islanders. These alleles complement the otherwise-typical Polynesian pool of Easter Islanders. It’s unlikely that these alleles were more widespread in Polynesia in the past (as Thor Heyerdahl would want to have it).

Thorsby offers a better explanation: in accordance with the findings of chicken remains with Polynesian mtDNA in El Arenal, Southern Chile and the suggestive evidence of pre-Columbian Polynesian ancestry in Mocha Island, Chile, he writes, “There is strong evidence that Polynesians had been in South America early, i.e. in pre-Columbian time. After having arrived in South America, some of them may have returned to Polynesia, including Easter Island, not only taking the sweet potato and bottle gourd, etc., but also some native Americans with them.”

I agree with the findings of this study. This is correct. Polynesians, the greatest mariners of the Ancient World, seem to have sailed all the way from Easter Island to Southern Chile and then sailed all the way back again. They probably picked up some Amerindians to take back with them along with the tuber and gourd. And it looks like they brought some chickens with them to South America.

Polynesians were the most amazing mariners. They had no modern steering instruments. They steered their ships by the stars!

Their genesis of course is from the Lapita people who originated in Taiwan. These people sailed from Taiwan to the Philippines and from there to Indonesia, New Guinea, Melanesia, Micronesia and then Polynesia.

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Filed under Amerindians, Asia, Chile, Genetics, Indonesia, Micronesia, New Guinea, Oceanians, Pacific, Peru, Philippines, Polynesia, Polynesians, Race/Ethnicity, Regional, SE Asia, South America, Taiwan

by | June 1, 2016 · 10:19 AM

If People Did Just This One Thing, There Would be Hardly any High Blood Pressure or Obesity on Earth

What’s that one thing? Quit eating salt. Eat from 65-300 mg of salt/day for your whole life, and you will probably never get overweight, nor will you get high blood pressure.

The Yanonamo have also been studied by medical researchers of hypertension because there has never been a case of high blood pressure recorded among this group in an aboriginal state. There is a simple reason for this, but no one accepts it. The reason is that they only ingest ~65mg of salt per day for their whole lives. This tribe also has never recorded one case of obesity.

Keep in mind that these are probably some of the violent people on Earth, and one would assume that their lives are rather stressful. Their lives are characterized by high levels of violence. Yet all of this “stress” doesn’t seem to raise their blood pressure one bit. So much for the stress = hypertension theory. Stress alone will not give any human being high blood pressure. It is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause this condition. It can cause it in combination with another factor though.

Another group in the Solomon Islands was found recently, a village of 3,000 people who did not have one case of either high blood pressure or obesity. However, one of the villagers left to move to an urban area where he stopped eating his village diet and lived instead on modern foods, and he became overweight and developed high blood pressure. This group also eats almost no salt – under 300mg/day.

High blood pressure is caused by excessive salt ingestion. Other factors add onto it and act in concert with that, but the bottom line is that if all of us ate less than 300mg of salt a day for our whole lives, there would be little if any high blood pressure in modern society. Nobody believes this because the “salt theory” has fallen by the wayside, but that’s bad science.

What happens is that excessive salt ingestion poisons and damages the kidneys of many modern people. The kidneys become damaged by the salt, and then high blood pressure may develop either alone or in concert with other factors.

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Filed under Amerindians, Biology, Health, Illness, Melanesians, Nutrition, Oceanians, Pacific, Race/Ethnicity, Science