It is shocking that an article this logically flawed is published in Science.
It’s opening and closing paragraphs are political, seeking to normalize the phenomenon of Syrian migrants into Western Europe. The opening:
When the first busloads of migrants from Syria and Iraq rolled into Germany 2 years ago, some small towns were overwhelmed. The village of Sumte, population 102, had to take in 750 asylum seekers. Most villagers swung into action, in keeping with Germany’s strong Willkommenskultur, or “welcome culture.” But one self-described neo-Nazi on the district council told The New York Times that by allowing the influx, the German people faced “the destruction of our genetic heritage” and risked becoming “a gray mishmash.”
In fact, the German people have no unique genetic heritage to protect. They—and all other Europeans—are already a mishmash, the children of repeated ancient migrations, according to scientists who study ancient human origins. New studies show that almost all indigenous Europeans descend from at least three major migrations in the past 15,000 years, including two from the Middle East. Those migrants swept across Europe, mingled with previous immigrants, and then remixed to create the peoples of today.
Regarding some new DNA techniques:
“We can falsify this notion that anyone is pure,” says population geneticist Lynn Jorde of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Instead, almost all modern humans “have this incredibly complex history of mixing and mating and migration.”
Basically, the piece’s polemics are against a straw man argument/caricature of a Nazi era, idealized sense of ‘racial purity’, which no one today believes, and which has never been the case within the modern HBD movement.
The lengthy piece’s closing paragraphs are more political propaganda:
Back in Sumte in the fall of 2015, the 750 refugees from Syria arrived on schedule. The adults mostly kept to themselves, learning German and taking occasional construction jobs. But their children sang “O Tannenbaum” in a local church at Christmas and their teens ventured out often, seeking cellphone signals in the quiet town.
In the following months, almost all the refugees dispersed to larger towns throughout Germany. In time, some of the young immigrants will contribute their DNA to the next generation of Germans, re-enacting on a small scale the process of migration and assimilation that once played out repeatedly on this same land—and far beyond.
Ah… isn’t that cute.
