Vitamin D scarcity and natural selection

 

In humans who are dark-skinned or who live above the Arctic Circle, natural selection has favored those who use vitamin D more efficiently or have workarounds of one sort or another for vitamin D scarcity. Yakut family, Wikicommons (Uyban)

 

 

Vitamin D is less easily obtained by some people than by others. It is less available to those who are dark-skinned or who live above the Arctic Circle. Because less UV light enters the skin for biosynthesis, natural selection has favored individuals who use this vitamin more efficiently or have workarounds of one sort or another (Frost 2009; Frost 2012; Frost 2018).

 

Vitamin D levels are thus naturally lower in Arctic and dark-skinned humans. Some variation exists even among Europeans, with levels being lower in darker-skinned southern Europeans than in lighter-skinned northern Europeans (Snellman et al. 2009; van der Wielen et al. 1995).

 

Unfortunately, vitamin D deficiency is diagnosed on the basis of norms developed for light-skinned people from temperate latitudes. Inuit and African Americans are thus diagnosed as “deficient” and offered vitamin supplementation, which has the effect of bathing their body tissues in concentrations of vitamin D that they and their ancestors have not experienced for tens of thousands of years, if not longer.

 

If  Arctic and darker-skinned humans naturally have lower levels of vitamin D, their optimal range of levels will likewise be lower, and toxic effects may occur at levels that lie within the optimal range of Europeans. You may have been told that this cannot happen because toxicity occurs only if you ingest huge amounts of this vitamin. Actually, toxicity begins at relatively low levels. In light-skinned humans from the temperate zone, the optimal range seems to extend only from 40 nmol/L to 100 nmol/L:

 

·         The total mortality rate is about 50% greater in men whose vitamin D levels are either below 46 nmol/L or above 98 nmol/L (Michaelsson et al. 2010).

·         The risk of prostate cancer is significantly greater below 40 nmol/L and above 60 nmol/L (Tuohimaa 2008; Tuohimaa et al. 2009).

·         Mortality for 7 types of cancer (endometrial, esophageal, gastric, kidney, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, pancreatic, ovarian) is significantly greater below 45 nmol/L and above 124 nmol/L (Helzlsouer et al. 2010).

·         The risk of pancreatic cancer is significantly greater above 100 nmol/L (Stolzenberg-Solomon et al. 2010).

·         The risk of cardiovascular disease is significantly greater below 50 nmol/L and above 62.5 nmol/L, and mortality from all causes is significantly greater above 122.5 nmol/L (Davis 2009).

 

Perhaps most worrisome, studies on mice indicate a U-shaped response curve for the aging process, with premature aging associated with both too little and too much vitamin D (Tuohimaa 2009; Tuohimaa et al. 2009).

 

Vitamin D metabolism and gene-culture coevolution among the Inuit

 

To what extent has the safe range of vitamin D been shifted downward in Arctic and dark-skinned humans? To answer that question, we need to understand gene-culture coevolution. When humans enter a new environment, they adapt by pushing the bounds of phenotypic plasticity—they do the most with what they have already. There is then natural selection for genetic variants that can stabilize this new pattern of adaptation and make it more innate. A new phenotype thus ends up becoming a new genotype.

 

Traditionally, Inuit coped with vitamin D scarcity through a high-meat/low-cereal diet and through extended breastfeeding of children for two years or longer. This diet not only provided vitamin D but also helped the body use this vitamin more efficiently, specifically by means of β-casein in breast milk, unknown substances in meat, and absence of phytic acid (Frost 2018). 

 

Those cultural adaptations were followed by physiological adaptations: receptors that bind more tightly to the vitamin D molecule; a lower set-point for calcium-regulated release of parathyroid hormone; and conversion of vitamin D at a higher rate from its common form to its most active form. Inuit breast milk might also be richer in β-casein (Frost 2018).

 

That gene-culture coevolution has been notably demonstrated by a genome study of the Greenland Inuit, whose marine diet has apparently selected for genetic variants that help their bodies digest and use polyunsaturated fatty acids (Fumagalli et al. 2015).

 

Research on indigenous northern Eurasian peoples

 

Before 2020, the Inuit were the only non-European population for whom we had research on cultural and physiological adaptations to vitamin D scarcity (Frost 2012; Frost 2018). Two studies have since been published on this subject with regard to indigenous peoples in northern Eurasia.

 

Research by Khrunin et al. (2020)

 

This research team looked for signals of natural selection in the genomes of eight northern populations: Russians from the Archangelsk and Vologda regions; Izhemski Komi; Priluzski Komi; Veps; Khanty; Mansi; and Nenets. The strongest signal came from two genes: SLC37A2 and PKNOX2. The first gene is expressed when vitamin D₃ is present in peripheral blood cells. The authors go on to note:

 

Deficit of vitamin D is often observed in northern populations, where exposure to sunlight is limited for many months. Hypothetically, mutations in the VDR-controlled SLC37A2 gene may help northern populations adjust to vitamin D levels. At the same time, the same mutations could have effects on alcohol tolerance in these populations through the PKNOX2 gene, located on the opposite strand of DNA in the same locus. 

 

The second gene, PKNOX2, is associated with alcohol addiction in mice and humans. The authors add that this finding “is of special interest in the context of the well-known alcohol addiction that occurs widely in indigenous populations of Northern Eurasia.”

 

Could vulnerability to alcoholism be a side-effect of adaptation to vitamin D scarcity? The hypothesis is interesting, although I lean more toward another explanation. Some populations, like those around the Mediterranean, have had a long history of drinking fermented beverages instead of water, which might be contaminated with bacteria that cause dysentery and other diseases. Consequently, natural selection has favored individuals who have higher levels of alcohol dehydrogenase and other physiological adaptations that make alcohol less toxic. Conversely, other populations, like northern Eurasians, have consumed fermented beverages for a shorter time, and their bodies are less adapted to alcohol (Nabhan 2004, pp. 27-30; Ridley 2000).

 

Research by Malyarchuk (2020)

 

This is a study of a single polymorphic gene, GC, in several indigenous peoples of northeastern Siberia (Eskimos, Chukchi, Koryaks), central Siberia (Evens, Evenks, Yakuts), southern Siberia (Tuvinians, Shorts, Altaians, Buryats), and western Siberia (Kets, Khanty, Mansi, Selkups, Nenets, Nganasans). The GC gene produces a protein that is the main carrier of vitamin D in the body.

 

One GC variant, specifically the T variant at rs4588, is much less frequent in northeast and central Siberians (5.4%, 3.1%) than in southern and western Siberians (28.6%, 27.5%). Conversely, the G variant is much more frequent in the northeast and center (32.1%, 46.9%) than in the south and west (16.1%, 12.5%). I initially thought the reason was a higher level of European admixture in southern and western Siberia. But there is little European admixture in East Asians, and they resemble southern and western Siberians in having the same high frequency of the T variant (26.1%).

 

The G variant may have become more frequent in northeast and central Siberians as an adaptation to vitamin D scarcity. As one goes farther north, the skin produces less vitamin D because less UV light enters the skin. More research is needed, however, on two other factors: (1) amount of vitamin D from dietary sources; and (2) skin pigmentation. It may be that southern Siberians are somewhat darker-skinned than northern Siberians, although that isn’t my impression. These points are made by Malyarchuk (2020) in the Results and Discussion section. Researchers should study:

 

… the gene-environment interactions by taking into account the vitamin D status of the indigenous population, ethnicity, influence of environmental conditions (the level of natural ambient light and seasonal patterns), and specifics of nutrition. The influence of such factors on the distribution of GC polymorphism variants is evidenced by the data obtained in this work on the high prevalence of haplotypes encoding the Gc1F isoform in northeast Asia under condition of low intensity of solar radiation. In addition, an important factor contributing to vitamin D deficiency may be a relatively high level of melanin in the skin of representatives of the Arctic peoples, which prevents the penetration of ultraviolet rays into the skin and thereby hinders the synthesis of vitamin D₃

 

References

 

Davis, C.D. (2009). Vitamin D and health: can too much be harmful? American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine 3(5): 407-408. https://doi.org/10.1177/1559827609338154

 

Frost, P. (2009). Black-White differences in cancer risk and the vitamin-D hypothesis. Journal of the National Medical Association 101: 1310-1313.

https://doi.org/10.1016/s0027-9684(15)31151-2

 

Frost, P. (2012). Vitamin D deficiency among northern Native Peoples: a real or apparent problem? International Journal of Circumpolar Health 71(S2): 18001

https://doi.org/10.3402/IJCH.v71i0.18001

 

Frost, P. (2018). To supplement or not to supplement: are Inuit getting enough vitamin D? Études Inuit Studies 40(2): 271-291.

https://doi.org/10.7202/1055442ar

 

Frost, P. (2020). Ethnic differences in vitamin-D metabolism. E Scholarly Community Encyclopedia.

https://encyclopedia.pub/3033

 

Fumagalli, M., I. Moltke, N. Grarup, F. Racimo, P. Bjerregaard, M.E. Jørgensen et al. (2015). Greenlandic Inuit show genetic signatures of diet and climate adaptation. Science 349(6254): 1343-1347. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aab2319

 

Helzlsouer, K.J. and Steering Committee of Vitamin D Pooling Project of Rarer Cancers (2010).  Abstract PL04-05: Vitamin D: panacea or a Pandora’s box for prevention? Cancer Prevention Research 3(1 Suppl 1): PL04-05. https://doi.org/10.1158/1940-6207.PREV-09-PL04-05

 

Khrunin, A.V., G.V. Khvorykh, A.N. Fedorov, and S.A. Limborska (2020). Genomic landscape of the signals of positive natural selection in populations of Northern Eurasia: A view from Northern Russia. PLoS ONE 15(2): e0228778. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0228778

 

Malyarchuk, B.A. (2020). Polymorphism of GC gene, encoding vitamin D binding protein, in aboriginal populations of Siberia. Ecological Genetics 18(2): 243-250.

https://doi.org/10.17816/ecogen18634

 

Michaëlsson, K., J.A. Baron, G. Snellman, R. Gedeborg, L. Byberg, J. Sundström et al. (2010). Plasma vitamin D and mortality in older men: a community-based prospective cohort study. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 92(4): 841-848. https://doi.org/10.3945/ajcn.2010.29749 

 

Nabhan, G.P. (2004). Why Some Like It Hot. Food, Genes, and Cultural Diversity. Washington: Island Press/Shearwater Books.

 

Ridley, M. (2000).Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters. New York: HarperCollins.

 

Snellman, G., H. Melhus, R. Gedeborg, et al. (2009). Seasonal genetic influence on serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels: a twin study. PLoS ONE 4(11): e7747. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0007747

 

Stolzenberg-Solomon, R.Z., E.J. Jacobs, A.A. Arslan, D. Qi, A.V. Patel, K.J. Helzlsouer et al.

(2010). Circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D and risk of pancreatic cancer, Cohort Consortium Vitamin D Pooling Project of Rarer Cancers. American Journal of Epidemiology 172(1): 81-93.

https://doi.org/10.1093/aje/kwq120

 

Tuohimaa, P. (2009). Vitamin D and aging. The Journal of Steroid Biochemistry and Molecular Biology 114(1-2): 78-84. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsbmb.2008.12.020 

 

Tuohimaa, P., T. Keisala, A. Minasyan, J. Cachat, and A Kalueff (2009). Vitamin D, nervous system and aging. Psychoneuroendocrinology 34S: S278-286. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psyneuen.2009.07.003

 

van der Wielen R.P., M.R. Lowik, H. van den Berg, L.C. de Groot, J. Haller J, et al. (1995). Serum vitamin D concentrations among elderly people in Europe. Lancet 346: 207–210. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(95)91266-5

Between Europe and America

Iceland had pre-Columbian contacts with North America. Did they lead to intermarriage? (Wikicommons)



Did the Norse have sustained contacts with the indigenous peoples of the Americas, including intermarriage? Or was Vinland a fleeting encounter?

Steve Sailer touched on this question in a recent column, citing an Icelandic study. Although Iceland’s gene pool is overwhelmingly from Scandinavia and the British Isles, there are also traces of a lineage normally found among the indigenous peoples of northeast Asia and the Americas. Preliminary genealogical analyses have shown that this lineage was present in Iceland at least 300 years ago. 

This raised the intriguing possibility that the Icelandic C1 lineage could be traced to Viking voyages to the Americas that commenced in the 10th century. In an attempt to shed further light on the entry date of the C1 lineage into the Icelandic mtDNA pool and its geographical origin, we used the deCODE Genetics genealogical database to identify additional matrilineal ancestors that carry the C1 lineage and then sequenced the complete mtDNA genome of 11 contemporary C1 carriers from four different matrilines. Our results indicate a latest possible arrival date in Iceland of just prior to 1700 and a likely arrival date centuries earlier. Most surprisingly, we demonstrate that the Icelandic C1 lineage does not belong to any of the four known Native American (C1b, C1c, and C1d) or Asian (C1a) subclades of haplogroup C1. Rather, it is presently the only known member of a new subclade, C1e. (Ebenesersdóttir et al. 2011)

I doubt the hypothesis of Amerindian admixture. As the authors note, the C1e subclade has not been found in any indigenous population of the Americas. Perhaps this is because those populations have not been studied as thoroughly as the Icelandic one. Perhaps it is present among Amerindians, but at a frequency too low to be detected by studies done to date.

But why, then, do we see no other Amerindian subclades in Icelanders? That population has been studied so exhaustively that even low frequencies of other subclades should have been detected by now. This point is made by Der Sarkissian et al. (2014):

Among other hypotheses including that of a European origin, an American origin was favoured on the basis that most of the hg C1 diversity is found on the American continent, despite the fact that no sequence belonging to hg C1e could be detected in the Americas (or anywhere else). This lack of match was explained by under-sampling of the American mtDNA genome diversity [10]. In any case, if admixture between Native Americans and Vikings did occur, it must have been limited, as no other American-specific lineage (e.g. hg A2, B2, D1, C1b, C1c, C1d) was detected in Iceland.

The authors of the same study point out that a sister subclade, C1f, has been found in human remains from Mesolithic northeast Europe. Moreover, it is not excluded that these two sister subclades, C1e and C1f, still exist in northeast Europe. The Icelandic population has been studied much more than almost any other population, so C1e might still exist somewhere in northeast Europe but hasn't been found because of its low frequency. The authors conclude:

... we suggest that the Icelandic-specific C1e sub-clade could have had a recent origin in northern Europe rather than an American origin. This hypothesis is relevant with regard to the origins of the Icelandic population, as Iceland was discovered and first settled by Scandinavian Vikings around 1,130 years ago. Vikings raids extended as far from their homeland in Scandinavia as France, Spain and Sicily, but their main expansion range comprised western Russia, the Baltic region, Scandinavia, and the British Isles.

In fact, we know that some of Iceland's settlers had trading contacts with Russia and may have had slaves of Slavic origin:

No name given in Landnámabók resembles any Slavic form. But the settlers who came from Sweden and Gotland (e.g. S. 209) must have had various contacts with the Slavs. This would be the case also with some Norwegians who like Skinna-Bjöm 'used to go trading to Novgorod' before he went to Iceland. His son Miðjarðar-Skeggi 'went to plunder in the Baltic' (S. 174 and H. 140). Such people were very likely to have aboard their ships Slavic slaves and/or companions recruited from among southern Baltic pirates or inhabitants of the multiethnic emporia like Wolin/Jómsborg or Truso. (Urbanczyk 2002, p. 160)

A Slavic presence in Iceland is further suggested by the existence of "sunken huts"—rectangular-like depressions in the ground with vertical walls, stone ovens placed in one of the corners, and roof constructions supported by corner posts. To date, the remains of eighteen such huts have been discovered in Iceland, and they seem to date to the settlement period. They are also typically Slavic:

Considering the houses they built there is little alternative to the conclusion that they were Slavs or, at least, people who grew up among the Slavs which made them 'Slavs' culturally. Such houses, distinctively different from the Germanic sunken huts are known in thousands from all the lands settled by early Slavs in Eastern, Southern and Central Europe. (Urbanczyk 2002, p. 163)

It should be pointed out that the Norse were major players in the early medieval slave trade, particularly in supplying North African and Middle Eastern clients with fair-skinned women. One of the largest slave markets was at Hederby, on what is now the Danish-German border. It was largely to cash in on the demand for slaves that the Norse began launching their infamous raids across Europe (Holm 1986; Raffield 2019; Skirda 2010, 143-146). Regular visits by Muslim merchants likely explain the influx of Middle Eastern silver coins into Scandinavia during the ninth and tenth centuries (Raffield 2019). 

Such visits may also explain the presence of low levels of North African ancestry in the Icelandic gene pool. Ásmundsdóttir (2017) argues that this North African ancestry entered the Icelandic gene pool by way of the initial Scandinavian settlers. It may thus have its origins in merchants from Muslim Spain and North Africa who regularly came to trading centers like Hederby.


References

Ásmundsdóttir R.D. (2017). The African L3e5a haplogroup in the Icelandic population.
Skemman repository of dissertations
https://skemman.is/handle/1946/27644

Der Sarkissian, C., P. Brotherton, O. Balanovsky, J.E. Templeton, B. Llamas, J. Soubrier, V. Moiseyev, V. Khartanovich, A. Cooper, W. Haak, and Genographic Consortium (2014). Mitochondrial genome sequencing in Mesolithic North East Europe Unearths a new sub-clade within the broadly distributed human haplogroup C1. PloS one 9(2), e87612. 
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3913659/ 

Ebenesersdóttir, S.S., Á. Sigurðsson, F. Sánchez-Quinto, C. Lalueza-Fox, K. Stefánsson, and A. Helgason, (2011). A new subclade of mtDNA haplogroup C1 found in icelanders: Evidence of pre-columbian contact? American Journal of Physical Anthropology 144: 92-99.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ajpa.21419

Holm, P. (1986). The Slave trade of Dublin, Ninth to Twelfth Centuries. Peritia 5: 317-45.

Raffield, B. (2019). The Slave Markets of the Viking World: Comparative Perspectives on an 'Invisible Archaeology'. Slavery & Abolition 40(4)

Sailer, S. (2020). Are Any Living Humans Descended from Pre-1492 Trans-Atlantic Contacts? The Unz Review, February 20
https://www.unz.com/isteve/are-any-living-humans-descended-from-pre-1492-trans-atlantic-contacts/#new_comments

Skirda, A. (2010). La traite des Slaves. L'esclavage des Blancs du VIII^e au XVIII^e siècle. Paris: Les Éditions de Paris Max Chaleil.

Urbanczyk, P. (2002). Ethnic aspects of the settlement of Iceland. Collegium medievale: interdisciplinary journal of medieval research 15:155-166
http://www.mgh-bibliothek.de/dokumente/b/b071118.pdf

Hiatus

 

The Second Class Carriage, Honoré Daumier (1808-1879)

 

I'll be on vacation until October and will probably have little time for my weekly column. I hope to profit from this hiatus to rethink my priorities for the next twelve months.

That rethink will include this column. Is it reaching its target audience? Are changes needed? A recurring suggestion is that I should write more simply and in a less pedantic style. Yes, plain language is best. A lot of academic writing suffers from turgid jargon, not to mention silly attempts to imitate the syntax of French deconstructionists. But it’s not as if I write my columns first and later try to impress folks by inserting “organizing principle,” “evolutionary trajectory,” and other bafflegab. That’s how I think. Jargon also allows me to squeeze complex ideas into a few words. A certain amount is unavoidable, unless you want to read columns that are twice as long.

Russia, Russia, Russia ...

Another suggestion is that I should write more pieces about foreign politics, like "Impressions of Russia." In The Unz Review that column got me 246 comments (My score was higher with only one other column “The Jews of West Africa”). Yet I wrote it off the top of my head.

So why not write about Russia? To be honest I don't feel qualified. I remember my first impressions of that country and how so many turned out to be incomplete or dead wrong. Nonetheless, those same first impressions turn up again and again in pieces by journalists and other writers.

Like the ones who go on about "grim-faced Russians weighed down by centuries of oppression." I've read that refrain so often it's no longer funny. Russians dislike smiling at strangers because it’s considered rude—and also because a stranger with attitude might take it the wrong way. But among friends and family they laugh and smile like anyone else. This is changing, to be sure. On my last visit I noticed many store employees flashing American-style smiles at customers.

Then there's that travel writer who said he knew he was being spied upon because the hotel maid looked like a top model. Uh, that's just the local demographics, and the fact that many young women work in services to pay for their university education. In the West, students are supposed to work as unpaid "interns."

Finally, many journalists have been writing that Russia is hell on earth for gays and lesbians. The real situation is like that of the West in the 1970s: homosexuality is no longer illegal but most people still consider it wrong. So gays and lesbians get disowned by their parents and beaten up by young toughs. On the other hand, they form a large and very visible community with its own bars, magazines, and festivals. I remember going to a night club where about a third of the clientele were openly gay or lesbian. It was no hole-in-the wall either.

So if some journalists think Russia today is evil, they should also think the West in the 1970s was evil. Maybe they do.

Of course, there is a big difference between us in the 1970s and Russians today. We had to wait forty years to see how things would turn out. They don’t have to wait. They can just look at us. That cuts two ways. On the one hand, Russian gays and lesbians look at the West and feel frustrated. They want change to happen faster. On the other hand, traditional Russians look at the West and feel dismayed. They want no part of this change.

Can you blame them? In the 1980s I supported gay rights on the principle of "live and let live." Gays weren't asking to be accepted by people who didn't accept them, least of all religious conservatives. They just wanted to be left alone, as consenting adults, and who could be against what consenting adults do in private?

The next three decades then saw a ratcheting upward of gay rights. For example, since 2012 all Ontario schools have had to allow gay/lesbian clubs on their premises, even Catholic and elementary schools. So much for freedom of religion. So much for "consenting adults."  Gays and lesbians seem to be like any pressure group: they make whatever promises are necessary to get what they want and then forget them when they get what they want.

So Russia is a bit like our past. Only it's a past where people have a better idea of the future.

Punditry, left vs. right, and globalism

That's about all I have to say about Russia. If you want to know more, ask someone from that country.

What about punditry on other topics? Again, I don't feel qualified, and there are columnists far better at that than me.

I also have mixed feelings about punditry. It aims not so much to change how people think as to confirm what they think. So the net effect is to polarize public opinion. Liberals become more self-assured about their ideology and conservatives likewise. Yet, as I see it, both groups are equally wrong, and both have betrayed their original principles. 

As I see it (again), the worst threat comes from the right. It’s the right that best articulates globalism and is best able to persuade everyone that it's for their own good. And globalism will be much more far-reaching—and devastating—than communism ever was. It is literally the abolition of all barriers to the free flow of capital, trade, and labor. In the best scenario, wages and working conditions will be levelled downward throughout the West. In the worst scenario, the whole world will be worse off because the conditions most suitable to wealth creation are in the high-trust societies of the West.

Those societies are not high-trust because of laws, constitutions, or charters of rights. They are that way because of their cultural, behavioral, and psychological characteristics—low levels of personal violence, high levels of affective empathy and guilt proneness, strong orientation toward the future rather than the present, and so on. It was that mental package that made the rise of the West possible.

That mental package is now being dissolved, not so much by "cultural Marxists" as by business interests that want to cut labor costs and increase GDP. They feel no animosity toward the West and its national identities. They just feel those identities have had their day. In their opinion, this is how we'll all move into a better and more prosperous future.

People are entitled to their opinions, but this one—globalism—isn’t competing with the others on a level playing field. It dominates the media, the think tanks, and even the entertainment industry. And it dominates both the left and the right. It’s an opinion that has succeeded not on its own merits but because it has much more money behind it.

This has always been a problem in open, democratic societies. It has gotten worse, however. This is partly because the top 1% have proportionately more money nowadays and partly because they have less sense of national loyalty nowadays. They’ll say it out loud: “Why should I feel more loyal to someone who works here than to someone who works in another country?” This sort of view is promoted by eminently conservative groups, like the Fraser Institute here in Canada.

Punditry becomes part of the problem to the degree it shores up the false dichotomy of “left” versus “right.” Today, the real one is globalism versus the forces it opposes.

Reference 

Ostroff, J. (2015). How Canada got its first Catholic elementary school gay-straight alliance, Huffington Post, May 11

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/05/11/polly-quinn-gsa-catholic-elementary-school_n_7226896.html 

Impressions of Russia

 

The Battle for Sevastopol, now showing in Russian theatres

 

The young man shook his head. “No, I can’t say I’m pro-Putin. There’s too much corruption in Russia, with too much money going to the wrong people. We should become more Western. Instead, we’re moving in the other direction.”

Finally, I thought, a liberal critic of Putin. The young man continued. “Here it’s not too bad, but in Moscow you can see the change. They’re all over. Please, don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate anyone, but I feel uncomfortable when there are so many of them. Sometimes, I wonder whether I’m still in Russia.”

*******************************************************

Much had changed since my last visit ten years ago. Driving into the city of Voronezh from the airport, I could see entirely new neighborhoods, supermarkets, office buildings, and the like. In 2003, there was only one shopping mall in the whole city, and it was nothing special. Now, there were malls as huge as any in Toronto. Things had likewise improved for some of our old friends and acquaintances. A few had moved up into the growing middle class, including one couple who showed us their new palatial home on the outskirts.

Yet the bulk of the population seemed no better off, and in some ways worse off. Ten years ago, jobs were there for the taking. The pay may have been lousy, but it was money. Now, the competition is intense even for those jobs. An unemployed man told me: “It’s hard to find work now. Employers will hire immigrants because they work for much less and won’t complain. And there are a lot of them now, mainly from Central Asia, but also from places all over.”

Sour grapes? Perhaps. But it’s consistent with what a Quebec building contractor had told me earlier. “I no longer bother with Russian construction projects because there’s always a Russian company that will put in an absurdly low bid. The only way he can stay within budget is by hiring illegal immigrants. Everyone knows it, but nothing is ever done to stop it.”

********************************************************

I wasn’t surprised to see Ukrainian refugees in a big city like Voronezh, but it was surprising to see so many in remote farming villages. And each refugee family had a horror story to tell. It’s one thing to hear these stories from professional journalists; it’s another to hear them from ordinary people who aren’t being paid to say what they say. This is an underappreciated factor in the growing anger among Russians against the Ukrainian government.

After all that’s happened, I don’t see how eastern Ukraine will ever accept being ruled by Kiev. It’s like a marriage that has crossed the line between verbal abuse and physical violence.

*********************************************************

We were standing outside a fast food kiosk. “I just don’t get it,” said my wife. “Prices are almost as high here as in Canada, yet the wages are a lot lower. How do people manage to survive?”

A young man overheard her. “The people who don’t survive are the ones you don’t get to see.”

**********************************************************

Postwar housing projects cover most of the city. They are now aging badly, and North Americans wouldn’t hesitate to call them “slums.” We like to think that slums cause crime, broken homes, and stunted mental development. Yet, here, you can walk up about in safety, families are usually intact, and the children are studying hard to become engineers, scientists, ballet dancers, or what have you.

**********************************************************

We were sitting in a restaurant with two young Russians, a lawyer and a university teacher. “Will there be war?” said one, looking worried. I tried to be reassuring, saying no one wanted war. But I wasn’t sure myself.

There was another question. “But do the Americans know what they’re getting into?” I shook my head. Few people in the West know much about Russia, and what little they do is worse than useless.

***********************************************************

Hitler said it would be like kicking in the door of a rotten building. That’s how it seemed at first. And then the war dragged on and on, grinding down one German division after another. If—God forbid—war happens another time, we’ll probably see the same pattern. Without a higher purpose, the average Russian man often retreats into indolence, alcoholism, and self-destructive behavior. Give him that purpose, and he will fight for it with almost superhuman power.

One of my professors ascribed it to the yearly cycle of traditional farm life. For most of the year, the muzhik slept a lot and whiled away his days in aimlessness. But when it came time to plough the fields or bring in the harvest, he had to pull out all stops and work continuously from dawn to dusk.

************************************************************

It’s the 70^th anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic War, and reminders can be seen everywhere. There has been a spate of new war movies, including one about the Battle for Sevastopol. It’s hard not to see references to the current conflict.

The other slave trade

 

Although the slave raiders usually left infants behind, older girls and boys could be taken, if suitable for immediate sale (Selling a child-slave, painting by Vasily Vereshchagin – source).

Europe used to export slaves to the non-European world. Such a statement would astonish most people today, even among the university-educated. Surely, those slaves were few in number, certainly fewer than the African slaves taken across the Atlantic.  And surely all of that happened long before the Atlantic slave trade. 

Well, no and no. The numbers were huge. At the height of that trade, over 10,000 Eastern Europeans were enslaved each year between 1500 and 1650 for export to North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia … a total of 1.5 million. By comparison, the Americas received fewer than 300,000 African slaves before 1600 and another 1.5 million between 1600 and 1700 (Fisher, 1972; Kolodziejczyk, 2006). Western Europeans were likewise enslaved and taken abroad, mainly to North Africa. How many? More than 1 million between 1530 and 1780 (Davis, 2004).

And, yes, those European slaves were going across the Mediterranean while African slaves were going across the Atlantic. Officially, the “harvest” ended with the Treaty of Carlowitz (1699), which called on the Ottoman Empire to stop all slave raiding (Abou-el-Haj, 1969). Unofficially, it did not end on a large scale until Russia annexed the Khanate of the Crimea in 1783—a quarter-century before the abolition of the slave trade in the British Empire. Fair-skinned women were thereafter exported on a smaller scale until the late 19th century, mainly from the Caucasus.  

Differences from the African Slave Trade

The white slave trade differed from its black counterpart in a few key ways. In Africa, a slave-trader typically purchased prisoners of war who had already lost their freedom through local conflicts. In Europe, he played a more active role.  

This was the case with the Crimean Tatars who lived under Ottoman protection in the Black Sea region. Beginning in the mid-15th century, they would fan out each year on raids into what is now Ukraine and southern Russia. These raids served no military purpose, being driven by the profits to be made in the slave trade:

[…] most of these raids do not appear to have had any military purpose and, moreover, had little or no relationship to Ottoman policy. They were an integral part of the Crimean economy, a "harvesting of the steppe" as the Tatars explained it. (Fisher, 1973)

In a royal [Polish] document dated 1555 we read: “There are many Turks who send Tatars supplied with their horses and armour into our domains, and later share the profits in the fields”, this last expression referring to the fact that the division took place far from the eyes of the Ottoman police and customs officers who might have viewed negatively the breaking of the peace treaty or the failure to pay taxes due by those involved in the slave trade.  

Notwithstanding such efforts to escape the tax duties, the Ottoman state was among the principal share holders in the Black Sea slave trade. According to Pretwicz, the sultan's income from the slave trade in Akkerman and Ocakiv (Turkish Özü ) amounted to a few 100,000 akçe a year. Strikingly similar are the numbers for Caffa established by Inalcik on the basis of Ottoman tax registers. The slave tax collected in Caffa amounted to 620,000 akçe in 1520 and 650,000 akçe in 1529.26 The same author estimates the total state revenue from the slave trade as approaching 100,000 gold florins (i.e. circa 6,000,000 akçe) in the mid 16th century. (Kolodziejczyk, 2006)

The white slave trade was different in a second way. Most black slaves were destined for physical labor on plantations. There was thus a stronger preference for men over women. In contrast, white slaves were used more for domestic service, particularly concubinage and marriage. There was thus a stronger preference for women, as reflected in the sex ratio of the slave population: black slaves were predominantly male, and white slaves predominantly female. Furthermore, while blacks of both sexes sold for the same price, Russian and Circassian women fetched 50% more than men of the same nationality. (Verlinden, 1977, pp. 211, 224, 306, 315, 330-331, 460, 517; see also Frost, 1990). This price differential continued until the end of white slavery. A mid-19th century report from Turkey states that a “trained, strong, black slave” would cost 4,000 to 5,000 piasters, whereas “white slave girls of special beauty” were worth 50,000 piasters or more (Lewis, 1990, p. 13).  

Conclusion

Slave trading existed in many parts of the world and during many historical periods. Trading in fair-skinned women, however, was much more limited in space and time. There is no evidence of it during Roman times, at least not on a large scale. If a Roman notable wanted a bride with milk-white skin, he would look among the families in his entourage and not among the slaves at the local market. After all, a native-born woman of good family would bring a dowry and valuable family connections.

All of this changed in the 7th century with the dramatic expansion of the Arab world into the Middle East and thence into North Africa and Spain. The new elites were darker in skin tone and, also, more polygynous. It was these two factors that would fuel demand for fair-skinned brides and concubines. 

A third factor was of course the relative weakness of European societies, particularly during the Dark Ages that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire. With the gradual strengthening of European states, this trade increasingly took the form of hit-and-run raids that focused on poorly defended areas, such as the plains north of the Black Sea. This raiding would finally end only with European annexation of those “states” that earned most of their income from the slave trade, such as the Khanate of the Crimea and the Beyliks of North Africa.

Would this trade have continued if Europe had remained weak? Probably. Would it have eventually become more humane and sustainable? Doubtful. Though often described as “harvesting,” there never was any effort to make it sustainable. A Tatar raid typically left behind the old and the very young, as a Polish report noted: “In the fields and forests they [i.e. the Tatars] left behind over 200 poor children whom they could not take along since everyone preferred to take horses and oxen rather than children” (Kolodziejczyk, 2006).

The result was widespread depopulation of much of Ukraine and southern Russia, which in turn forced the Tatars to raid farther and farther afield, even as far as present-day Poland. Demographic wastage was considerable: 

The Crimean Tatar society was based on raiding the neighbouring Slavic and Caucasian sedentary societies and selling the captives into the slave markets of Eurasia. Approximately 75 percent of the Crimean population consisted of slaves or freedmen, and much of the free population was highly predatory, engaged either in the gathering of slaves or in the selling of them. It is known that for every slave the Crimeans sold in the market, they killed outright several other people during their raids, and a couple more died on the way to the slave market. (Britannica, 2013)

There was no resource management, only resource depletion (Wikipedia, 2013). As Kolodziejczyk (2006) notes:

We should not close our eyes to the consequences of depopulation, affecting large Slavic territories in Eastern Europe. If an "alternative" history of Ukraine were imaginable, perhaps the country's historical development would have looked different had it not been for the slave trade.

Ukraine is considered to be part of ‘Old Europe’ yet the plains north of the Black Sea were finally opened for settlement at about the same time as the plains of the United States and Canada. 

References

Abou-el-Haj, R.A. (1969). The Formal Closure of the Ottoman Frontier in Europe: 1699-1703, Journal of the American Oriental Society, 89(3), 467-475. 

Britannica. (2012). “Slavery” in Encyclopedia Britannica’s Guide to Black History.

http://www.britannica.com/blackhistory/article-24157 

Davis, R. (2004). Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast, and Italy, 1500-1800, Palgrave-Macmillan.

Fisher, A.W. (1973). Azov in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, Neue Folge, 21(2), 161-174. 

Fisher, A. (1972). Muscovy and the Black Sea slave trade, Canadian American Slavic Studies, 6, 575-594.

Frost, P. (1990). Fair women, dark men: the forgotten roots of colour prejudice, History of European Ideas, 12, 669-679.

Kolodziejczyk, D. (2006). Slave hunting and slave redemption as a business enterprise: The northern Black Sea region in the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries, Oriente Moderno, 86, 1, The Ottomans and Trade, pp. 149-159.

Lewis, B. (1990). Race and Slavery in the Middle East, New York: Oxford University Press. 

Verlinden, C. (1977). L’Esclavage dans l’Europe médiévale, vol. II, Ghent.

Wikipedia (2013). Crimean-Nogai Raids,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimean-Nogai_Raids

Cultural modernity and behavioral modernity

 

Where’s the beard? And the headscarf? In this photo from the 1980s, the Tsarnaevs look secular and modern (Source: Paris Match)

Much has been made of radical Islam and its role in shaping the mental makeup of the Tsarnaev brothers. During their formative years, however, they were scarcely even nominal Muslims. Although their father was Chechen and their mother Avar (another Caucasus nationality), the language spoken at home was Russian, and their culture was the secular and increasingly Westernized one of late Soviet society. At that time, the cultural referents were largely those of the 1980s: heavy metal, New Wave, and Michael Jackson.

Religious radicalization would not begin until much later, after their family had emigrated to the U.S. and specifically in 2008 when the older brother, Tamerlan, stopped drinking and smoking and started attending a local mosque (Wikipedia, 2013).

Already, however, Tamerlan was having problems with anger control. In 2007, he confronted a Brazilian youth who had dated his younger sister and punched him in the face. In May 2008, his other sister said her husband was cheating on her and beating her up. Tamerlan flew across the country to "straighten up the brains" of his brother-in-law. Although his future American wife converted to Islam and started wearing a hijab in 2008, her conversion did not prevent domestic fights in which he would "fly into rages and sometimes throw furniture or throw things." In 2009, he got involved with another woman, allegedly assaulted her, and was arrested for aggravated domestic assault and battery (Wikipedia, 2013). In 2010, as an aspiring boxer, he entered his opponent’s locker room before the fight to taunt him and the man’s trainer (Sontag et al., 2013). In addition to his bad temper, Tamerlan had other behavioral problems. After his marriage, he stopped working and lived off his wife (who had to put in 70-80 hour weeks as a home health aide) and Massachusetts welfare services (to the tune of over $100,000). “He wasn’t really willing to work. That in my mind made him an unsuitable husband. She worked like crazy for him” (Fisher, 2013).

Failed assimilation?

The Boston bombers are often presented as a case of failed assimilation. In reality, they and their family had already been assimilated into modern secular culture. This was, of course, the authoritarian modernity of the Soviet Union, which severely repressed premodern patterns of behavior, i.e., religion, vendettas, child marriage, seclusion of women, etc. The Soviet Union also dealt harshly with what results when premodern impulses are expressed in a modern social setting, namely “hooliganism” and “parasitism.” By emigrating to the U.S., the Tsarnaevs entered a much freer environment that would eventually enable them—first Tamerlan and then other family members—to return to a cultural system that could bring some control back into their lives.

This phenomenon has been observed not only in immigrant communities of the U.S., but also in those of Western Europe. Islamism has arisen primarily in the relatively free environments of the West, and not in the more authoritarian ones of the Middle East. In many cases, the West has helped radicalize individuals who initially come as students or immigrants and later return to promote Islamism back home. Furthermore, when we in the West intervene to overthrow secular dictatorships in that region—Hussein in Iraq, Mubarak in Egypt, Gaddafi in Libya, Assad in Syria—we unwittingly create optimal conditions for the emergence of radical Islam. We refuse to countenance the possibility that some kind of authoritarianism is necessary to make those societies work. The choice is really whether it will be secular authoritarianism or the ultra-religious kind.

The other Chechen revolution

Another example is Chechnya itself. The first and second Chechen wars (1994-1996, 1999-2000) are usually seen in the West as a reaction to political circumstances, specifically the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the inability of its successor state, the Russian Federation, to maintain political control. The Chechen people thus saw an opportunity to reclaim their independence and took it.

There was also, however, a prior weakening of cultural control that can be traced farther back to the late Soviet period. This was a time when official Communist ideology had become little more than an empty shell and when people began to emulate Western ways. School and parental discipline slowly became more relaxed, under the influence of beliefs that children start off good and are made bad by excessive control.

With the collapse of Communism in 1991, the way was clear for this new vision:

Education reform in the Russia Federation after 1991 was an orchestrated attack on what was now perceived as the ideologically impure Soviet system of education, with its ubiquitous administrative centralization, a bankrupt communist ideology and bureaucratic inefficiency. Hurried attempts were made to Westernize Russian education. […] In Russia, these education reforms represented a radical shift in ideology, knowledge and values and appropriately typified the inevitable outcome of the global Weltanschauung of modernity.

Curriculum reforms and implementation of change in Russia during the early 1990s have been “almost completely permissive” […] The ideas of democracy, humanisation and individuation — the three popular slogans of post-Soviet education reforms, which almost echoed the spirit of the French Revolution — liberty, equality, and fraternity, have successfully challenged the hegemony of Marxism-Leninism in schooling, authority, and curricular control in the teaching/learning process. In subjects’ content and teaching methodology considerably more power at the school-level decision-making has been given to teachers, parents and students. (Zajda, 2005, p. 405)

This was a real cultural revolution, particularly in the Caucasus where “in Chechen families there are very strict rules of behavior with a stern social control” (Mikus Kos, 2009, p. 144). By the 1990s, most teachers had been won over to “modern” notions of child discipline: 

I had an interesting experience working with Chechen and Ingush teachers during the first Chechen war. The prevailing belief was (which was some decades ago the belief in Europe and the USA as well) that all emotional and behavioural problems in children, and even many learning problems, stem from harming influences of the family and that the unique way to cure them was to provide love and understanding to the child. So there was quite a lot of blaming on parents and teachers and feelings of guilt in parents and in teachers who did not succeed in helping children with difficulties and children in distress. When starting to run seminars for teachers from North Caucasus, I was very eager, guided by the best intention to explain that there are biologically “difficult children”, children with temperamental traits which affect the process of socialisation, and that the problems in normal life circumstances are most often the result of interaction between the difficult child and his/her environment, and not only the fault of parents and teachers. (Mikus Kos, 2009, p. 143)

Since the 2000s, discipline has made a comeback under the growing influence of both Islamism and “Putinism.” There is of course the continuing influence of well-meaning Westerners who come to the Caucasus and try to market their own notions of child development, without considering local conditions:

Instead of using existing local knowledge, values and experience, and synthesising them with the new ones, some international trainers bring a well wrapped package of modern concepts and guidelines […] The value of local explanatory models and old practices should be recognised and respected.  Radical changes of paradigm are not working, at least not in practice (Mikus Kos, 2009, p. 144)

A rendez-vous with disaster …

Recent decades have brought a relaxation of external controls over behavior. On the one hand, people from the rest of the world have been emigrating in growing numbers to the West, where behavioral norms are more relaxed. On the other hand, the West has been exporting these same norms to the rest of the world. The situation wouldn’t be so serious if everyone everywhere had the same internal controls over their behavior. But they don’t.

Some societies have gone farther than others along the trajectory that leads to cultural modernity and, in time, behavioral modernity. Wherever strong States have imposed a monopoly on the use of violence, there has been a consequent pacification of social relations, the result being increased trust in strangers and a freer, more open society. This transition also affects the way societies are organized. In premodern societies, the market economy is secondary, being limited to special places at special times, i.e., marketplaces. In modern societies, the market economy is primary and encompasses almost all possible transactions. In premodern societies, kinship is primary, being the main organizing principle of social relations. In modern societies, kinship has little importance beyond the bounds of each nuclear family. The transition from premodernity to modernity in turn leads to a suite of behavioral changes: higher anger thresholds, a more future-oriented time orientation, and a stronger work ethic.

Wherever the social environment has long been pacified, these internal behavioral controls have largely taken over from external cultural controls. Where pacification has been more recent, “correct behavior” is enforced largely through external controls. Not enough time has elapsed to bring behavioral predispositions into line with cultural modernity.

The above analysis may seem unacceptable to most of us. Current discourse allows only two possible causes for the Boston bombings: social exclusion or radical Islam. The “social exclusion” explanation is the weirdest. The Tsarnaevs were accepted as Chechen refugee claimants even though they had spent almost their whole lives outside Chechnya and were in no danger. Tamerlan himself was welcomed with open arms into an American household despite his uncontrollable temper and unwillingness to work. Such indulgence is unusual, and it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that Tamerlan benefited from an almost pathological fear of seeming to be xenophobic.

The other possible cause, radical Islam, has become the leading explanation, largely by default. But what if Tamerlan had not been radicalized? There would have been no Boston bombings, yes, but sooner or later he would have committed an act of murder or attempted murder (assuming he had not already done so before the bombings) and he would have almost certainly remained a tax consumer, and not a tax payer.

In this latter respect, Tamerlan was not unusual. If we examine immigrant communities of similar backgrounds, their work ethic tends to weaken as they become more and more assimilated. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Turkish population in Germany had a labor-force participation rate higher than that of native Germans. Now, as we enter the 2^nd and 3^rd generations, the picture has completely reversed: 40% unemployment in Berlin and other cities; welfare dependency three times the national rate; and an average retirement age of 50 (Caldwell, 2009, p. 36). This is the paradox we see with many non-European immigrants: the more they become assimilated, the more different they become. They shed the cultural controls that formerly kept their behavior in line.

What, then, will be done? Nothing, probably, other than that the U.S. will become more and more a society under surveillance. One thing that used to make American society so exceptional was its high level of personal security and personal responsibility. Americans didn’t have to fear being sucker-punched by some guy with a problem. They didn’t have to closely monitor the body language and facial expressions of anyone they happened to meet. And they didn’t have to worry about other people abusing their trust and generosity. In other countries, people do. And that’s a big reason why those countries are less productive and, hence, less wealthy.

References

Caldwell, C. (2009). Reflections on the Revolution in Europe. Immigration, Islam and the West, Doubleday.

Fisher, M. (2013). The Tsarnaev family: A faded portrait of an immigrant’s American dream, April 27, The Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/sf/feature/wp/2013/04/27/the-tsarnaev-family-a-faded-portrait-of-an-immigrants-american-dream/?hpid=z1

Mikus Kos, A. (2009). Psychosocial programmes can also diminish or destroy local resources, in E. Baloch-Kaloianov and A. Mikus Kos (eds). Activating Psychosocial Local Resources  in Territories Affected by War and Terrorism, IOS Press.

Sontag, D., D.M. Herszenhorn, and S.F. Kovaleski. (2013). A battered dream, then a violent path, April 28, The New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/28/us/shot-at-boxing-title-denied-tamerlan-tsarnaev-reeled.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

Wikipedia. (2013). Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dzhokhar_and_Tamerlan_Tsarnaev
 

Zajda, J. (2005). “The educational reform and transformation in Russia,” in J. Zajda (ed). International Handbook on Globalization, Education and Policy Research, Springer.

http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/1-4020-2960-8_26#