On Wed, 30 Sep 1998, Ray Audette wrote:

> Todd Moody wrote:
> >  This is why I am suspicious of quick generalizations from
> > the Inuit or other relatively isolated breeding populations.
>
> The Inuit are among the most genetically diverse people on earth for
> several reasons.
>
> They are the only culture that has existed in both the Old and New
> Worlds for thousands of years.  It took the "cold war" to stop them from
> traveling and inter-breeding across the Bearing Straits.  Many are today
> becoming re-acquainted with their Russian cousins.

This is of course utterly irrelevant to their genetic isolation.
I understand that the Inuit comprise peoples from Canada, Asia,
and Scandinavia.  This shows the geographic dispersion of the
population.

> The arctic circle is much smaller than the equator.  The total land
> area of this region is smaller than Australia and the natives have
> long travelled it's entire area. Arctic dwellers found in Lapland are
> related to North American Inuit.  Stefansson was actually famous for
> (among other things) making first contact with blue eyed Inuit in the
> Canadian Artic.

See above.

> In the summer, the Inuit traditionally raided their southern neighbors
> for goods and women.  The Indians of northern Canada were much afraid of
> these raiders coming in their kayaks along the rivers that lead from the
> Arctic.  Laplanders were also feared for this in Europe.

This, and this alone, would count against the statement that the
Inuit are a genetically isolated breeding population.  And of
course, it would depend upon how much of a factor these raids
were, in terms of the overall gene pool.

Against this rather murky argument, I adduce the known genetic
studies that document metabolic differences between Inuit and
other populations (I have posted abstracts of some of them
recently, so there's no need to do so again), and the
fact--mentioned in Neanderthin--that Inuit on a Western diet have
rates of diabetes that is considerably higher than that of
Westerners.  Even without the genetic studies, that fact alone is
strong evidence that the Inuit are genetically less adapted to
Western diet and therefore metabolically different.

This doesn't imply, of course, that Westerners are well adapted
to the so-called Western diet, only that they are somewhat
better adapted to it than the Inuit.  It is therefore not a wild
logical lead to suppose that the Inuit are better adapted to the
Inuit diet than many non-Inuit would be.

Todd Moody
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