Genetics of the Oligarchs: Eloi, or Upstarts?

postflaviana.org /elite-sub-species/
Jerry Russell
In H. G. Wells classic novel The Time Machine, the Time Traveler is translated to the year 802,701 AD. In
this future world, the human race has evolved into two completely distinct species, the Eloi and the
Morlocks. The effete Eloi elite live in comfort above ground and do no work, while the brutal Morlocks toil
endlessly at their underground industry. Wells wrote:

At first, proceeding from the problems of our own age, it seemed clear as daylight to me
that the gradual widening of the present merely temporary and social difference between
the Capitalist and the Labourer, was the key to the whole position. No doubt it will seem
grotesque enough to youand wildly incredible!and yet even now there are existing
circumstances to point that way. the exclusive tendency of richer peopledue, no doubt,
to the increasing refinement of their education, and the widening gulf between them and the
rude violence of the pooris already leading to the closing, in their interest, of considerable
portions of the surface of the land. About London, for instance, perhaps half the prettier
country is shut in against intrusion. And this same widening gulfwhich is due to the length
and expense of the higher educational process and the increased facilities for and
temptations towards refined habits on the part of the richwill make that exchange between
class and class, that promotion by intermarriage which at present retards the splitting of our
species along lines of social stratification, less and less frequent. So, in the end, above
ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below
ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their
labour.

However, neither the Eloi nor the Morlocks have remained fully human. The Eloi have grown lazy and dull,
while the Morlocks, crude as they are, have somehow regained the upper hand in the war between the
two species. In a sort of comic reversal, they have taken to cannibalizing the Eloi that they feed and clothe.
In an earlier version of this post, The Eloi and the Morlocks, I argued that the elite of our planet may
similarly represent a distinct race or sub-species of humanity. That is, they are descended largely from a
small founder group, such as a tribe or a small set of tribes. If so, they may have an ethnic, xenophobic, or
even nepotistic sense of their own power and entitlement. This could be the beginning a trend that could
eventually culminate in a situation similar to the nightmare vision of the Wells novel.
This has proven to be a controversial view even at this website. Forum member Collectivist suggested
instead that the oligarchs from the feudal era have been overthrown by a small vanguard of very
powerful Jews and crypto-Jews. These Jews would be the Upstarts in the title of this post. We claim that
since ancient times, the Jews have been in the role of a buffer (scapegoat) class between the gentile
elites and the commoners. How, then, could this tiny minority launch a coup dtat against their
masters? When and where did this take place? Was it before or after the Jews were emancipated from
Catholic-originated legal strictures in Europe, and also in relation to the liberal rise of the democratic
nation-state system? The proposal raises as many questions as it answers.
Meanwhile, we are also concerned that casual or out-of-context discussion of the ethnic or racial

characteristics of the oligarchs can easily take on an unsavory Aryan Nazi White Supremacist aspect.
The suggestion that the true core group might be Jewish could add the appearance of a dark, ugly shadow
of anti-semitism, to use this genetically over-freighted term. Unsupported or unsupportable racist
allegations could easily result in the marginalization of our entire Postflavian project. (That is, if our
rejection of all major organized religions and national political parties is not sufficient in itself to result in
that fate.) Therefore, racial or ethnic statements about elite secret societies must be fully supported by the
evidence, and placed in proper context.
Elsewhere, we have argued that the trumped-up conflict between Gentiles versus (Romanized Rabbinic)
Jews has been the single biggest false dialectic underlying Western Civilization. So now we are being
told that these downtrodden and abused Christ Killers have emerged as the new (secret) masters of the
universe? This would be supremely ironic, to say the least. We must at least consider what sort of
evidence would be required to establish the truth or falsehood of the proposition.
Given these concerns, the statistical null case also deserves careful consideration. Wells supposition, that
promotion by intermarriage at present retards the splitting of our species along lines of social
stratification may very well be correct. Or in other words, perhaps upward and downward social mobility
swamps any tribal organization of the elite. If so, there may be no demonstrable genetic, racial or ethnic
distinction between the oligarchs of our planet, versus the rest of our species. Or, even if there is some
difference which can be theoretically defined and proven from genealogy charts or DNA testing, that
difference might have no functional effect. According to this view, the elite criminality discussed on this site
must be explained entirely on the basis of the persistence of cultural memes; institutional continuity; social
selection; scientific and technical knowledge; and many other factors unrelated to genetics. Obviously
such factors must be very important, regardless of whether or not genetics, race and ethnicity play a role.
This is obviously the beginning of a long-term research project. The context is that these are not racist
allegations, certainly not directed against particular individuals, but rather they are genetic, genealogical &
ethnic questions which we hope to resolve in the future. The earlier post is being revised to further develop
a conceptual basis for the research, and to describe some of the tools which could possibly be brought to
bear.

The Eloi Model of Elite Genetics

This theory would claim that throughout history, the class of oligarchs (that is, the wealthy & powerful) are
far more likely to have chosen their mates from among other wealthy & powerful people, rather than from
the lower classes. Because of international politics, opportunities for travel, and cosmopolitan values, the
wealthy and powerful are far more likely to choose their mates (or have mates chosen for them by their
elders) among individuals from far distant locations, different religions, different cultures, or different
languages, compared to low-class people with far more limited options. However, all of these mates
chosen from all these different locations, regions and cultures would have one thing in common: that they
would have been wealthy and powerful.
If this is correct, the oligarchs may by now have become a distinct ethnicity or breeding pool, which is now
increasingly diverging from the rest of humanity. By the same token, the members of this wealthy and
powerful ethnic group are becoming increasingly more genetically similar to each other, than they are
related to any of the peoples that they rule over.
According to this Eloi model, it is also highly likely that the oligarchs are descended primarily from a small
founder group. That is, near the beginning of agricultural civilization there was a single tribe, or a
small number of tribes, that became extraordinarily successful in either insinuating control or conquering
the various nations, so to speak, of the ancient Near East (Eurasia and North Africa). Thus, they became

the rulers over the members of the less fortunate ethnic groups.
Michael Hart, in Understanding Human History, argues that at the end of the Paleolithic era, the peoples
living in arctic climates had evolved a cluster of genetic characteristics including pale skin and greater
technological skills required for survival in adverse conditions. Meanwhile, the people living in southern
regions (with darker skins) had the misfortune of living in lands that were far more fertile and thus more
valuable. Thus, Hart argues, tribes from the North had both the capability and the motivation to become
dominant over people of the South, either by conquest or by infiltration. The northern tribes spoke IndoEuropean and / or Uralic languages. As they became rulers over the various nations of Semites,
Africans and Asians, the invaders would have been highly motivated to breed only amongst
themselves. Having originated from a distant location, these pale-skinned rulers would have had a very
distinct sense of their peculiar racial identity in contrast to their subjects.
It is difficult to say to what extent these ancient tribal genetics have actually been preserved to the present
time by the elite. Over deep time, many factors militate against it. One factor would be the rate of intrusion
of random breeding partners from outside the elite class into the core bloodlines. Another factor would
be the loss of members of the bloodlines because of downward social mobility, death of entire family
lineages, or other misfortune. If the elite view themselves as a distinct class, this may be a matter of
cultural memes and/or self-deception as much as anything else.
Nevertheless, there are signs that at least some of the elite have an awareness of themselves as a class
with a familial, ethnic or xenophobic nature, as well as a nepotistic sense of entitlement to wealth and
power. As such, they also have access to a wealth of knowledge and experience regarding the science and
art of maintaining control over the masses. This knowledge is certainly preserved in colleges and
universities which are accessible primarily to the elite and their middle-class collaborators, but it might also
be maintained as family lore, or held in secret libraries within the innermost circles of elite secret societies.
If this oligarchical sub-species still exists, it must have also had a significant amount of genetic material
introduced from local elites all over the world from every racial background. There have also been distinct
evolutionary pressures arising from the unique environment of the elite. As it is often said: uneasy is the
head that wears the crown. In other words, there has been some selection pressure for raw survival to
reproductive age, based on cunning in social relations and in battle.
The elite also have a very powerful sense of the importance of family connections and genealogy. It is
possible, at this point, that the elites do not view themselves as any more akin to Nordic or Caucasian or
Jewish commoners, than any other race of hoi polloi. According to the strong version of this
eloi hypothesis, they are a distinct racial entity unto themselves. Or, if the null hypothesis mentioned
above is correct, then we can still propose a weak version of the Eloi model: that many elite think of
themselves this way, even if it isnt literally genetically true.
For example, under the British Israel doctrine, the British consider themselves to be Lost Tribe Hebrews
and, as such, part of Gods chosen people even though historical or genetic support for this claim is far
from obvious. That said, we have our own interpretation of biblical history where there can indeed be
some, rather varnished, contextual credence to such claims. And which we will use to complement this
effort.
In either case, we have an Earthly model for the Abraxas family in the recent movie, Jupiter Ascending. As
we showed in our recent review, the Abraxas are portrayed as a close-knit family which rules over many
herds of humanity, each of which lives on a different planet, an allegory here for races and tribes living in
different Earthly regions.

The Upstart model: Judaism Ascending?

According to this view, the ancient eloi as discussed above may well have been in control during the time
of the Roman Empire and indeed throughout feudal times and even up until recently. However, the conflict
between the Flavians and other Roman emperors, versus the Jewish rebels, may not have ended with the
utter defeat of the Jews in the many wars against them, and the Roman dominance over rabbinical
Judaism. Instead, is it possible that the Jews maintained a grim determination to reverse their humiliating
defeat and to establish world domination over their rivals, a plot which is now nearing consummation?
There are some basic facts which form the core of this speculation, and which are not in dispute (or at
least, not here.)
The story seems to date back to the first Crusade, which was organized as a European response to
Islamic conquest of the holy lands of the Middle East. French noblemen related to participants of the First
Crusade organized the Knights Templar and set up shop at the newly conquered Temple Mount, and
were given the blessing of the Roman Catholic Church in 1129. The Templars became very successful as
bankers, introducing innovative practices which they may have learned from the Islamics. It is suspected
that the Templars were not orthodox Christians, but that some of the organizers were Cathars. The Cathars
emerged at about the same time as the Templars: first reports of Cathar theology in France emerged
around 1143. The beliefs of both the Cathars and Templars are obscure (their writings having been
destroyed) but are believed to have been basically gnostic, or perhaps Kabbalist. The Templars were
accused of worshiping Baphomet, although there is little if any evidence that this is true, or who they
thought Baphomet was. Images of Baphomet as a man with a goat head apparently originate from the
19th century.
The Cathars came under severe pressure from the Albigensian Crusade beginning about 1208, and were
utterly crushed by 1330. The Knights Templar were terminated and suppressed in 1307, although
remnants were merged with the Knights Hospitaller (of whom later became todays Roman Catholic
Knights of Malta), the Portuguese Knights of Christ, the German Teutonic Knights, and so forth. The
vacuum left in the banking industry was taken up mostly by Italian and Venetian bankers.
The intolerance of the medieval Catholic church extended also to the Jews. The Inquisition, which initially
targeted the Cathars, impacted Judaism as well beginning about 1242, and intensified in the Spanish
Inquisition beginning in 1481. Many of the Jews were forced to convert to Christianity. However, some of
these conversos (converts) continued to practice Judaism and/or Kabbalism in secret, and so the loyalties
of the conversos were always open to suspicion. The name Marrano (pig or swine) was also attached as a
pejorative to these people.
The invention of the printing press in 1440 enabled many commoners, craftsmen and merchants to
read the Bible (and to a lesser extent, Josephus Flavius) for the first time. This led to a realization that the
beliefs and practices, such as indulgences, of the Catholic Church were not entirely compatible with the
ancient scripture. This, as well as the excesses of the Inquisition, may have led to the advent of the
Reformation. As a popular attack on the Catholic Church, the Reformation was actually in full swing by the
time of Martin Luthers Ninety-Five Theses of 1517.
The overt counter-reformation of the Church was led by the Jesuits, an order formed by Ignatius of Loyola
with the authority of Pope Paul III in 1540. Curiously here, the archbishop of Venice, who supported the
founding of the Jesuits and the Council of Trent (whose purpose was to hear and rule upon the Protestant
complaints) also wrote letters of encouragement to the Calvinist Protestants. The center of the Calvinist
theological dispute was over the means (works versus grace) of Salvation and the related doctrine of
Predestination, of which we proclaim was a manufactured controversy.
However, although nominally Christian, the theology of the Jesuits was in some ways more similar to the
that of the Alumbrados (that is, the illuminated or enlightened ones), a group of Spanish

gnostic conversos denounced in 1525 by the Inquisition. Ignatius of Loyola himself was a converso, as
was the prior Spanish Inquisitions Torquemada, and had been accused of sympathies with the
Alumbrados, although he was acquitted. The Jesuits became the main educational and missionary (that is,
propaganda) arm of the Catholic Church and became increasingly powerful from the 16th through the 18th
century, until 1773 when they were suppressed and largely disbanded by the order of Pope Clement XIV.
Strangely coincidental with the alleged termination, or rather the Disestablishment, of the Jesuits,
came the rise of the Rothschild banking empire, and the creation of the Bavarian Illuminati by Adam
Weishaupt, a Jesuit professor of Catholic canon law at the Jesuits University of Ingolstadt. Mayer
Rothschild obtained the position of court factor for Crown Prince William of Hesse in 1769, beginning his
meteoric rise to become the primary banker to European royalty. Weishaupts group was founded in 1776,
and took up the function of Illuminist propaganda and missionary work more or less where the Jesuits left
off, and also worked to influence the Freemason lodges of the time. There are allegations that Weishaupt
was also from a converso family and was a crypto-Jew.
Whether contrived, as Tupper Saussy claimed in his Rulers of Evil, or not: his claim is that the timely, and
supposedly bloody, Disestablishment of the Jesuits is what enabled the Catholics to garner the good
graces of the highly Protestant American colonists, who otherwise hated them. The enemy of my enemy is
my friend, and thus Jesuit based Catholicism is ironically the vastly predominant form found in the United
States of America, and the most powerful block in American national politics, with some considerable help
from the JFK assassination.
The Jesuits were restored to the good graces of the Catholic Church beginning in 1801 in Russia.
Meanwhile, the Bavarian Illuminati were officially condemned in Prussia in 1785, but continued to infiltrate
the Freemasons whose work continues to this day.
These events were watersheds. Ever since then, these influences can be seen in the banking system, in
Freemasonic dominance over democratic governments in America and Europe. In the mass media, the
use of illuminati symbolism as well as reversed Gospel typology can be seen as a trademark of this
influence.
According to the Judaism Ascending model, characters such as Ignatius of Loyola, Adam Weishaupt and
Mayer Rothschild should be seen as vanguards of their own race, upstarts from the humble ghettos where
the Jews lived as an oppressed minority. Shakespeare (that is, perhaps, Emilia Bassano) may also be
seen as part of this cabal. Any question whether the Shakespearean literature is more Jewish or Jesuit in
character is basically irrelevant, as both Jesuitism and Kabbalist Judaism are manifestations of one evil.
This entire movement is essentially Jewish (Kabbalistic), ethnic, and targeted to reverse the humiliations
suffered by the Jews at the hands of the Romans. According to this model, the New World Order
conspiracy must be seen as fundamentally racist, and it is now targeted towards genocide of all other
races aside from the Jewish chosen people.

Eloi model, revisited

The Eloi model of elite genetics (discussed above) does not deny any of these events, but gives them a
different interpretation. Just as the Roman Emperors were pagans hiding behind a Christian front, the
Roman Catholic church throughout its entire history may have been, at its core, an illuminati institution
and not a Christian one. Christianity itself has never been anything more than an exoteric, populist con
game to be foisted on feudal subjects. Similarly, Rabbinical Judaism has been a con game foisted by
those same elite insiders onto the Jewish commoners.
Eloists would say that the emergence of the Jesuits, Bavarian Illuminati, modern Freemasons, and the
Rothschild banking empire, were all manifestations of the old elite coming out from behind their Catholic

cover story, re-asserting Imperial control under cover of stealth. If this is correct, we would expect to find
the institutions of old feudal Europe such as the Catholic Church, the various Royal courts, and the nobility,
all covertly collaborating with the Jesuits, Illuminati, Freemasons, and Jewish Bankers.
By the same token, Kabbalism should not be viewed as uniquely Jewish, but rather part of a greater
Hellenistic trend, and going back even further in time and geographically widespread with roots in
shamanism. Philo was incorporating Platonism from the Greeks into Judaism, and the same seems to be
the case for wider gnosticism. All of this can be traced back ultimately to the Mesopotamians and
Egyptians. In general, these esoteric religions may have been reserved for elites, as the inner church. The
Cathars may have been an unapproved stream, via such as the Bogomils, that escaped the clutches of the
church until it became predominant and thus dangerous to the Roman churchs monopoly in the
Languadoc and eventually even wider.
Its possible that at least some, if not all, of the founders and elite leaders of the crypto-Jewish Illuminati
will turn out to be as closely related genetically to the noble class of Europeans, as they are to the common
class of Ashkenazi and / or Sephardic Jews. These Hofjuden or Court Jews tended to intermarry with
the royals and nobles, or favored close cousin marriages.
I will not try to hide my own views here. I believe that the Roman Catholics and European royalty and
American democracy have collaborated far too closely with the Jesuits, Freemasons and Jewish
International Bankers, for the latter to be seen as an upstart rebellion. I believe it has been a cooperative
venture from the beginning, and continuing to the present day. This includes the strange alliance of Jewish
Zionists, Christian Zionist Neocons and American and European military intelligence, which seems to be
at the heart of the New World Order Conspiracy today.
Nevertheless, it has been proposed that genetics and/or genealogy might be a key to resolving this
particular dispute, and revealing the true nature of the secret society. Accordingly, I would like to review
some concepts that might prove helpful.

The concept of species and sub-species in modern biology

Biologically, a species is defined as a group that can successfully interbreed and produce fertile
offspring. Thus, all human beings are considered part of the same species. We can choose a mate from
anywhere on the planet, without hurting our chances of reproductive success.
If a species is separated into two or more groups which are not allowed to interbreed, they will start to drift
apart genetically. If they are subject to different selection pressures, then the process of genetic
divergence is accentuated and directed. Thus, the separated populations may start to become
anatomically and functionally distinctive as well. Yet this can go on for quite some time, before mating
between the groups becomes impossible. As long as most or all pairings are fertile, the populations are
considered to belong to the same species. But, because they have distinct local characteristics, they are
called sub-species.
A good example of sub-species are the various breeds of purebred dogs. These populations are
separated by their human breeders, so that there is little if any genetic exchange between the breeds. If
dogs from different breeds do mate together, the result is called a mongrel and is excluded from the
entire category of purebred dogs. Although of course mongrels are still members of the species of dogs,
they are not considered a part of either of the sub-species of their parents.

Races and ethnic groups

The terms race and ethnic group are similar but not identical in their connotations. Ethnic group tends

to be more associated with groupings based on culture, religion or nationality, while race has a more
genetic and physical connotation. In practice the terms overlap for reasons which I will explain.
A modern concept of race and ethnicity is shown in this graph from Out of Africa Again and Again by Alan
Templeton (Nature 416, 4551, 2002).
The figure illustrates that humanity
consists of a number of lineages
which have descended in parallel
through many generations. Humans
naturally fall into groups which are
separated by factors such as
distance, geographical barriers,
language, and culture. Such barriers
serve to delineate the populations
and limit the amount of genetic crossflow at each generation. Thus, each
lineage is inbred to some degree.
However, all couplings between
human beings are potentially
fertile. Miscegenation can and does
occur in spite of all obstacles to the
contrary. Major events denoting
vast migrations of peoples from place
to place (shown in red in the diagram)
have contributed additional
intermingling.
The biological concepts of subspecies or breeds are potentially
applicable to such human groups.
However, because of the amount of
interbreeding among human groups,
the physical and genetic
differences between groups of people
are far less significant than the
differences between the various
breeds of dogs. This is in spite of the
fact that these subspecies of dogs
have been created in a relatively short period of time compared to mans evolution. (Most modern breeds
of dogs have been created by breeders in the last 150 years or less, and are still diverging rapidly.)
Rather than crisply defined breeds, humankind consists of an undefined number of lineages that blend
imperceptibly together, with no clear edges. Accordingly, efforts to use such concepts to create clear
boundaries in legal or nationalistic contexts have often ended as intellectual and/or political
fiascos. However, this does not mean that the concept of race is meaningless.

Genetics and family trees

To further help explain what we mean by these concepts of subpecies and inbreeding, I would like to
bring in some figures and information from the excellent blog article Your Family: Past, Present and

Future by Tim Urban.

Your Ancestor Cone

So lets start with the past, and see what happens if we keep going up the family tree, or
what Ill call your Ancestor Cone:

You can see that things get hectic pretty quickly when you start moving back generations.
The top row is the 128-person group of your great5 grandparents, or your grandparents
grandparents great-grandparents. The thing that I find surprising is how recently in time you
had such a large number of ancestors. Estimating an average generation at 25-30 years,
most of those people were your current age around 1800-1825. So the early 19th-century
world contained 128 random strangers going about their lives, each of whose genes makes
up 1/128th of who you are today.

With respect to this drawing, it is possible to define three lines of descent: paternal ancestry along the
purely male line, maternal ancestry along the purely female line, or what I might call general ancestry,
that is, the entire cone. In genetic research, data may be extracted from either Y-chromosome DNA (a
probe for paternal ancestry), mitochondrial DNA (a probe for maternal ancestry), or autosomal DNA
(which derives from the entire ancestral cone.) The vast majority of DNA in the human genome is
autosomal DNA.

Notice that as we go higher in the ancestral cone, the maternal and paternal lines represent a smaller and
smaller sample of the total ancestry of each person. That is, at the 7th generation back (as shown in the
diagram above) the paternal and maternal lineages each represent less than 1% of the total genetic
heritage of the individual. In genetics, these lineages can be explored using Y-DNA and mt-DNA
respectively, establishing relationships going deep back into time. Y-DNA and Mt-DNA can be used to trace
ancestries all the way back to Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosome Adam, the most recent maternal
and paternal ancestors of all living humans.
Autosomal DNA draws information randomly from the entire general ancestral cone, but gives less and
less information about each individual ancestor as time recedes. At each generation, segments of DNA
from each parent are snipped and recombined at random. Thus, in comparisons of DNA genomes among
close family relations, segments of varying length may be found to be identical by descent, that is, IBD.
As relations become more distant, the IBD segments get chopped into smaller and smaller pieces, until
they either become too short to detect, or are randomly omitted altogether by the
recombination process. Analysis of IBD segments can reveal family relationships very reliably to the 5th
degree, and sometimes up to the 11th degree. That is, we can trace three to five generations up to an
ancestor, and back down his or her family tree another two to six generations through another child of that
ancestor to find distant cousins.

Inbreeding and pedigree collapse

Getting back to Tim Urbans blog, he notices that as we continue going back in time, the number of
ancestors in everyones family tree continues to explode, reaching ~68 billion ancestors at 1100 AD. As
Urban explains:

The reason thats problematic is that the world population goes like this:

So how do we explain this?

With a concept called pedigree collapse, which is what happens when people end up with a
mate who is somewhat or very closely related to them. So for example, if two cousins had a
child, that child would only have six great-grandparents, not eight. Or, to put it another way,
there are eight filled great-grandparent spots on that childs family tree, but two of the spots
are duplicates of two other spots
Before you
wince, absorb
this fact:
according to
Rutgers
anthropology
professor
Robin
Fox, 80% of all
marriages in
history have
been between
second
cousins or
closer.
The reason for
this is that for
most of human
history, people
spent most of their lives in the same five mile radius, and the other people in that same
area tended to be immediate and extended family. To get away from their extended family
when courting, men would have to walk over five miles away, which after a long day of
hunting you just dont feel like doing.
In the Western World, this is largely a phenomenon of the past, but in many parts of the
world, this is still a common practicefor example, in most of the Middle East and North
Africa, over 50% of todays marriages are between second cousins or closer.

I would add that according to Foxs research, another important reason for the prevalence of these 2nd
cousin marriages is because they are specifically favored according to the laws and customs of many
traditional societies. This may be because they preserve some family cohesiveness, without the wellknown genetic downsides of marriages among even closer cousins or siblings.
This is what we mean by inbreeding: the shrinkage of the ancestor cone due to pedigree collapse. This
occurs when distant cousins are intermarrying at a rate higher than would happen by chance in a large
population. Returning again to Urbans blog, he offers this further explanation of distant cousin
relationships:

every stranger in the world is a cousin of yours, and the only question is how distant a

cousin they are. The degree of cousin (first, second, etc.) is just a way of referring to how
far you have to go back before you get to a common ancestor. For first cousins, you only
have to go back two generations to hit your common grandparents. For second cousins,
you have to go back three generations to your common great-grandparents. For fifth
cousins, youd have to go back six generations until you arrive at your common pair of greatgreat-great-great-grandparents.
Since a lot of people get confused about cousin definitions, I made a little chart illustrating
what a second cousin is.

So notice that for you and your second cousin, A) your parent is a first cousin of their parent,
B) you have grandparents that are siblings, and C) their parents are your common greatgrandparents. For third cousins, everything just goes up a levelyour parents
are second cousins, your grandparents are first cousins, your great-grandparents are
siblings, and you have a common pair of great-great-grandparents.
The number of cousins you have grows exponentially as the degree of distance goes up.
You may have a small number of first cousins, but you likely have hundreds of third cousins,
thousands of fifth cousins, and over a million eighth cousins.

Measures of inbreeding
Urban explains his computations for the number of distant cousins as follows:

The formula is (n-1) 2d nd

where n is the average number of children being had by a family and d is the degree of
cousin you want to find the total number of.
It boils down to a simple multiplication of the number of top-level siblings [(n-1) 2 d] times the
number of eventual offspring on your generation level each of those top-level siblings
ultimately produces (nd).

This is correct for modern national populations that have been choosing mates more or less at random for
many generations. However, as mentioned above: in paleolithic times, and to a large extent up until the
industrial revolution, most people lived in small villages or towns, and chose their mate from within that

town. Some were directed by tradition to chose a 2nd cousin, while a few of the more adventurous might
have gone a few towns away at most, but marriage was generally a very local affair.
Even now, there are populations in which the size of the breeding pool is severely limited, and has been for
many generations into the past. In such populations, the number of relatively close cousins in the local
area is increased, and the number of distant cousins depleted, compared to the formula. In a town of ~500
people, it might be that the breadth of the ancestor cone continues to increase into the distant
past, but an increasingly high percentage of the slots in that cone would be filled by only 500
individuals at each generation, no matter how far back. At a sufficiently isolated island, the ancestor
cone might theoretically never have included more individuals than the population of the island. So, the
chances of a new marriage occurring between close cousins is increased, perpetuating the inbreeding.
The degree of inbreeding leaves an unmistakable signature in the genome of an isolated population. Henn
et al (2012) studied IBD between random pairs of individual DNA samples collected by the 23andMe
customer database and the Human Genome Diversity Project, and found:

With data from 121 populations, we show that the average amount of DNA shared IBD in
most ethnolinguistically-defined populations, for example Native American groups, Finns
and Ashkenazi Jews, differs from continentally-defined populations by several orders of
magnitude.

The data table from the Henn study shows their measure of population mean pairwise IBD ranging from
1870 for the Surui, an indigenous Brazilian tribe of ~1100 individuals, to 54.3 for Orcadians (population
~22,000); 23.0 for Ashkenazi Jews; and 12.3 for Icelanders compared to figures of 0.1 for continentally
mixed populations such as the United States, France or the UK. These estimates can be calculated for
sample populations as small as five, although 10 to 20 samples or more provide better accuracy.
Inbreeding can sometimes be demonstrated in a DNA sample from a single individual, by looking for IBD
segments from maternal and paternal sources within the same gene. This measure is called ROH, or
Runs-of-Homozygosity. McQuillan et al (2008) measured ROH in DNA samples from the North Orkney
Islands and an island in Dalmatia, comparing them to continental populations from Scotland and Northern
Europe (sampled in Utah). In the case of the Orkney samples, they were able to compile accurate
genealogical data to directly calculate the degree of inbreeding, for comparison with ROH. They found
that 28% to 30% of Orcadian and Dalmatian samples contained ROHs greater than 10 megabits, while
only 1% or 2% of continental samples contained ROHs as long as that. However, it is not clear whether
this method would detect intermediate degrees of inbreeding, such as Ashkenazi or Icelanders.
Of course, very high levels of inbreeding can also be detected directly by genealogical pedigree. Cecil
Adams noted, for example, that Alfonso XIII of Spain (1886-1941) had only ten of the expected
sixteen great-great-grandparents. The pedigrees of European nobility have to some extent been available
in books such as Burkes Peerage, and additional data of this type may be coming on line. The London
School of Economics explained:

Newly available genealogical records are helping to provide insights into the lives the
European nobility
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS) practice of the baptising the dead by
proxy has resulted in the church developing the largest genealogical library in the world.

These extensive historical records have been put together by the LDS Church to enable it
to baptise all who have died without undergoing the rite. It believes, in doing so, that it gives
the deceased the opportunity to enter the Kingdom of God.
Now this huge database is being digitised and made publicly available online, giving
economic historians like Dr Neil Cummins of LSEs Economic History Department access to
genealogical big data for the first time.
Describing the significance of the newly digitised information, he says: Individual
demographic data before 1538 in England is extremely rare thats the time of Henry VIII,
Cromwell and the English reformation. Before that we only had scraps.
Now the digitisation has allowed Dr Cummins to construct the family trees of European
nobility a group that has left behind abundant evidence about itself and analyse trends
in how long they lived between 800 and 1800.
When he looked at the age of death of 121,524 nobles during this time period he found that
their lifespans began increasing long before the Industrial Revolution, with a marked
increase around 1400, when life expectancy went from around 50 to 55. After 1500, life
spans seem to decline again until around 1650 when an uninterrupted rise begins.

This data, presumably, can also be reviewed to determine the degree of inbreeding that occurred during all
that time, and the extent of social mobility in and out of the noble class. In many cases, it would be a
straightforward matter to assess suspected or known modern-day oligarchs and secret society members
to determine their connections into the European class of nobility as it existed in the year 1800.
Significant amounts of genealogical data for Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews may also be available for
analysis from LDS records and other on-line sources, to complete the analysis.

Who were our ancestors?

Tim Urban said:

You can see why its not really that impressive when someone tells you they are descended
from famous royalty who lived a few hundred years ago. Look how many people youre
descended from only about 300 years back! Within [those ~4000 people], theres probably
some royalty, in addition to some peasants, scholars, warriors, painters, prostitutes,
murderers, lunatics, and any other kind of person who existed back then.

Cecil Adams similarly remarked:

Pedigree collapse explains why its so easy for professional genealogists to trace your
lineage back to royalty go far enough back and youre related to everybody.

But, nevertheless: all of us are not alike in this regard. The indigenous Brazilian Surui are obviously not
going to have any European royalty in their pedigree, no matter how far back you go. Most Americans and
Europeans might have one or two noble ancestors among their thousands of peasant ancestors of 300

years ago. Of those thousands of ancestors, most of us can only trace a few if any, and know nothing
about them, unless we are indeed able to find a royal.
But if the Eloi hypothesis is correct, members of that elite class would be able to look back 300 years or
1000 years, and might very possibly be able to fill in much of their ancestor cone with the names of
illustrious individuals straight from the history books, each repeated many times in a web of ancestral
paths.
Or if the situation is similar to the Judaism Ascending hypothesis, the ancestor cones of the elite would be
full of repeated names of Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews from the ghettos of Europe.

Race and Locality

Intuitively, Americans tend to define race in terms of a few visually salient properties of human beings,
such as their skin color (black, yellow, red or white), facial features (broad, long or hooked nose, for
example), hair color and texture, and so forth. Such concepts tend to correlate broadly with continental
origin. Black-skinned folks are from Africa or Australia, yellow-skinned from Asia, red-skins from the
Americas, and whites from Europe. Although Africans and native Australians both have dark skins, they are
very different in other aspects. This results in a short list of five races based on the five continents.
We might try to make this into a practical definition by applying fuzzy-set math. Supposing we design an
instrument to measure skin color, another to measure nose shape by width and breadth, another to
measure hair color, and so forth. Using these instruments, we would be able to characterize every
individual on the planet in terms of these measurements. Next, we could assign a fuzzy score (from zero to
one) for the similarity of each individual person, with some prototypical ideal of a typical individual from
each of the five races.
Some individuals would receive a high score (near 1.0) in a single race category, and very low scores
(near 0.0) in all other race categories. However, many other individuals would receive middling scores in
several race categories. This might be because those individuals came from areas near cosmopolitan
seaports, or because some of their ancestors had migrated from one global region to another.
Scientists from the Romantic era attempted such measurements and classification, using not only skin
color and other readily distinguishable characteristics, but also craniometry and phrenology. Then they
attempted to draw correlations with other measures such as intelligence, whatever that
means. Unfortunately, any subtlety of scientific nuance was lost in jingoism with imperialist and/or
colonialist agendas. And the entire efforts were generally used to help justify those Romantic agendas,
revealing perhaps a hidden motivation for a particular outcome.
But from the fuzzy point of view, it is all right that many people dont fit neatly into one or another of these
continental racial categories. Also, while intelligence and other aspects of personal character may be
determined to some extent by genetic factors, race plays only a small and fuzzy role. Epigenetic and
environmental factors are just as important if not more so.
The blogger Steve Sailer suggests that while race is a fuzzy concept, nevertheless it can be useful at a
much finer-grained level than the five continental races. In support of his view, Sailer poses the following
quiz:

Which of these four conflicts are between different races and which are merely clashes
between some other kinds of groups?
1. President Mugabe`s black supporters vs. white farm-owners in Zimbabwe

2. Sudan`s civil war between the brown people in the North and the black people in the
South
3. Rwanda`s civil war between the tall black Tutsis and the short black Hutus
4. The Troubles in Northern Ireland between Catholics (often red-headed) and Protestants
(often red-headed).
And if you think you know the answer to which of these fights are between races and which
are not, please try to explain to yourself why you drew the line where you did.

Contrary to Sailer, I would suggest that while the concept of race might make most sense for case 1
(black vs. white in Zimbabwe), the other conflicts are between what I would prefer to define as ethnic
groups. An ethnic group would be any distinguishable subset of one of the larger continental races.
Whether an ethnic group is defined by geographic, political or religious boundaries, all of these boundaries
lead to a degree of inbreeding. This is the key genetic definition of an ethnic group.
There are a great many distinguishable ethnic groups on Earth, and the processes of history tend to
alternately raise and lower the barriers between these groups. Thus, those ethnic groups which are
neighbors (either geographically or in some other shared history) tend to be relatively similar to each
other; while those drawn from far-distant regions are more distinctive. When we compare, say, an ethnic
group from Africa, against another from Northern Europe, the differences are undeniable. So, we feel
comfortable with the conclusion that the groups are from different races as well as different ethnic groups.
When it comes to Scotsmen and Irishmen (even including the effects of Viking and other invaders), the
genetic boundary is far less clear, and so we consider that the difference is ethnic rather than racial. But
again, the difference between race and ethnic group is a fuzzy concept.
America is essentially a melting pot of mixed ancestry going back many generations, so most or all local
structure is probably lost, aside from the continental racial makeup: even today only about 5% of couplings
in the USA are inter-racial. However, in Europe, it is still not that hard to find individuals who can say that
all four of their grandparents were born within a few miles of their present place of residence. People such
as these living in the UK were the
target of a recent study by Leslie
et al. They found that the
autosomal DNA samples from
these individuals could be
clustered into a fine structure of
seventeen groups which
corresponded to geographic
locality with very few outliers, as
shown in the figure below. The
samples from southern / central
England were more
homogeneous over a broader
area than any other region.

An early 20th century view of the Five Races of Man.

Similar techniques, of course, can readily be used to distinguish groups such as Ashkenazi or Sephardic
Jews, not only as to their Jewish aspect, but also as to their particular European region of origin. Eran
Elhaik (2012) was able to show that European Ashkenazi Jews, whose autosomal genetic signature has
long been known, are more similar to Georgians and Armenians from the Caucasus and contain more
recent DNA contributions from that region, compared to Palestinian populations. The European Jews are
also related to Palestinians, but at a more ancient distance. Elhaik concludes that this supports the theory
of a Khazarian sojourn for these European Jews.
While this result is historically interesting, for the purposes of this article it is mainly relevant to note that

the technology is readily available to ascertain whether the DNA of any individual is strongly related to the
European Ashkenazi Jewish population, or for that matter any other ethnic group located nationwide.
But

The Oligarchs are also a fuzzy set!

Based on most available objective criteria (political power, wealth, influence) the set of oligarchs blends
smoothly into the set of merely important people, which in turn blends smoothly into the upper class, and
from there into the middle class. Many secret societies exist, and in many cases we know something about
the membership of these societies, but not necessarily who their core policymakers or beneficiaries are.
Thus, there is no particular boundary unless there is some secret list of names in the book of life that is
maintained in some secret library, but we are not going to get access to that library any time soon. Genetic
and/or genealogical analysis may reveal a surprise, that there is some small set of people who are nearly
as conscientiously inbred as the Surui tribe.
But whats more likely is that some sort of fuzzy relationship will be revealed between the nobles of
Europe, the Jews, and modern oligarchs; and that the historical hypotheses discussed above will be
verified or falsified to some extent.
Discuss in forum!
Revision history: rev 1.0, 10/22/2014