I knew about the alcoholism rates, but had always assumed it was a socio-economic / situational driven thing.
I understand that historically it was used in some sense to control and indeed damage the Native Americans by the colonists? To what extent alcohol was completely new etc I do not know
It is very hard to tease genetic factors out from socio-economic ones, but IMHO it seems plausible that a population that has been exposed to alcohol for a long time (hundreds of generations) may have been better selected for higher tolerance than a population that has been exposed only recently (a few dozen generations, and with modern technology making selection pressure lower in general).
I think one thing to clarify here is that western Europeans have thousands of years of history brewing and drinking alcoholic beverages, but it was only in the past 250 years that heavily DISTILLED alcoholic beverages like whiskey at affordable prices became a thing. Have greater than 5 percent ABV in a beverage would've been a bit rarer preindustrial revolution I believe. Even heavily DISTILLED high proof colonial rum was quite expensive and typically mixed into punch water to bring down it's concentration. Mass production and lowering costs were what triggered the alcoholism epidemic and temperance movements of the late 19th and early 20th century.
Drinking in northern Europe does have a way longer and more entrenched history than elsewhere though. Colonial men women and children all drank watered down rum and beer which were more hygienic than water. In China, by contrast, half of the population gets Asian flush and cannot tolerate alcohol, and there is a strong traditional culture of boiling water and drinking tea!
As a long-time tea drinker it was a shock to realize that while tea is pretty good for you, historically its biggest health contribution has been in drinking boiled (or almost boiled) water, not those catechins or l-theanine...
The evo-bio story of alcohol is confusing though, since fermentation has been present in East Asia as long as anywhere, and there's a large part of the population there that has the alcohol flush reaction.
You could tell the story as like, alcohol puts pressure on a population to evolve better responses, and with enough time the flush evolves and that helps limit drinking. But that's pretty just-so.
> You could tell the story as like, alcohol puts pressure on a population to evolve better responses, and with enough time the flush evolves and that helps limit drinking. But that's pretty just-so.
The "alcohol flush" reaction seems to be genetically conserved in Asia because it gives resistance to rice pathogens not because it protects against "alcoholism".
Yeah, I'm not saying that this is actually true, only that it's not absurd on its face. As I understand it (and I am absolutely not an expert here) North American indigenous populations separated from Asians at the end of the ice age, i.e. ~10,000 years ago, and since then had no exposure to alcohol. That seems like plenty of time for genetic predisposition to alcohol tolerance to be reduced. So it's possible and worthy of serious consideration and investigation. Whether it's actually true is a completely different question, one where the jury is still pretty clearly out.
This is simply not true. Indigenous peoples of mesoamerica have drunk fermented maize beverages for as long as maize has been cultivated. Tejuino is still a quite popular drink in Mexico.
Arguably what has changed is the ABV of such beverages. Post-industrial alcohol percentages are way higher than what precolonial mesoamericans, ancient Greeks, and vikings we're drinking
OK, but Pine Ridge is in North America. There could have been enough isolation in pre-Columbian times for north American indigenous to evolve a different alcohol response from mesoamericans.
Like I said: I am not an expert, and I have no idea whether this hypothesis is true or not. I'm just not aware of any facts that would rule it out.
My nan was born in the 1930s and I have kids. So we're already at 3 generations that have had a chance to breed. My great grandparents takes us not even back to the start of the 20th century.
Having kids at 30 is historically very late. Late teens and early 20s was much more common. So perhaps not a few dozen, but certainly over a dozen.
>To what extent alcohol was completely new etc I do not know
Kind of a tricky question that is somewhat covered in my link. Alcohol was definitely brewed in the Americas pre-Columbus, but by the seventeenth century alcohol was largely unknown to the Natives interacting with the colonists.
Tejuino is a precolonial alcoholic beverage that is still enjoyed today. It's ABV is incredibly low compared to anything you'd buy in a modern 7/11 however.
The tarahumara people's have more alcoholic version called tesguino that is only drunk once per year as the preparation process is labor intensive, and the drink goes bad rather quickly
I think your points add much needed nuance, but isn't there a possibility that both are true? I.e., both your examples may be true for Native Americans in present-day Mexico while the OP's point could be true for other groups like the Lakota at Pine Ridge. (I'm not claiming any knowledge on the subject, just questioning whether both points have to be mutually exclusive)
A single opinion on a single subject is not a sweeping view of the entire world. Despite being treated as disposable trash by the world I actually have unflattering but overall optimistic view of the world. I believe people are mostly good but more selfish.
All these problems are not from lack of help but lack of personal empowerment. The world has this deranged flow to it lately that people "need" help on the most basic survival aspects of life. It has become profitable to keep the problem rolling. Nothing in the "help" world is about empowering people. Its about keeping people stuck in various stages of "help" but always pulling the rug when they get momentum.
> The world has this deranged flow to it lately that people "need" help on the most basic survival aspects of life
Well yeah, we're a social/interdependent species. We generally don't do particularly well trying to survive purely independently, nor has any significant percentage of mankind ever really tried (or needed to).
The "pulling the rug" part is the one fair point you make - it's often true that we expect once people reach a certain stage they can suddenly manage by themselves. But these are often people that for whatever reason lack close friendship circles and are alienated from their families and communities, i.e. the very people that you and I turn to for help all the time without even thinking about it.
Good options were available? What if there weren't? What if you were conditioned to not take them? What if you became a child addict? What if literally nobody around you escaped the cycle of addiction and poverty?
There's a difference between growing up in an environment where *a fourth-grader in your class is always scrounging for cigarette butts to smoke (that's what my dad grew up with), and your entire community being fucked up every way to Sunday before they get into high school.
A town with a life expectancy of 50 is far closer to the latter than the former. Throw in violence, maybe a bit of domestic abuse passed down the generations, crime against you, and a dollop of literally nobody outside of it wanting to deal with your shit, and good luck escaping that environment.
But I guess that since it's technically possible for a legless man to crawl a marathon, the rest of his peers are just not trying hard enough...
>literally nobody around you escaped the cycle of addiction and poverty
I guess your righteousness is greater than your reading comprehension. I left home as a minor. I have not spoken to anyone from that time including "family" since then. They were all garbage people that created their own poverty and trouble.
> child addict
I did drugs given to me by "adults" as a minor. I realized it was not a good path and rejected it.
edit:The downvotes are a good reason that I never talk about this. I've learned that privileged people rarely like to hear real stories about poverty. Go back to your 100% accurate view of the world as shown on 60 minutes.
> I guess your righteousness is greater than your reading comprehension
I think that's a more appropriate criticism to levy against you.
Whatever you dealt with, things could have always been worse.
No man is an island, and you could only do what you did because there were opportunities around you. If they didn't work out, or they weren't present, or if you went for them, and got bitten for worse than you gained, you could have well ended up back in that shitty environment, homeless, or dead, or in prison. Sometimes shit just happens, and is too much to deal with. Sometimes the effort required to get out is greater than any one person can put in.
There's no shortage of bums living under the I-5 overpass who also had great plans for leaving their shitty town, and making a better life in the big city. They all have two things on common - nobody they could lean on when things went to shit, and things going to shit for them. When you're born in a shitty environment, the first box gets checked for you at birth, and any man only has partial control over the second one. Tell me your life story, and I'll happily throw a 'but, what if...' that, had it gone the other way, could have put you under that overpass.
The world isn't some deterministic puzzle where if you make the right moves, everything will work out. Sometimes, you can do everything right, and still lose in the short-term. People who have safety buffers to fall back on can bounce back from that. People who don't get to move to that overpass.
I'm speaking relatively. Like stand on the corner selling drugs and probably go to jail or get up at 6AM every day to a shitty hard job that pays you hourly. The choices are not great but one is good compared to the other. One has a potential path to something better one day, the other all but guarantees you a cycle of poverty.
As a thought experiment. How might an AI trying to follow the intent of Azimov's three laws of robotics help the humans?
Initial conclusion: the community is broken and dangerous to humans. Evacuation of at risk life necessary. Distribute and re-integrate across functional settlements.
Negative examples might be easy to think of since they get tons of word of mouth and press coverage. Many of the negative examples (E.G. of 'native americans') you think of involve breaking up a functional community and relocating it against it's will en-mass.
Positive examples get much less coverage. Such as refugees that are spread out and integrated with host families and communities. Lives can be improved, and oversight and improvements might be had with the consultation or creation of experts in the subject.
I understand that historically it was used in some sense to control and indeed damage the Native Americans by the colonists? To what extent alcohol was completely new etc I do not know