Friday Night Science Thread
Fri, Jun 13, 2008 at 7:44:16 pm PDT
Ben Stein’s contention that Darwinian evolution led directly to the Nazi Holocaust is destroyed by genetic science.
The theory of Scandinavian racial purity cherished by Hitler and the Nazis has been rubbished by new scientific research.
The study found that bodies from 2000-year-old burial sites in eastern Denmark contained “as much genetic variation in their remains as one would expect to find in individuals of the present day”.
The findings, in an analysis by the University of Copenhagen which has just been published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, explodes the Nazis’ much cherished concept of a ‘superior’ Nordic race.
Hitler used pseudo-scientific research to back up claims that northern Europeans could form a Master Race which would lead mankind, and even set up a breeding program between Germans and Norwegians to foster it.
The racist theory, which placed the Master Race at the top of mankind’s hierarchy and Jews at the bottom, played a central role in the Holocaust. But according to the new research, the “concept of a single Scandinavian genetic type, a Scandinavian race that wandered to Denmark, settled there, and otherwise lived in complete isolation from the rest of the world, is a fallacy”.
Far from being isolated and ‘genetically pure’, the study on the burial sites found that Danes mixed with peoples from across the globe.
“It becomes clear that the Danes must have been in contact with other peoples,” said scientist Linea Melchior, who analysed DNA from the Bøgebjerggard and Skovgaarde sites.
(Hat tip: Josephine.)
