Human evolution and differentiation of races

What bar do you use to establish that race has no biological meaning?...
Genetic science.

How about we call blood groups racial divides?

Can you argue that the amount of genetic code which produces a blond vs a brunette is less than the amount of genetic code which differentiates a black from a Caucasian?
 
Can you argue that the amount of genetic code which produces a blond vs a brunette is less than the amount of genetic code which differentiates a black from a Caucasian?

Hmm. If race has "no biological meaning," what's a Black and what's a Caucasian? And, why is Caucasian capitaized in your response?
 
The point is racial divisions are based on facades, not based on actual racial divisions.

People in Africa tend to have certain characteristics. So do people in Japan and people in Sweden and people in Syria, etc. These tendencies are all quite easily identified. This is all that is meant in the common language by the word "race." It is not an exact term and it is not defined scientifically because it has no particular value in science. The fact that the edges are fuzzy is irrelevant to how the term is used in the common language, just as you used the concept above in referring to Black and Caucasian. It is a useful term because everyone who read your post understood exactly what you meant. So, while denying that the concept of race has meaning, you used words that refer to two "races" as we know that term in the common language. Ironically, you used the terms quite well while denying they exist!
 
Hmm. If race has "no biological meaning," what's a Black and what's a Caucasian? And, why is Caucasian capitaized in your response?

False dichotomy. They can have meaning and even proper names without being significant biologically. Anthropologists generally accept them as a valid social/cultural classification, just not a biological one.
 
One of two juveniles? What are you talking about. These are two well known twins. Their birth was well publicized when it occurred.

I am talking about that the most common is to describe taxa based on differences in the adult (even though there are several cases where this is not the case). This is because a juvenile of any species cannot be expected to show all relevant characters necessary to determine what species it belongs to. Therefore, showing a picture of two juveniles and asking someone to determine what taxon they belong to is not fair, because the relevant characters may not have developed.

The point is so called racial characteristics and divides are arbitrary and not based on good science. With good science, racial divides would be clearly visible within the human genome. They turn out not to be.

If the differences are slight, they may be hidden in some sort of equivalent of the barcoding gap, especially if your genetic material comes from within the last 200 years, when there's been an active mixing of different populations on a previously more or less unprecedented scale. Is there any research done on these things based only on material from the 18th century or earlier?
 
People in Africa tend to have certain characteristics. So do people in Japan and people in Sweden and people in Syria, etc. These tendencies are all quite easily identified. This is all that is meant in the common language by the word "race." It is not an exact term and it is not defined scientifically because it has no particular value in science. The fact that the edges are fuzzy is irrelevant to how the term is used in the common language, just as you used the concept above in referring to Black and Caucasian. It is a useful term because everyone who read your post understood exactly what you meant. So, while denying that the concept of race has meaning, you used words that refer to two "races" as we know that term in the common language. Ironically, you used the terms quite well while denying they exist!

the skin pigment and facial characteritics may exist, however the arbitrary consensus a hundred years ago was that 'white' was good and everything else was 'inferior'. tne you find the KhoiSan who are african as can be but caucasian in appearnce.

Then you have the people from the area of turkey were the 'arayan' culture most likely came from and they were reffered to as turk-a-******* by the brits or towel heads of some sort. It makes no sense.

Blood groups and tissue groups are more meaningful.
 
False dichotomy. They can have meaning and even proper names without being significant biologically. Anthropologists generally accept them as a valid social/cultural classification, just not a biological one.


aside
I think my father ( a very famous mesoamerican anthropologist) would disagree, they have a commonly accepted social cultural meaning but the phenotypes don't mean much.
 
I am talking about that the most common is to describe taxa based on differences in the adult (even though there are several cases where this is not the case). This is because a juvenile of any species cannot be expected to show all relevant characters necessary to determine what species it belongs to. Therefore, showing a picture of two juveniles and asking someone to determine what taxon they belong to is not fair, because the relevant characters may not have developed.



If the differences are slight, they may be hidden in some sort of equivalent of the barcoding gap, especially if your genetic material comes from within the last 200 years, when there's been an active mixing of different populations on a previously more or less unprecedented scale. Is there any research done on these things based only on material from the 18th century or earlier?


Well human population have mixed in the past, it is a matter of scale of distribution. Even hunter-gatherers can travel fairly far. They are usually sociopolitical reasons populations don't mix. Like servitude of serfs.

There is this great study of the distribution of genes by the 'mongolian' invasion, I am not sure anyone has done that for the romans, persians or ostrogoths.
 
The point is racial divisions are based on facades, not based on actual racial divisions.

Would you say the same thing about some divisions among other animals? For example, are the quarter horse and the thoroughbred both facades and not actual divisions? How about Hereford and Holstein cattle?

If yes, then I can understand where you're coming from.

It's a different way than I'd use the terms, since I think that clusters of characteristics which breed true are, by definition, actual and based on genetics, and that's what "race" is.

But I understand the "facade" point, since if we bred every Hereford with a non-Hereford for a few generations, there would be no more recognizable Herefords, just as if every person chose a mate with markedly different racial characteristics, there would be no more people who could be identified as any of the races we recognize now, in a few generations. With easier transportation and less cultural prohibitions, we can see it happening already.

However, if you consider quarterhorses and thoroughbreds, or Herefords and Holsteins, different kinds of labels than human blacks and whites, then I don't get it.
 
Originally Posted by Perpetual Student
Hmm. If race has "no biological meaning," what's a Black and what's a Caucasian? And, why is Caucasian capitaized in your response?


False dichotomy. They can have meaning and even proper names without being significant biologically. Anthropologists generally accept them as a valid social/cultural classification, just not a biological one.

Are you saying that the differences that are so apparent to our eyes and laboratories have no biological basis, they are merely social or cultural?
How would you account for this: Bone Density ?
 
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Then you have the people from the area of turkey were the 'arayan' culture most likely came from and they were reffered to as turk-a-******* by the brits or towel heads of some sort. It makes no sense.

Just a quick correction in my first paragraph. I know what you mean, but I want to clarify in more detail. Arayan is a small culture of Indian fishermen. Aryan is a mythical race that supposedly first spoke the Indo-European language. I say mythical, because it is a race based on language group. It is very hard to tell what language group early speakers of a language spoke, because they didn't have writing. Any such race would have to be based completely on speculation.

The belief was that these people were the original Caucasian people, or people from the region surrounding the caucasus mountains. This is a large area that includes Western Russia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and the North-East edge of Turkey. The idea that white people descended from these original caucasians has been disproven in modern migration patterns.

For instance, there are markers in your Y-DNA that tell you who your ancestors were in different locations over thousands of years. These are mutations that are found in skeletons (normally the enamel protected teeth) known to live at different time periods. Only descendants of that skeleton have the same mutations most of the time.

My Y-DNA has been demonstrated to have migrated from Africa to Southern Spain. From Southern Spain to Catalan. From Catalan to Ireland, and from Ireland to Scotland. I am very white with reddish-brown hair, and brown eyes.

The Nazis would of thought that my white appearance and dark hair and eyes was a sign of imbreeding between the descendants of the original Caucasians and inferior races. The reality is that my ancestors developed lighter skin as they moved north based on the sun. The skeletons in Spain were still black. We can tell by their DNA. The skeletons in Ireland became white. We will never know for sure whether it was from cross-breeding or mutation, yet the truth is that the sun decided the skin color had to change. White people consistantly become black as they moved south, and black people consistantly become white as they move north. It is so consistant, that one skin color can be considered superior before the invention of Vitamin D pills and sun block. A white person is superior far from the equator with the ability to produce more Vitamin D than a dark skinned person. A dark skinned person is superior near the equator with the ability to survive harsher sun exposure with less chance of skin cancer.

The concept of race is partly based on the misunderstanding of breeding. Forced breeding always limits the gene pool to smaller more fragile groups. Natural mutation always strengthens the species by giving the species more tickets to win the natural selection lottery. Humans are still not smart enough to know all the selective pressures on an animal, and horrible fragile pure dog breeds on the edge of extinction are perfect examples.

In reality the skin colors have all developed from mutation at some point that had nothing to do with breeding. They literally popped into existance out of nowhere. Dark skin is the original skin color of everyone's ancestry. The mutation was natural and occured based on a specific probability of change. If someone decided to kill off all blacks and import Whites to the equator, they could be bringing in the ancestors of the future blacks at the equator. Breeding does not prevent natural genetic drift, and nature will naturally reselect the people that can actually survive in that environment.

Again, I wish I could post links. You will just have to use keywords from what I said and google it to confiirm my statements. I think I have about 5 posts before I can post links.
 
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Would you say the same thing about some divisions among other animals? For example, are the quarter horse and the thoroughbred both facades and not actual divisions? How about Hereford and Holstein cattle?

If yes, then I can understand where you're coming from.

It's a different way than I'd use the terms, since I think that clusters of characteristics which breed true are, by definition, actual and based on genetics, and that's what "race" is.

But I understand the "facade" point, since if we bred every Hereford with a non-Hereford for a few generations, there would be no more recognizable Herefords, just as if every person chose a mate with markedly different racial characteristics, there would be no more people who could be identified as any of the races we recognize now, in a few generations. With easier transportation and less cultural prohibitions, we can see it happening already.

However, if you consider quarterhorses and thoroughbreds, or Herefords and Holsteins, different kinds of labels than human blacks and whites, then I don't get it.

IIRC, there's more genetic difference between two dog breeds than within the whole human species. With taxonomy more and more focusing on genetics, that could be a point in labeling dog breeds (don't know about horses or cows) as races but blacks/whites/Asians not. I'm more throwing this point up for discussion than that I can back it with authoritative links btw.
 
Again, I wish I could post links. You will just have to use keywords from what I said and google it to confiirm my statements. I think I have about 5 posts before I can post links.

If you have interesting links, just write them out with some spaces in between.
 
If you have interesting links, just write them out with some spaces in between.

I just tried several things, and some how it knew I was typing links. I'll do it this way. Type in google "Y-DNA test" to learn more about the genetic migration patterns. Type "Nina G. Jablonski" to find an author who has studied skin changes in depth. Type "Your Family May Once Have Been A Different Color" to find an interesting article about why you may not be descended from your skin color. "human skin color mutated quickly" also seems to bring up some good articles.
 
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are dog breeds biologically non-existent as well?

They are clssed as "varieties" , or "sub-species", or "breeds", depending on the person doing the classifying.
Darwin agonised over what is a variety, what a sub-species.
Had he written a book titled "The Origin of varieties and sub-species", a lot more people would have accepted it as self-evidently true. But he used the word "Species"- and for many people in 1859 - and , it appears, 2010, there is something more fundamental about that taxonomic category than any other.
 
I'll leave it to taxonomists to accurately re-label race to something that's better classified (if race implies sub-species then I'm not comfortable making that claim, though I would defer to taxonomists). We distinguish between sex and gender, perhaps we should do the same with race.

To say that race has no biological component is inane, unless you're willing to claim that a white family could raise a kid who grows up to be black skinned or vice versa.

It's also irrelevant that (pick some huge number) of dna is identical across "races" as the focus is on that small part that differs. Unless people are claiming that one can't classify races with better than 0 accuracy by using skin color, blood tests, dna markers or some type of biological test?

I suspect there are very nasty medical disorders that occur only because one's dna differs very, very trivially from the norm. Is this true? Or, would any type of genetic dis-order imply always that the victim's DNA is vastly different from "normal"?
 

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