And actually, if we really look at the concept of race it is a recent social construct. Born out of chattel slavery as a distinctive marker between slave owners and their slaves.
I doubt this. IIRC Caesar's Gallic War Commentary made exactly the sorts of distinctions we might today call "race" when referring to the inhabitants of Britain. Some he considered to be the same as the Gallic Celts and others distinct based on hair color and stature and such.
I think you are trying to conflate the concept 'race' with slavery on a black/white basis- but they two very different topics.
Before that, most humans only prescribed themselves to an ethnic group. I.E. I am Spanish, or I am Portuguese. Not I am white, or I am black. All of this is a recent invention.
It's unclear what distinction you are trying to draw. Spanish and Portuguese are national or language distinctions and these are decidedly NOT race.
The term "land race" or "landrace" was commonly used to refer to variants of cultivated species. So for example as you cross central Europe in the middle ages you might find a lot of useful variations of wheat grown. It would also refer to breeds of dogs common to a region. Without getting into the etymology I think that is what is meant by "race". Isolated sub-populations of a species that express characteristic phenotypes.
So I think we can say that the original Australian natives and Inuit are distinct races.
This is partially why I chuckled when blacks and Arabs wage verbal wars against one another about the race of the Egyptians. It is almost certain that Egypt was a racially diverse group of people with blacks, whites, and Arabs all equally ranked in the society.
Ancient Egypt was certainly a diverse culture - but whether these groups were equally ranked requires some evidence.
There were almost certainly black pharaohs, white pharaohs, and pharaohs of Middle Eastern descent. Race was almost worthless in ancient Egypt. And it is almost certain that ancient Egyptians were racially blind. They viewed skin color with nothing more contempt.
Unless you are "channelling" some ancient Egyptian - I this this statement above is unsupportable. You seem t be guessing in the absence of evidence. The idea the AEgypt was not divided based on skin color does not imply they made no distinctions based on race.
Race is almost certainly worthless.
By the definition of race that I suggested - it sounds like you are unable to make a distinction between a chihuahua vs a doberman when you want a guard dog. It seems like politically correct head-in-the-sand-ism.
But some racial groups have characteristic genetic characteristics that are advantageous or dis-advantageous - so it's not all merely superficial like the common characteristics we think of skin, hair, eye color.. It's very clear that many genetic diseases are isolated to a particular "race", metabolic capabilities, type of physique, and others.
I agree that it should not be used as a basis for social or legal distinctions, in any fair society - but that's not the question. Of course once there is substantial cross breeding between races (hmm that phrase is troubling) they cease to have so much characteristic distinction.
Humans are all one species. We can interbreed freely.
Yes !
No !
The concept of variations within a species is well established. There are hundreds of VARIETIES of Tea Rose for example, yet all are the same species.
We have fewer dissimilarities than many species in which only one variety is recognized. All that separates people from different parts of the world are groups of particular genes that have higher distributions in some places than others, but which are never found only in one group of similar appearance.
Well - Human genetic variation is significant, tho' it's unclear how you should measure the range of group phenotypes.
Your claim about genetic distributions is a direct result of the sub-populations not being completely isolated - it's not much of an argument for or against any point - except that characteristic or common traits in one group are usually transmitted to some degree to other populations. There are a number of genetic diseases that have arisen in historic times and can be traces to specific sub-populations, sometimes specific families and in a few rare cases to individuals.
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