If humans are a product of evolution...

[Broken_Erika]

Meh. We're all pretty much mongrels at this point....

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

I hope these add some clarification on the topic:

Now, something as important as a species has to be clearly defined and it is, to a point. Different species are simply different animals, distinct kinds of organisms. They can’t breed with each other. Even if they do create offspring, the offspring will be sterile. Think of donkeys and horses for example – they can have offspring (mules), but they will be sterile.

A widely accepted definition is that of Mayr and Ashlock (1991:43): “A subspecies is an aggregate of phenotypically similar populations of a species inhabiting a geographic subdivision of the range of that species and differing taxonomically from other populations of that species.”

 

[Colon]

I’ll admit that I’m not an expert on biology or sociology, but from my understanding there is not enough of a genetic difference between people of skin colours to call someone of a different skin tone. From my understanding the criteria is far more strict for the concept of subspecies..

That's not even the biggest issue. It's that appearance correlates very poorly with genetic differences.

In many ways, genetics makes a mockery of race. The characteristics of normal human variation we use to determine broad social categories of race—such as black, Asian, or white—are mostly things like skin color, morphological features, or hair texture, and those are all biologically encoded.

But when we look at the full genomes from people all over the world, those differences represent a tiny fraction of the differences between people. There is, for instance, more genetic diversity within Africa than in the rest of the world put together. If you take someone from Ethiopia and someone from the Sudan, they are more likely to be more genetically different from each other than either one of those people is to anyone else on the planet!

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/10/genetics-history-race-neanderthal-rutherford/

 

[Berzerker]

I'm part Neanderthal, my people were slaughtered by Sapien invaders

 

[Crezth]

That's not even the biggest issue. It's that appearance correlates very poorly with genetic differences.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/10/genetics-history-race-neanderthal-rutherford/

It does seem like humans migrate too much for nature to select traits based on environment more than, I dunno, melanin levels. Even if there was a really good evolutionary reason for an epicanthic fold, would that trait necessarily correlate with anything "important?" Would it not make a difference over a long period of time?

I'm part Neanderthal, my people were slaughtered by Sapien invaders

Actually the Sapiens banged your people and turned them into Europeans.

 

[gay_Aleks]

As we can see, that didn't end very well.

 

[Mechanicalsalvation]

As we can see, that didn't end very well.

The part I agree with is that it "didn't end": evolution isnt finished...

 

[Berzerker]

That was rape... Actually I read recently the Neanderthal/Denisovans provided us with various genes allowing better adaptation to cold mountainous regions.

 

[Ryika]

It's Christmas, so: Jesus F. Christmas. The winking smiley? Under your plan, all urbanites would be the same race? Would all blind people be a race?

No to both, but that's because both examples are bad.

Urbanites don't share an environment, they're geographically separated when it comes to Urbanites from different cities, and different parts of the same city can also be very different environments.

Blind people don't share an environment at all, and blindness is not caused by shared genetics. There are many reasons to become blind.

It is however true that you could make the argument that people who live in a very specific city, without much movement in and out of that city, become their own race over time, because they will develop shared genetic similarities that separate them from the people in other cities. If Civ was actually a thing, you could say that the people who live in every city are their own race, because there is no simulated immigration at all in Civ, all babies are created from the internal population, and every city is its own environment. This might seem silly, but that's again because you can divide subspecies - races when it comes to humans - arbitrarily, based on how much or little genetic overlap you aim for, as long as you have separated environments with little movement between them, which has been the state of the world until rather recently. Well, for the most part of course, where there are no natural borders between environments that become sufficiently different, you find a gradient of changes.

 

[Berzerker]

what I find fascinating is the possibility we all lived together some <300 kya in Ethiopia, one language, one culture, one people...

 

[metatron]

In before Valka issues a - justified - rant about "species" interbreeding in various science fiction universes.

By what metric would you decide when differences are large enough and when they are not?

Most definitions of the term as an informal taxonomic rank require degrees of predictability and reliability that humans due to their exceptional circumstance usually fail to meet.
So perhabs you can get away with calling them island dwellers in the Andamans who attack everyone a race and the rest of humankind another race, but you'll hardly get much farther than that.
Humans just live in a highly unusual fashion. Plenty of animals migrate large distances, sure. But for a mostly sedentary animal to seemingly randomly travel the span of continents individually or in large groups is pretty damn weird.

And this is presuming you can escape the problem of history here, which you allready kind of can't.
I.e. you may dodge the obvious problems of intentional human interventions, such as say, Triangular Trade, by an insistance of talking about some however defined "prehistoric" human.
The issue with that is that early hallmarks of civilisation (say agriculture, pottery, heck, even wheels) occur early enough; and spread of, say, them fancy bright eye and hair colors so often associated with the dubious concept of "race" occurs unintuitively late. You still get a window of some millenia to sneak through, argumentatively, but this all looks surprisingly uncomfortable.

Point being: humans are exceptional and that severely inconveniences attempts to make the kind of assertion you are apparently trying to make here.

 

[Cutlass]

Seems to me that the difference between an African and a European is about the same as the difference between a black Labrador retriever and a golden Labrador retriever. As in, after looks, who cares?

 

[Ryika]

In before Valka issues a - justified - rant about "species" interbreeding in various science fiction universes.

She's on Valkation from the forums as far as I know!

Most definitions of the term as an informal taxonomic rank require degrees of predictability and reliability that humans due to their exceptional circumstance usually fail to meet.
So perhabs you can get away with calling them island dwellers in the Andamans who attack everyone a race and the rest of humankind another race, but you'll hardly get much farther than that.
Humans just live in a highly unusual fashion. Plenty of animal migrate large distances, sure. But for a mostly dsedentary animal to seemingly randomly travel the span of continents individually or in large groups is pretty damn weird.

But humans did not travel that far during 99.99% of their existence. Most of them still don't, the freedom to travel great distances is a thing that is mostly offered to first world countries, in the third world, there is a lot less movement, and even in the first world most traveling is done for the purpose of going to vacation, which usually does not result in import/export of genetic material. Well, sometimes it does. Few people permanently move towards Africa or other places, the only consistent stream of migration over large distances is towards Europe and the USA.

In fact, Genetic Ancestry Testing does exactly use the fact that different environments harbor different genetic makeups and compares individuals to databases, and can trace ones ancestry with reasonable accuracy.

 

[metatron]

She's on Valkation from the forums as far as I know!

Valkation!^^
I hope nobody was mean to her, or, god forbid my occassional dissing of Canadia is at fault.

But humans did not travel that far during 99.99% of their existence.

Yeah, there's still the problem that the rando redhead Tunisian doesn't look the way, say an American would expect a proper "African" to look.

in the third world, there is a lot less movement,

Oh, often it doesn't look as "freeish" as say settlement of the American west, but there is plenty of movement going on in the third world in modern times. Of the top of my head: Chinese vanille farmers in Madagascar. A rather small population to be sure. But the principle applies elsewhere.
Btw: Can we agree that Suriname is quite weird?

Anyway, this is modern times and at extreme scales. There are plenty more significant regional migrations. E.g. the selective migration that caused the first global cotton boom in Persia. etc.

and even in the first world most traveling is done for the purpose of going to vacation, which usually does not result in import/export of genetic material.

Erm...you have to have a couple of uncomfortable conversations. For one with Thailand and the Philippines. For another: Erm, care to look around you right here?

Few people permanently move towards Africa or other places, the only consistent stream of migration over large distances is towards Europe and the USA.

Didn't Borachio complain recently that he wasn't sure whether what Jain sings constituted English?
Anyway, yeah, i suppose i see your point.

 

[uppi]

I think it is pretty obvious that you could define groups of humans that are somewhat genetically isolated. What to call these is a matter of semantics. Calling those "races" is a bad idea, because the correlation with the social construct of race is bad and people might confuse these two.

My question is now: so what? What would be the point of dividing humans in such a way? What is this thread supposed to be about?

 

[Manfred Belheim]

Just call them "breeds".

 

[gay_Aleks]

Humans aren't horses.

(Last time I checked.)

 

[Oerdin]

I'm part Neanderthal, my people were slaughtered by Sapien invaders

There is no Neanderthal mitochondrial dna in tge current human population so it seems only male Neanderthals breeding with Sapian females were fertile. The other way around either did not work or resulted in sterile issue.

So it was neanderthal males nailing human females. It is not currently known if the same was true for Denisovians or other human-proto-human crossings. An interesting area just getting attention is how west Africans crossed with certain early proto humans or exactly how some of the ancient human subspecies interacted with us.

 

[Crezth]

But humans did not travel that far during 99.99% of their existence. Most of them still don't, the freedom to travel great distances is a thing that is mostly offered to first world countries, in the third world, there is a lot less movement, and even in the first world most traveling is done for the purpose of going to vacation, which usually does not result in import/export of genetic material. Well, sometimes it does. Few people permanently move towards Africa or other places, the only consistent stream of migration over large distances is towards Europe and the USA.

In fact, Genetic Ancestry Testing does exactly use the fact that different environments harbor different genetic makeups and compares individuals to databases, and can trace ones ancestry with reasonable accuracy.

Hey if Genghis Khan's gallivanting about was sufficient to put a genetic marker in 0.1% of all people then I'm sure John Smith sailing to the Mauritius on stopover for business has resulted in more than his share of mulattoes.

As for the not traveling so far "99.99% of the time," well, really you're completely wrong. Basically through all of history humans have traveled great distances. The number of large migrations is a matter of debate, but since there was trade there was widespread long-distance travel and corresponding co-infiltration of genetic material. Essentially few places ever have remained "pure." Even from neighboring region to neighboring region, you had nomads, war refugees, wanderers, and the enterprising packing up and going for parts unknown pretty much since forever. Indeed this is how all these places of our world became settled to begin with. Even before the slave trade and urbanization, you had Turks wandering to Anatolia, Greeks settling the Mediterranean, and Cantonese going all over the frikkin place.

Basically, there's been too much human migration and not enough time passed for natural selection to take hold in categories deeper than a few superficial features: melanin levels, epicanthic eye folds, and a handful of other markers. Great periods of time are required to select for traits beyond that, such as basic biological functions, to say nothing for intelligence, creativity, or social proclivity. This suggests that the races are structural categories and wholly mutable, utterly capable of mixing, rather than some essential thing such as Blumenbach describes (though to be fair, he did not know about evolution, and was making an argument based on Biblical authority -- even so, he argued that the races are "equal" as they have all created culture, art, and science). Certainly, not nearly enough time has passed (with no migration) to assert the existence of an urban race.

Adaptations acquired through culture and living memory do not a race make. You should be careful to distinguish sociological and cultural behaviors from genetic predispositions, and err on the side of caution lest you make reckless suppositions.

 

[Ryika]

As for the not traveling so far "99.99% of the time," well, really you're completely wrong.

What I'm saying is: 99.99% of all people who ever lived have not traveled great distances, not that "99.99% of the time, there were no people traveling great distances in the world".
Do you disagree with that, or was it a misunderstanding?

Basically through all of history humans have traveled great distances. The number of large migrations is a matter of debate, but since there was trade there was widespread long-distance travel and corresponding co-infiltration of genetic material. Essentially few places ever have remained "pure." Basically, there's been too much human migration and not enough time passed for natural selection to take hold in categories deeper than a few superficial features: melanin levels, epicanthic eye folds, and a handful of other markers. Great periods of time are required to select for traits beyond that, such as basic biological functions, to say nothing for intelligence, creativity, or social proclivity. This suggests that the races are structural categories and wholly mutable, utterly capable of mixing, rather than some essential thing such as Blumenbach describes (though to be fair, he did not know about evolution, and was making an argument based on Biblical authority -- even so, he argued that the races are "equal" as they have all created culture, art, and science). Certainly, not nearly enough time has passed (with no migration) to assert the existence of an urban race.

Significant numbers of humans started slowly migrating from Africa around ~60k years ago. According to the source you gave, Greeks started settling colonies around 800 BC. So that leaves... 57k years of evolution. And not just evolution in a static environment, no, evolution of members of a species that were migrating into new environments. Those last 10k years ago, when agriculture hit, we entered an environment that was the most unique of all environments that existed before.

And again... Genetic Ancestry Testing. How would that even work, if your theory of travel in a scope that can disrupt the distribution of gene differences were true?

Adaptations acquired through culture and living memory do not a race make. You should be careful to distinguish sociological and cultural behaviors from genetic predispositions, and err on the side of caution lest you make reckless suppositions.

I made no claims about behavioral differences between races, did not makes claims about differences between the races when it comes to "intelligence, creativity, or social proclivity", those ideas were all introduced by you.

All I claimed is that there is a distribution of genetic clusters that is similar to how subspecies work in the animal kingdom, and that those clusters can be called "races".