If humans are a product of evolution...

[Senethro]

Migrating, contesting best hunting grounds and being forcibly moved on by a stronger clan is like what people spent most of their time doing before they had fields to tend.

Migrating is the ancestral state, being sedentary is novel.

 

[Crezth]

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?

I think that's an idiotic claim to make without evidence, and also a claim that's hard to test on the face of it. (What does great distances mean? What does traveled mean? etc) The stronger claim that 99.99% of people don't ever go beyond 10 km of their hometown still needs substantiation, and I still think is completely wrong...

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.

...Because even before the great migrations of the... er... agricultural era, there were people moving around. In fact the migratory nomads, by nature of not being able to settle in one place for long, pretty much did nothing but move around. Now while it's true that this notwithstanding it was still possible to develop certain selected traits based on the environment, i.e. high melanin levels and the epicanthic fold and whathaveyou, it's possible to overstate the differences these genetic markers actually constitute that are not superficial. It may seem to you like an Asian looks very different from you, but when you compare the difference between a St. Bernard and a Poodle, it actually seems rather trite. We're not that different when you get down to it, and this gets me to the crux of my original point, which is that some superficial characteristics do not necessarily indicate a significant deviation in the gene pool, an argument that is supported by the endless nomadic and migratory nature of human civilization.

Essentially no matter how much you slice it, humans are constantly settling and resettling territories, conquering them, being conquered, or looking for a new place to spear mammoth. Lands change, people move, people change. I'd suggest not projecting your personal experience of never wanting to leave Podunk to all of humanity, on the whole more intrepid and entrepreneurial than your blinkered tribalistic perspective would lead you to believe.

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?

A few things. First of all, do you know anything about genetics, let alone genetic ancestry testing? I'm going to hazard a guess that you know nothing about it whatsoever and are using it as a scientific wedge for your "cunning" agenda, but in case you do know about it, then you would know that GAT is not 100% accurate and in fact uses probabilistic guesses to make a probabilistic argument about the genetic backgrounds of any person based on association with other people's genetic tests. In fact your genetic test will show you a wide, wide berth of areas that your genetic ancestry can be traced to.

The very fact that a person's genetic ancestry test rarely ever shows genetic markers all within 10 or even 100km of each other should demonstrate to you what an absurd claim it is that people don't move around.

Second of all, that was not my theory. I argued that the gene differences were less drastic than superficial characteristics would make them seem and correlated that to migration.

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.

Only an imbecile would believe that you introduced this topic in an intellectual heritage that created racialism without knowing about it. Especially because you are on record creating forum threads hypothesizing that some races are naturally stupider than others, entirely by coincidence I'm sure.

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".

Right... but... this is not a new claim. In fact the term "race" has meaning in biology and insofar as that applies, it applies here. Read up. I'd like to assume you knew about this and were trying to take a reasonable tack when you made this thread, but after all I have to assume that you just wanted to tout your white supremacist agenda by slyly suggesting that races are naturally different from each other. Unfortunately for you it does not seem like you're capable of making those arguments convincing because you don't actually know what you're talking about, lmao.

 

[Oerdin]

There is going always going to be admixture at the margins however we KNOW that there are indeed large areas which had largely isolated populations for much of tgeir existance. We KNOW there are ohenotype difference which really are more than skin deep as a forensic specialist can reliably identify which group (or groups) an individual came from simply by examining the bones. If it is in the bones then it is real. Now, a good foresic scientist will use 5-10 or even more indicators and not just one but routinely can get tgeir conclusions to the 95%-99% reliability for accuracy.

There will always be some form of social construct as we are dealing with human societies and that is what human societies do. That said the claim that there is no biological basis for race/breeds is just hogwash and wishful thinking by people who just wish the "problem" would go away and who do not want to examine the data critically. That is my big complaint.

 

[Crezth]

Well it shouldn't be hard to give examples about extremely isolated groups. Go to the Pygmies if you have to. But just because a forensic scientist can tell the difference doesn't mean there's a major, absolute, essential difference. It's situational. You can look at soot on a shoe to determine where someone was killed.

 

[Ryika]

I think that's an idiotic claim to make without evidence, and also a claim that's hard to test on the face of it. (What does great distances mean? What does traveled mean? etc) The stronger claim that 99.99% of people don't ever go beyond 10 km of their hometown still needs substantiation, and I still think is completely wrong...

Great distances in the context that was originally given, where people migrate so far that there is no gradient distribution of genes to be found.

A few things. First of all, do you know anything about genetics, let alone genetic ancestry testing? I'm going to hazard a guess that you know nothing about it whatsoever and are using it as a scientific wedge for your "cunning" agenda, but in case you do know about it, then you would know that GAT is not 100% accurate and in fact uses probabilistic guesses to make a probabilistic argument about the genetic backgrounds of any person based on association with other people's genetic tests. In fact your genetic test will show you a wide, wide berth of areas that your genetic ancestry can be traced to.

The very fact that a person's genetic ancestry test rarely ever shows genetic markers all within 10 or even 100km of each other should demonstrate to you what an absurd claim it is that people don't move around.

Second of all, that was not my theory. I argued that the gene differences were less drastic than superficial characteristics would make them seem and correlated that to migration.

I do know about the inaccuracy of genetic ancestry testing, even mentioned in one of the previous posts that it is not highly reliable. Of course that does not change the fact that it's clear evidence that there is a gradient of genetic differences.

Only an imbecile would believe that you introduced this topic in an intellectual heritage that created racialism without knowing about it.

I know very well about it, but so what? Do you think acknowledging the scientific reality of genetic distribution will automatically lead to racialism? Well, I very much disagree with that idea, and I haven't given any cues to push the discussion into that direction. It's all projection on your part.

Especially because you are on record creating forum threads hypothesizing that some races are naturally stupider than others, entirely by coincidence I'm sure.

You mean this thread where I twisted the idea of race realism and asked people how they would feel if we found that significant IQ differences exist and their race turned out to be the stupidest of them all? I mean, I understand you're on the war path and all, but surely you see that the way I twisted the idea was to make it a humorous thought experiment where people find themselves in a situation that they're not used to, right?

But if you want my unfiltered thoughts on race and intelligence: I think it's foolish to claim that evolution "stops at the neck", clearly, intelligence is a trait that can be selected for or not. Therefor, we can expect some variation in the different types of intelligence, but I don't think we currently have conclusive evidence on how big the differences are, or who the winners and losers of that lottery are, as factors such as education (and lack thereof) and malnutrition seem to have a much bigger impact.

And of course even if that's wrong and one day we realize that Asians are indeed the master race and white people are just the dumbest apes around... so what? There is so much variation that we cannot possibly judge the individual by the racial group they belong to and expect good results.

Right... but... this is not a new claim. In fact the term "race" has meaning in biology and insofar as that applies, it applies here. Read up.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_(biology)
Uhh... wah? We're talking about Human races, not animal races. More particularly, the part about Biological classification.

I'd like to assume you knew about this and were trying to take a reasonable tack when you made this thread, but after all I have to assume that you just wanted to tout your white supremacist agenda by slyly suggesting that races are naturally different from each other. Unfortunately for you it does not seem like you're capable of making those arguments convincing because you don't actually know what you're talking about, lmao.

First you accuse me of having secret afterthoughts, then you accuse me of not conveying these secret afterthoughts convincingly?

Overall I think it would be to your benefit to be a bit more charitable with your interpretations of the actions of other people. Accusing me of being a "white supremacist" just because I enjoy talking about topics that make people uncomfortable is just idiotic, particularly when 90% of it is built on things that I have not actually said to begin with.

 

[Berzerker]

How many posts do you all think it will take before this thread devolves into a discussion on eugenics?

Your question inspired another vision in my head of Jesse Owens leaving Aryan runners in his dust at the 1936 Olympics and the look I imagine on Hitler's face. Well, I'm sure he wasn't that surprised, Owens was already a known commodity. Course the German eugenics crowd would point to Owens' slave ancestry as proof for their cause.

But people with recent African ancestry dominate running events and they're not all the product of slavery. Well, the burners seem to be more inclined to descend from slaves but they didn't develop that ability lifting bales of cotton (or maybe that helped, I cant say for sure), it was from eons of traversing hot, open flat terrain whereas Aryan runners had Neanderthal in them, climbing cold mountains doesn't produce sleek fast moving people. Now tall Scandinavians do add a puzzling twist to the story, maybe there was a tall "Ghengiz Khan" somewhere deep in the past we haven't learned about yet.

I recently saw researchers believe women ~7,000 years ago were much stronger and would put our modern athletes to shame. Reminds me of Jon Stewart's chart showing our progression as a species, on the left are our shorter hominid ancestors and moving right are increasingly taller and more erect humans. At the end of the chart is an overweight, out of shape man slumped in a recliner with a beer in his hand watching a TV. Technology makes us unfit... I'd expect an evolutionary regression for critters that have it too easy, not just physically but mentally. Becoming a couch potato is bad for the brain too. Dont have children when you've reached that stage in your life, they might end up paying for your deteriorating genes.

But life is based on eugenics, no? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but the beholder is not unbiased. There's a reason why our celebrities tend to be attractive. The eugenics crowd are scum for violently imposing their ideas on people, but not because they recognized 'survival of the fittest' in nature. The reason people are fit at all is because of nature's eugenics program...

 

[Berzerker]

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.

If thats true would that mean greater genetic distance between Neanderthal women and sapien men compared to the distance between Neanderthal men and sapien women?

 

[Senethro]

There will always be some form of social construct as we are dealing with human societies and that is what human societies do. That said the claim that there is no biological basis for race/breeds is just hogwash and wishful thinking by people who just wish the "problem" would go away and who do not want to examine the data critically. That is my big complaint.

What people mean when they say that is that there are poor correlations between the racial categorizations drawn up by a bunch of white slave owners and colonizers (i.e. the social construct) and the groups of related populations as revealed by molecular methods.

 

[Oerdin]

If thats true would that mean greater genetic distance between Neanderthal women and sapien men compared to the distance between Neanderthal men and sapien women?

Not really. Think about mules or horse-zebra hybrids.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Of course we cannot call different groups of humans "subspecies", because that would be really weird, so I'll instead use a word that is not riddled with historical baggage or weird connotations -

Valessa, when are you going to make good on this promise in your OP and give us your word for these subspecies that isn't riddled with historical baggage?

 

[Ryika]

Valessa, when are you going to make good on this promise in your OP and give us your word for these subspecies that isn't riddled with historical baggage?

Well, that was a joke. While reading about the topic, I came across some articles that avoided the use of the word "race" by using "ethnic group" instead, but of course that's not even close to being the same concept. An ethnic group includes everything, culture, language, biology... while race, at least in this context, is strictly biological. Overall, I do not think there is a good replacement for the word.

 

[Berzerker]

What people mean when they say that is that there are poor correlations between the racial categorizations drawn up by a bunch of white slave owners and colonizers (i.e. the social construct) and the groups of related populations as revealed by molecular methods.

do molecular methods break people down into sub groups that can be categorized by race?

 

[Oerdin]

Valessa, when are you going to make good on this promise in your OP and give us your word for these subspecies that isn't riddled with historical baggage?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens_idaltu

Start with that one as it was on page one. It is indeed a recognized human sub species. Tgere are likely many more and how humans interacted and interbred with said subspecies as well as other hominid species really does reflect how we are no different than any other animal species out there.

The people who deny this are making political statements not scientific statements.

 

[Berzerker]

I was under the impression some early aborigine skulls showed evidence of mixing with erectus populations in Indonesia...and the Flores hobbits appear to be much more recent

 

[Senethro]

It’s pretty damn intellectually lazy or dishonest if a guy were to use evidence of groupings below the species level to argue against opponents of the social construct.

This would be misapplication of scientific evidence for his own political statement.

 

[Senethro]

do molecular methods break people down into sub groups that can be categorized by race?

Not absolutely sure what you’re asking here. The social construct of race has rarely required your DNA to be applied.

 

[Ryika]

Well, that was a joke. While reading about the topic, I came across some articles that avoided the use of the word "race" by using "ethnic group" instead, but of course that's not even close to being the same concept. An ethnic group includes everything, culture, language, biology... while race, at least in this context, is strictly biological. Overall, I do not think there is a good replacement for the word.

On second thought, "ancestry" might be a fitting replacement. I'm obviously not part of the scientific community, so who am I to make that call for their context, but it seems to rather accurately describe the concept, even though I think I have not seen it be used in any of the stuff I read. Not that I think it needs to be replaced, but it might prevent people from being triggered by the word, or move to false conclusions too quickly, and therefor maybe be more useful for discussions with random people.

 

[Crezth]

Great distances in the context that was originally given, where people migrate so far that there is no gradient distribution of genes to be found.

I do know about the inaccuracy of genetic ancestry testing, even mentioned in one of the previous posts that it is not highly reliable. Of course that does not change the fact that it's clear evidence that there is a gradient of genetic differences.

I know very well about it, but so what? Do you think acknowledging the scientific reality of genetic distribution will automatically lead to racialism? Well, I very much disagree with that idea, and I haven't given any cues to push the discussion into that direction. It's all projection on your part.

Well done side-stepping and ignoring all my points, which you are a professional at. You'd make a great politician the way you dance from bad claim to bad claim and blow red-faced on your dog-whistles.

Of course there are genetic gradients. My whole point was that there can only be gradients because of constant "interbreeding" and locomotion, and that these gradients rely on choice few or insignificant markers. You don't need vast quantities of markers to find distinctions, only enough to make a statistical impression: this is how you can distinguish between Siberian forest cats and Norwegian forest cats. And then after all there's no evidence that these correlate with the sociological categories (and you've been somewhat careful to try to distinguish these categories but it bears repeating because you're a Nazi).

The concept of human biological races is not new. We've worked on this question for a long time. Your brilliant and novel scientific deductions are neither brilliant nor novel much less scientific as you've demonstrated less than zero understanding of the scientific concepts you're citing. Your only purpose is to bait a hook and try to cajole people into having stupid muddy conversations with you about races, where you refuse to define the characteristics of the conversation in full and, not understanding any of the concepts yourself, are free to bleat on the half-baked points you've prepared until you've been outed, where you act all harmless and defenseless. You're a troll.

Moderator Action: Do not call other posters Nazis or trolls. It's trolling, and extremely unkind. --LM
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[GoodSarmatian]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_sapiens_idaltu

Start with that one as it was on page one. It is indeed a recognized human sub species. Tgere are likely many more and how humans interacted and interbred with said subspecies as well as other hominid species really does reflect how we are no different than any other animal species out there.

The people who deny this are making political statements not scientific statements.

And if you read the first two sentences you'll discover that this is an extinct hominid that we only know about because of 160.000 year old fossils.
Nobody is denying that there were several human subspecies hundreds (or even tens) of thousands of years ago.

 

[Katie88]

Some very interesting information on the subject in general can be found here.

On subspecies:

In addition, there are several recognized subspecies which have diverged from each other in time spans similar to or more recent than humans have had to evolve subspecies:

Subspecies’ Time of divergence
Cyanoptera – Discors (birds) 65,000
Discors – Septentrionalium (birds) 70,000
Cyanoptera – Septentrionalium (birds) 95,000
North American Moose – European Moose 165,000
Proposed time for human subspecies to have evolved 100,000
8 subspecies of tigers 72,000
2 subspecies of lizards 12,000
Eastern and Western Wood Duck 34,000

And given the speed at which humans have spread around the world, it shouldn’t seem intuitively implausible that humans would evolve subspecies faster than most (but not all) other animals. One counter is that humans have longer generation times, and perhaps that offset the more rapid exposure to new environments. Or perhaps not, or perhaps partially.

(There's more but I can't copy and paste due to tables, etc.)