Is race real or is it just a human invention?

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Again, people seem to be confusing junk DNA for DNA that actually matters. The huge genetic diversity in sub-Saharan Africa is in junk DNA because that's the DNA scientists use to trace ancient human migrations, however I suspect that if you focused on functional DNA, the distance between Khoisan and Bantu would be much less and the distance between English and Chinese would be much greater.

Cite ur sources plz!


Also, both the english and the chinese are part of the north eurasian supercluster. A vast group of people who do indeed descend from a common ancestral population in SW Asia. Did you know that Caucasoid peoples and Mongoloid peoples are much closer genetically than say, Caucasoids and Negroids? Most anthropologist conclude that east asian mongoloids split off from caucasoids. The khoisan people however, may very well have been the first modern humans on Earth. They were the first group to genetically split off from the rest of the ancestral population of modern humans.

pff..
junk DNA is barely an plicable term anymore, much of it, we know today, is actually non coding dna, but it still plays a part in how your coding DNA activates.

the actual relationship is still not well researched, some portions are almost certainly without function, but huge portions have barely been touched scientifically, some wil be non coding dna(of which there are multiple sub categories), some junk and probably some where we barely understand the very concept of operation.

Agreed. That explains why Cro Magnon looking guys like me have that peculiar eye fold. Very common among more robust north Europeans, and their American descendants.

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer

yes my confusion is definitely the problem.
did you read the paper? or are you just intuiting that the authors of the paper just don't
understand genetics in the depth you do?
Maybe you could read it for me then explain it to me?
You know so I won't be confused anymore.

Good sense to whom?
Did you know that I can tell a Papuan skull from a African skull of any race from across the room? ( It is a simple trick you can learn in a minute.)
And that the San people call Bantu people black and Arabs and Europeans white?

The melanesians are somewhat of a puzzle for anthropologists. The "convergent evolution" theory as to why they look almost exactly like black africans has actually been debunked. What I did read once is that some 60,000 years ago, the ancestors of the melanesians left east africa and traveled around the coast of southern asia by boat until the reached Sundaland. A few thousand years later a group of these people took to their boats and migrated to the islands of the South Pacific. Interestingly enough, they show evidence of interbreeding with the Denisova hominid whose existence was first discovered in a south siberian cave. Perhaps that explains their genetic distance from black africans.

This explains what I am talking about in africa

I suspect they would have a diverse gene pool, but whether they consider the same things as we do important is the real question. There are actually many criteria that could be used to establish [essentially unnecessary] subdivisions of humans that have nothing to do with skin color or bone structure yet you don't hear "racial realists" [or, idiots as I prefer] talking about them because they are interested in superficial and cultural characteristics. Lets say the civilization we are talking about is composed of a sentient race of sightless beings. Will skin color even occur to them? What if they communicate through chemical signals? Perhaps the nuances of your bio-chemical makeup would be more important to them

JakobVirgil:

What is the source of that racial phylogenetic tree you just posted? And why does it not include native americans and melanesians? What gene frequencies is it based on?

1)http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n11s/pdf/ng1435.pdf
2) not addressed in the article my guess would be that the 3 race theory is what is being discussed.
3)is explained in the article mostly it is Alu insertions.

I will say one thing though: The 3 race theory seems to work very well when it comes to classifying people based on their appearance. So-called "negroid" peoples share common physical traits: very dark skin, flat noses, full lips, rounded faces, and dolichocephaly. Most have nappy hair but some have wavy hair. And interestingly enough, some have epicanthic folds(in africa) whereas some are blond(melanesia). Caucasoid people have varying skintone but they are mesencephalic, have variable eye and hair color, considerably variation in hair texture(from nappy to straight)and in the size and shape of the nose. Mongoloids are brachycephalic and have epicanthic folds. There is variation in skintone and nasal size(FYI, native americans have been shown to be direct descendents of east asians).

only because those traits are cherry-picked (not by you but by folks now dead.)
if one choose size of the Supraorbital ridge, length of the femur and degree of steatopygia he would get different divisions. Also head ratios have been shown to be almost completely plastic so not really useful in making distinctions.

What do you see as the benefits of the 3 race theory?

What benefits do you see to racially distinguishing native americans from east asians? You do realize that the genetic relationship between these 2 groups has been firmly established, do you not? I remember when odinists in my home state of WA tried to claim Kennewick man as a nordic aryan, when in fact he had no relationship to white europeans whatsoever.


But with regard to the melanesians and the "negroid" peoples, there is a political benefit to this as black skinned people in Asia, Australia, and the pacific face considerable discrimination; especially in Southern India. Also, not only do Papuans the Andamenese look like black africans, they have astoundingly similar cultures.

Correct and the question is, if so called negroids are all so physically similar, why are they so genetically dissimilar? That doesn't make sense since physical traits are largely coded by genes.

The reason is they are probably NOT genetically dissimilar. They are only dissimilar in junk DNA, because junk DNA by definition is uninfluenced by natural selection, and as a result junk DNA mutates at a predictable rate allowing scientists to measure how old populations are and how long ago they diverged.




So although the genetic distance trees you guys read correctly document the fact that Melanesians have left Africa say 60,000 years ago, it's probably incorrect to say they are genetically distant from Africans. They are genetically distant only in the subset of DNA scientists use to clock divergence times but this DNA by definition does not code for anything that matters because if it did, it would be influenced by natural selection(instead of just time) and thus serve as unreliable molecular clock.




If we ignored the junk DNA and created a genetic distance tree based on functional DNA, the simple 3 race model would probably be supported. However such a tree would tell us little about when races split apart and the history of human migrations. For that we need junk DNA

Would I be incorrect by bringing up the theory that Kennewick man was related to the Japanese Ainu?

-Bill, otherwise known as Kraichgauer