Re: Morphological and Genetic Races in Humans

["Steve Brusatte" <dinoland@lycos.com>]

On Wed, 24 Oct 2001 23:52:52  
 David Marjanovic wrote:
>
>I repeat myself: It's all _individual variation_. Some variations are
>loosely clustered in geographical regions, some are not. Glad to see you
>didn't use skin colour because this trait isn't far from a 1 : 1 correlation
>with geographical latitude :-)

Certainly using skin color to support any theory of races/populations etc. 
would be erroneous.  However, just to try to understand what you are saying, 
David, are you implying that all major differences between modern humans have 
occured because of individual variation, and that individual variation "seems" 
to represent races or populations because it became clustered in certain areas 
to to cultural breeding?  Or, in other words, any individual traits that 
happened to occur may have spread in certain areas because, up to recent 
history, many people only breeded with those in their own tribes or groups, and 
those traits may have been passed on within those groups??

I can't fathom to think that there are no races, not because I am a racist or 
an Archie Bunkerite, but because there does seem to be some very evident 
morphological differences between humans.  Certainly, as a whole, "negroes" can 
be told apart from "Asians" due to certain features.  As you said, there is no 
need to discuss ethics or politics here, which we won't due, but there is no 
denying the fact that certain groups of people manifest certain physical 
"traits" or morphologies.

I really don't understand how ALL of this can be individual variation.  If a 
variation, or several variations, become clustered in an area, does that 
constitute a race or group?  

And, Tracy, I see your point about going off topic here, so I'll stop.  
However, there are ramifications when it comes to dinosaurs.  With cladistics 
gaining a stronger foothold the notion of a species is becoming more unclear.  
We're all still looking for a definition of what makes a species a species.  If 
none exists, well...  Clades are so much easier in this regard!

Steve     

---
***************************************************************
Steve Brusatte-DINO LAND PALEONTOLOGY
SITE: http://www.geocities.com/stegob
ONLINE CLUB: http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/thedinolanddinosaurdigsite
WEBRING: http://home.wanadoo.nl/dinodata.net/
INTERNATIONAL LANGUAGE SITE: http://www.geocities.com/stegob/international.html
****************************************************************


Make a difference, help support the relief efforts in the U.S.
http://clubs.lycos.com/live/events/september11.asp