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Author Topic:   Human Races
Speel-yi
Inactive Member


Message 22 of 274 (62697)
10-25-2003 2:54 AM
Reply to: Message 21 by crashfrog
10-24-2003 7:29 PM


Why should anything have to have a use in order for it to valid as a category? Is a genus useful?
I will say this, Europeans have the idea it seems quite often that if two things are different, then one must be better than another.
Races do exist and they have been around for around a million years, I can tell Halle Berry is of African descent not by her skin color, but by her bone structure. A forensic Anthropologist can tell the race of a homicide victim by subtle differences in bone structure. These differences have persisted for around a million years and we see them in the fossil record.
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Bringer of fire, trickster, teacher.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 21 by crashfrog, posted 10-24-2003 7:29 PM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 23 by NosyNed, posted 10-25-2003 3:11 AM Speel-yi has not replied
 Message 24 by crashfrog, posted 10-25-2003 3:43 AM Speel-yi has replied

  
Speel-yi
Inactive Member


Message 26 of 274 (62735)
10-25-2003 12:20 PM
Reply to: Message 24 by crashfrog
10-25-2003 3:43 AM


Racial differences show up in the fossil record about a million years ago. I don't ow about anyone else, but I have a tough time arguing about that.
Race has nothing to do with skin color, the Tamils in Sri Lanka and Swedes are both Caucasoids.
You also have to consider ethnicity and it too has almost nothing to do with race as most people think about it. Race and ethnicity are two different things and you should consider that most people make this fundamental mistake when talking about race. For example, there is not a white race.
Race will help give you a clue about how to treat people with a medical condition and also how people digest food. East Asians have much lower rates of type 2 diabetes as they can get by on high carbohydrate diets for extended periods of time. Some races respond to medicine differently than others and in that way it is useful.
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Bringer of fire, trickster, teacher.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 24 by crashfrog, posted 10-25-2003 3:43 AM crashfrog has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 29 by crashfrog, posted 10-25-2003 9:18 PM Speel-yi has replied

  
Speel-yi
Inactive Member


Message 35 of 274 (62994)
10-27-2003 1:48 AM
Reply to: Message 29 by crashfrog
10-25-2003 9:18 PM


Links? I keep making the mistake of that I assume people actually look at ALL of the evidence before they decide something about whether something is true or not.
So here ya go, this first one discusses human evolution from a worldwide perspective.
From the URL: Evolution: Out of Africa and the Eve Hypothesis
For example, Chinese Homo erectus specimens had the same flat faces, with prominent cheekbones, as modern Oriental populations. Javanese Homo erectus had robustly built cheekbones and faces that jutted out from the braincase, characteristics found in modern Australian Aborigines. No definite representatives of Homo erectus have yet been discovered in Europe. Here, the fossil record does not extend back as far as those of Africa and eastern Asia, although a possible Homo erectus jawbone more than a million years old was recently excavated in Georgia.
Nevertheless, the multiregional model claims that European Homo erectus did exist, and evolved into a primitive form of Homo sapiens. Evolution in turn produced the Neanderthals: the ancestors of modern Europeans. Features of continuity in this European lineage include prominent noses and midfaces.
Then we have this one here:
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/...ver/thesis/section1.htm
The evidence offered for the multi-regional theory stems primarily from fossil evidence. Phyletic theorists contend that there is a great deal of morphological continuity in regional populations of Homo erectus and Homo sapiens. For example, in the Far East, there are a number of morphological characteristics which modern humans and erectus have in common. These include cheek form: high, anteriorly placed cheekbones, resulting in a flatter face; dental characteristics: shovel-shaped incisors; and cranial traits. One of these cranial traits is known as an 'Inca bone', a feature resulting from an extra suture running across the occipital bone, which has its highest frequency (30%) in modern Eastern populations (and New World migrants ) and which was present in three out of four of the Peking erectus skulls (Krantz 1980:198). Thus, Chinese paleoanthropologists, at least, see a very clear transition from erectus to their modern populations (Nelson & Jurmain 1988:563; Wolpoff, Wu Xinzhi, and Thorne 1984; but see Young 1995).
and the page also has the interesting statement:
Proponents of the single-origin theory might respond to evidence of local morphological continuity by mentioning possible interbreeding between displacing and indigenous populations, but would maintain that the overwhelming nature of such gene flow was such that the end result was the same as it would have been had the invaders simply replaced, i.e., annihilated, the native populations.
The problem of which is this is really what MRH is saying in the first place with Wolpoffs model. (This is a model with gene flow out of Africa and interbreeding with local populations.)
I favor Brauers view.
The fact is that regional variations do exist, some of which are due to drift and isolation, others of which are due to selective pressures of dealing with climatic variations.
Personally, I have a sense of urgency about the subject since ignoring human variation is not going to contribute to solving the problems we will are dealing with in regard to human health.
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Bringer of fire, trickster, teacher.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 29 by crashfrog, posted 10-25-2003 9:18 PM crashfrog has not replied

  
Speel-yi
Inactive Member


Message 38 of 274 (63092)
10-28-2003 2:17 AM
Reply to: Message 37 by crashfrog
10-27-2003 6:03 PM


You're not really making a meaningful argument. There are a lot of people that are the product of mixed race marriages etc etc.
Take a look at the at the head basketball coach at Oklahoma, his ethnic group is a really interesting bunch. One kid will be a blond haired, blue eyed nordic type and his cousin will have nappy hair and a dark skin color.
But if you go to the Niger river valley, you will know one race from another as is the case if you go to the Yangtze river valley or to the Ganges.
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Bringer of fire, trickster, teacher.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 37 by crashfrog, posted 10-27-2003 6:03 PM crashfrog has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 40 by DBlevins, posted 10-28-2003 3:24 AM Speel-yi has replied

  
Speel-yi
Inactive Member


Message 41 of 274 (63100)
10-28-2003 3:53 AM
Reply to: Message 40 by DBlevins
10-28-2003 3:24 AM


The distribution is clinal like many other things. There are several races in Africa alone. Someone from the highlands of Ethiopia is from an ancient race referred to as the Saharans and then the Bushmen are again from another racial stock,
As Mammuthus pointed out, people will respond differently to medicines based upon racial types. We do need to look at the differences with a clinical detachment because people will die if we assume that a dose of medication for a 35 year old white man is appropriate for a 20 year old black woman. We are just beginning to figure this out.
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Bringer of fire, trickster, teacher.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 40 by DBlevins, posted 10-28-2003 3:24 AM DBlevins has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 42 by DBlevins, posted 10-28-2003 4:05 AM Speel-yi has replied

  
Speel-yi
Inactive Member


Message 43 of 274 (63127)
10-28-2003 11:59 AM
Reply to: Message 42 by DBlevins
10-28-2003 4:05 AM


quote:
The clinal model is unable to distinguish between distinct "races."
Says who? Given that assumption, you can't tell blue from red on a spectrum since colors are distributed clinally. You can visually tell red from orange easily, but you probably would be hard pressed to tell exactly where one began and another ended. By your reasoning, we can't tell blue from red and this is a ridiculous proposition.
People react emotionally to the idea of race these days because it has been it has been so badly used by ignorant people to oppress other people. Unfortunately, people are still being oppressed even without the category of race being involved. In fact I argue that treating people exactly the same puts many of them at a disadvantage.
Take a look at the skyrocketing rates of diabetes among many indigenous people and the rates of hypertension among African-Americans. Mismatching the environment to the people is a lethal combination for many minorities.
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Bringer of fire, trickster, teacher.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 42 by DBlevins, posted 10-28-2003 4:05 AM DBlevins has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 46 by DBlevins, posted 10-29-2003 4:53 AM Speel-yi has not replied

  
Speel-yi
Inactive Member


Message 63 of 274 (63569)
10-31-2003 3:18 AM
Reply to: Message 52 by DBlevins
10-29-2003 7:51 PM


DBlevins quoted:
quote:
"Concludes Howard L. McLeod, a professor of medicine at the Washington University School of Medicine in Missouri, "There is no clear link between skin pigment and drug metabolism genes. Skin pigment is a lousy surrogate for drug metabolism status or most any aspect of human physiology."10"
Skin color is not what an anthropologist is talking about when he describes race, what anthropologists use to determine race is bone structure and then more recently biochemistry.
The Tamils from Sri Lanka are much more darkly complected than many people of African descent and the Tamils are caucasoid by bone structure.
Further, there are some very interesting distributions of the ABO blood groups, especially in North America and this is considered to be evidence of at least several migrations into the new territory. The scarcity of Type B is very noteworthy and the absence of Type A above the Rio Grande also correlates with the Athapaskin distribution.
Some genes such as skin color are extremely subject to selection and so is the presence of the various thalassemias, sickle cell anemia and favism (G6PD deficiency syndomes) all of these are heavily selected for by pathogens and so is cystic fibrosis.
Things that are clinally distributed are things that approach selective neutrality such as the presence of the Inca bone, shoveled inscisors and skull shape. These are only subject to drift...not selection. Take that for what it's worth.
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Bringer of fire, trickster, teacher.
[This message has been edited by Speel-yi, 10-31-2003]
[This message has been edited by Speel-yi, 10-31-2003]

This message is a reply to:
 Message 52 by DBlevins, posted 10-29-2003 7:51 PM DBlevins has not replied

  
Speel-yi
Inactive Member


Message 68 of 274 (63650)
10-31-2003 12:46 PM
Reply to: Message 67 by Wounded King
10-31-2003 8:06 AM


Had to address this, DBlevins said:
quote:
If it were only so simple as to assume that ALL African-Americans had high rates of hypertension or that ALL indigenous populations (by the way I am assuming you are talking about Native Americans and not all indigenous populations) have skyrocketing rates of diabetes. What is the cause for these problems? Genetic? Possibly but certainly not for ALL. Is hypertension just an effect relating to their environment in the U.S? Racial biases that lead to increased poverty risk would make a lot of people hypertensive. Is there a genetic disposition for diabetes among Native Americans or just a penchant for Mountain Dew? I'd be surprised if there isn't a skyrocketing rate for diabetes among MOST americans regardless of ethnicity.
For many tribes in America, you won't find any statistics like you will for the Pima because they resist having anymore studies done on their people. But if you could spend a few years among them, you'd see how many of them end up in the hospital with complications due to diabetes and the resultant strokes, heart attacks and other complications from diabetes.
The "Mountian Dew" hypothesis is particularly dangerous since this simplistic idea solves nothing and actually hinders prevention. With this idea in hand, tribal governments are removing vending machines that contain Coke, Pepsi and other soda pops and replacing them with things like sports drinks, which are perceived as healthy alternatives to carbonated beverages. The only problem is that most soft drinks are sweetened with fructose and this hexose is not easily absorbed nor does it cause blood glucose levels to rise all that much. It tends to give people a bloated feeling and possibly gives rise to reflux problems since the fluid will just sit there in the gut. Sports drinks on the other hand are sweetened with glucose and this causes the blood sugar to rise rapidly. This can be handled if a person is active, but if they are sitting around and not doing much, it will shut down fat metabolism.
At any rate, Type 2 diabetes is not caused by too much sugar anyway. The most likely culprit right now is hypovitamonosis D...the VDR polymorphisms seem to track pretty well with Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes.
If you follow the lifestyle changes over the past half century, one thing that has happened is that people are spending less time outdoors and making vitamin D. I know it sounds whacky, but the fact remains that rickets and other vitamin D related disorders are on the rise worldwide.
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Bringer of fire, trickster, teacher.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 67 by Wounded King, posted 10-31-2003 8:06 AM Wounded King has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 69 by Wounded King, posted 10-31-2003 1:26 PM Speel-yi has not replied

  
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