Human Races

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if we were to overhaul language usage and make 'race' into a word for a genetically distinct population that would be fine.

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That IS what race means -- at least that's how I interpret
the definition from the dictionary.

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Now you seem to want to reduce things down to tribalism. If fundamental areas of your concept of race are based in nothing more than cultural tribalism why do you expect it to be based on genetics, do you have surprising new evidence on the gene predisposing one to practice slavery.

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Racial concepts are founded in tribalism, and referring to it
as 'nothing more than...' is inapproriate trivialisation.The reason that I expect there to be a genetic basis for race
is that 'tribalism' tends to include not breeding with (many)
outsiders.What's slavery got to do with it -- almost all 'races' of man
throughout history have practiced slavery at some point.

If I remember rightly Japanese cannot synthesis
alchohol dehydrogenase -- that would be a genetic
trait present in most european races that is absent in
japanese (unless I have mis-remembered that I suppose).Why should races lead to major divergence?I think it is jumping the gun, given our limited understanding
of the link between the genome and the phenome, to state
that there is no such thing as race -- I mean there's
all that epigenetic stuff going on as well.

But that there are representative issues such as
ADH synthesis is in line with what I'm saying --
just muddied by the inter-breeding that has gone
on.

Mules exist, does that mean the concept of horses
and donkeys is not genetically viable?I'm not saying people are as different as that by
any stretch, but just because the issue is complex
doesn't make it irrelevant or even wrong.As for usefulness, it depends what you want to do.Members of certain lineages are more prone than others
to certain diseases and medical conditions, so one can
target health care with limited funding more effectively.If the only material evidence at a crime scene is some DNA
and one can narrow the field down to one demographic or
another that will aid in police investigations by allowing
the limited police resources to target likely matches
first.Even if those are the only two uses for a genetic concept of race
it would be worth further investigation.And I know this might be an unpoular view, but if one wished
to breed for some 'racial' traits as seen by the masses, one
could.Ultimately, by observation, that means that the culturally
common view of racial features are heritable -- how is that
contrary to a genetic concept of race.It's not about one unique trait, but a unique trait set.If that is heritable, then it must be genetic in origin.If it is genetic in origin then 'race' exists.

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Bad example. Mules are sterile and thus there is a species level separation at the F1 generation. No such barrier exists for ANY group of humans.

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OK, I said I don't suggest that the distance is anything like
the same.The existence of Mules does not detract from the genetic separation
between horse and donkeys, but throw in a Mule DNA sample in
a blind test and it would confuse things ... maybe.It was taking an extreme to try to illustrate why I find that
particular objection questionable.

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This is done without recouse to "race". It is called population genetics and it will often not coincide with the cultural distinctions of "race".

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Does the 'often' mean that sometimes it does, or is that just
a wording thing?

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Again, the chances of finding a match or a demographic depend on the local population sampling and database, which will not superimpose on "race"

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So that work has been done?

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And such studies are conducted and have produced useful information for both the medical and forensic fields..but have not produced a genetic "race" determinant.

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It might not call it 'race' for sensitive political reasons,
does that mean it isn't related to race?

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I don't see how this is relevant. One could breed humans that look like chihuahua's via artificial selection over many generations. All it says is that there is natural genetic and morphological variation in the species that can be selected for. Hardly any population on the planet that does not show this characteristic

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If you can breed for it, it is genetically determined.If it is genetically determined it will be detectable in the genome.

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Please show me a unique trait set of the "races" as you see them from the studies that have been cited in this thread. I think you will find it really difficult. Your family has a unique trait set..is the "Peter" family a race? I am genetically distinct from every living human on the planet..am I a race?

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From post 48:
and from here: Page Not Found | Virginia State University "With the vast expansion of scientific knowledge in this century, however, it has become clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. Evidence from the analysis of genetics (e.g., DNA) indicates that most physical variation, about 94%, lies within so-called racial groups. Conventional geographic "racial" groupings differ from one another only in about 6% of their genes. This means that there is greater variation within "racial" groups than between them."... 'only 6%' is still an identifiable difference.From post 58:
"Large genetic distances are observed among African populations and between African and non-African populations. The root of a neighbor-joining network is located closest to the African populations. These findings are consistent with an African origin of modern humans and with a bottleneck effect in the human populations that left Africa to colonize the rest of the world. Genetic distances among all pairs of populations show a significant product-moment correlation with geographic distances"...Genetic distance correlates with geographical distance."Thus, the Y-chromosome gene pool in the modern Egyptian population reflects a mixture of European, Middle Eastern, and African characteristics, highlighting the importance of ancient and recent migration waves, followed by gene flow, in the region."...and Y-chromosomes reflect sets of 'racial' characteristics."all systems show greater gene diversity in Africans than in either Europeans or Asians. Africans also have the largest total number of alleles, as well as the largest number of unique alleles, for most systems"... references to 'unique alleles' and that some 'racial' types
have more of them than others.from post 67:
"A total of 146 SNPs were found in the total sample; 53 of them were observed only once (i.e., singletons) and 22 only twice (doubletons). The number of variant sites found in the African sample was 118, of which 68 (36 singletons, 15 doubletons, and 17 others) were not found in the Eurasian sequences (i.e., they were unique). In contrast, in the Eurasian sample only 78 variant sites were found and only 28 of them (17 singletons, 4 doubletons, and 7 others) were unique"...again references to 'unique' variation in different 'racial'
groups. The 'unique' differences between African and Eurasian are
68+28 (the unique ones) = 96 which is greater than within eurasians,
but less than within African samples.from post 80:
"A polymorphism in the coding sequence of the SRY gene was found by single-strand conformation polymorphism (SSCP) and direct sequencing analysis. The new allele of the SRY gene, which is raised by a C-to-T transition in the 155th codon, was found in 24% of Honshu, 35% of Okinawan, and 51% of Korean males respectively, whereas it was not observed among 16 Caucasian and 18 Negroid males"Again unique differences between 'racial' groups.I cannot list what the unique differences are or may be -- but
the 'data' from the posts thus far all point to there being
a real, genetic component to what we call 'race'.I partially agree that the usefulness is limited, and the politically
sensitive nature makes the subject difficult.

Re: Mules.I already said I don't believe that humans are as different
from one another as horses are from donkeys. What I was trying to
point to was that the existence of a mule (which is a genetic
cross between horse and donkey) does not make the difference
between horses and donkeys a matter of dispute.Close the genetic gap (though not totally) and what you have been
saying is that the same comparison is no longer allowed.That humans can inter-breed and so have genetic characteristics
that are a mixture of the 'racial' types of their parents is
glaringly obvious and says nothing about the potential for
difference between the parents.Re: definition of race.How is a conventional geographic definition of race any different
from saying that people whose lineages originate in different
locations are members of different races. Those differences
show in the genome.The studies say 'African', 'Eurasion', 'Asian', 'Northern European',
etc. as a racial categorisation.Re: breeding.Take a modern Asian (e.g Indian) population.
Breed them (assuming no significant mutations) for
a number of generations.Will you (do you think) get any offspring that would be
considered African or European or Japanese?Re: Who belongs to what race:Typify the genome of a race based upon historical consideration
of the likelihood of outsider influence on the gene pool.Compare.

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All I get from the data is that the farther apart two populations are in H. sapiens the greater the genetic distance among alleles,the greater the difference in allele frequencies, and tremendous overlap regardless of what the social concepts of "race" claim.

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'Do we not bleed?' -- One expects 'tremendous overlap'.Genetic distance between alleles and differences in allele
frequencies lead to differences in the overall character of
the individuals involved.

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You seem to think I should be able to go into the lab right now determine exactly what "race" any unmarked sample of blood belongs to. I would like to know exactly how and based on what

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You probably can (or find markers for a number of races) if
someone would do the work to find the markers in the first
place.You've already pointed to some. Alleles that exist only in
African populations, or only in Asian, or only in European
are all things that are mentioned in the reports that have
been cited in this discussion.Question:Why do you dislike the idea of a genetically determinable
race?When I say I partially agree -- it's with the suggestion that
whether there is or is not a genetically determined race
is largely irrelevent .... but then, to most people, so
is quantum physics.

One of the emerging hypotheses about the divergence
that caused the ape-human separation is that there were
NOT distinct separated populations, but a large, inter-mingling
one that gradually over time drifted farther and farther
apart genetically.The idea is that some common ancestor of humans and another of the
modern apes could inter-breed and produce offspring.How far apart, while still being able to inter-breed, does a
pair of populations need to be before one considers them
'different'?

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Except that their parents and their parents parents etc etc. have been interbreeding for thousands of years ...

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I'd tend to think that significant interbreeding between diverse
human populations has been going on for hundreds rather than
thousands of years.Travel was much harder in the past, and 'tribalism' was a
dominant factor -- even the Egyptians and Romans tended to
breed within their 'cultural group' (slaves probably got
bred however the owners saw fit though).Even during my parents time travel and meeting people of
overly diverse culture was rare (perhaps less so in the US
I don't know) -- and inter-racial marriages were (for completely
unsupportable reasons I add just in case) considered
taboo. That's not to say that it hasn't happened, but that's
why I say one needs to look to the history to unravel what
the genomes are saying.

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So you would agree that a white South African who is as genetically distinct from a Nigerian as a black South African is from the same Nigerian belong to the same race. Which African "race" would that be considering that their are Africans that differ from each other more than they differ from non-Africans?

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White south Africans come from Dutch lineages -- that's why
I mentioned 'lineage'.Black south Africans (if memory serves) are largely Bantu or
Zulu (two races in my opinion) and still different from Nigerians
(Even culturally).I've already raised my objection to lumping all African's
together for the purposes of the studies shown.

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Re: the first is a strawman. If I put a group of humans on the moon for many generations I could end up with a different species and I am not arguing that humans could not form sub-species or fully separate species over time...just that Homo sapiens has not and is tending to homogenize rather than diverge.

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Not a strawman at all -- you are either missing or ignoring the
point (I'll assume the former and try to be more clear).First, note that I said assuming no significant mutation, but since
we don't no what a significant mutation might be let's say NO
mutations.That means no amount of isolation could generate anything vastly
different to the original population.The question is would any single population (with no history
of outsider influence -- or very limited) produce children
who appear to be of a different 'race' by the normal standard
of assessment of race -- or any common assessment of race.

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RE: the second, considering the immense amount of interaction among and between populations historically, you have such a muddled mess I don't see where you are going to find your nice distinct categories.

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But we know a lot of the history of most areas -- so if we take
samples and charaterise them and find that a small percentage
appear to have genomic matches with another perceived race
BUT we know that there have been interactions then it's hardly
suprising.Like the 'Japanese' (in the paper that you cited) having overlaps
with Taiwanese etc. but not with some other races.

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Actually, if the distinctions between groups merited "race" designation you would not expect tremendous overlap...lets see if this works below

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No that's species distinctions.

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Is that enough to conclude race? I could find genetic markers that make YOU different from everyone else too..are you a race?

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No, I am an individual -- for racial distinction you would be
considering populations and average values
(kind of like a filtering out of noise).

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I actually would not care if race was a true biological distinction. But that a fairy poorly defined concept bordering on "kinds" and that is used to distinguish people is trying to gain credibility by claiming it has a clear genetic basis. If I just say that Africans are all one race so I can just pick any African from anywhere for my next clinical study I will probably end up with a drug that is deadly or useless. Biological terms should have at least a high probability of being relevant or real to be applied and race is so blurry it makes defining species look like a cake walk.

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I've already argued that Africa is too big, and the populations
too diverse to be considered a single race.That has no bearing on whether race exists or not.

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I think that most people identify heavily with social concepts of race at some level...hell, even Basque nationalists are constantly trying to prove they are a superior native Iberian "race". So I think it has a little more impact on peoples lives than pondering quantum physics.

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The biology of it doesn't -- tell a white supremecist that
he is genetically no different to a Zulu warrior and he'll
probably shrug and continue with his bigotry. Tell him he
is genetically different and he'll say 'I knew that, what's
the point' and then use it in arguments of superiority that
the data doesn't even apply to.You cannot combat racism by denying race, nor will you inflame
it by showing whether or not it has a basis in genetics.

Lineages and cultural associations go hand in glove ....
lineages are formed within a socio-cultural context.I mention African, Asian, etc. partly because that's what's
in the posts/citation that I am talking about, and partly
because it's an accesible terminology. I don't think that
one could claim that all africans are part of the same
race any more than all Europeans are.I'm not even discussing whether or not there is a use for
a concept of race ... I don't consider useful application
to be a criterion for studying and attempting to understand
nature.'Race' cannot apply to individuals though .... by definition
it requires a group.In regard to race and whether it has a genetic basis you have
twice not answered a very simple and relevant question. You claim
it as a straw-man when it is directly relevant to the issue.Racial characteristics (i.e. those observed traits that lead
one to say that's a caucasian or whatever) are heritable.Looking at non-coding regions may well provide information
concerning the ultimate origin of humans, but it is not looking
at those things that make different populations observably different.If you are looking for ducks don't go to the sahara.If you do subscribe to the out-of-Africa hypothesis (?) then
you have to acknowledge that human populations have diverged.
Swedes are not the same as Nigerians (apart from the Nigerian
immigrants and their descendents of course ... or Swedes in
Nigeria).The divergence might be small ... does that make it irrelevant?Maybe, if one could shed the fear (as I see it), that one will
be labelled a Nazi then a study of what makes human populations
observably different may illuminate the ascent of man.

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Lineages and cultural associations go hand in glove ....
lineages are formed within a socio-cultural context.
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Except when they don't

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Lineages are always formed within a socio-cultural context ...
mating is the result of social activity, and happens within
a cultural setting.You get cross-cultural pairings ... but there is always
a socio-sultural context.

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Why not claim all Africans are part of one "race"? According to you any difference, whether the same alleles show up in other populations or not, are clear and precise distinctions between groups...and then we can move on to defining what "kind" we all belong to

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Because Africans are not all part of one race.Not any single difference -- I have always (I hope) referred to
trait sets.

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So science should stop what it is doing and study Lamarkian evolution, intelligent design, and creationism because even though they are not useful concepts they are a way of studying nature?

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No ... but if something is observed in nature it is worthy of
study.The above are suggested explanations of nature, not features to
stduy.

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Which groups? How about any two people then..it is a group of two and they are both genetically distinct from any other humans on the planet (if they are not clones)...how about 3 people per race?

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If they are genetically distinct, and there are more than one
they are a race. If they have alleles at different frequencies
than other groups, alleles that others don't, and alleles missing
that others have ... what have you.... course looking at allele frequencies might be statistically
unviable with such a small sample.

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How the hell can you answer it? You are the one stating there are "significant" differences between some murky concept of "social-cultural" racial groupings that you claim (without support) are entirely valid and somehow self evident and not controversial. I say it is a strawman because I could find "significant" genetic differences between you and your kids..so you tell me where a "race" begins and ends that has absolute genetic support.

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Fairly simply -- it would require a 'yes' or a 'no'.Scenario:
Take a group of a supposed racial group, observe the offspring
over a number of generations.Question:
Would children result that would be judged (by common standards)
to be part of a different racial group?The concept of racial groupings IS self-evident.That's why people talk of themselves as 'the asian community'
or the 'Afro-caribean community' or whatever.As to me and my kids -- paternity testing can identify the
father genetically -- which kinda suggests that you wouldn't
be able to find sufficient differences to infer racial separation.

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Hmmm height is also heritable. Should tall people in a population be considered part of the tall race? Also skin color is highly variable and you would find overlap between your "caucasians" and "non-caucasians" in skin color....again, it hardly makes a fool proof distinction.

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Like I said ... it's about trait sets, not individual traits.Height can be affected by development ... but the alleles that
determing that development could form a part of a unique
trait set.I've never come across much overlap in skin colours (tones
maybe, but not colour) ... feeling the need to point out that
I don't care about skin colour again!!

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And since you seem to think that scientists are a bunch of dumbasses who only study non-coding genes and do nothing else

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I never said they didn't -- I said the papers cited in this
discussion do -- and that that is not relevent to looking at
the racial differences amongst us humans.The abstract that you have posted would tend to support my
view that we don't actually know enough to claim that
race has no genetic reality -- if we cannot even indentify
how skin-colour works what hope do we have (at present) for
understanding all of the differences that combine to make
the racial distinctions that are observable in any city.

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Hell, ducks in just about any given coding sequence will have well over 50% homology to humans...what "race" of human do they belong to? Homo quackus?

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And probably vary more within their group than they do
from us too .... The point was to look at the data which is relevant to the
question ... to look in the right place.

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I don't deny that populations have diverged. I don't even deny that some populations may have private polymorphisms, little gene flow, etc. But to ascribe these differences to a level "race" that has biologically been ascribed to a sub-species level distinction is preposterous. You claimed earlier in this thread that it was of no interest to compare one population of humans to another as if we were talking about different species.

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I'm not ascribing it to sub-species (thought I already said that).
I've been arguing that the cultural concept of race has a genetic
basis and to say otherwise would need more support that has
been given.If there is an observable divergence, then there is observable
difference -- and that difference is race.

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It is not irrelevant..but it is probably (for medical studies) less relevant than within population variation which excedes among population variation.

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Then what's the problem?There are relevant differences between human populations that
are heritable and tie-up with the cultural view of race.And which is more relevant to a study in any case ... an allele
that is shared with little variation by one group that is
absent in other groups, or one that varys greatly within a single
group?From a targetting of care point of view one would like to find
definite pointers!![This message has been edited by Peter, 11-24-2003]

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I would say lineages (in a biological sense) form by mutations that occur in individuals and spread to their children. If they have children from lineages that have formed elsewhere you cannot point to the offspring and call them a race unless you define race so narrowly that it becomes useless.

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You can identify family groups that are composed of single
culturally defined races and those that aren't.Even if it's only by their own perception.

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You have not defined a trait set so it is impossible to tell at what point you would call something a race or not even if not based on a single trait.

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Are you asking me to provide a list of traits for each race,
or do you not understand the term 'trait set'?

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This gets to my point before. If you use this definition (and it is a highly idiosyncratic one) of race, it becomes meaningless. If you can define it to cover two to three people then there are billions of races. It also then goes against your adhering to a socio-cultural definition of race since 3 people are usually not a cultural group (unless it is Syamsu and his two imaginary friends).

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The 2/3 people have to be genetically distinct from others
in order to be a race. I am not suggesting that ANY 2/3 people
could be categorised as a separate race -- only that should
such a small group exist they would BE a race.Lineages start with mutations that get passed on, so logic
would suggest that any racial divergence must start with
a reletaively small number of individuals.Perhaps due to a bottleneck in the recent past.

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How people identify themselves may 1) have no bearing on genetics..again you are conflating a social race definition with a biological (more specifically genetic) basis for race 2) the census did not even include mixed "race" until recently so most people declare themselves as part of some social defintion..again, irrelevant to the biological question.

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(1) is the question being asked. Assuming the answer a priori
seems a little backward.(2) What people have had to put on a census form does not relate
to how they view themselves.If I am of mixed-race parentage I am most likely to identify
with the race of the peers in my environment (which-ever side
of the family that may be). Genetically this is not incorrect,
just incomplete.

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So now genetic differences are deemed irrelevant if you can tell who the father is? What is sufficient then? A little ways back you agreed that 3 people could be a race. If a kid is born with trisomy 21 that is an entire chromosome difference from the parents...is that significant or insignificant? My point is you are making arbitrary choices to establish "clear cut" racial criteria and it just does not work.

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No, just suggesting that the genetic difference between a parent
and offspring seems to be small. Admittedly paternity is likely
based just on Y-chromosome matching.The distinctions aren't arbitrary. They are observable trends
within differing populations.

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So if a group of tall people in a population (while completely differening at all neutral loci) share a set of alleles that predisposes them to greater height, you would consider this a race?

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No. They have exclusive relationships in some parts of the
genome.

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Actually all the studies I have cited point to the fact that H. sapiens is a relatively genetically homogenous primate species that has historically had a great deal of gene flow between populations making distinct separation among groups extremely difficult to define. If it were clear cut we could separate out differences as with other species of primates such as the divergence among different chimp groups that are much higher or sub-species level divergence in African elephants i.e. forest versus savannah.

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I don't disagree, I'm just saying that because it is difficult
to do doesn't mean that there aren't racial differences that
are genetically determined.

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Except that there are more relevant differences that do not tie up with the extremely vague (and variable) views of race.

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Such as ...?

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While there are useful ways of partitioning genetic variation in humans, trying to force fit it to completely amorphous definitions
of race (which often have extremely negative connotations to boot) hardly seems like a way to proceed. Given that the results of genetic studies typically shatter preconceived notions of race (like Basques being some super Iberian mystery race) it would be better to develop a terminology that fits the data rather than outdated concepts.

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...but the studies that you have cited show that there are
differences between races, and that these differences (in genetic
distance terms) correllate to geographical separation.

I continue to refer to cultural lineages because
this discussion is about whether or not there is a
genetic basis for the cultural racial distinctions that
are commonly made.You cannot discuss this without reference to cultural
definitions.A trait set is exactly that, a 'set' of 'traits'. Each
race should be indentifiable by a collection of traits that
are unique to that race.Some traits may be common with other races, but membership of
a group is defined by holding all elements.e.g. the following sets are unique:{1,2,3,4,5}
{4,5,6,7,8}
{1,2,3,7,8}even though there is overlap in the element values.I think you are missing what I am saying. I am NOT saying that
ANY three people can be considered a race, I am saying that
should three people exist who share a trait set that is unique
to them, then they would constitute a race.If one person has a unique trait set, that is not covered by
another categorisation they are an anomaly. Their traits will
either be assimilated into the cultural racial group in which they
interact, or disappear.

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That divergence would start with a few individuals or small population is fine. But if they persistently mix with other groups via migration etc. it will quickly cancel out the limited results of the bottleneck and tend towards homogenization of the gene pool

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If this is the case, then that cannot have been a feature of
human development.Human groups have diverged ... heritably so.To deny that is to deny the basic observation that different
cultural racial groups will only have children that appear
to belong to that cultural racial group, unless there is an
influx of outside influence.

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My argument is that humans have tended more towards homogenization throughtout most of their history as opposed to sub-speciation that is scene with our nearest relatives among the great apes.

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Recent history perhaps, but hardly most of their history.Can sub-species inter-breed and produce fertile offspring?

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Funny then that geneticists have been able to map extremely complex quantiative traits that are highly variable and multifactorial with precision and have even isolated the underlying genes involved yet a clear genetic basis of "race" is not forthcoming. Suggests it is more apparant than real.

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So your main argument above is that since it hasn't been found
yet, it doesn't exist?

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every population has a large distribution of genetic variation which overlaps with all other groups

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Overlaps, yes. Represents the absence of biological race, no.If someone can find a single trait or genetic sequence that ONLY
occurs in one particular group and that group tallies with a
cultural racial distinction then there IS a biological basis
for race.The papers quoted/cited in this discussion mention such seqeunces.
One's which only appear in African populations but not in
Europeans or Asians. Sequences that only appear in the region
around Japan.And that's not even looking at the genetics directly behind
the perceived distinctions between people (like bone structure,
muscle attachment, metabolic differences, etc.)

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How about this. What is a race to you culturally? Are Africans a race? Black people? The Amish? Jews? The freemasons? 3 people who share a mutation in the dystrophin gene that nobody else has?

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All but the last two have, at one time or another, been consdiered
(culturally) to be races ... (except maybe the Amish -- don't
know much about them).The last one could be considered a race, but only culturally so
if they (or someone else) considers them a race.The freemasons cannot be considered a race -- partly because they
are all men so would find it hard to breed

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Give me a break. So if data is found that contradicts your hypothesis it s an anamoly? What if that anamoly appears in a group completely unrelated to the one you are claiming belongs to a race? Mongolians share haplotypes with some Central Americans...is there a Mongolian/Central American race?

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First, such a single, anamolous individual does not contradict
anything I have said. They just don't constitute a race, since
a race requires more than a single individual.If the unique traits persist in subsequent generations then
we have am emergence of a new racial group.Perhaps the Mongolians and Central Americans share a common
racial ancestry.

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Africa has the highest level of genetic diversity measured for humans. What is an African trait set when two neighboring populations (culturally considered the same race) could be as genetically dissimilar in "trait sets" as they are from Asians?

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Culturally by whom? Caucasian, non-African scientists?Ask a Zulu if he is the same as a Bantu, or a Nigerian.Africa has high genetic diversity BECAUSE it is composed of
a number of different racial groups.Take 10 Zulu instead of 10 any-Africans and then do the
comparisons.Which is more dissimilar having alleles in different frequencies
or having an allele that no-one else does?

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What evidence do you have for lack of interaction among human populations over the vast majority of human evolution? Honest question. I am not aware of this data.

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Well .... language for one.Then there's basic history, which shows there was very limited
contact between continents until the late 1700's (sure the Vikings
made it to America, but as far as I can tell they decided there
was nothing there worth having so didn't bother with it much).Then there's classic literature -- which does not feature much
in the way of multi-racial populations, suggesting they weren't
common.I'm not sure where you got the idea that there has been a lot
of contact throughout human history.Trying not to be too cyclic, but the fact that were are having
this discussion suggests that there must have been limited
interaction between populations in the early evolution of humans
too ... or maybe we diverged recently?

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Nope. I am arguing that using the same kinds of methodologies used to detect highly variable and subtle differences in order to localize a specific boundary (i.e. a gene responsible for a phenotype) one does not run into "genetic races".

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If it has been looked for and not found then that is a stronger
argument than I have seen so far ... if you are saying no-one
has stumbled over it while looking for something else ...

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Then every single mtDNA mutation that occurs gives us a new "race", species, family or kind or anything else you want to call it...oh and I am sure these two guys in this study will be thrilled to know they are members of a new race as they have a novel integration of a LINE element not found in other people..

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Well I was only thinking of nuclear DNA to be honest. Mitochondria
are largely from mother only ...

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Ah..so now we are saying Europeans, Africans, and Asians are a race? And there is an "around Japan" race?

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No, I'm making a comment based upon data in cited papers. If THEY
use those as categories I cannot refer to their data without
using their categories.

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Again, one does expect that those in closer proximity will be more cloesly related...however, as you travel within the cultural "race" you will find that people are diverging from one another (sometimes extremely so) and blending into the next group continuously forming a single human genetic continuum. Thus, someone in Taiwan may be more genetically similar to someone in Japan but is culturally Taiwanese. This is just one example where race fails as a biological concept.

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If people at the geographical extremes interact with one another
there will be overlaps at the 'boundaries', how does that detract
from racial distinctions? It just means that there are a large
number of races and they can all inter-breed.Chimpanzees have sub-species ... presumably there is a specific
metric for the genetic difference that says 'Yes, they are distinct.'How did that happen?Go back 1/2 a million years, what would you expect to see in the
chimp gene pool? Where they always distinct from one another?
Do the modern sub-species share a common ancestor? How long ago?How much inter-tribe interaction is there with chimps? How will
that affect divergence and divergence time?With humans, what's wrong with us diverging? Why do we all have to
be the same to get along?

Re: Uselfulness of race.I've not said I think it useful, but in the case of suggesting
some common ancestry it may be interesting to figure out how
that could be.Or the likelihood of the same mutation happening in different
populations that are geographically separated.Ghengis Khan commanded a vast empire that impinged upon the
remains of previous empires that had contact with the
Egyptians ... and Thor Hyerdal suggested that the Egyptians
had travelled to the America's ... where we also find
Egyptian-like architecture.So maybe this genetic link is indicative of a real amount of
travel in the ancient past.Maybe I'm completely wrong.Re: Cultural definition of race:As with 'teams', the definition is based upon whether the members
identify themselves as part of a separate group, not whether
outsiders do.That's why 16+1 and self-determination is coming into play
in UK police forces.

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What boundaries would those be? And I am not talking about geographical extremes but a continuum. You do not need very much immigration to homogenize a gene pool. And it detracts from the concept of race because making specific assignments of populations or groups of people based on a continuous distribution is not useful and is completely arbitrary.

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If you don't need much immigration to homogenise gene pools
why are there heritable characteristics that have been used
as racial differentiators?Why are there any differences between human populations?How much genetic difference does one need to claim a
difference?...and remember I am not talking about species, or even
sub-species.

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there is nothing wrong with diverging...however, there is no evidence that humans are diverging..and with the ever increasing contact among populations the trends will probably go in the opposite direction..much like languages which are becoming extinct....and it would not matter whether we are divergent or homogenous...people will not get along in either case

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But they must have diverged already .... because there are
observable differences that are heritable (i.e. genetically
determined).I agree about the not getting along bit -- which is why
denying race for political reasons is so pointless.

I'm not talking about 3-4 major divisions. I find that too
broad ... but then in the UK we can get hot under the colour
about being called British! We are English, or Scottish, or
Welsh .... but NOT British (a guy from Cheshire even went to
court for refusing to fill in his census form because it
didn't have an 'English' option under ethnic background).I've never disputed whether or not it is useful ... I am objecting
to the suggestion that there is no biological reality
to 'race'. That seems to fly in the face of observation and logic
and be motivated by political thinking rather than scientific
curiosity.The following nicely sums up my objection to the rejection of
human races as a biological concept as argued in this thread.
I will admit though (to save time) that this paper agrees that
the link between cultural concepts of race and a meaningful
biological one is likely not there.I tend to disagree with that aspect of the paper, simply because
the commonly held view of what makes races of humanity different
focusses on 'adaptive' differences."On the concept of biological race and its applicability to humansBy Massimo Pigliucci1,2 and Jonathan Kaplan2,31Departments of Botany and of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN 37996. Phone 865-974-6221; fax 2258; email pigliucci@utk.eduLewontin and Gould have made much of the fact that there is relatively little genetic variation in Homo sapiens (compared at least to other mammals; see Tempelton 1999) and that most of what genetic diversity is known to exist within Homo sapiens exists within (rather than between) local populations (see, for example: Gould 1996; Lewontin et al. 1984), and these facts are cited repeatedly in arguments concluding that there are no biologically significant human races. But the idea that this data might imply something about the existence of biologically significant human races emerges from a focus on the wrong sort of biological races. The relative lack of genetic variation between populations compared with within populations samples does imply that the populations have not been reproductively isolated for any evolutionarily significant length of time. But of course, this fact is irrelevant for the consideration of races based on adaptive variation; in this case, if there is extensive gene flow, genetic variation can be mostly within groups, rather than between groups, as variations not related to the adaptive phenotypic differences between the populations will be spread by gene flow relatively easily. The question is not whether there is significant levels of between-population genetic variation overall, but whether there is variation in genes associated with significant adaptive differences between populations (see our discussion in Kaplan and Pigliucci 2001)."

I'm sure Ned won't mind I felt that the part that spoke about why the within/between
comparison isn't relevant was stated better than I had.Maybe I was wrong.Consensus is hardly a validation of anything -- a couple
hundred years ago the concensus was that the earth was flat.You've mentioned 'clearly divergent' a few times -- I asked how
different populations needed to be for this, but I think
you missed it in the rush to respond to the rest of the
posts.The differences which we see as 'race' in terms of racial
description are localised geographically wrt origin of the
lineages (biological).Biological lineages can be traced genetically (e.g. the Viking
study that found a correlation with the known interaction
with the Danes and the boundaries of the Dane-Law).The differences are related to locally adaptive traits, and are
heritable.If you look at non-coding sequences (which the within/between
paper cited earlier in the thread did) you are not looking
at the areas responsible for the 'racial' differentiation.If you accept out-of-africa then you must accept divergence
of the human populations, else the differentiation that is visibly
present (and heritable) couldn't exist.That divergence does correlate with the racial distinctions
commonly made -- including those with only 3 categories (is that
a particulalry US thing in the UK we now use a 16 + 1
categorisation for such things.)That there is more variatey amongst Africans than between
Africans and Eurpoeans (say) is not evidence of a lack of
race, but evidence of a lack of refinement.