Human Races

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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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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.

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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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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.

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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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'Race' cannot apply to individuals though .... by definition
it requires a group

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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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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.

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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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Racial characteristics (i.e. those observed traits that lead
one to say that's a caucasian or whatever) are heritable.

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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.

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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.And since you seem to think that scientists are a bunch of dumbasses who only study non-coding genes and do nothing else, there are also those who do study what you want science to study...aint so simple i.e. last line of the abstract about "standardizing of phenotype assessment"Annu Rev Genet. 2003;37:67-90. Related Articles, LinksGenetics of hair and skin color.Rees JL.Systems Group, Dermatology, University of Edinburgh, Lauriston Buildings, Lauriston Place, Edinburgh, EH3 9YW, United Kingdom; email: jrees@staffmail.ed.ac.ukDifferences in skin and hair color are principally genetically determined and are due to variation in the amount, type, and packaging of melanin polymers produced by melanocytes secreted into keratinocytes. Pigmentary phenotype is genetically complex and at a physiological level complicated. Genes determining a number of rare Mendelian disorders of pigmentation such as albinism have been identified, but only one gene, the melanocortin 1 receptor (MCR1), has so far been identified to explain variation in the normal population such as that leading to red hair, freckling, and sun-sensitivity. Genotype-phenotype relations of the MC1R are reviewed, as well as methods to improve the phenotypic assessment of human pigmentary status. It is argued that given advances in model systems, increases in technical facility, and the lower cost of genotype assessment, the lack of standardized phenotype assessment is now a major limit on advance.

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If you are looking for ducks don't go to the sahara.

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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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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).

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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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The divergence might be small ... does that make it irrelevant?

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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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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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And what do you think all the human populations studies I cited, the human genome projects goal, the entire SNP mapping project, are in effect studying? Nobody is shying away from the field. If anything it is under more study than ever before.

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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.

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You get cross-cultural pairings ... but there is always
a socio-sultural context.

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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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Because Africans are not all part of one race.

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Not any single difference -- I have always (I hope) referred to
trait sets.

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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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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.

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... course looking at allele frequencies might be statistically
unviable with such a small sample.

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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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That's why people talk of themselves as 'the asian community'
or the 'Afro-caribean community' or whatever.

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I asked where does a race begin and end and you say the answer is "yes or no"..could you clarify?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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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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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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Height can be affected by development ... but the alleles that
determing that development could form a part of a unique
trait set.

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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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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

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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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There are relevant differences between human populations that
are heritable and tie-up with the cultural view of race.

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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.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.

Rather than go point by point I will address the main themes ok? I do this since we are talking past each other in a few places and Moose complained about overuse of quotes in posts.I brought up lineages in a genetic sense and you immediately switched to cultural. We have to stay on the same page if this debate is going to be meaningful. I am asking you what a trait set is because you now have introduced another undefined term that I could define almost any way I want. Also, given the immense variation within groups, it would be interesting to see how you define a trait set.If you think that 2/3 people are a race then it effectively negates any use one could have for race. For example, if one were to take the phylogenetic species concept to an extreme, then any single base difference I find in a sample in say, cytochrome b, could be defined as a new species...this then makes almost every individual a species. By claiming 2/3 people are different enough to be considered a race, your biologically related uncles and nephews etc could belong to a different race from you.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. 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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They are observable trends
within differing populations.

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"observable trends" is not exactly a way of making cut and dry "racial" distinctions. There are observable trends among unrelated families in geographical areas. One can note them and study them, but it does not provide a clear biological basis for distinction. And the distinctions are arbitrary or you would be able to list them and define people of a specific "race" with them. One can say that Ashkenazi jewish women have a higher frequency of breast cancer due to BRCA1 mutations that common in the population, and this is a trend. But it is not a defining feature of this religious group.

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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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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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...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.

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Actually, the studies show that the greater the geographic distance between two people, the higher the liklihood that they have a higher genetic distance from one another...but this is true within a population as well...negating the cultural concept of "race" which presupposes some vague clear distinction between whatever the hell a "race" is supposed to be and the next one at its boundary. The fact is that every population has a large distribution of genetic variation which overlaps with all other groups. The only way to get "race" out of it is to make highly arbitrary distinctions among groups of people which I do not find particularly compelling or helpful.

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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.

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Fine. Then give a "cultural" version of racial distinctions. You won't find any that are universally accepted or acknowledged so you are screwed from the beginning. You have been defining race in such a bewildering number of ways it is really getting hard to follow anymore what you are or are not supporting.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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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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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?If you take a combination of alleles as a "trait set" then I am a race as I have a unique trait set that does not overlap anybody else on the planet even though probably every allele I have is common. I have also heritably diverged from my parents and my grandparents as have you. The other problem are the large number of people in each group that do not share the trait sets you are assigning. The japanse population share many combinations in common with other groups...what about those people? What race are they even though they are culturally japanese? 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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Recent history perhaps, but hardly most of their history.

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Can sub-species inter-breed and produce fertile offspring?

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

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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 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.

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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..Kazazian HH Jr, Wong C, Youssoufian H, Scott AF, Phillips DG, Antonarakis SE. Related Articles, Links
Haemophilia A resulting from de novo insertion of L1 sequences represents a novel mechanism for mutation in man.
Nature. 1988 Mar 10;332(6160):164-6.

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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.

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Ah..so now we are saying Europeans, Africans, and Asians are a race? And there is an "around Japan" race?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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Perhaps the Mongolians and Central Americans share a common
racial ancestry.

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So what is the usefullness of the concept of "race" when you end up linking two completely different populations? i.e. genetic "race" is not a predictor of "cultural race". Seems to present a problem.

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Culturally by whom? Caucasian, non-African scientists?

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Ask a Zulu if he is the same as a Bantu, or a Nigerian.

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And we see again, since nobody can even agree on what a "cultural race" is in the first place how do you want to go about defining them genetically? The twists and turns of your "racial" definitions in this thread demonstrate that it is a problem from the outset.

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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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You are correct wrt mtDNA...the LINE elment was a nuclear insertion.

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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.

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What boundarries 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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With humans, what's wrong with us diverging? Why do we all have to
be the same to get along?

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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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So maybe this genetic link is indicative of a real amount of
travel in the ancient past.

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Of course their is a genetic link in the ancient past...we are the same species and have a common ancestor. If you mean a genetic link of different populations, much of the data suggests that all populations of humans share a common ancestor that emerged in Africa. That is why earlier I said we all belong to African sub-populations.

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How much genetic difference does one need to claim a
difference?

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...and remember I am not talking about species, or even
sub-species.

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I have been asking you this question for several posts. You have alternatively talked about "significant genetic" differences "trait sets" etc. and it is completely unclear to me what you consider a significant difference at the genetic level. I don't claim that there is a right or wrong answer to this since like species, it is hard to define precise differences in a continuum. But remember the distribution pattern I posted of pairwise differences between humans, the neandertal type specimen and chimps. You see that human pairwise differences are all in one large normal distribution. You don't see separate non-overlapping or poorly overlapping distributions for Asians, Africans or whatever because this kind of divergence has not occurred. Contrast this with chimps (which are also very genetically similar to humans). Their distribution not only does not overlap with human pairwise distances but their distribution is not even remotely close. Let's say for the sake of argument that the neandertal distribution against humans represented an equal sampling of neandertals rather than a single individual. There is a slight overlap with humans. Knock that overlap over a bit so that it is greater and I might start to believe neandertals were a "race" of humans. But certainly not the Vikings, the Nigerians, or whatever.

Besides the fact that the article you cite is hardly a consensus on the issue of race i.e. directly the opposite of what Gould, Lewontin, Templeton, Pbo, and others say, it also has a completely non-sensical statement at the beginning

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"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."

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This is simply a rehash of the "kinds" debate. Since they don't like the common definition of "race" as it is commonly used as a cultural-social measure, they just decide to completely redefine it....so if I call an apple an orange can I go argue with botanists that they are completey wrong about plant taxonomy?

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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.

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In other words, we are a single population with a distribution of variation that overlaps extensively as opposed to sub-species or "races" where the overlap is on a trajectory heading towards diminishing overlap.

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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

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And notice here at the end...not a mention of the word "race". No segregating of human groups by cultural-social criteria. No, they talk about adaptive differences between POPULATIONS. Why not use population genetic terms when dealing with a population genetic question such as adaptive response, allele frequency, and allele distribution in a SINGLE SPECIES? Reserve race (or eliminate it completely since it could be subsumed under sub-species) for clearly divergent populations under a population genetics model.We have largely been arguing past each other Peter because you have been clinging to a term that cannotes a finer degree of separation than is visible among our species and has had a changing social meaning (much of which is nasty). But we do not appear to disagree that researching the poplational variation within our species is a relevant course of study.(edited: Ooops, I goofed and did not see that Peter was responding to NosyNed and not to me)[This message has been edited by Mammuthus, 11-27-2003]

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Darwin didn't have the luxury of genetic evidence, and yet he could
still infer adaptive traits from observation of traits wrt
environment ... isn't that sufficient? If a trait provides a benefit
of some kind in the environment where it is the norm?

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Isn't the emergence of differentiation between two populations
of the same species in different locations required by evolutionary
theory ... and it's absence an undermining of such?

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Darwin's inferences on adaptive traits were mere speculation. As sfa pointed out, it is extremely difficult to identify adaptive traits. Merely saying some trait must be the cause of reproductive success is not sufficient since multiple traits vary simultaneously and figuring out which one or ones are adaptive is not trivial for example,: J Exp Biol. 2001 Sep;204(Pt 18):3151-60. Related Articles, LinksGenetic approaches to understanding human adaptation to altitude in the Andes.Rupert JL, Hochachka PW.Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada V6T 2B5. rupert@zoology.ubc.caDespite the initial discomfort often experienced by visitors to high altitude, humans have occupied the Andean altiplano for more than 10000 years, and millions of people, indigenous and otherwise, currently live on these plains, high in the mountains of South America, at altitudes exceeding 3000 m. While, to some extent, acclimatization can accommodate the one-third decrease in oxygen availability, having been born and raised at altitude appears to confer a substantial advantage in high-altitude performance compared with having been born and raised at sea level. A number of characteristics have been postulated to contribute to a high-altitude Andean phenotype; however, the relative contributions of developmental adaptation (within the individual) and genetic adaptation (within the population of which the individual is part) to the acquisition of this phenotype have yet to be resolved. A complex trait is influenced by multiple genetic and environmental factors and, in humans, it is inherently very difficult to determine what proportion of the trait is dictated by an individual's genetic heritage and what proportion develops in response to the environment in which the person is born and raised. Looking for changes in putative adaptations in vertically migrant populations, determining the heritability of putative adaptive traits and genetic association analyses have all been used to evaluate the relative contributions of nurture and nature to the Andean phenotype. As the evidence for a genetic contribution to high-altitude adaptation in humans has been the subject of several recent reviews, this article instead focuses on the methodology that has been employed to isolate the effects of 'nature' from those of 'nurture' on the acquisition of the high-altitude phenotype in Andean natives (Quechua and Aymara). The principles and assumptions underlying the various approaches, as well as some of the inherent strengths and weaknesses of each, are briefly discussed.

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The locations on earth are many and varied, and the peoples who
come from different locations are observably different, but
consistent within group.

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Consistent within group??? You are kidding right?J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2001 Jun;86(6):2747-51. Related Articles, LinksCommon genomic variation in LMNA modulates indexes of obesity in Inuit.Hegele RA, Huff MW, Young TK.John P. Robarts Research Institute, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5K8. robert.hegele@rri.on.caWe discovered that rare mutations in LMNA, which encodes lamins A and C, underlie autosomal dominant Dunnigan-type familial partial lipodystrophy. Because familial partial lipodystrophy is an extreme example of genetically disturbed adipocyte differentiation, it is possible that common variation in LMNA is associated with obesity-related phenotypes. We subsequently discovered a common single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) in LMNA, namely 1908C/T, which was associated with obesity-related traits in Canadian Oji-Cree. We now report association of this LMNA SNP with anthropometric indexes in 186 nondiabetic Canadian Inuit. We found that physical indexes of obesity, such as body mass index, waist circumference, waist to hip circumference ratio, subscapular skinfold thickness, and subscapular to triceps skinfold thickness ratio were each significantly higher among Inuit subjects with the LMNA 1908T allele than in subjects with the 1908C/1908C genotype. For each significantly associated obesity-related trait, the LMNA 1908C/T SNP genotype accounted for between approximately 10--100% of the attributable variation. The results indicate that common genetic variation in LMNA is an important determinant of obesity-related quantitative traits.Glad all those Inuit are genetically identical....especially those inconsistent ones in the population.

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I agree, though, that there is no distinct point where one can make a fair delimitation; it's a gradient of allele frequency, which varies depending on which gene you're talking about.

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I was arguing this point with Peter earlier in the thread but he claims that he is unconvinced and that one can place a clear boundary on one race and another. If you have a distribution of allele frequencies or a normal distribution of pairwise sequence differences for say a neutral locus like a microsatellite or the Dloop ...where in that distribution can one identify specific "races"? I fail to see it.

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My problem in this thread is not that I want there to be
racial distinctions, but that I feel that denial of them is
driven by politics and not by scientific inquiry.

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Where do you get this from sfs or my posts?from sfs post

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That does not, by itself, make the cultural groups a natural way of dividing the genotypic variation; any arbitrarily assigned geographic boundaries would also show a correlation.

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That you can replace cultural groups with any arbitrary geographical demarcation is the reason race is a useless concept. This is not some political game. In order for "race" to be a useful concept genetically it would have to be supported in such a way that you could not replace "races" with almost any arbitrary grouping. This is the case because of the heavy outbreeding of humans coupled with a normal distribution of genetic variation rather than blunt genetic differentiation among populations that one could consider "races". It is no more a ducking of the political issues to avoid using the term race which is not supported by genetics and is a word that has had multiple historical meanings than it is to call avoid calling genetics "blended inheritance".

Hi John
While your Faq is actually quite well written, you are basically advocating a re-assignment of the word "race" (and sub-species from your article) with various other terms such as phylogeographical subspecies. At the same time you admit that cultural definitions of race are not accurate

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So if we do belong to different biological races, what, if anything, does this mean? Subspecies are closely related by definition, and human races appear to be less distant than the major phylogroups of many other species.[113] While FST values for neutral variation are not negligible from a population genetics point of view, it’s significant that the overwhelming majority of genetic variation is found within populations, reaffirming the importance of treating people as individuals. It’s also significant that the FST value for the most prominent racial trait - skin color - has been estimated to be about 0.60,[114] which means that the visible variation between races greatly exaggerates overall genetic differences. Admixture in some populations further clouds the picture. The average European contribution to the gene pool of American blacks has been found to be about 20%,[115] and admixture between the major races in some other regions is substantially higher.

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I am not taking issue with your article and not trying to politicize the debate. However, I am of the same opinion as sfs that when you have such a fuzzy concept as "race" that does not necessarily correlate with the genetics of a species, just renaming your terms arbitrarily serves no purpose. If as sfs pointed out, that Dubliner is a more accurate measure of genetic relatedness than Irish what use is race in forensics or medicine? The Dublin race? The Bronx race? There are issues of the utility of the concept in general that probably requires the development of new terms rather than mis applying old terms that have a fairly political history. Why did Avise et al. bother with phylogeographical subspecies? This in not an old term. They developed a novel term and they were not specifically dealing with human variation. Why just rename "race" and confuse everybody even further when from a scientific perspective, one would wish to have clarity?

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If there is no race, how CAN you tell that there are differences
in genomes between African and non-Africans, or that Australian
aborigines are not closely related to modern indigenous Africans.

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There are differences in the genome between mother and child. There are enormous among African genetic differences so who are you going to pick as your "African" race as a standard to which to compare to other non-Africans? How is this lumping of divergent groups of people who may differ from one another more than the groups you are comparing them to going to guide research into the effects of novel drugs on humans? forensics? Anything? How about as these groups outbreed? How do you classify the descendants who may be genetically a mish mash of dozens of different "races"?

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If this were not the case genetic distance would not correlate
to geographic distance.

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If according to you, one can designate "original lineages" despite massive interbreeding in say London or anywhere else then there should be absolutely no correlation between genetic distance and geographic distance...one should always statically maintain one's race just like a separate species.

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If you accpet that the
genetic evidence points to an out-of-africa origin, then
you have to accept diversification.

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First off, I don't necessarily think OOA (in the form of purist supporters) is correct but in any event, I can accept diversification without subscribing to the cultural concept of "race".

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That diversity is forged geographically, and most concepts of
'race' correlate with geographical origin.

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Oh really? Your own personal definitions of race in this thread have varied from as extreme as African, Asian, Caucasian to 3 individuals composing a potential "race". Compound how variable your definitions of race are with the other variant defintions of race on top of the changes throughout the history of the word itself and you are left with a term that is almost as ill defined as "creationist kinds".

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Say Dublin, or London, or Paris.

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There is NO genetic marker available for such a population
because there is a very wide range of lineages that originate
in different geographioc locations.

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Oh really? And this does not apply EVERYWHERE else? Show me a place where you do not have large numbers of lineages orginating from different locations even in relatively isolated populations. Sfs point that the chance that even in a city, your chances of being related to others from the city are higher than another city kinda throws the "race" concept for a loop. A person from Munich has a higher chance of being related to other people from Munich than from Berlin...Munich race? (aside from the fact that some of them seem to think so)Why is it any less valid to you to have "identity by residence" than race? You can find genetic relationships that correlate just as weakly as anything culturally you have proposed so why not just lump people by zip code under this scenario?

Hi TT,

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Phylogeographic subspecies are more distinct species segments than classical subspecies, which in many cases weren't very distinct at all.

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This is where some of my problem with this concept stems. To call phylogeographical subspecies the equivalent of "race" in humans amplfies the significance of the diversity among human populations while minimizing those in other species. Look at some of the groups O'Brien for example, has examined such as a group I have worked with, proboscidians. Forest elephants, Loxodonta cyclotis, were given a sub-species/species designation based on a level of divergence far more pronounced than that which exists between human populationsScience. 2001 Aug 24;293(5534):1473-7. Related Articles, LinksComment in:
Science. 2001 Aug 24;293(5534):1414.Genetic evidence for two species of elephant in Africa.Roca AL, Georgiadis N, Pecon-Slattery J, O'Brien SJ.Laboratory of Genomic Diversity, National Cancer Institute, Frederick, MD 21702, USA.Elephants from the tropical forests of Africa are morphologically distinct from savannah or bush elephants. Dart-biopsy samples from 195 free-ranging African elephants in 21 populations were examined for DNA sequence variation in four nuclear genes (1732 base pairs). Phylogenetic distinctions between African forest elephant and savannah elephant populations corresponded to 58% of the difference in the same genes between elephant genera Loxodonta (African) and Elephas (Asian). Large genetic distance, multiple genetically fixed nucleotide site differences, morphological and habitat distinctions, and extremely limited hybridization of gene flow between forest and savannah elephants support the recognition and conservation management of two African species: Loxodonta africana and Loxodonta cyclotis.These are two species that can and do interbreed where their ranges come in contact and until only a few years ago were thought to be all part of the same species. This is more in line with what O'Brien, Avise, etc. are trying to accomplish with the phylogeographic subspecies assignments.If one does the same with non-human primates and finds older and more diverse lineages in say, P. troglodytes than one finds in H. sapiens, how can one consider the divisions equivalent and cover them with the same definition? I don't think it is semantics. If evolution in one species is markedly different from related species, the terminology should reflect this difference i.e. there is no L. cyclotis version of humans.I would not take issue, after more data is collected, with rough subdivisions of human genetic diversty that analyzes multiple loci and is based in principle on relevant comparisons to non-human primates. However, even the phylogeographic subspecies concept does not overlap with a common or folk concept of race. One would have to redefine race scientifically and somehow hope that everyone from the general public to funding agencies to potential candidates for drug screens etc etc magically understands and acknowledges that science has changed the definition. It would be far easier and productive to use novel terminology or terminology used for other species to designate the differences than to use a term that is already in use and that has variable meanings both historically in science and in layman terms.I am not even necessarily opposed to phylogeographical subspecies per se. Only that in applying it to humans or any other species where the are less among group differences than say Loxodonta, the terminology reflects this so that one gets some biological meaning from the terms. Race does not do the trick.

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It could amplify or diminish your sense of human group diversity depending on what your original sense of it is. But in any case it at least gives an accurate view of our species diversity with respect to that found in other mammals.

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If it can change based on your "original sense" then how can it give an accurate view of our species diversity? Again, this is my problem with the concept of race i.e. trying to fit precisely defined categories on a highly variable distribution.

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I might be misreading you, but it sounds like you're failing to make a crucial distinction between the terms 'subspecies' and 'species'. To my knowledge nobody in modern times is advocating the existence of different SPECIES within extant humans, so of course the level of genetic difference between these elephant species is much greater than what's found in humans.

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Sorry I did not make myself clear. L. cyclotis until recently was a sub-species and only after the O'Brien groups study did it get elevated to species. There is a similar study in the first issue of PLOS by Fernando et al. on Asian elephants demonstrating that E. maximus from Borneo are actually a subspecies that probably diverged around 300 kya. My point was, it was very difficult to demonstrate lack of gene flow and that enough divergence exists to even suggest that these populations are in fact different sub-species or species in the case of cyclotis. And you think one can then apply strict "racial" categories (whatever those would be) to H. sapiens were there is extensive gene flow? A comparative approach may also not serve to calibrate the differences among H. sapiens and other mammals because it is unclear if the evolutionary histories, mutation rates, etc. are equivalent among mammlian groups. I have used Comstock's microsat primers on mammoths by the way and one sees that they demonstrate far lower heterozygosity and numbers of alleles than E. maximus or L. africana for these loci (it's not published so you won't find it in Pubmed yet). One already sees extreme differences in numbers of alleles and heterozygosity among extant elephant species reflecting the differences in their evolution.Regarding Lake Victoria cichlids, the species designations are not uncontroversial though the original work of Schliewen and colleagues on sympatric speciation is fascinating...but nobody is calling them Lake Victoria cichlid races. That race, subspecies, and species can accomodate an extreme range of genetic diversity among groups suggests that the terminology is inadequate. If you give me a sample and tell me it is African or Asian...how would this guide my forensic work? would it be enough for a significant comparison to be made to other groups if I genotype it? Which genotype represents which race? What is a race? In this thread alone I have seen probably a dozen different definitions appear. Given the difficulty of biologically defining species, it seems to be a wasted effort to try to precisely categorize humans into the even more fuzzy concept or races.

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What's a "strict racial category"? Sounds like an oxymoron. How much gene flow is "extensive"? You can't build a very solid case against human races using vague terms like these. You have to show us that gene flow has indeed been "extensive" compared to gene flow among groups within lots of other species. Stephen O'Brien has said publicly that people who don't believe in the biological reality of human races are basically ignorant of population genetics, although he said it more nicely.

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I asked you what a "race" is....Peter in this thread has claimed there is a clear basis for "race" in the results of human population genetics studies and from the genome project. You seem to be advocating this same position yet neither of you has produced a definition of what a "race" or what the "racial" divisions we should be accepting are. As sfs pointed out, you are conflating several different meanings of "race" and assuming your concept is somehow the most common understanding of the term. If anyone is using vague terminology it is those who variably define "race" to suite any particular need. As for comments by O'Brien, everyone can have their opinion...science and scientific definitions should not be based on megalomaniac posturing. Leave that to the rock stars.

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Of course evolutionary histories are not equivalent. But why shy away from a comparative approach? You were using one yourself when you wrote that it's preposterous to compare human group differences to those found among subspecies.

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Yes, I do advocate a comparative approach. But I do not advocate assuming a priori that the genetic diversity in one species can be used as a direct measure of the evolutionary history of another. Even if the genetics are similar, the evolutionary histories could have been very different. You are comfortable with the concept that cichlids can evolve by sympatric speciation and that even with low levels of genetic divergence among groups, that they can be considered species...I am fine with that. But what evidence is there that humans have evolved in this way? Would you advocate then that there is an African "race, sub-species, species" of H. sapiens? I know a morphologist who does though he was equally vague in his definition of "race" and "species"

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Well, you can propose some new terminology if you like. I agree that it would be wasted effort to try to precisely categorize all humans into racial categories, but it works pretty well for several billion people and at least provides a frame of reference for the rest. Your new terminology will have to do at least that well.

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I'm not studying humans...Let O'Brien propose the terms if he thinks everyone besides himself is a rube. I am just not convinced that "race" is a useful concept as applied to defining human groups biologically. After participating in this thread, I now am skeptical that any two people share a common concept of what "race" is much less that it "works for billions of people". I note that plenty of scientists are perfectly happy allowing species definitions and concepts to proliferate "phylogenetic species concept, phylogeographic sub-species etc" yet somehow "race" is invariant and billions of people are all sharing exactly the same definition from scientists to laymen?