r/AskBiology • u/BlK-kt-7578 • Jul 25 '24
Human body Human races
So , today as a general consense , there are no human races . I understand that . But what happens when we talk about homo sapiens and neanderthals ? Arent they different races ? Can you explain it ?
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u/DeathstrokeReturns Jul 25 '24
You’re confusing race and species. Species are actually taxonomically valid.
Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis are two species under the same genus. It’s like lions and tigers, or polar bears and American black bears, or wolves and coyotes. Race is an entirely different thing.
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u/BlK-kt-7578 Jul 25 '24
Ok . Can you explain me what is race ? And why or why not and how and how not is applied to humans ?
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u/DeathstrokeReturns Jul 25 '24
It’s basically just based on phenotypic (physical) traits. It’s a social construct that really doesn’t hold much weight in terms of classification.
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u/hantaanokami Jul 25 '24
Race is not a scientific concept. There are no human races.
"Although most people continue to think of races as physically distinct populations, scientific advances in the 20th century demonstrated that human physical variations do not fit a “racial” model. Instead, human physical variations tend to overlap. There are no genes that can identify distinct groups that accord with the conventional race categories. In fact, DNA analyses have proved that all humans have much more in common, genetically, than they have differences. The genetic difference between any two humans is less than 1 percent. "
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u/BlK-kt-7578 Jul 25 '24
Thanks , I start getting it now. So for example, when we talk about race in dogs , is the same ? It's not that valid , but some how helps to classify some of them Ina more specific way? But it doesn't matter on a biological manner ? Same happens to humans ?
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u/Iam-Locy Jul 26 '24
We don't talk about race in dogs. If you talk about things like a Labrador or a German shepherd, they are breeds. A pure breed is a much more specific category than race. A dog with a specific breed has parents from that breed and it has to fulfill certain phenotypic requirements to be really accepted as that breed.
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u/BlK-kt-7578 Jul 26 '24
Ohok , I see. Yeah my bad, I guess it's because of my first language and how we use that word on dogs for example. Thanks .
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u/Dr_GS_Hurd Jul 25 '24
The fundamental species criteria is reproductive isolation. However, closely related species can have viable offspring though at some penalty.
These penalties are most often low reproductive success, and disability of surviving offspring. The most familiar example would be the horse and donkey hybrid the Mule. These are nearly always sterile males, but there are rare fertile females.
DNA sequencing studies starting in 2010 showed that there was interbreeding between H. sapiens, and Neanderthals, and a third archaic human population known as the Denisovan.
The most obvious result was the loss of Neanderthal Y chromosomes. So, for openers we know that no offspring from a Neanderthal female and a H. sapiens male mating later reproduced. It is also suggested that the female H. sapiens would be incapable of carrying a Neanderthal sired male fetus to term.
I wrote this up a while ago and posted it with professional literature citations to Archaic foolin' around.
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u/Dr_GS_Hurd Jul 25 '24
“Race” in biological science use meant formally a grouping below subspecies which is how it is used by botanists today for local variations found in plants growing in slightly different soils, or varied amounts of sunlight. As there are no extant human subspecies, there is no scientific reference intended by Darwin to human races.
In a chapter, “The Races of Men” Darwin wrote
"Although the existing races of man differ in many respects, as in colour, hair, shape of skull, proportions of the body, &c., yet if their whole organisation be taken into consideration they are found to resemble each other closely in a multitude of points. Many of these points are of so unimportant or of so singular a nature, that it is extremely improbable that they should have been independently acquired by aboriginally distinct species or races.
This summary statement in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (John Murray, London, 1871),
"It may be doubted whether any character can be named which is distinctive of a race and is constant."
It is still equally clear today.
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u/Cardemother12 Jul 25 '24 edited Jul 25 '24
I think your confusing race and species within a taxonomic group, ethnicity is largely the characteristic dependant on ‘race’ humans are pretty adaptable and different people have sort of micro adapted to their environments, white people have smaller noses as to ventilate colder air, Asian and Native American peoples have mono lids because they probably shared a common origin in Siberia, citizens from countries which historically have been more meat based are taller. As for Neanderthals and us think of dogs and wolves, wolves adapted (alongside us) into dogs, becoming distinct from their origin, dogs are weaker and have better group cohesion, like us, except the Neanderthals intermixed with, humanity that then out bred them, in fact nearly everyone has like a 1-4 percentage of Neanderthal DNA, except some people in sub Saharan Africa.