Sure--because they could only look at external characteristics rather than genes they were sometimes wrong, as in the case of the Andaman islanders, whose dark skin was the result of convergent evolution rather than shared genetics. That made them think they were recent African immigrants. But even with only a Mk 1 eyeball they got a lot right--including spotting the Indo-European component of the North Indian population.

Nope, I mentioned them.

... while missing it in the South Indian population, due to flawed racial assumptions.

You are looking at the very data that has led to the current movement away from such racial groupings.  Yet for some reason you persist on strawmen and refuse to offer a falsifiable alternative model.

I wonder if DNA can predict Advanced Grunting?

Nope. Look at the map. They distinguished between the more heavily Indo-European north India and the south, which they colored differently. To be fair they were probably also going off some cultural markers such as the Dravidian and Sanskrit family of languages, the speakers of which happened to roughly match up with the genetic groupings.

 

Maybe. It's a fast-moving field right now. The last good update that I know of was from late last year.

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/346/6213/1113.abstract

http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/ancient-dna-shows-earliest-european-genomes-weathered-the-ice-age-and-shines-new-light-on

He completely moved them out of the same "racial" category into an "uncertain" category!  Yet, we now know they are quite closely related. Bad assumptions rooted in since disproven racial theories led him astray.

It's even worse with the Sami. Contemporary racial theory that had "mongoloids" characterized by epicanthic folds cause him to completely miscategorize them - we now know the Sami are more closely related to all of those Indian groups - and even more close to the English than they are to any East Asian group.

You know what science does when a theory leads researchers astray and fails to properly predict things as it should?  It revises or totally tosses it out.

Actually that "poor German ethnographer" seems to have classified the Indian population pretty well.

Genetic Evidence for Recent Population Mixture in India

If your most serious complaints are about a 19th century guy attempting to classify genetic background armed only with an eyeball and a pair of calipers  are that the got the Sami wrong, he's doing pretty well.

Evidence about the functionality of the Neanderthal genes incorporated into humans. Lots of unknowns.

http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2014/09/22/molbev.msu255.full

You need to get your eyeglasses checked. Better map here:

http://images.zeno.org/Meyers-1905/I/big/Wm13610a.jpg

South Indian is clearly marked "Dravida" and North India is marked "Indo-Aryan/Dravida." That's a pretty close match to the current understanding,
which has the Indo-Europeans invading a few thousand years ago and leaving a significant genetic footprint, with the Dravidians as a substrate.

Continued:

Shared and Unique Components of Human Population Structure and Genome-Wide Signals of Positive Selection in South Asia



Figure 12:

"It's a fast-moving field" translates "I should read more and apply the observations that have been made".

Neandertals were genetically isolated from the majority of humanity in excess of 400,000 years ago. Geographic distance was the sole cause of this genetic isolation. Contact simply did not exist.

Due to various (still debated) pressures, most likely changes in climate, the Sapien-sapien populace of Africa and the middle-east began moving North, into the gateways of Europe, approximately ~40,000-50,000 years ago. This resulted in contact between the southernmost Neandertal populations and thus the first, relatively small interbreeding between the groups. This is observed in the genetics of Sapien-sapien remains from this timeframe and shortly thereafter. This interbreeding seems to have occurred around what we now consider Israel, North Africa and Morocco/Ceuta.

The expansion of Sapien-sapiens into Europe then stalled for some time, before surging greatly (again, probably due to pressures from changes in climate) around ~30,000 years ago. In this surge, Sapien-sapiens moved, in massive numbers, into Europe itself, absorbing the small Neandertal populaces as they went. It presently appears that this absorption happened quickly, and is the reason a strong minority Neandertal genetic lineage remains in Europe to this day. This is how the Neandertals, as a separate branch of humanity, ceased to exist. This sudden transition in the observed evidence, from remains of Neandertals in Europe, to remains of Sapien-sapiens with significant Neandertal admixture, makes the conclusion undeniable. They were absorbed.


We know that Neandertals were always a relatively small populace (compared to the rest of humanity). We know that large numbers of Sapien-sapiens moved into Europe. We know that these Sapien-sapiens in Europe, in large numbers, suddenly acquired significant quantities of Neandertal genetics. A small amount of interbreeding would not accomplish that. A small amount of interbreeding would not result in Europeans that, to this day, typically still have significant Neandertal lineage. A small amount of interbreeding would not preserve 20% of the unique Neandertal genome.

The lack of significant Neandertal/Sapien-sapien interbreeding for most of the existence of the Neandertals was simply a result of geographic isolation from the bulk of humanity. As soon as this isolation ceased, interbreeding resumed and the Neandertals were reabsorbed into the Sapien-sapien populace.

It is of no surprise that, when no physical contact between Neandertals and Sapien-sapiens existed, no interbreeding occurred. Likewise, it is no surprise that when physical contact between a limited portion of the Neandertal and Sapien-sapien populaces existed, a small amount of interbreeding occurred. And it is no surprise that when Neandertals and Sapien-sapiens were brought into large scale physical contact, the smaller population was absorbed by the larger population.

Maybe you should take it up with Dr. Foley, or present more recent genetic data that shows his mistakes. Do you know of any genetic research that supports your theory?

That's mildly interesting, I stand corrected. All of the subspecies of anthros are equally retarded.

But my assertion that physical anthro is a soft science stands. Slightly above archaeology, but not much.

The last person I'd ask about race would be an anthropologist. Their tenure would be on the line, an honest answer would be a career killer. Gawd forbid they'd admit there are measurable differences between geographically isolated sub-populations of H. sapiens.

That's not "race," that's species. You seriously don't understand the difference? Seriously?

No. Try again. Geneticists have been able to classify the sub-populations of H. sapiens quite successfully. This despite the infancy of genetic science and the very strong disincentives for race research.

you're aware, i hope, that any question about biological "race" is a physical anthropology question, right?  if you're talking about genetic variation within or among populations, you're ipso facto discussing phys anthro.  

how much phys anthro have you studied?

Neandertal lineage was genetically isolated from the rest of humanity >500,000 years ago.

Modern humans share genetic lineage with Neandertals and Denisovians

Sapien-sapien/Neandertal interbreeding occurred recently in Europe and Eurasia.

20% of the unique Neandertal genome still present in a sample of 379 European and 286 East Asian individuals

Among countless other papers.

So, we have Neandertals becoming genetically isolated >500,000 years ago. Then evidences of some interbreeding ~38,000 years ago, matching the archeological record of Sapien-sapien migration into some parts of Neandertal territory at this time. Then in the archeological record we see a sudden massive migration of Sapien-sapiens through Neandertal territory, and the coincidental complete disappearance of Neandertals. Together with this we also see a large percentage of the unique Neandertal genome incorporated into the genetics of present day humans in the regions where this occurred, to an extent which is mathematically unsupported if no significant Neandertal/Sapien-sapien interbreeding occurred.

In short, the available DNA evidence supports at least two "waves" of interbreeding between Neandertals and Sapien-sapiens, the last of which is responsible for the bulk of the surviving Neandertal genetics. Considering the evidence that Neandertal populations were always rather small compared to the rest of humanity, the only logical conclusion is that Neandertals were, by majority, absorbed by the Sapien-sapien migrants in this last interbreeding event.

Survival of >20% of the Neandertal genome 30,000 years after the Neandertals effectively ceased to exist is not consistent with small scale interbreeding. It is consistent with complete absorption of their population.

You didn't continue reading past this quoted post of mine, you hit quote instead.





Try again.



 

Sort of, and I blame the authors from using that terminology although I should not have snipped the "hybrid" qualifier.

"but the patterns that Reich’s team noticed are exactly what you would expect if their hybrids suffered from reduced fertility, he adds.

However, Presgraves was surprised that modern humans and Neanderthals, separated by only tens of thousands of generations, would already show signs biological incompatibility."


It is misleading because "infertility" implies "sterility" (in the hybrids). However, it seems what it is actually about is reduced "fitness" (an actual specific and useful term) in the hybrids. I.e. they produced less offspring per individual per breeding cycle or generation. Whether that was because they didn't generally survive as well through reproductive stages or whether there was partial sexual incompatibility (could be anything from gamete selection on around the cycle) couldn't really be assessed in my thinking. The most parsimonious explanation for the peppering and purging is that the hybrids bred back enough to get adaptive genes into lineages that were otherwise not hybridized as extensively. But who knows what the mechanism was.

Dude, he's totally got you on this. Regroup, and come back to fight another day. You've lost this one.

Did not.

If you're going to pitch racial taxonomies for not being "scientific", you'll have to bin other existing, widely used biological taxonomies for the same reasons, and I'll start accusing you of being unscientific for using the term "homo sapiens."

And the 19th century guys, operating only with a sharp eye and a pair of calipers, delineated groups that largely match up with modern, genetics testing-based results. Compare the graphic on Cavalli-Sforza's book cover to that German's map and the overlap is quite good. Exact? No. That's why genetics testing is better. But the 19th century guys spotted the Indo-European genetic content in India a century and a half before genetics testing got around to confirming it.

Not even close.  I've already shown B_A to be outright wrong with his repeated mischaracterization of South Indian genetics.  The 19th century map posted was far more accurate at classifying Indian genetics than B_A has been.  

Let's see.  On the one hand we have the Sami, a population of less than 200,000, and on the other we have the Indian sub-continent with a population of 1.7 billion.  And B_A keeps harping on the misclassification of the Sami?

The fact of the matter is that there are three "RACES" On this entire Planet,
"others" and governments constantly look to fracture and Divide the people as much as possible for PERSONAL
AND POLITICAL GAIN.
I in no way intend to suggest or imply that any one group is superior to another.
THE three groups are :
Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid.
the first two in the group are nearly identical.
Yet in the political and social aspect the first two are ignored, Uniteourpeople is for
True Equality, True freedom and True Liberty.
Example: over 80% of the people that are classified as "HISPANIC" are actually Caucasian and or white.
South Asian Indians are 100% Caucasian ( thank you Bobby Jindal and Preet Bharara lol).
as are Austalians , Europeans, Most of North America, Most of the Middle East and even most of North Africa.
Asians although Mongoloid are clearly what we know as white and all of the above are normally quite conservative
in there politics by nature....it is time for us to uniteourpeople for a better country and a better world.
UNITEOURPEOPLE

The fact of the matter is that there are three "RACES" On this entire Planet,
"others" and governments constantly look to fracture and Divide the people as much as possible for PERSONAL
AND POLITICAL GAIN.
I in no way intend to suggest or imply that any one group is superior to another.
THE three groups are :
Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid.
the first two in the group are nearly identical.
Yet in the political and social aspect the first two are ignored, Uniteourpeople is for
True Equality, True freedom and True Liberty.
Example: over 80% of the people that are classified as "HISPANIC" are actually Caucasian and or white.
South Asian Indians are 100% Caucasian ( thank you Bobby Jindal and Preet Bharara lol).
as are Austalians , Europeans, Most of North America, Most of the Middle East and even most of North Africa.
Asians although Mongoloid are clearly what we know as white and all of the above are normally quite conservative
in there politics by nature....it is time for us to uniteourpeople for a better country and a better world.
UNITEOURPEOPLE

Well, I guess that's settled.

mcgredo, you didn't answer my question.  According to the definition of "race" that you think you are arguing, what race are these people?

You're asking me to classify them based on a photo, without any genetic testing? Why would I do that?

The discussion here has pointed out a few things:

1) All taxonomies are "social constructs" that classify things according to what humans are interested in, including the classic Linnaean taxonomy that most of the posters here claim is scientific. There is no taxonomy created in a vacuum by pure reason--they all reflect what humans want to classify. If you attack racial taxonomies, the same techniques can be used to attack long-standing biological taxonomies that form the backbone of modern biology.

2) Nonetheless, taxonomies can be useful. Try doing biology without one.

3) Taxonomies can be incomplete--they may not classify every member of the world population. Nor may it classify all persons in a geographic region if interbreeding is incomplete. In some areas of Indonesia, Chinese immigrants have not interbred with indigenous peoples, for example. It's more of a salad bowl that a melting pot.

4) Relying on looks alone, rather than genetics, can give one a rough idea, but relying on genetic testing is better. In the case of convergent evolution the same external features may arise despite very little or very distant shared ancestry. In the case of the Negritos, dark skin seems to have been a case of convergent evolution.

5) Based on the caption of your photo, probably Negrito. Current thinking is that they are descendants of quite early migrants out of Africa in one of the early waves of human migration. They have considerable genetic distance from current subsaharan Africans, and their neighbors. There's been some interbreeding with their neighbors, but to a large extent they've been isolated. In fact, they seem to have their own Haplogroup.

"Genetic testing places all the Onge and all but two of the Great Andamanese in the mtDNA Haplogroup M found in East Africa, East Asia, and South Asia, suggesting that the Negritos are at least partly descended from a migration originating in eastern Africa 60,000 years ago. This migration is hypothesized to have followed a coastal route through India and into Southeast Asia, which is sometimes referred to as the Great Coastal Migration.

Analysis of mtDNA coding sites indicated that these Andamanese fall into a subgroup of M not previously identified in human populations in Africa and Asia. These findings suggest an early split from the population of migrants from Africa; the descendants of these migrants would eventually populate the entire habitable world.
...
A recent genetic study found that unlike other early groups in Malesia, Andamanese Negritos lack the Denisovan hominin admixture in their DNA. Denisovan ancestry is found among indigenous Melanesian and Australian populations between 4–6%."

The Negritos inhabit the Andaman Islands and parts of Malaya, Thailand, and the Phillippines.  They've interbred, partially in isolation. In fact for perhaps 60,000 years. Some groups have Denisovian genes, probably picked up from neighbors; the Andaman islanders lack them, probably because the islands are so isolated.

So: Negrito. They constitute a genetic group that is distinguishable from others, and have a shared genetic history going back tens of thousands of years.

The first time I asked you what race the Negritos were, you didn't answer.  I figured neat pictures might get a response out of you.

So they are their own race?

Based on what you think you are arguing, how many races are there?  Please go ahead and list them.

There's a basis for them being a race, yes--they have a shared genetic history and are distinguishable from their neighbors.



I can only assume you've read nothing I've written.

On the contrary, I've read everything you've written.  It's confusing.  You make a case for identifying races, but when pushed to do so, you won't.  Except in this case, you'll say that Negritos are.  So that's one.  What reputable man of science identifies "races" according to your criteria?  Does any reputable man of science, recognize the Negritos as their own distinct race?

The fact that you can post a picture and identify them by a unique name means that you have conceded 99% of your argument and are just pissing around about the semantics of what you want to call a unique identifiable genetic group. You can also group them within a larger set of groups, or split them into smaller sub-groups.

If you like you could call them the "Negrito Race," or you could lump them in with Austral-Oceanic peoples as a race, or you could call them the Southern Mindanao Negrito Race, or you could lump them in with other dark people and call them "black," or maybe you're more of a haplogroup sort of guy.

Pick your construct. Be happy.

BUT HE LIKES A CONSTRUCT THAT I DON'T LIKE! What about my feels?

you've very concisely proven his point--race means whatever the speaker wants it to mean.  according to your argument, every single person in the thread is correct, even when they completely contradict one another.  no one can possibly be incorrect.

this is the opposite of that which scientific terminology is supposed to accomplish.

When you can get scientists to even vaguely agree on the taxonomy of Neandertals and Denisovans in relation to present day humanity, then we can worry about the scientific determinations about the (slightly) lesser differences among humanity today.

The issue is far too complex for a simple conclusion to be drawn at this time. There are legitimate evidences backing many points of view. More data and analysis is required, and the conclusions will not be simple.

Professional language isn't supposed to be universal outside of its intended audience .  You are a guy that tries pretty hard to proclaim your academic bonafides in every thread, but I bet that if you are talking about the walls and doors in your house, you would use different terminology than a carpenter.  The carpenter's language would almost certainly be more precise, but it would only be "right" or even more correct(than your terms) within his specific community.

With regard to classifying humans, there are plenty of answers to choose from.  As far as "race," it is certainly imprecise, and carries too much baggage to be readily reinvented.  Despite all that, plenty of people in academia are quite ready to discuss the intersection of race and every other topic...  so obviously it still has plenty of meaning.

I don't care if you write letters to your mom using Chicago Format, doesn't mean you own the English language.

disagree completely.  if we're talking about joinery, then the joiner's language is the correct one, and i'm happy to defer to him.  if i say that a structure is made out of cement, and the contractor corrects me with "concrete", he's right and i am wrong.  same with the military man's language in a conversation about war, the composer's language when describing music, and the mechanic's language of an engine.

seems odd to treat a conversation about genetics differently, but i guess that's up to you.

but thanks for the heads-up about my 'proclamations'.  i'll try to control this in future.

Well, you are a smart motherfucker, no reason to be shy about it.

One can make exactly the same criticisms of any biological taxonomy, including all those used today.

Is a bear an animal? Yep. So is a snake, and a fox and all subspecies of birds. The kingdom/phylum/class/order/family/genus/species classification
used is simply a social construct, including differentiation between species. Yet we still use it to distinguish between mammals and reptiles.

http://scienceblogs.com/evolvingthoughts/2006/10/01/a-list-of-26-species-concepts/

As wikipedia puts it

"Some biologists may view species as statistical phenomena, as opposed to the traditional idea, with a species seen as a class of organisms. In that case, a species is defined as a separately evolving lineage that forms a single gene pool. Although properties such as DNA-sequences and morphology are used to help separate closely related lineages,[12] this definition has fuzzy boundaries.[13] However, the exact definition of the term "species" is still controversial, particularly in prokaryotes,[14] and this is called the species problem.[15] Biologists have proposed a range of more precise definitions, but the definition used is a pragmatic choice that depends on the particularities of the species of concern."

So, by deconstructing the use of racial taxonomies, you've also (if you wish to be consistent) blown up all taxonomies used in modern biology, including the venerable Linnaean taxonomy.

Are you calling all modern biological taxonomies unscientific?

well, maybe, but it gets irritating when a guy is always trying to announce his resume.  besides, there's a lot of guys here who are more educated than i.

anyway, sincere thanks for the check.

i'm a splitter, so that gives you an idea of where i'm coming from.  again, i focus on typological difference, rather than differences of degree.  for example, claiming that humans divide into races of "short", "medium",  and "tall" would be pretty odd, right?  it's quite possible, quite rational, and can be useful.  but somehow height doesn't seem to work with the concept of race--it doesn't speak to the concept that people are trying to get at with that term.  why not?

once again, the concept of race--as it has been used consistently for several thousand years--attaches to the concept of purity.  short/medium/tall isn't something we think of as a measure of purity, which is why it's excluded as a racial criterion...  


***

actually, this is all tangental to your question.  to answer directly, no.  the dissonance between race and scientific taxonomy is that the latter recognizes itself as a schema, while the former does not (because it still carries the baggage of the traditional use of the term).  IOW, when a scientist argues about an organism's species classification, he is arguing about the system of classification, not the organism itself.  race is different--it has always been viewed as an essential difference--a property of the organism itself.  we could change that, but this is where i completely agree with fightinghellfish, when he wrote:



prior to the acceptance of germ theory, disease was thought to be caused by miasma--foul vapors in the air.  when germ theory was embraced, scientists could have, had they so chosen, reinvented the term 'miasma' to apply to airborne pathogens.  but this would have been a bad idea scientifically, because it would be so nebulous (pardon the pun) as to undermine precision--defeating the whole point of scientific terminology in the first place.  

science is an exclusive, disconfirmatory system--it functions by discarding things.  so while it's certainly a legitimate scientific move to create taxa with which to classify intra-species populations, it is supremely unscientific to label them with an archaic term that has to be redefined, and is so devoid of rigor that it can't exclude anything.

i more or less made that point several pages ago. it did not sink in then. it will not sink in now.

lol




Riddle me this: Before direct genetic research was possible, what made Neandertals identifiably different from the main human ancestors of the same time frame?

Before genetic research became possible, how were Neandertal remains identified?

Did genetic research prove the prior methods of recognizing Neandertal remains false?

But, as I've pointed out, typological differences--the idea of "species"--is itself a social construct, since we can define species in many ways. Are you suggesting we give up on biological taxonomies,
or punt on drawing distinctions between mammals and reptiles?



Because it doesn't address the idea of a shared genetic history of a group of people, which is at the core of the idea of race.



I disagree. That 19th century map I posted earlier has many sub-races listed--they distinguish between West Africans and those farther south, for example. It wasn't a "purity" idea, but instead they explicitly recognized the ideas of gradations between populations and gradations within populations. And Darwin himself mentioned the idea of mixed races, rather than the offspring being of once race or another.



I don't think there's a distinction where you think there is.

So your objection is to the use of the term, rather than the underlying concept? That if another term expressing the same idea were used, everything would be fine?

cranially, sapiens traits (parabolic arcade, Y5, formula, spatulate), capacity, prominent SO torus and moderate prognathism.  key trait: occipital bun.  all i remember post-cranially is robusticity, in association with the forgoing.  general 'lines of evidence' inference.

not sure what 'falsity' has to do with what you quoted.

 

as to the first, nonsense--height is heritable.  an isolated population of tall individuals is very likely to have increasingly tall offspring.  that's shared genetic history based on founder effect, which seems to be the basis of your conception of race.  

the second is quite correct.  i have no problem with the concept of phylogenetic taxa, provided that they are recognized as epistemological categories, that is, analytical tools rather than essential properties of organisms.  in evolution threads, we constantly remind creationists that taxonomy is simply a filing cabinet--whether we put an organism in one folder or another makes no actual difference in the properties of the creature under analysis.  but such disclaimers are seldom heard in conversations about biological 'race'.  instead, the folder we place it in is often assumed to be a comprehensive description of the thing.

race divides people into drawers and folders, which is problematic at best.  a relational database approach seems much more appropriate.