Is race real or is it just a human invention?

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Just because you can make distinctions between congoids and australoids, and between capoids and congoids does not mean they don't all fall under the umbrella "Negroid"

You're arbitrarily choosing to focus on the differences between these groups and ignoring the similarities.

It would be like someone arbitrarily deciding that all reptiles must have legs and therefore snakes are not reptiles.

I wonder if autistics have trouble grasping the 3 race theory because they hyper-focus on the details and ignore the big picture.

Yes. As kids going through elementary school we are brainwashed into thinking otherwise to accept each other more easily. The human species is divided in races like dogs are separated in breeds (just not as extreme). What you make of this should come from you and not what the mainstream media says.

1) does not mean it but the genetic evidence does make classifying Australoid as Negroids a bit silly.

2) A little strange from the guy that wants to throw out phenotype for phenotype. I am arguing that eyeballing it does not give one useful data. That way I like the genetics. What people look like is subjective.

3) It would be more like saying legless lizards are not snakes. I am saying Australoids don't belong to a group that some think they look like they should belong to.

4) I have my doubts about this assertion. The three race theory is not really a brain twister.
Correct me if I make it into a strawman but it goes sumtin like this.
People that look white are white.
People that look black are black.
People that look Asian are Asian.
People that look mixed are mixed?

Not exactly special relativity is it?

using genetic evidence is silly unless we can distinguish between functional and non-functional DNA. For example let's say I took some rats and put them on two different islands, however I made sure that the two islands had identical environments for the next billion years. A billion years from now genetic evidence would proclaim these two rat populations as genetically distant as humans are from trees and by your logic, we would not only have to declare them different races, but different species; indeed different kingdoms! And yet these 2 populations would look, sound and behave identically. The problem with non-functional DNA is it only measures divergence time; you're assuming populations must be very different if they diverged a log time ago, but time means nothing if nothing relevant changes in that time.

The 3 race theory is a brain twister because not all negroid peoples have all the Negroid traits and not all caucasoid and Mongoloid people have all their respective traits, so you have to abstract a prototype for each race.

NO U!

1) Murinae is only 14 million years old with 519 species 1 billion years ago was the time of the eukaryotic split. If the rats in your story could still interbreed they would still be the same species. This has nothing to do with the topic at hand. again with the Junk DNA thing there really is no such thing. Please address that I have brought this up several times since it seems to be the linchpin of your construction.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergenic_region

I think the brain twist you are feeling is the twisting of reality to fit a bad theory.

I think what we have here is a conflict of criteria.
Mine is to understand human migration a project for which the 3 race theory is meaningless.
What is your interest?

It's present not just in Scandinavians but in Germanic populations further south as well, where Laplanders and Saami never dwelt. It is not likely that it was passed on from the Sami either, given that other traits are not shared.

Nor does it account for the fact it's found in many other populations as well, such as southern Africans.

The distribution of traits simply doesn't match up with 19th century ideas based on culture and a single trait (skin colour). Almost all phenotypical traits have an individual, unique cline that generally does not correspond well with the clines of other traits.

Um, ever heard of the Mongol invasion some 800 years ago? Well, those mongols left their genetic footprints throughout much of Europe. Epicanthic folds are very common among slavic Russians and Ukranians. FYI: Whites and East Asians are actually quite similar genetically and morphologically.


You are aware that Nilo-Saharan peoples like Dinka of Sudan and the Karamojong of eastern Uganda also have pronounced epicanthic folds? In the case of those people however, there is no genetic relationship between them and east asians.

you just dont lisen do you??

today phenogenetics are the main classifier in taxonomy,

numerical taxonomy is a thing of the past.
in essence that is what you are arguing for.

i know you probably wont answer, just like you ignored all the other posts sayuing and detailing the exact same thing!

please define functional dna and relate it to the fact that even pseudogenes can have an impact on evolution(what you would call non functional).

Is he Inayasha? I hope so it would mean Ina is growing up a gave up his stupid politics.
Maybe he will grow out of this 3-race thing as well.

..........And I hope anthropology buffs will finally give up on the discredited convergent evolution hypothesis when explaining why "australoids" look the way they do.

You are InaYasha dude how have you been?
I honestly missed you Chris you still living in Lafayette?

or maybe you are just some kid with low reading comprehension
and did not realize the points of ellipsis meant you were continuing my statement

discredited by whom?
melanism is one of the easiest traits to change in the course of relatively few generations, and there are direct selective pressures towards more melanin in areas of higher solar irradiance.

I'm not just talking about skin tone, I'm talking about facial features like the width of the nasal aperture, the protrusion of the jaw, the projection of the zygomatic arch, and JVs favorite feature: The supra-orbital ridge(presence of absence). My big questions:

1What genes are responsible for the structure and shape of these bones? How about the genes for the thickness of the lips?

2)How are these genes inherited and what is the cause of their variation? A related question is can the genes responsible for the shape of the skull change as a result of environmental change. If so, what is the evidence for this.

You and JV assert that Melanesians have common genetic markers with asians and caucasians. But what do these genes actually code for? In fact, are they coding or non-coding regions? If the latter then are there any other explanations besides common lineage, like the fact that both asians and melanesians interbred with other hominids.

The characteristics that you're describing are less likely to be controlled by differences in alleles than by differences in the genetic control mechanisms that tell, for example, the zygomatic when to start and stop growing (ie, same gene, active for longer or shorter times during development). 'non-coding' does not mean 'unimportant.'

1) I will let you do the spade work on that one. You should be responsible for understanding the basics before joining the conversation.
2) Genes are not responsible for the shape of the skull (Boas 1912). I have cited this several times. (can I ignore the rest of the question.
3) the irony here is if I say have been drinking to much on a given day and decide to adopt your three race theory I would have to say under its rules that both Melanesians and Australian indigenous peoples -collectively called Australoids- have to be call mixed Caucasian and Negroid with some Mongoloid admixture. This may and does ignore their history -but you seem to be okay with that- but it does give a description of the skull.

The question you are asking about which genes is a bit naive the answer is depends on the paper. I suggest you read some of these papers and find out for yourself.

You seem to be tilting at windmills with this Denisova Hominins thing I am conservative and agnostic about 2 bone species. This said no one is actually arguing with you about Denisova Admixture. This also goes to my hypothesis that you have diminished reading skills.