Is race real or is it just a human invention?

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wogaboo
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19 Aug 2012, 2:14 pm

LKL wrote:
wogaboo wrote:
I suspect if someone looked only at "functional" DNA or non-neutral DNA, they would find far more genetic diversity outside of sun-saharan Africa than within it

If you're interested in phenetics rather than cladistics, why do you give a damn about DNA anyway?

Edit: it's pretty clear that you're just looking for some version of evidence that will fit your preconceived conclusion. You are not interested in science; you are interested in constructing a scientific-looking wardrobe out of whole cloth to fit the notion you already have.




I am interested in Non-neutral DNA because it's a good measure of the overall hereditary traits and properties of an organism and phenetics is the science of classifying organisms based on their overall traits, as opposed to cladistics which uses neutral DNA to classify organisms by how long ago they shared a common ancestor regardless of how much has changed since.


I am interested in science, however science as it's currently conducted can not answer questions about the taxonomy of race (or anything else). I'm interested in improving science



JakobVirgil
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19 Aug 2012, 2:29 pm

wogaboo wrote:
JakobVirgil wrote:
wogaboo wrote:
I strongly support the out of Africa theory too. But this is not about the out of Africa theory; I am proposing a fundamentally different way of studying genetic distance between populations. The current methods use neutral alleles because scientistists prefer to classify humans by cladistics, which has the advantage of telling us how and when populations diverged.


I am advocating that scientists instead classify by phenetics and further proposing that non-neutral alleles would be useful for doing so.



Put simply, scientists currently measure genetic distance as a function of time since divergence from a common ancestor. A more meaningful measure of genetic distance would be the amount of evolution that took place in that time. So if some humans left Africa 60,000 years ago, but genetically preserved their African ancestry outside Africa, they should be considered more African than another group of people who left Africa only 10,000 years ago, but evolved into a cold climate genotype in that time.



So you can find out who is the most evolved?
Adaptation did not somehow stop in Africa .5 million years ago or even .25 mya.
Africa's climate, flora and fauna were not the same across the life of the species.
Being the most "African" is not equivalent to being the most conservative genetically.
In fact the genetic diversity of Africa implies the opposite to be true.
Even when only taking into account only "functional" DNA.



I suspect if someone looked only at "functional" DNA or non-neutral DNA, they would find far more genetic diversity outside of sun-saharan Africa than within it


You would be wrong.
The Dinka
[img][415:276]http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/MG_4344.jpg[/img]
The Mbuti
Image


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wogaboo
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19 Aug 2012, 4:45 pm

JakobVirgil wrote:
wogaboo wrote:
JakobVirgil wrote:
wogaboo wrote:
I strongly support the out of Africa theory too. But this is not about the out of Africa theory; I am proposing a fundamentally different way of studying genetic distance between populations. The current methods use neutral alleles because scientistists prefer to classify humans by cladistics, which has the advantage of telling us how and when populations diverged.


I am advocating that scientists instead classify by phenetics and further proposing that non-neutral alleles would be useful for doing so.









Put simply, scientists currently measure genetic distance as a function of time since divergence from a common ancestor. A more meaningful measure of genetic distance would be the amount of evolution that took place in that time. So if some humans left Africa 60,000 years ago, but genetically preserved their African ancestry outside Africa, they should be considered more African than another group of people who left Africa only 10,000 years ago, but evolved into a cold climate genotype in that time.



So you can find out who is the most evolved?
Adaptation did not somehow stop in Africa .5 million years ago or even .25 mya.
Africa's climate, flora and fauna were not the same across the life of the species.
Being the most "African" is not equivalent to being the most conservative genetically.
In fact the genetic diversity of Africa implies the opposite to be true.
Even when only taking into account only "functional" DNA.



I suspect if someone looked only at "functional" DNA or non-neutral DNA, they would find far more genetic diversity outside of sun-saharan Africa than within it


You would be wrong.
The Dinka
[img][415:276]http://blog.oup.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/MG_4344.jpg[/img]
The Mbuti
Image



Height is only on trait. And there is an enormous amount of height variation outside of Africa too.



LKL
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19 Aug 2012, 4:50 pm

wogaboo wrote:
Height is only on trait. And there is an enormous amount of height variation outside of Africa too.
:roll:
There are a lot of differences other than height between the dinka and the Mbuti, but weren't you the one who wanted to classify race based on what people look like? You are grasping at straws.



LKL
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19 Aug 2012, 4:52 pm

Image
They look different, right? But they are basically the same people: same language, same geography, same religion. Before Belgians came along, they intermarried pretty freely.



19 Aug 2012, 10:44 pm

LKL wrote:
wogaboo wrote:
Height is only on trait. And there is an enormous amount of height variation outside of Africa too.
:roll:
There are a lot of differences other than height between the dinka and the Mbuti, but weren't you the one who wanted to classify race based on what people look like? You are grasping at straws.


Like many nilo-saharan peoples, the Dinka have epicanthic folds and speak tonal languages.

What is the basis for claiming that the shape of the skull(and the facial bones) aren't neutral alleles and indicative of ancestry?

For example, there are NO (native)precolumbian peoples in tropical regions of the Americas with negroid features. The climate in equatorial South America is almost identical to that of equatorial Africa. The only people in the new world with negroid features are those whose ancestors came from Africa. Why do you suppose that is? That is my biggest qualm with the "convergent evolution" hypothesis for explaining the look of the Melanesians.



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19 Aug 2012, 11:15 pm

Some traits are selected for, some are drift, and some are lost due to founder effect. Degree of skin pigmentation is strongly selected for, and does converge based on irradiance; other traits vary within a population (see above for the congolese groups) and, where they are fixed, tend to be fixed by drift or founder effect.
New World humans show strong founder influences, so comparing New World tribes (some of the least genetically diverse on the planet) with African tribes ( the most genetically diverse) is a little bit like comparing the members of a band field trip to the members of the entire rest of the school district.



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20 Aug 2012, 6:52 am

AspieRogue wrote:
[That is my biggest qualm with the "convergent evolution" hypothesis for explaining the look of the Melanesians.


or the rest of the Australoids.


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wogaboo
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20 Aug 2012, 12:01 pm

LKL wrote:
wogaboo wrote:
Height is only on trait. And there is an enormous amount of height variation outside of Africa too.
:roll:
There are a lot of differences other than height between the dinka and the Mbuti, but weren't you the one who wanted to classify race based on what people look like? You are grasping at straws.


The Dinka and mbuti DO look alike. And I don't want to classify race based on what people look like per se, but if people are similar in ways we can see, it's only logical to think they are alike in ways we can't see too.



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20 Aug 2012, 12:14 pm

wogaboo wrote:
LKL wrote:
wogaboo wrote:
Height is only on trait. And there is an enormous amount of height variation outside of Africa too.
:roll:
There are a lot of differences other than height between the dinka and the Mbuti, but weren't you the one who wanted to classify race based on what people look like? You are grasping at straws.


The Dinka and mbuti DO look alike. And I don't want to classify race based on what people look like per se, but if people are similar in ways we can see, it's only logical to think they are alike in ways we can't see too.


They do not look the same to me. This is the issue I think. What people look like is subjective.


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We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots??

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20 Aug 2012, 12:38 pm

wogaboo wrote:
LKL wrote:
wogaboo wrote:
Height is only on trait. And there is an enormous amount of height variation outside of Africa too.
:roll:
There are a lot of differences other than height between the dinka and the Mbuti, but weren't you the one who wanted to classify race based on what people look like? You are grasping at straws.


The Dinka and mbuti DO look alike. And I don't want to classify race based on what people look like per se, but if people are similar in ways we can see, it's only logical to think they are alike in ways we can't see too.

pure bull,

nothing, in the entire universe, is what you see, what you "see" is a model your brain constructs to make sense of what its senses tell it, it is often severely skewed under even mundane circumstances.


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21 Aug 2012, 5:12 pm

wogaboo wrote:
LKL wrote:
wogaboo wrote:
Height is only on trait. And there is an enormous amount of height variation outside of Africa too.
:roll:
There are a lot of differences other than height between the dinka and the Mbuti, but weren't you the one who wanted to classify race based on what people look like? You are grasping at straws.


The Dinka and mbuti DO look alike. And I don't want to classify race based on what people look like per se, but if people are similar in ways we can see, it's only logical to think they are alike in ways we can't see too.

'You people all look the same to me.'