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to3m | 8 years ago

Wow, race is biological? Who knew!

discuss

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danieltillett|8 years ago

Race is not biological as it is just a historical classification based on some "skin deep” observations of physical appearance.

What is biological is that different people from around the world are genetically more similar to their neighbours than people more distant and people with a similar genetic background tend to look similar.

What is more interesting is not race, but that different human populations around the world are different species that can produce fertile offspring. There are four known living human species; sub-Saharan Africans, Euro/Asians, Melanesian/Australian Aborigines, and African pygmies (there might be some more human species in Africa, but we lack the fossil DNA data to know this). Each one of these different species is a hybrid between ancient sub-Saharan African’s and one of the other homo species that lived on the planet before 50,000 years ago [0].

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archaic_humans

burtness|8 years ago

> sub-Saharan Africans, Euro/Asians, Melanesian/Australian Aborigines, and African pygmies

These groups are not considered different species or subspecies of human (homo sapiens sapiens). There are homo sapiens subspecies, but all except sapiens are extinct.

to3m|8 years ago

Yes, your first 2 paragraphs clarify it a bit. Thanks.

As for races vs species, that well has been so thoroughly poisoned that I for one refuse to drink from it. But, you know... you do you.