In anthropology, you'll almost never hear or read the word "race" largely because it's almost impossible to get any agreement as to what the criteria should be. Therefore, we use other terms, such as "populations", "societies", "cultures", "groups", etc.

Old ideas held by Ernst Mayr's generation.

Thank you metis, that is exactly right. Every time they try to define this term, someone gets left out who wants to be in or pulled in who wants to be out .

The people who are most commonly looking for definitions for this word are Europeans who are usually trying to find a scientific genetic basis for why they should be considered a separate subspecie from the rest of humanity. The truth is that Europe has a complex history of being populated by different people arriving at different times, with different looks and ancestry. For example, DNA testing seems to suggest that many Greeks and Italians share relatively recent common ancestors with middle easterners that the Greek and Italian population does not share with the rest of Europe. Furthermore, Northern Europeans, on the other hand, share some other ancestors with Iranians and East Indians, that they do not commonly share with Greeks and Italians. Most Middle easterners share a common ancestor with a large number of Greeks and Italians who separated from the ancestors of most Europeans more than 40,000 years ago. For a specie that left Africa only 60 thousand years ago, this is a very long time ago. In other words, Iranians and Indians are more closely related to Northern Europeans than Greeks and Italians/ Middle Easterners when it comes to time since they shared recent common ancestors. However, Greeks, Italians and Middle Easterners "look" more European than Iranian and Indians because of geographical/ cultural proximity. All of this makes it exceedingly difficult for these race theorists to provide any useful information about who is related to whom by looking at 'race'.

regards,

bob

Yep. My wife was born and raised in Sicily but here features show some of this migration pattern. She's short and round faced, which were characteristics common with the Moors from northern Africa, but she is also a red head with freckles and has lighter skin than I do (and my appearance is that of a blond-haired, blue-eyed Swede). Her lighter skin and red coloring is characteristic of possibly the Viking invasion that took over Sicily for a while, or possibly from the Greeks, some of which also had those characteristics.

As for me, even though I look very Scandinavian, I'm pretty much a Heinz 57-- a mixed-up mixture. However in Judaism, when one converts they become Jewish as one of the "family", so that's really my main identity.

So, a "teenage drop out" is too young with not enough credentials and one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists is too old with too many credentials? It is apparent to me that this discussion is completely pointless. Believe whatever you want.

Don't like all this talk about things being too old. I'm touchy about it nowadays.

Bob, I just remembered that I can mention one other example that fits well with you wrote above.

About 15 years ago, I got into a discussion on the Holocaust with a young lady who was raised in Poland and had only been here in the States for a couple of years, and I mentioned to her that I had studied the Holocaust both in Poland and Israel in 1991. In the process of this discussion, I mentioned about the suffering of the Polish people who lost around six million people that were the victims of the NAZI genocide, but she said it was only 3 million. I said it was 6, but she came back and said it was only 3 and that the other 3 were Jews. I said but the Jews there were Poles and she said no they were Jews. I said their ancestors had been there for well over a thousand years, but she said they were still Jews-- not Poles.

This is not the only time I've run across reactions like that from Europeans. My wife's relatives in Italy, whom we stayed with for a couple of weeks several years ago, could not understand why I was Jewish since my wife is Catholic. It totally boggled their minds even though they and I got along very well.

There really is a different mindset over there in so many cases.

metis, I have a brother in-law from Northern Italy. I was telling him how significant numbers of Italians and Greeks share ancestry with Jews, Arabs and other populations from the Near/ middle East (which they do not share with other populations in Europe. He appeared skeptical and reluctant to accept it as a scientific fact. I thought my mother in-law (from Barcelona) was going to have a heart attack when she learnt that there could be jewish, Moorish, Phoneican ancestry in Spain's population.

However, facts are facts and we can see from this map that distribution of haplogroup J extends into Europe in both Italy and Greece:


Fileistribution Haplogroup J Y-DNA.svg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia




"Haplogroup J is found in greatest concentration in Southwest Asia. Outside of this region, haplogroup J has a presence in North Africa. It also has a moderate presence in Southern Europe (especially in central and southern Italy, Malta, Greece, and Albania), Central Asia, and South Asia, particularly in the form of its subclade J2 (J-M172). Haplogroup J is also found in Horn of Africa, particularly in the form of its subclade J1 (J-M267). Subclades J2a and J2a1b1 are found mostly in Greece, Anatolia, and southern Italy.

Haplogroup J2 is found in the highest concentrations in the Fertile Crescent and is found throughout the Mediterranean (including Southern Europe and North Africa), the Balkan peninsula, the Caucasus, the Iranian plateau and into Central Asia[7] and South Asia. More specifically it is found in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Iran, Israel, Greece, Italy, the Balkans and the eastern coasts of the Iberian Peninsula[12], and most frequently in Lebanese 30% (Wells et al. 2001), Iraqis 29.7% (Sanchez et al. 2005), Syrians 29%, Kurds 28.4%, Iranians 24%[13], Ashkenazi Jews 24%, Palestinian Arabs 16.8% and Sephardic Jews [2]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_J_(Y-DNA)

regards,


bob

Yep, that would be right.

Most of these new conclusions have come about as a result of data collected by the National Genographic Project. The National Genographic Project began in 2005 under the direction of Cornell U., Professor of genetics, Dr. Spencer Wells (PhD. Harvard).
https://genographic.nationalgeograph...hic/atlas.html

There is no way for Prof Mayr to have known the results of this study since he died at the age of 100 in 2005 (retired from Harvard in the 70s). There are of course others, such as Roy King (Stanford), Michael Hammer (University of Arizona), A. Oppenheimer (Technion Israel) who are at the cutting edge in this field. These geneticists have built their research on the works of other great geneticists such as Walter Bodmer (Oxford U.) Walter Bodmer - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and Cavalli Sforza (Stanford) Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia among others.

regards,


bob

Under your first link it said "In 2005, Sir Walter Bodmer was appointed to lead a £2.3 million project (roughly 4.5 million USD) by the Wellcome Trust at the Oxford University to examine the genetic makeup of the United Kingdom - the People of the British Isles project. Professor Sir Walter Bodmer was joined by Oxford Professor Peter Donnelly (a population genetics and statistics expert) and the Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow Professor Lon Cardon. Professor Bodmer said "Our aim is to characterise the genetic make-up of the British population and relate this to the historical and archaeological evidence." The researchers presented some of their findings to the public via the Channel 4 television series "Faces of Britain." On 14 April 2007, Channel 4 in Britain aired a program that highlighted the study’s then-current findings. The project took DNA samples from hundreds of volunteers throughout Britain, seeking tell-tale fragments of DNA that would reveal the biological traces of successive waves of colonisers — Celts, Saxons, Vikings, etc. — in various parts of Britain. The findings showed that the Viking invasion of Britain was predominately from Danish Vikings while the Orkney Islands were settled by Norwegian Vikings. Additionally, the results showed that the Cornish people have the MC1R gene which makes them a true Celtic race more closely related to the Welsh, Irish, and Bretons than to their English neighbours." Interesting results. Someone should tell them that a Celtic race doesn't exist.

On the second link I didn't find much that I found very interesting but I went down to the link African Human Genome Initiative. This part I found the most interesting: Cavalli-Sforza himself has written: "The classification into races has proved to be a futile exercise." Genetic research, he has argued, undermines "the popular belief that there are clearly defined races" and will "contribute to the elimination of racism." The idea of race in the human species "serves no purpose". Here are some of my thoughts on this:

1)I agree that classifying people into clearly defined races is a futile exercise because we have pretty much the whole "fossil record" of mankind in our genes and human races blend together in a continuum. Here is an example of what I'm saying. If we had a fossil for every single creature that ever existed and lined them up all the way back to the first living cell then our whole classification system would no longer be clearly defined. Would that mean that species don't exist? Of course not. It would just mean that there is no clearly defined species. For an example, we wouldn't see a distinct line between ape and Man. The more scientific research we do on race the more we are filling in the gaps between the races. Filling in the gaps proves to me that race exists because if it didn't then there would be no gaps to fill.

2)His comment,"contribute to the elimination of racism." tells me that he believes that the existence of race causes racism, that he is anti-race, and that he is giving an anti-race interpretation of his research. Scientists aren't 100% objective. A scientist who is racist would focus his research on the differences and a scientist who is anti-race would focus on the similarities. His view that his research will contribute to the elimination of racism is the opposite of a racist scientist that believes his research will contribute to racism. Both views are false and are not objective. People are tolerant or intolerant no matter how big or small differences are.

3)His comment, The idea of race in the human species "serves no purpose" is false. An example that shows it is false is the People of the British Isles project. The idea of race can serve a purpose and it doesn't always have to be a racist one.