So that leads us right back to the question I asked in the beginning of this thread: “What does “race” mean when applied to pre-history?”
I would say that “race” means the same thing it does today-- groups of people who look substantially different from one anther. Very subjective, I’ll admit, but that’s what it is. Forensic anthropoligists can look at a skull from a crime scene and be pretty certain of the “race” of it’s owner (that’s how the famous Kennewick Man controversy began). I’d guess, though, that that ability is based on quite a large sample size of modern human skulls from the various “races”. I doubt we have that luxury with ancient skulls, unless you looked principally at ancient H. sapiens and applied our modern understanding of skull anatomy to those remains. It would be a bit of a leap of faith, but not too much of one.
And who knows how many “races” of modern humnas came and went leaving no historical descendents. Now, if someone finds a cave painting with two ancient people depicted and one has twenty extra marks above it, I guess you could argue that you’ve found evidence of paleo-Affirmative Action…
What I said above:
I went on to describe (very loosely) the characteristics of “Levantine Neanderthals” from the Middle East as being less pronounced than those of “Classic Neanderthals” from Europe. Things like the brow ridge and the size of the nasal bone, for example, are more like those of modern man in the Levantines (excuse the use of what’s come to be a pejorative, folks of Middle Eastern ancestry; it’s the standard usage for that subgroup of Neanderthals, not a slam at modern people) than the more pronounced features of the Classic Neanderthals.
Obviously, we have none-to-very-limited knowledge about soft tissues of most prehistoric people, but a great deal can be isolated from hard-tissue characters. Details of cranial and facial bones, for example, lead one to the conclusion that a group of Neolithic skeletons discovered in Western China are of “Caucasian” ancestry – i.e., with the skull characteristics found in people of European ancestry – rather than those associated with “Mongolic” people (i.e., those of Eastern Asian ancestry). IIRC, they tried to pin them down to Dinaric – akin to the populations traditionally inhabiting the Alps and the Danube drainage area.
The key point to me in discussing “race” at all is that it’s a signal of the diversity that the one real “race” – the human one – includes within itself, and that it has little or nothing to do with the traditional classification by skin color and presence/absence of epicanthic fold that have plagued human relations for so long. I can see the differences between Danes and Dutch and Spanish, between Tukolor and Tigré and Xhosa, and find some people of each beautiful, and many of each interesting to get to know. The old Star Trek IDIC philosophy, cliché as it’s become, speaks to me far more than any of the trash supposedly “proving” somebody or other’s ethnic “superiority.”
Not funny. If your great-grandfather, a major crook for purposes of this hypothesis, had defrauded mine of all his worldly goods and left him a pauper, then invested his ill-found gains wisely and left you a multimillionaire, would you be ethically correct in saying that we start on an even plane, with just what our ancestors left us and what we’ve been able to amass for ourselves? Something akin to this is why American Blacks are nearly unanimous for Affirmative Action, and why many other people support them in it – they got screwed at the start of the race, and want a fair chance to catch up. The idea that the law is supposed to be color-blind and not favor people on the basis of race argues against it, of course, and it’s a quite differerent debate than we’re in here. But I think just looking at the perspective that my analogy illustrates may show why some people might feel it to be right.
How 'bout we do like our old, departed curmudgeon Collounsbury suggested and not use the word “race” with it’s modern implications and use instead “population” which is very clear and distinct when used in biology and anthropology?
Oh yeah-- so does anybody know how long it takes for differentiationg alleles to express themselves enough to form a distinct population?
Biggirl:
Do you mean “how long does it take to accumualte enough alleles to form a distinct populaton”? Any allele present will express itself immediately as long as it doesn’t have an associated gene that “turns it off”.
In either case, I don’t know the answer to your question, and I think you’d have to define “distinct population” to get an answer. But then, you have the same problem as “race”. Are natives of France and natives of Turkey “distinct populations”? How about natives of France and natives of Estonia?
“Not funny.”
Polycarp: Come on! Is AA so sacred that we can’t poke a little fun at it from time to time? Let me know if there is any acceptable AA humor.
I suppose I’m coming across like “a humorless liberal” with that, but a comment about Affirmative Action in what was an attempt to figure out what if anything “race” means, especially as applied to prehistoric populations, seemed to be a cheap shot.
Yeah, it was cute. It also had the potential to head this thread for the Pit in jogtrot time. So I tried to defuse it.
What constitutes a “distinct population?” Nice question – one can get down to a very limited fine-tuning on this, like the one man of Eskimo/Aleut ancestry in North Dakota (as reported on the 1990 census). When I was a student teacher, one of my kids was a blond-haired, fair-skinned boy of Italian ancestry. When I met his family, both parents were of Italian descent, but his mother’s ancestry was from an enclave on the Swiss border that had fair complexion and blond hair, and the genes that expressed in him for those two traits derived from her and her ancestors.
(And Biggirl’s point is well taken – “race” is a very loaded word. Unfortunately, it’s standard for “discrete population demonstrating ethnic variation from other groups.”
Polycarp:
I’m glad you said it (humorless liberal). I almost put that in my post, but I bit my tongue…
Maybe it’s just me, but I always get a kick out of throwing in a joke or two in the middle of a serious conversation. I try to be an eqaul opportunity comedian, but probably hurl a few more than at the “opposition” than at my own side. No offense meant, and I hope none was taken.
Jomo Mojo,
There was nothing remotely “racialist” in my original post. It seems as though people theses days are hyper-sensitive whenever the word “race” is brought up. At least several more intelligent people were able to discuss this thread as intended.