# How many human races are there? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 24, 2015, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-human-races-are-there/732359 "2015-09-24T01:03:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2015, 10:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-human-races-are-there/732359/121 "2015-09-28T22:58:37Z")
> [@Horatio\_Hellpop](#): > > Well, a discussion about slavery reparations comes up in this country from time to time, and its proponents are talking about redistributing money from one specific group to another. Also, some scholarships are issued based on racial criteria. I’d say precise boundaries can be relevant. They can be of utility, admittedly. But in those circumstances there is a financial motivation to get something unearned (money, education, votes) and integrity, intellectual or otherwise, is not expected with those who advocate such. And it is interesting that those who would shout the loudest that race is a meaningless social construct also are many of the same who use the concept of race when it’s beneficial to their goals. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2015, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-human-races-are-there/732359/122 "2015-09-28T23:15:17Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > They can be of utility, admittedly. But in those circumstances there is a financial motivation to get something unearned (money, education, votes) and integrity, intellectual or otherwise, is not expected with those who advocate such. > > And it is interesting that those who would shout the loudest that race is a meaningless social construct also are many of the same who use the concept of race when it’s beneficial to their goals. Race is a social construct. It is not a meaningless one. ---
**Author:** ![Chief\_Pedant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/a6a055/32.png) [@Chief\_Pedant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chief_Pedant)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2015, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-human-races-are-there/732359/123 "2015-09-28T23:15:58Z")
Not being able to define “race” biologically is quite a different thing from saying that race groups don’t have biological characteristics specific for the aggregate pool. Of course they do. But the differences lie in average prevalence of gene variants for the aggregate pool. You make up your own races, if you like. Feel free to create a tall race; let folks self-define their group. Odds are very high if you looked at average prevalence of tall/short genes for the aggregate pools, there would be a difference which biologically drives the average outcome for height. In the case of standard (US) race groups, self identification parallels closely enough historic migration (in this case, out of africa then into other parts of the world) and evolution patterns such that average gene prevalence differences arise when the aggregate pool is considered, even if the pool is created by self-identification. To deny that is to exhibit a lack of understanding about how we came to populate the planet. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 12:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-human-races-are-there/732359/124 "2015-09-29T00:15:30Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > No doubt the French skew up the average. My greatest regret is that I didn’t say that. ☹ > [@RickJay](#): > > To an American, it generally means “black, white, Asian or Hispanic.” Oh, my Canadian friend, you are very wrong. There’s Quality, White Trash, Colored Folk, N\*\*\*\*\*s, Indians (Regular (American) or Pull-Start and Push-Start (South Asian)), Arabs of Some Sort (from Gibraltar to the Burmese border, with a lot of overlap with South-Asian Indians), Meskins (lots of overlap with the Regular Indians), and Chinamen. You just travel in the better circles of Americans than I. You may want to continue that. > [@Trinopus](#): > > Late hit, after the play was blown dead. Five yard penalty. Don’t replay the down. Finally, a post in this thread that I completely understand. I actually don’t recall any of my Anthro profs saying, flat out, that there was only one race of humans. All they said was stuff like, “Though the percentage of a blood type can be greater in one population than another, humans will screw anything so you can’t rely on it to tell you anything.” It was a rebuilding season for Anthropology. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-human-races-are-there/732359/125 "2015-09-29T02:44:10Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > In most cases, the two main lineages of a population are not closely related at all, and in fact each of those lineages is usually much closer to a corresponding lineage in another population. For example, German (and general European) R lineages are more closely related to Native American Q lineages than they are to German (and general European) I lineages. As [seen here](http://www.yfull.com/tree/IJK/), R diverged from Q about 30,000 BC and from I about 45,000 BC. (The chronology of Y clading is much more widely agreed now than it was just a few years ago.) If you look at the detailed charts at the linked site, you can see that R-P312 was surely a great King of Bell Beaker who (as the Mongol Khans did famously) procreated very rapidly and created a royal caste that overwhelmed Western Europe. Unlike mtDNA haplogroups and autosomal haplotypes with their blurrier geographies, some Y-chromosome haplogroups have amazing dominance. About 50% of German and Italian males have the Y-chromosome of that King of Bell Beaker or his brother R-U106 Mrca, and the percentage increases as you travel West, exceeding 90% in Basque country and parts of Ireland. Most of the I-haplogroup in Western and Northern Europe descends from a single male (I1 Mrca) who lived at the same time as the early Kings of Bell Beaker. One might guess that male’s ancestors were of the Megalithic or Funnel Beaker culture, but it may be unknowable whether he was [ul][li] a great warrior who sustained his status despite Bell Beaker aggression, or[/li][li] a compliant vassal permitted to join the elite caste, or[/li][li] a lover boy who cuckolded a Bell Beaker Prince![/li][/ul] ---
**Author:** ![Nelson\_Pike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-human-races-are-there/732359/126 "2015-09-29T03:46:19Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Also, for that one sub-group to be reproductively isolated from the rest of humanity, they’d have to also be reproductively isolated _from the rest of the Khoisans who are not part of that subgroup._ Now we’re REALLY not passing the sniff test. Smells fine to me: the ancestors of the modern 300,000 Khoisan speakers have historically been scattered in small groups over an area of about 1 million square miles, inhabiting the most desolate of those square miles, where they have most easily been able to live in their preferred state of isolation or near-isolation, not just from non-Khoisan, but also from their nearest Khoisan neighbors. (I got this from Anthropology 101, really). ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 5:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-human-races-are-there/732359/127 "2015-09-29T05:06:39Z")
> [@Nelson\_Pike](#): > > Smells fine to me: the ancestors of the modern 300,000 Khoisan speakers have historically… Do you know what the word “historically” means? ---
**Author:** ![Nelson\_Pike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-human-races-are-there/732359/128 "2015-09-29T05:13:30Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Do you know what the word “historically” means? Getting your head handed to you so time for some diversionary supersnark, eh? ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-human-races-are-there/732359/129 "2015-09-29T05:25:34Z")
> [@Nelson\_Pike](#): > > Getting your head handed to you so time for some diversionary supersnark, eh? Hah! You made a mistake reading a paper and can’t admit it. Not my problem that you trip yourself up by also not understanding the time scale involved. You might also want to spend some time understanding how, over timespans of 10,000 to 100,000 years, climates change in regions of the earth. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 12:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-human-races-are-there/732359/130 "2015-09-29T12:11:24Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > As [seen here](http://www.yfull.com/tree/IJK/), R diverged from Q about 30,000 BC and from I about 45,000 BC. (The chronology of Y clading is much more widely agreed now than it was just a few years ago.) If you look at the detailed charts at the linked site, you can see that R-P312 was surely a great King of Bell Beaker who (as the Mongol Khans did famously) procreated very rapidly and created a royal caste that overwhelmed Western Europe. > > Unlike mtDNA haplogroups and autosomal haplotypes with their blurrier geographies, some Y-chromosome haplogroups have amazing dominance. About 50% of German and Italian males have the Y-chromosome of that King of Bell Beaker or his brother R-U106 Mrca, and the percentage increases as you travel West, exceeding 90% in Basque country and parts of Ireland… Y-chromosome lineages do show amazing dominance in may areas of the world. In no part of the world does one lineage show 100% dominance, but there are places where one lineage is 80% dominant. My own lineage is a descendant of R-P312 that is called R-M222 whose MRCA has been called “Ireland’s most successful alpha male” and whose descendants are thought to have been involved in the spread of the Gaelic language from Ireland to Scotland. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-human-races-are-there/732359/131 "2015-09-29T13:42:25Z")
> [@Grim\_Render](#): > > A one-directional geneflow does actually mean they were reproductively isolated from other groups. Even though other groups however, were not reproductively isolated from them. This is the best Humpty-Dumptyism I’ve seen this year. _There’s_ glory for you! > [@](#): > > Note also that there are climatic indications that the Khoisan were physically isolated for a long timespan. Stop saying “The Khoisan” when you mean “The !Kung”. Other Khoisan groups were not isolated, nor did they occupy climates anywhere as inhospitable as the Kalahari. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-human-races-are-there/732359/132 "2015-09-29T14:11:53Z")
…and anyway, as the Pickrell paper shows, even the !Kung weren’t isolated from inflow. ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 3:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-human-races-are-there/732359/133 "2015-09-29T15:00:13Z")
> [@robert\_columbia](#): > > Y-chromosome lineages do show amazing dominance in may areas of the world. In no part of the world does one lineage show 100% dominance, but there are places where one lineage is 80% dominant. My own lineage is a descendant of R-P312 that is called R-M222 whose MRCA has been called “Ireland’s most successful alpha male” and whose descendants are thought to have been involved in the spread of the Gaelic language from Ireland to Scotland. According to the Yfull website, P312 was in a clan that fanned out 2900 BC; the clade suddenly exploded 2500 BC (± 300) and within just two centuries expanded into at least 125 clades, of which M222 is just one, albeit an important one. In other words, there were at least 125 distinct agnatic 5-gt grandsons(\*) of King P312 who have living agnatic descendants today. Truly a phenomenal expansion, more impressive than that of Genghis Khan. (Looking for clades within two centuries was arbitrary; change to three centuries and get even more. \* - the “5-gt” is approximate.) I’m not sure how firm the error bars (± 300 years) are, but clearly P312-Mrca lived right smack in the middle of the Bell Beaker Expansion. M222 formed 2300 BC, but didn’t split up until 150 AD (± 330 years). It had been my understanding that both the O’Neil Kings of Ireland and the MacCrinan Kings of Scotland have been demonstrated (how?) to be M222. (The MacCrinan Kings have a legendary agnatic descent from the O’Neil Kings … maybe not so mythical?) However [this excellent website has a page](http://www.ancestraljourneys.org/irishsurnames.shtml) that discusses M222 (in the section “Uí Néill”) and reaches a different conclusion. > [@](#): > > So M222 is more likely to be a La Tène marker, spread from Northern Britain into Northern Ireland around 200 BC. If so it would be present among the people of north-western Ireland centuries before the Uí Néill came on the scene - if they actually did. I find these details fascinating. **Robert** , do you have further links you can send me? ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 3:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-human-races-are-there/732359/134 "2015-09-29T15:18:41Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > Stop saying “The Khoisan” when you mean “The !Kung”. Other Khoisan groups were not isolated, nor did they occupy climates anywhere as inhospitable as the Kalahari. It might be best to avoid the ambiguous term “Khoisan” altogether as its used in both ethnic and linguistic senses. The Sandawe and Hadzabe people of East Africa speak click (“Khoisan”) languages but are unrelated to the Southern African Khoisan (San and !Kung – aka !XunKxoe ?). The paper I linked to refers to the latter group as SAK (southern African Khoesan). And in the paper’s Figure 1, a giant clading diagram of the entire human family, San and !XunKxoe are shown diverging at the root, as different from each other as each is from the rest of humanity! ---
**Author:** ![Nelson\_Pike](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Nelson\_Pike](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nelson_Pike)\ **Post date:** [September 29, 2015, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-human-races-are-there/732359/135 "2015-09-29T15:44:56Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Hah! You made a mistake reading a paper and can’t admit it. Addressed. See reply #109. Also see #63 for a reminder of your own bad habits when it comes to citation comprehension. > [@John\_Mace](#): > > Not my problem that you trip yourself up by also not understanding the time scale involved. You might also want to spend some time understanding how, over timespans of 10,000 to 100,000 years, climates change in regions of the earth. Without looking anything up: I am aware of the fact that there have been at least three glacial cycle maxima in the last 150,000 years. I guess you are thinking about how the Sahara is known to have been wetter closer to the last maxima, and you jumped to the conclusion that aha! the Kalahari must similarly have spent 1000s of years flowing with milk and honey! Maybe, maybe not: during glacial maxima there is generally less rainfall because of so much water being locked up in ice. Therefore the greening of the Sahara is counterintuitive, and may have resulted from special circumstances not prevailing elsewhere, including the Kalahari. But even if the Kalahari was as green as the Sahara that goes nowhere to establish Khoisan admixture. If the tiny Khoisan group was the _largest_ human population for so long, then the enormous amount of land available for the species per capita must have meant there was no need to compete for any, and the Khoisan, being most numerous, would have had the upper hand if it nevertheless came to a fight. ---
**Author:** ![Hyperelastic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Hyperelastic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hyperelastic)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2015, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-human-races-are-there/732359/136 "2015-09-30T00:30:04Z")
The controversy stems from two different theories of race. The first theory, “naive racism,” says that the behavior of an individual can be predicted based on that individual’s self-identified race. This theory is unsuccessful. There is too much variation within races. You can’t predict someone’s SAT score from his race. The second theory says that race can predict the average behavior of self-identified racial groups. This theory is very successful. If you ask the Educational Testing Service to predict the average SAT score of 1000 17-year-olds of the same race, the prediction will be markedly more accurate if race is accounted for. A similar thing could be said about violent crime rates. These correlations are among the most well-substantiated and persistent in all of social science. Many progressives seem to think that if theory #2 is correct, then there is no reason to treat people of certain races humanely. Maybe they value their own IQ more highly than they really should, so when someone else’s IQ is threatened, they think it’s the ultimate evil. They spend all their energy trying to discredit theory #2, and it just makes them look foolish. It’s like fundamentalist Christians who defend young-earth creationism thinking that if the Biblical account of creation is wrong, then all of the Bible is worthless and it’s OK to lie, cheat and steal. Most ordinary people have no trouble giving theory #2 some credence while at the same time believing that individuals of different races should be treated the same. There’s no obvious conflict. It would take a real moral midget to start being a racist just because he learned about theory #2. I hope the anti-racism of progressives is staked to firmer ground than fairy tales about race having no scientific meaning. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2015, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-human-races-are-there/732359/137 "2015-09-30T01:08:10Z")
A group of humans who had truly been reproductively isolated from the rest of humanity for ~150K years, and who had distinct morphological differences from the rest of humanity would properly be described as a sub-species. Anyone who thinks they have discovered a new subspecies of _H. sapiens_ should rush to publish, because it’ll be hailed as the biological paper of the century. This, by the way, is another way of talking about the smell test. That is, anyone who thinks this is so obviously reading the paper incorrectly that they should immediately question their own interpretation. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2015, 1:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-human-races-are-there/732359/138 "2015-09-30T01:15:50Z")
Ack… missed the edit window. And before someone comes along and says “but they AREN’T morphological different”, I’d ask you to consider how a group could be genetically isolated for 150K years w/o developing any morphological differences. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2015, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-human-races-are-there/732359/139 "2015-09-30T02:38:04Z")
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it? As a credentialed Anthropologist from forty years ago I have plenty of half-assed hypotheses based on poorly-remembered knowledge that was probably thrown out thirty-five years ago. Why, in MY day we didn’t cotton to this new-fangled cladistics shit. And now everything I know is wrong. ☹ But yeah, offhand the very idea that a group of humans could stay genetically isolated for 150k years AND remain genetically _H. sapiens sapiens_ (do we still call ourselves that? it’s like keeping up with Windows versions sometimes) is ludicrous. So I guess I have some reading to do. And follow this thread better. ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2015, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-human-races-are-there/732359/140 "2015-09-30T03:39:19Z")
> [@Nelson\_Pike](#): > > Not that the word “irrelevant” saves you, because dismissing as irrelevant the opinion of a PhD, speaking about a specialty of his in his field, is preposterous. I dismissed the impact factor of _Nature_, not the word of Kim and Schuster et al. So unless by “the opinion of a PhD, speaking about a specialty of his in his field” you are referring to yourself (as you wrote, a “random person on the internet”) your objection is baseless. And even if you are, you’d still be wrong to **cite a journal’s impact factor** to back a point. That’s not how science works. And for good reason, as demonstrated by your trying to use a journal’s authority to support a point that wasn’t even made in the paper published in that journal. > [@Nelson\_Pike](#): > > Why don’t you go look for it? I’ve done my share of providing cites here. No need to look for it. You have provided cites. And you provided this cite, too, thanks. But of course you know that, because you read the paper that cites it. Having now examined it, the main improvement is that the newer model allows the user to assign ancestry to more populations while still maintaining \>98% accuracy. Which is pretty good, but obviously not enough to write “that admix was ruled out to a high enough degree of confidence to state as scientific ally verified fact in 2/4 Khoisan examined.” But of course the authors make no such claim, maybe because they’re good scientists. We can all learn from good scientists. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-human-races-are-there/732359.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-many-human-races-are-there/732359.md?page=8)