Technically, yes to producing viable offspring. They both have the same amount of chomosomes (I can explain why that is, if you want).
It was only around 150k years ago that they diverged.
Yes there are. Visit Uganda or Japan.
Are you able to answer my questions yet, Chen?
They are rather simple questions, and since your entire position hinges on you ability to answer them it is odd that you are ignoring them, while answering questions I have put to other posters.
Well, maybe not all that odd, certainly very telling.
So, you chose African and Caucasian as examples of races, of genetically and phenotypically distinct groups.
So according to you Muammar Ghaddafi, Anwar Saddat and Nelson Mandela are all the same race; African. Whereas Saddat and Ghaddafi, being African, are not the same race as Yassir Arafat or Ariel Sharon, both Asian Caucasians, and Saddat and Sharon are the same race as both Mahatma Ghandi and Boris Yeltsin, who are also Caucasian.
I’ve been waiting for a race proponent to answer this question for years. Normally they dodge and weave and avoid answering. Thank you for being honest
Now we can finally play ball.
Can you please tell us what phenotypic characters are shared by Mandela, Ghaddafi and Saddat that enabled you to place them in the same race? And when you have done that, can you tell use what the genotypic basis of the cluster is?
You also claimed that races must genetically isolated. Can you please tell use how Egypt has managed to remain genetically isolated fom Israel/Palestine, and how Libya has remained isolated from Spain, and present us with your evidence that this is the case?
Because your entire position hinges on your claims that races are genotpyically distinct, phenotypically distinct and genetically isolated.
Now that you have named two races for us I look forward to seeing your evidence that theyare indeed genotpyically distinct, phenotypically distinct and genetically isolated.
Then we can start working oin the much more difficult case: the fact that Ghandi, Yeltsin and Arafat are apparently more genetically and phenotypically similar to each other than Arafat is to Sadat. That’s gonna take some doing I can tell you.
Are you seriously stating that either Uganda or Japan are reproductively isolated, and that the population in each is composed entirely of individuals with a consistent and distinctive phenotype that separates every individual in that population from every other individual human in the world? Because that would be demonstrably, even ridiculously, wrong.
You keep repeating the same quote about “clusters” as if repetition can make it true and accurate. Please note, this tactic isn’t working.
Oh, and what Blake said.
Well, of course. I wasn’t debating that with him. We all agree that, as of today, there are no human sub-species.
My question was a different one - when it could be said the last human sub-species different from us existed, at the same time as modern humans. We all agree that, whenever that was (if ever), it is not the case now that any exist.
“Race” obviously exists as a social construct, based in part on physical differences, but no modern humans are genetically isolated.
Sorry if I gave the impression that you were in disagreement! I knew you were not. Others though do appear to differ.
I cannot answer your question, as it is beyond my area of expertise. I would though also be intrigued to see an answer based upon current understanding of human evolution.
You’re not going to get a consensus on that, as there just isn’t enough data.
As you probably know, there is a tendency for anthropologists to want whatever fossil they find to somehow be “new”, so they’ll say it’s part of a new taxa rather than an exsting one. Setting it in a subspecies is very subjective, and other anthropologists are always going to object.
There is a school of thought (though I’d hardly call it a consensus) that our species consisted of a population (or populations) of “anatomically modern humans” earlier than about 100k years ago. That is, they look like us, but they weren’t cognitively the same as us. This is based on the tool kits of those specimens being pretty much like those of Neanderthals. The oldest of these fossils, at about 195k years ago has been labeled Homo sapiens idaltu.
Sometime around 100k years, we broke thru some cognitive barrier (often thought to have to do with fully articulate speech), and became fully modern-- H. sapiens sapiens. These fossils are associated with a more advanced tool kit as well clear signs of decorative artifacts (eg, shell beads).
But this is speculative, and not what one could call the consensus view-- if there ever will be one on the subject. I doubt that even its strongest proponents would put if forth as well established scientific fact.
That’s fine, I didn’t expect there to be a final accord; the speculation is equally intriguing. As will be the inevitable continuing debates whenever new evidence is discovered and fresh explanatory scenarios are proposed. Thanks for providing!
How is it a strawman to accuratelly analyse someone’s position in good faith?
Mixed? Mixed with what? Is this really what your position hinges on? That any time someone demonstrates that your races don’t exist you claim that they must be mixed with something? IOW that they aren’t true members of that race?
And I just bet you know that because they don’t eat sugar with their porridge. Right?
And what precisely do you mean by “smaller indigenous populations”? As I stated, there are hundreds of millions of such people, probably over a billion.
Are you admitting that your “races” fail completely to categorise 1/6th of the human population who have lived in the same geographic area for >40, 000 years?
If that is what you are admitting then I thinkyour opponents can rest their case right there. Clearly your racial categorisations are utterly useless, totally meaningless and provide no information whatsoever.
Oh, of course. The True Asians. Right? The ones that wear kilts and don’t eat sugar with their porridge?
And how, pray tell, do you distinguish these true Asians from the vast majotity who are apparently regular Asians?
Are all Chinese true Asians, includingthis one? Or are some Chinese “True Asians” and some not?
Or perhaps all Chinese are "True Asians, but not all IndoChinese are True Asians? But if that is the case where is the line of demarcation where the populations become gentically isolated?
Because your whole position hinges on these populations being genetically isolated and phenotypically distinct.
So where, on the geographic continuum between (presumably) “True Asian” Beijing Chinese and the obviously Black Mani of the Malay Peninsula, does the genetic isolation occur?
Across that landmass, with an apparently subtle shift from “True Asian” to “True Black”, where exactly are you claiming that genetic interchange ceases and two contiguous populations become genetically isoalted?
You really must be able you answer this question, Chen, for your position to have any legs at all. Your position hinges entirely on “True Asian” populations being genetically isolated from Australoid. So you must be able to tell us where the isolation point occurs.
Because just looking at at he people between Beijing and Bangkok there appears to be a gradual and subtle shift from “True Asian” to “True Black”, with no indications at all of genetic isolation at any point.
No, because I’m not talking about different species. Sesardic comments:
Do you agree with Sesardic’s comments about subspecies later in the same article?
http://www.ln.edu.hk/philoso/staff/sesardic/getfile.php?file=Race.pdf
Whoa Nellie. Put the Red Herrings back into the can. The issue is not whether you are talking about different species. The issue is that you are talking about
and about
You novel introduction of the term species is total red herring.
You made the claim that Uganda and Japan are home to reproductively and geographically isolated human populations with different allele frequencies and distinct phenotypes.
Now are you going to stand by that claim, and provide some evidence to support it, or are you going to retract the claim?
Never mind whether you are or are not referring to species. Just concentrate on what you were referring to, which is the existence reproductively and geographically isolated human populations with different allele frequencies and distinct phenotypes in both Uganda and Japan.
[quote=“Blake, post:190, topic:553699”]
The fact that red and yellow can be mixed to produce orange does not mean that red and yellow are illusions or do not exist. Goodrum makes the point here:
You can see the difference in allele frequencies between the Asian & African groups illustrated here.
So Chen, are you unable to answer my questions, or simply unwilling?
As I stated earlier, the assignment of a taxonomic designation (species, subspecies/race, even higher levels) is intended to convey information, not distort understanding. Nor does the assignment of a taxon create information where none existed before. Given that populations biology deals with large numbers often spread over great distances as well as great expanses of time, given limitations of sampling, and given the problems associated with that “moment in time” issue, several different depictions may be necessary or may succeed each other in the literature to provide comprehensive understanding.
This is why assignments of taxonomic levels are often controversial. One researcher may conclude that some organism is best understood as “three species and 5 subspecies in a single genus” while another may parse the same organisms into multiple species in several genera, with a third researcher gathering them all together into a single multivariate taxon. All of this is true for biology on a generic level.
None of this changes the fact that, given the appropriate definitions of terms like race and/or subspecies, and given the reality of the human population of the world as it is right now, it is completely incorrect to assert that today’s humans can be divided into races. The attempt to do so distorts understanding of the human species, and attempts to create new information where there was none.
Oh, and once again, what Blake said.
So Chen, are you unable to answer my questions, or simply unwilling?
I’ve already posted some papers where in fact this is done & individuals tend to cluster genetically with others of the same ancestral geographic origins. These correspond to traditional continental racial populations. Further, as the Sesardic article notes, forensic anthropologists do this routinely using new or traditional methods of bone analysis.
You don’t say. You mean to tell us that people who are geographically proximate are also genetically similar? Who would have ever thought that!
Nice debunking of something that no one posting here has asserted to be true.
“Clustering” has nothing to do with genetic isolation.
So Chen, it seems you are utterly incapable of answeringmy questions.
Given that your entire position relies on an ability to accurately answer exactly those questions, I think we can discount your position as ignorant nonsense.
Don’t you?