Re: Morphological and Genetic Races in Humans

["David Marjanovic" <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

Sorry for slowly becoming off-topic.

>   Actually, there are several distinct races of human kind.

Not in the least genetically, as reading Nature and Science for years must
have told you. Otherwise I can find one or two refs, but there are more.
This is even stated in a UNO declaration.
BTW, one such paper makes what is left of the "negroid type" heavily
paraphyletic... B-)

> [...] morphologically speaking, there can be
> identified several phisologies and morphologies separable into races: the
negroid or "african"
> type, the caucasian or "europoean/white" type, the oriental or
"asian/amerind" type, the
> aboriginal or "australian" type, and the distinctive San or "Bushman"
type, which are not negroid
> in any way.

I can very quickly say "hah, you forgot bambutid ("African pygmies"), aëtid
("Philipine pygmies"), weddid ("Indian aboriginies") and so on." I could
also go on and try to split the """races""" you mentioned into much smaller
"""races""" by morphology including physiognomy, which has often been done;
some have counted 60 races (OK, long ago). You don't have to exaggerate this
approach very far to arrive at 6.1 billion races (just forgot whom I'm
paraphrasing).

> Osteological markers include proportions of the limbs, the form of the
nasals and
> brow, prominence of cheeks, etc. These all form natural populations,

Most of these are just _individual variation_. Just look at the foreheads of
people around you -- some look like straight from the Neandertal. "Natural
populations" is true to some extent, but there has always been contact and
gene flow between almost all of them. The allele for the negative rhesus
factor peaks in Basque Country, where 25 % of the population have it; from
there that amount decreases _gradually_ and has still not reached 0 far in
Asia.

The population of Easter Island has been totally isolated for several
centuries. I know of nobody who might have invented a separate race for them
instead of regarding them as "polynesid mongolids".

> I myself am both Danish/German on one side of my family, and
> Amerind/Irish on the other, making me a Gaulish Celtic Viking Indian, if
you can imagine that!

Sure I can B-) . I myself am of Serbian, Hungarian, probably Polish, likely
Czech, German Jewish and "Austrian" descent (though this range spans several
hundred years, probably further back than US independence); the latter
implies the Baiuvarians around 600 -- 800 AD, who were a mixture of several
Germanic tribes, refugees from everywhere and the "autochthonous"
population, which were Romanized Celts, not to forget the pre-Celtic
population who are usually thrown into the wastebasket "Illyrian". Not to
forget other intruders; it's impossible to find out but there might be Avars
(straight from the Caucasus) and/or Huns (straight from Inner Mongolia)
among my ancestors, not to mention the Turkish and other peoples that joined
the Hungarians on their migration from Bashkortostan (in the middle of
nowhere, er, European Russia), whatever the "Romans" were composed of and
the "autochthonous" populations of Hungary and southeastern Hercegovina. And
so on ad infinitum vel nauseam. To return to the topic -- count the
populations here: 1.

>   There are dog breeds (less than races) that cannot, in any way, cross
breed and are, by
> morphology, genetically isolated. You cannot breed a Chihuahua to a St.
Bernard, for one thing,
> and I beleive this is true even of artificial insemination.

OK: *Canis lupus* has been transformed into a ring species with several
loops. :-)

> The
> multiple evolution of "domestic" dogs indicates for one thing that dogs
are not even their own
> species, but merely interbreedable sets of the wolf, and are *Canis lupus*
_variabilis_ familiaris
> ad caput; they have no real genetic identity except at the artificial
breed.

Indeed, at least some breeds can interbreed with wolves, and *Canis lupus
forma familiaris* has therefore long been used.

I also wrote

> But, as HP Jaime A. Headden wrote, in most cases we don't have
> anywhere near the data to even suspect anagenesis!

I wanted to say that in by far most cases we can't even suspect an
ancestor-descendant relationship between paleontological morphospecies, so
anagenesis is quite pure theory anyway. :-)