Re: Morphological and Genetic Races in Humans

["Jaime A. Headden" <qilongia@yahoo.com>]

David Marjanovic (david.marjanovic@gmx.at) wrote:

<To draw any line here would be even a lot more arbitrary than to draw one 
between *Homo ergaster*
and *Homo sapiens* in East Africa, who are surely just chronospecies there, _if 
we had a much
better fossil record from 200,000 years ago_.>

  And should I say that I draw no lines? I do not recognize genetic 
exclusivity, period,
full-stop. My point here is that interbreedability exists in spite of the fact 
that broad
catagorial (maybe one criterion per group) can exist within many races. Even so 
refined as a 2,000
count set of races, it is irrelevant. There is an essentially african 
morphotype (does not cross
the Bushman type), there is an essentially mongloid or asian/amerind 
morphotype, and there is an
essentially caucasian morphotype. As with dogs and cat breeds, the intermixing 
of types has led to
a good deal of confusion regarding what we recognize as a "race," by fuzzing 
the boundaries. This
is what happens at a finer level than dog or cat breeds, but dogs are not as 
prevalent in their
mixing as humans are [same for cats].

  There are broad morphological features that indicate an essential type that 
we have had to deal
with for thousands of years. One can argue that Avars are not even a race, nor 
are the Turks, as
they are essentially middle-eastern in type. I see that in the effort to 
destabilize the
exclusive-race theory (which is a good thing) that the nature of the distinct 
racial morphotype
has been lost. It means nothing, except as a measure of diversification in 
human history. The more
plesiomoprhies, the more ancient a lineage. It's as simple as that. Caucasions 
as a whole
typically lack the head brows, broad cheeks, and have saddle-shaped nasals, as 
a result of their
ecology [cloudy, temperate, more delicate masticatory needs, etc.]. To argue 
the abscence of these
types is to take the "no race" concept too far.

  Interbreeding occurs, and I'm sure that in a few thousand years, if we're 
lucky, it will have
occured to such an extent that it would not be any more possible to distinguish 
a person from
Africa from someone from Svalbard from a person in the Australian Bush or the 
deeps of Amazonia.
Do I worry? No. In the past 5000 years I am very certain the distinctions were 
much more prevalent
than they are now, as intermixing had not occured as much.


=====
Jaime A. Headden

  Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhr-gen-ti-na
  Where the Wind Comes Sweeping Down the Pampas!!!!

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