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>Do humans not fit the standards for being broken into multiple subspecies? No. Multiple human subspecies did once exist (examples being Neanderthals, Denisova

by krapp 7mo ago

>Do humans not fit the standards for being broken into multiple subspecies? No. Multiple human subspecies did once exist (examples being Neanderthals, Denisovans, Homo Erectus, and Homo Floresiensis) but only our species, Homo Sapiens, remains (with traces of Neanderthal DNA so there was some interbreeding.) However race is a cultural and social construct. Different human races are not different human subspecies. A Pygmy, a Norwegian, a Sentinel Islander, and a Han Chinese person are all the same species. The superficial variations in average height, skin color, etc. do not vary enough to constitute species differentiation - humans share 99.9% of their DNA, and the vast majority of genetic variation exists within populations (in other words, within "races") and not between them.

MrBuddyCasino 7mo ago
But the DNA of the sumatran tiger and a Siberian tiger is also over 99% identical?
- beloch 7mo ago
  The DNA of humans and chimps is 98.8% identical. The percent difference between genomes of species is one of those tricky measures that doesn't really give good intuition. I find it much more useful to think in terms of the time since two species shared a common ancestor. e.g. For humans and chimps, that's several million years. For Sumatran and Siberian tigers, it's around a hundred thousand years.
  - IncreasePosts 7mo ago
    What's the most recent common ancestor between an North Sentinel islander and a Norwegian? Mitochondrial Eve is 150kya
    - vjjsejj 7mo ago
      Probably less than 40k? Since it took a while for modern humans to leave Africa.
      - MrBuddyCasino 7mo ago
        I don’t think the out-of-africa hypothesis is defensible in light of recent archeological findings, and, incidentally, DNA complexity analysis.
        iknowimarat 7mo ago
        Out of africa remains defensible but more and more people will come to the conclusion that the chinese hyporhesis of the multiregional origin is somewhat true so we will get a hybrid i guess
        zozbot234 7mo ago
        The problem is that "Out of Africa" is an uninformative name. The outflow from Africa was well underway 100k years ago or even 200k years ago, and there was no inherent break between that ongoing outflow and what happened 40k years ago when (inasmuch as we can reconstruct today) behaviorally modern rather than 'archaic' humans began to migrate out, which we now call "Out of Africa". So it's hard to even tell apart the "recent Out of Africa" and the "multiregional" hypotheses in a way that might help settle a debate.
    - jltsiren 6mo ago
      There are estimates that the most recent common ancestor of all humanity lived a few thousand years ago. Isolated peoples are almost never fully isolated, and all kinds of rare events can happen in 100+ generations. Andamanese peoples in particular were in contact with each other, with occasional contacts to the mainland. Tasmania may have been isolated for ~8000 years between sea level rise and European contact. But the last person of fully Aboriginal Tasmanian descent likely died in 1905.
  - vjjsejj 7mo ago
    > it's around a hundred thousand years. So not that far away since modern humans began splitting up into separate subgroups outside of Africa? Of course there have been quite a bit of intermixing since then (more so in Eurasia than the more isolated parts of the world before the modern times, though)
  - scotty79 7mo ago
    What percentage of DNA do all mammals share? And what all mammals except platypus?
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
red75prime 7mo ago
> the vast majority of genetic variation exists within populations This particular argument (I am not talking about anything else) always looked to me as "inkblot defense" (Cephalopods muddy water to defend themselves). Genome is discrete. A single nucleotide polymorphism can have far-reaching consequences. So it's a bit like arguing that this collection of pentagons is not statistically different from this collection of hexagons because radius variation within collections is greater than between collections. One day I've got into trouble by pointing to another genetic adaptation (EPAS1 SNPs) rather than the poster child of genetic differences: an SNP in the 6th codon of the β-globin gene. But that's another story.
- scotty79 7mo ago
  Species is a fuzzy concept, much like class of radius variation.
vjjsejj 7mo ago
Well humans and chimpanzees share almost 99% of their DNA despite being quite distant relative so that number is somewhat deceptive. Not disagreeing with the overall point of course
scotty79 7mo ago
In the age of AI we probably could do better in dvivding humans by pattern of variation rather than amount of variation. But who cares about such divisions if we all can interbreed?
naasking 7mo ago
> However race is a cultural and social construct. [...] The superficial variations in average height, skin color, etc. do not vary enough to constitute species differentiation Species is also a social construct. Calling race a social construct isn't the persuasive argument people seem to assume. > the vast majority of genetic variation exists within populations (in other words, within "races") and not between them. This is is a fallacious argument, because there is no such thing as the "average Norwegian" and the "average Pygmy", and so you cannot even construct a meaningful sentence like "the average Norwegian and the average Pygmy are more alike than any individual Norwegian is to any other Norwegian". People need to stop using this silly argument.
- krapp 6mo ago
  It's the established scientific consensus. Obviously it isn't convincing to racists, but no argument would be given that racists don't approach the subject in good faith to begin with. I think you're being too pedantic, though, because the statement "the average Norwegian and the average Pygmy are more alike than any individual Norwegian is to any other Norwegian" is perfectly sensible within the context of this thread and relative to the supposition that genetic variability between human populations is a valid basis to justify a biological definition of race and further classifying human races as subspecies. That species is also a social construct is true, and you seem to think that it disproves the premise, but it really doesn't because species is a social construct in the sense that all scientific classification is a social construct. But when people say that race is a social construct, they mean it was created to justify white supremacy, slavery and colonialism, and that (unlike species) it serves no useful scientific purpose. You're intentionally omitting necessary context to create a false equivalence between race and species. Here are some actual scientifically credentialed papers and statements supporting the thesis that race has no biological basis. I doubt anyone will bother reading them but here they are just for the record. Further reading is easy to find. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8604262/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8604262/ https://bioanth.org/about/aaba-statement-on-race-racism/ https://bioanth.org/about/aaba-statement-on-race-racism/ https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/impediments-to-countering-racist-pseudoscience/96D909C410413AFBF21EFF8C3FD5878D https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-s... https://www.sapiens.org/biology/is-race-real/ https://www.sapiens.org/biology/is-race-real/

by krapp 7mo ago

MrBuddyCasino 7mo ago

But the DNA of the sumatran tiger and a Siberian tiger is also over 99% identical?

beloch 7mo ago
The DNA of humans and chimps is 98.8% identical. The percent difference between genomes of species is one of those tricky measures that doesn't really give good intuition. I find it much more useful to think in terms of the time since two species shared a common ancestor. e.g. For humans and chimps, that's several million years. For Sumatran and Siberian tigers, it's around a hundred thousand years.
- IncreasePosts 7mo ago
  What's the most recent common ancestor between an North Sentinel islander and a Norwegian? Mitochondrial Eve is 150kya
  - vjjsejj 7mo ago
    Probably less than 40k? Since it took a while for modern humans to leave Africa.
    - MrBuddyCasino 7mo ago
      I don’t think the out-of-africa hypothesis is defensible in light of recent archeological findings, and, incidentally, DNA complexity analysis.
      - iknowimarat 7mo ago
        Out of africa remains defensible but more and more people will come to the conclusion that the chinese hyporhesis of the multiregional origin is somewhat true so we will get a hybrid i guess
        zozbot234 7mo ago
        The problem is that "Out of Africa" is an uninformative name. The outflow from Africa was well underway 100k years ago or even 200k years ago, and there was no inherent break between that ongoing outflow and what happened 40k years ago when (inasmuch as we can reconstruct today) behaviorally modern rather than 'archaic' humans began to migrate out, which we now call "Out of Africa". So it's hard to even tell apart the "recent Out of Africa" and the "multiregional" hypotheses in a way that might help settle a debate.
  - jltsiren 6mo ago
    There are estimates that the most recent common ancestor of all humanity lived a few thousand years ago. Isolated peoples are almost never fully isolated, and all kinds of rare events can happen in 100+ generations. Andamanese peoples in particular were in contact with each other, with occasional contacts to the mainland. Tasmania may have been isolated for ~8000 years between sea level rise and European contact. But the last person of fully Aboriginal Tasmanian descent likely died in 1905.
- vjjsejj 7mo ago
  > it's around a hundred thousand years. So not that far away since modern humans began splitting up into separate subgroups outside of Africa? Of course there have been quite a bit of intermixing since then (more so in Eurasia than the more isolated parts of the world before the modern times, though)
- scotty79 7mo ago
  What percentage of DNA do all mammals share? And what all mammals except platypus?

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

red75prime 7mo ago

> the vast majority of genetic variation exists within populations This particular argument (I am not talking about anything else) always looked to me as "inkblot defense" (Cephalopods muddy water to defend themselves). Genome is discrete. A single nucleotide polymorphism can have far-reaching consequences. So it's a bit like arguing that this collection of pentagons is not statistically different from this collection of hexagons because radius variation within collections is greater than between collections. One day I've got into trouble by pointing to another genetic adaptation (EPAS1 SNPs) rather than the poster child of genetic differences: an SNP in the 6th codon of the β-globin gene. But that's another story.

scotty79 7mo ago
Species is a fuzzy concept, much like class of radius variation.

vjjsejj 7mo ago

Well humans and chimpanzees share almost 99% of their DNA despite being quite distant relative so that number is somewhat deceptive. Not disagreeing with the overall point of course

scotty79 7mo ago

In the age of AI we probably could do better in dvivding humans by pattern of variation rather than amount of variation. But who cares about such divisions if we all can interbreed?

naasking 7mo ago

> However race is a cultural and social construct. [...] The superficial variations in average height, skin color, etc. do not vary enough to constitute species differentiation Species is also a social construct. Calling race a social construct isn't the persuasive argument people seem to assume. > the vast majority of genetic variation exists within populations (in other words, within "races") and not between them. This is is a fallacious argument, because there is no such thing as the "average Norwegian" and the "average Pygmy", and so you cannot even construct a meaningful sentence like "the average Norwegian and the average Pygmy are more alike than any individual Norwegian is to any other Norwegian". People need to stop using this silly argument.

krapp 6mo ago
It's the established scientific consensus. Obviously it isn't convincing to racists, but no argument would be given that racists don't approach the subject in good faith to begin with. I think you're being too pedantic, though, because the statement "the average Norwegian and the average Pygmy are more alike than any individual Norwegian is to any other Norwegian" is perfectly sensible within the context of this thread and relative to the supposition that genetic variability between human populations is a valid basis to justify a biological definition of race and further classifying human races as subspecies. That species is also a social construct is true, and you seem to think that it disproves the premise, but it really doesn't because species is a social construct in the sense that all scientific classification is a social construct. But when people say that race is a social construct, they mean it was created to justify white supremacy, slavery and colonialism, and that (unlike species) it serves no useful scientific purpose. You're intentionally omitting necessary context to create a false equivalence between race and species. Here are some actual scientifically credentialed papers and statements supporting the thesis that race has no biological basis. I doubt anyone will bother reading them but here they are just for the record. Further reading is easy to find. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8604262/ https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8604262/ https://bioanth.org/about/aaba-statement-on-race-racism/ https://bioanth.org/about/aaba-statement-on-race-racism/ https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-sciences/article/impediments-to-countering-racist-pseudoscience/96D909C410413AFBF21EFF8C3FD5878D https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/evolutionary-human-s... https://www.sapiens.org/biology/is-race-real/ https://www.sapiens.org/biology/is-race-real/