Quote:
Originally Posted by iheartthed
Yes, a group of people who have lived in the same isolated environment for a long period of time will have a similar genetic makeup. I have not disputed that. There are countless groups of people that have been relatively isolated from the rest of humanity for an extended period of time. Do each of those groups get divided into a race? Where do you draw the line between one race and another? Is there a test that you can use to say X person is or is not of Y race that will hold true for all people of said race and no one else? What about the rest of us (which includes everyone reading this forum) whose ancestors have been pretty active in the global genetic gene pool?
There is no single genetic characteristic that can be used to put human beings into any meaningful race classification system. If you use skin color, there are people who are "black" that have lighter skin than someone who may be considered "white." If you use hair texture then that breaks similarly. If you use any trait imaginable it is almost certainly not distinct to members of a certain human subgroup.
|
You could use the same logic for all continuums in which we have to draw arbitrary lines.
For example, the climate is a continuum between Detroit and Miami. There's no noticeable difference in climate between Detroit and, say, Toledo. "Where do you draw the line?" The answer is, we can find places to draw them. The alternative would be that we consider all of Earth to have the same exact climate. For any location you can think of, there is a location just next door that has basically the exact same climate, but slightly slightly different. For any person you can think of, there is a very similar person that has generally similar characteristics but is slightly further on the genetic path towards a different ethnicity.
So we find ways to manage to define the Earth's various climates (imperfectly). Same with races. There's a continuum between all the races, yet it's very possible to identify distinct characteristics, even though of course some people will be in between.