Determine race by DNA? Psuedo science?

[Dustin Kesselberg]

I'm hearing alot about people determining your Race by your DNA,and I've heard about how it's done and there just seem to be way too many flaws in it to get an accurate answer as to someone's race.

This is how it's done...

They go around the world getting different DNA samples from thousands of people on every continent..
Then they get someone's DNA who wants to know their racial ancestory.
Once they have that persons DNA they determine what percent of people from various contries they have DNA in common with and then conclude that is their race.

So say I get my DNA tested and they compair my DNA to other peoples around the world and get the results back that Im 40% african by race!
Say also Im a blonde haired blue eyed and white ghost type person who's parents,grandparents and great grandparents all come from places like norway,iceland and finland.
What's the problem here? If I am indeed 40% african one of my grandparents must be atleast 100% african by race. Which they aren't.

I've come up with alot of flaws in the actuall testing methods.

1.The number of people who they got their samples from around the world are just way too small. It would have to include everyone on the planet for it to be accurate.

2.They are simply compairing the DNA to other's who are in their sample population. However it's very likely that most of someone's ancestors who were european have died off and no DNA remains in the world of those people and the only DNA remotely related to yours happens to be in africa. That does not mean you're 30 or 40% african. It just means that most of your european ancestors have died out and you only happen to have relatives in africa who share some common DNA from thousands and thousands of years back,Who are really nowhere near related to you.

3.Just because someone lives in Africa it does not make them African by race. There are millions of white europeans living in Africa who's ancestors migrated there in the 16th and 17th century from europe.
The same goes for Asia or India. Just because 50% of someone's relatives happen to live in Africa it does not make them African by race.


I was watching on PBS where some scientist was being interviewed who was a teacher at some University. He was doing these tests on students who wanted to know their racial statistics. He was saying that alot of people were supprised to find out they were 30% southeast asian or 10% African.
However If someone is 10% african...They will know it.
Because You have 2 parents. You get 50% of your genetics from them. You have 4 grandparents,You get 25% of your dna from each of them. And you have 8 grandparents and you get about 12% of your DNA from them.
If someone were say 10% African by race,Their great grandparents would be basically 100% African. Now how could a family not know that their parents or grandparents were 100% African? How could they believe for all of these years that they were completly european or White when their grandparent happened to be 100% African? That students grandparents would be half African. How could that student not realize that?

The fact is...The DNA testing to determine race is completly flawed. Just because someone happens to have 10% of their relatives living in Africa does not make them African by race. Just because someone has 10% of their relatives(From this super tiny population) does not make them African.
Just because someone actually has 10% of his living relatives as Africans who are african by race..It does not make that person 10% African.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

It's more complex than that. The idea is to find markers for certain phenotypes. For example, ten years ago one might have thought that a marker for Tay-Sachs disease meant you were an Ashkenazi Jew. Genzyme banked on it. However, it turns out that the same marker is now found in some Japanese and other groups, much to Genzyme's delight. This shows that the correspondence of origin with phenotype is not cut and dried.

Now picture hundreds of these markers. By analyzing your DNA, I can sort of triangulate your origins(s) by noting which markers you carry.

Note that I'm expressing no opinion about whether the concept of race is reasonable or not.

~~ Paul

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

It's more complex than that. The idea is to find markers for certain phenotypes. For example, ten years ago one might have thought that a marker for Tay-Sachs disease meant you were an Ashkenazi Jew. Genzyme banked on it. However, it turns out that the same marker is now found in some Japanese and other groups, much to Genzyme's delight. This shows that the correspondence of origin with phenotype is not cut and dried.

Now picture hundreds of these markers. By analyzing your DNA, I can sort of triangulate your origins(s) by noting which markers you carry.

Note that I'm expressing no opinion about whether the concept of race is reasonable or not.

~~ Paul

When I saw it...They were doing what I said. They were taking samples from a few hundred people from each continent and then compairing the persons DNA to that. Maybe by the way you're saying,But they definitly showed the person a little map where there was little "flags" showing where the people who had similar DNA lived.


Also explain how a family could possibly not know if they are a majority African.


Also isn't it likely that somehow the markers that are occurent in Europeans for example spread through someone's family where the markers for Africans did not,And this person was clearly African?

[Darat]

Originally Posted by Dustin

...snip...

Also explain how a family could possibly not know if they are a majority African.

...snip...

Doesn't your question only make sense if you start with the preconception that there is a an "identifiable" (by appearance) "African race"?

The only definition I think that can be in any way meaningful to call someone an "African" is "someone who was born in the African continent". Which say nothing at all about what we could expect an "African" to look like.

[CFLarsen]

Originally Posted by Darat

"someone who was born in the African continent"

Shouldn't that be "born on the African continent"?

[Darat]

Originally Posted by CFLarsen

Shouldn't that be "born on the African continent"?

Oh you'd include the surface dwellers as well?

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Originally Posted by Darat

Doesn't your question only make sense if you start with the preconception that there is a an "identifiable" (by appearance) "African race"?

The only definition I think that can be in any way meaningful to call someone an "African" is "someone who was born in the African continent". Which say nothing at all about what we could expect an "African" to look like.

You know good and well that it's easy to identify someone if they are African by race or european..ect

I've never seen an african person who was African by race who did not look African.

Even albino's who are African by race look clearly African in their facial features.

And I don't think you looked hard for a definition..

Quote:

Ne·groid ( P ) Pronunciation Key (ngroid) Anthropology
adj.

Of or being a major human racial classification traditionally distinguished by physical characteristics such as brown to black pigmentation and often tightly curled hair and including peoples indigenous to sub-Saharan Africa. Not in scientific use.

adj : characteristic of people traditionally classified as the Negro race; "negroid features" n : a person with dark skin who comes from Africa (or whose ancestors came from Africa) [syn: Black, Black person, blackamoor, Negro, Negroid]

In contrast to..

caucasoid-
Of or relating to the Caucasian racial classification. Not in scientific use.



Im obviously not going to get into the whole race thing with you,However generally speaking no one who's line of ancestors are African looks European and vise versa.
You find me someone who is african by race who has European features(lighter skin,Lighter hair,European facial features) And I'll show you that person has people who are european by race in their immediate ancestory.

[Darat]

Originally Posted by Dustin

You know good and well that it's easy to identify someone if they are African by race or european..ect

I've never seen an african person who was African by race who did not look African.

"African by race" - that's exactly what I was saying - you've already decided what that means but then you use it to support an argument about "African race". A definition to be useful can't refer to itself, that's just circular reasoning.

I perhaps have an advantage over you since I lived in two African countries for quite a few years and traveled throughout Africa so my experience of the continent is first hand.

Originally Posted by Dustin

Even albino's who are African by race look clearly African in their facial features.

And I don't think you looked hard for a definition..

I didn't look for a definition. I stated that a useful or meaningful definitionwould be one like I gave (and pedantically corrected by Claus). The one you quote is a meaningless, circular definition because it assumes certain characteristics exist and then uses them to define those characteristics.

Out of curiosity which of these is an African face:

[CFLarsen]

Originally Posted by Darat

Oh you'd include the surface dwellers as well?

Huh?

Ah. Brit Humour.

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Dustin

I've never seen an african person who was African by race who did not look African.

How would you know if you did?

We could probably make a list of markers that are identified with high probability with people whose ancestors came from various parts of Africa. There would always be some people from those regions that did not have a particular marker. Then we could analyze the DNA of a random person and give him an idea about the origin of his ancestors.

One of the purposes of this project is to trace the history of human migration:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4435009.stm

The Genographic Project site:

https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/...hic/index.html

~~ Paul

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Originally Posted by Darat

"African by race" - that's exactly what I was saying - you've already decided what that means but then you use it to support an argument about "African race". A definition to be useful can't refer to itself, that's just circular reasoning.

No,I've defined what it means. Someone who's ancestory is african,More specificaly sub-Saharan Africa.

Originally Posted by Darat

I perhaps have an advantage over you since I lived in two African countries for quite a few years and traveled throughout Africa so my experience of the continent is first hand.

I don't see how that makes a bit of difference. Traveling through africa really makes no difference since as i've mentioned there are alot of europeans living in Africa who are not african by race along with alot of mixing.

Originally Posted by Darat

I didn't look for a definition. I stated that a useful or meaningful definitionwould be one like I gave (and pedantically corrected by Claus). The one you quote is a meaningless, circular definition because it assumes certain characteristics exist and then uses them to define those characteristics.

It does not assume those characteristics exist in african populations...Those characteristics DO exist in those african populations.

Originally Posted by Darat

Out of curiosity which of these is an African face:

None of them are completly African by race. Maybe some of them have norther-african in them however they look middle-eastern.The second one looks to have Caucasian in him.

Note that even if all of them happen to be from africa(probably northern africa,egypt) that does not mean they belong to the Negroid race.

Here's a few examples of people who are obviously African and belong to the Negroid race,just random pictures i've googled.



African soldier...



African man with caucasian mix.



Another African man.

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

How would you know if you did?



We could probably make a list of markers that are identified with high probability with people whose ancestors came from various parts of Africa. There would always be some people from those regions that did not have a particular marker. Then we could analyze the DNA of a random person and give him an idea about the origin of his ancestors.

One of the purposes of this project is to trace the history of human migration:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4435009.stm

The Genographic Project site:

https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/...hic/index.html

~~ Paul

It still runs into the same problems that i've detailed in the beginning.

[Darat]

Originally Posted by Dustin

No,I've defined what it means. Someone who's ancestory is African,More specifically sub-Saharan Africa.

So you no longer mean "African race" but "sub-Saharan African race"...

Quote:

I don't see how that makes a bit of difference. Traveling through Africa really makes no difference since as I've mentioned there are alot of europeans living in Africa who are not african by race along with alot of mixing.

I was commenting that I might be slightly more aware of the difference in appearances that exists between different African people then you are, which it seems I am...

Quote:

It does not assume those characteristics exist in african populations...Those characteristics DO exist in those african populations.

(You made a mistake above you forget to use your new racial group i.e. "sub-sharan africans")

But they also exist elsewhere - they are not unique to "sub-Saharan African populations".

Quote:

None of them are completly African by race. Maybe some of them have norther-african in them however they look middle-eastern.The second one looks to have Caucasian in him.

All, apart from the smallest picture, are Africans, the smallest picture is of a "European". Sp it appears that even you cannot tell Africans from Europeans...

Quote:

Note that even if all of them happen to be from africa(probably northern africa,egypt) that does not mean they belong to the Negroid race.

Now another racial group... have you perhaps ever considerd that these racial groups are not quite as distinct and unique as you thought they were?

Quote:

Here's a few examples of people who are obviously African and belong to the Negroid race,just random pictures i've googled.

They are not obviously African to me and given you've just been shown not to be able to distinguish Africans from other "races" perhaps if you hadn't googled them you wouldn't have been able to correctly identify their race as "sub Saharan Africans".





African soldier...



African man with caucasian mix.



Another African man.[/quote]

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Originally Posted by Darat

So you no longer mean "African race" but "sub-Saharan African race"...

When I say "African race" I mean people who have Negroid features..I.E. the features I've already listed.

Originally Posted by Darat

I was commenting that I might be slightly more aware of the difference in appearances that exists between different African people then you are, which it seems I am...

As i've said,Considering how many Europeans and Arabs live in Africa..It would not make any difference.

Also it's special pleading.

Originally Posted by Darat

(You made a mistake above you forget to use your new racial group i.e. "sub-sharan africans")

But they also exist elsewhere - they are not unique to "sub-Saharan African populations"

Actually the only place in the world where people look anywhere remotely close to Sub-Saharan Africans(Negroids) Would be native Australian aboriginals.

You don't see native people's of the European population who have the features that those who belong to the Negroid race have.

Originally Posted by Darat

All, apart from the smallest picture, are Africans, the smallest picture is of a "European". Sp it appears that even you cannot tell Africans from Europeans...

Apparently you're not reading what Im saying...

I said that EVEN IF they happen to live in Africa it does not mean they belong to any African Race.
I've got a blonde haired blue eyed uncle who lives in south Africa...However that does not mean he is African by race.

Please pay attention to what I'm saying.

Originally Posted by Darat

Now another racial group... have you perhaps ever considerd that these racial groups are not quite as distinct and unique as you thought they were?

Definitely not.

Originally Posted by Darat

They are not obviously African to me and given you've just been shown not to be able to distinguish Africans from other "races" perhaps if you hadn't googled them you wouldn't have been able to correctly identify their race as "sub Saharan Africans".

So you're claiming that these people don't obviously belong to any African races?

And As I've said...Just because they happen to live in Africa it does not mean they are African by race(your photographs).



I really don't know if you are actually that unaware of the fact there are distinct races or you're just trying to be funny...

So I'll explain it as simply as I can...

I will define "Race" and I will tell you how we determine who belongs to which race.

Race-A local geographic or global human population distinguished as a more or less distinct group by genetically transmitted physical characteristics.

These physical characteristics include facial features and Skin color.

People who belong to a specific race have these characteristics in common.

There are 3 major races.
1.Caucasoid(Europeans)
2.Negroid(Africans,Native Australians)
3.Mongoloid(Asians)

People who belong to a spcific race say "Negroids" have physical characteristics in common. Dark/black skin,Wide and flat nose,kinky dark hair..ect

How do we know that people who are native to Africa have these physical characteristics?
Obviously you're going to resort to special pleading and claim that Africans don't have these characteristics..So I will give you examples that are obvious to anyone.

1.When Europeans came to Africa and brought Africans over to America as slaves,Why did Racism even exist if Africans don't actually generally look different than Europeans like you're claiming?
Heck,Racism would not even exist if as you're claiming..There was no identifiable differences between various races. There would of been no slavery,There would of been no Holocaust,There would of been no segregation in America,There would of been none of these things if there were no identifiable physical characteristics between say people who's ancestors came from Europe and someone's who's came from Africa.

2.Why is it that anyone who claims to be "African American" has these physical characteristics? I.E. black skin and facial features similar to the photographs of africans I posted. Why don't we see any Pale white blonde haired blue eyed people with european facial features claiming to be African-American?

3.Why does the FBI identify fugitives by their "race" if there is indeed no general physical characteristics between the races,Like you're claiming? They I.D. a person as either White,Black,Hispanic or Asian. If as you're claiming there is no general physical differences between the races...How would this even work?

4.Why is it if we look at an African Tribe for instance,One who does not allow outsiders to come in and interbreed...We see they all have the same general physical characteristics..Black hair,Black skin,Similar facial features..ect. Why is it that we don't see a non-albino blonde haired blue eyed guy with european features who's ancestors all lived in the tribe for generations? Why do we see that they all have the same similar characteristics?



The fact of the matter is humans ARE separated into various and distinct "races" or "populations" or whatever you would like to call them. As humans migrated the populations separated and as they became separated they started to develop distinct physical characteristics. Africans skin stayed dark due to more exposure to harmful UV rays. Europeans skin tone lightened due to less exposure to UV rays.

[Soapy Sam]

Dustin-
Are you aware that your division of mankind into "races" is totally based on characters of appearance?

Are you aware that your apparent inability to distinguish between the appearance of Africans and Australian Aboriginals is a failing not shared by either people? I once saw a group of Chinese scientists wholly unable to tell four British scientists apart, because the four were dressed alike and the Chinese lacked the practice necessary to recognise clues to appearance in westerners.
The inhabitants of a Bantu village , town or city don't look alike to each other, only to you because you are unable to tell them apart. Your failing, not their lack of variability.

Are you aware that there is more variation in nuclear DNA between native Africans (ie excluding European settlers of the last 400 years) than among virtually everyone else on the planet?

The use of mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome DNA to establish "ethnic origin" is indeed full of potential error. So long as it's viewed as a possibly useful tool for palaeoanthropologists and as a bit of fun for the rest of us, this sort of procedure is fine- but it's at a very early stage. I would not put much faith in it's conclusions, which are also often misunderstood and misreported by journalists.

Are you aware that it's highly probable that you and I are both 100% African?

Are you aware your posts seem to be acquiring distinctly racist overtones?

Slavery as an economic system is not historically restricted to America. The Vikings kept slaves, for example, generally white ones. One difference was that an Icelander could be legally punished for maltreating a slave. To claim that slavery requires a physiological difference is silly.

Actually, this thread is getting pretty silly.

[drkitten]

Originally Posted by Soapy Sam

Are you aware that there is more variation in nuclear DNA between native Africans (ie excluding European settlers of the last 400 years) than among virtually everyone else on the planet?

Which in and of itself suggests a method for testing race -- that is, a partial division between what you just called "native Africans," and "virtually everyone else on the planet." Just look at nuclear DNA and see how well it fits the the DNA pattern of a typical European, and if the variance is too large, then the person is probably sub-Saharan African.

You can't have it both ways....

Quote:

Are you aware that it's highly probable that you and I are both 100% African?

If you go back far enough, sure.

Quote:

Actually, this thread is getting pretty silly.

Yeah, but at least part of the reason is the politics masquerading as science. Of course there are obvious differences among national and continental sub-groups (as was pointed out earlier, if there weren't, the FBI wouldn't bother to put "race" on their APB's). Some are less obvious : see, for example this page for the geographic distribution of blood type (ABO system) in various "native" populations -- and observe how a clearly genetic trait varies geographically.

Superimpose enough of these geographic patterns atop each other and you'd be astonished at what will inevitably come out of the mix. It's a simple application of data mining.

[hammegk]

Originally Posted by Soapy Sam

Dustin-
Are you aware that your division of mankind into "races" is totally based on characters of appearance?

Current state of the art medicine doesn't agree. DNA does provide the % of those groups: Caucasoid(Europeans), Negroid(Africans,Native Australians), and Mongoloid(Asians), and treatments are beginning to be keyed to ancestry.

And some people -- by no means all -- are 100% ers.

Most newer studies of human traits seem to me to place more and more emphasis on genetics rather than environment. Anyone have any good counter-examples of this apparent trend?

[delphi_ote]

Originally Posted by Dustin

When I saw it...They were doing what I said. They were taking samples from a few hundred people from each continent and then compairing the persons DNA to that.

What type of DNA were they comparing? How were they comparing it? How were they identifying "race" and what do you mean when you say that they used "a few hundred people from each continent?"

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Originally Posted by Drkitten

Yeah, but at least part of the reason is the politics masquerading as science. Of course there are obvious differences among national and continental sub-groups (as was pointed out earlier, if there weren't, the FBI wouldn't bother to put "race" on their APB's). Some are less obvious : see, for example this page for the geographic distribution of blood type (ABO system) in various "native" populations -- and observe how a clearly genetic trait varies geographically.

This is exactly the point. It is genetic traits that vary geographically, not some sort of composite "race." We can certainly assign race names to clusters of genetic traits, but it's a complex matter of probabilities.

~~ Paul

[Rolfe]

Originally Posted by drkitten

.... see, for example this page for the geographic distribution of blood type (ABO system) in various "native" populations -- and observe how a clearly genetic trait varies geographically.

I see that map even (crudely) spots the difference between Scots (more type O) and English (more type A). It's quite marked actually - testing blood groups at school had nearly all the class saying, it's not working - very few people saw any agglutination because most were type O. Then at university the same thing happened. The next task on the worksheet said "take one drop of type A blood". Resulting in the entire class pursuing an English student round the room wielding blood lancets. (Ah, the happy days before HIV....)

When I moved to England, a medical friend said, the Blood Transfusion service will love you (O being the universal donor), and indeed it was so. The first time I went I noticed the donor cards were colour coded, and indeed the bulk in the nurse's hand were A-coloured and there were relatively few O. And I've more than once been called up for a special collection of O blood.

So, Scots and English are really quite distinct races? I don't think so....

Rolfe.

[drkitten]

Originally Posted by Rolfe

So, Scots and English are really quite distinct races?

Ask Angus after three pints at the Dog and Duck, and he' s likely to tell you they're different species.

[Soapy Sam]

Aye, but Angus is fae Kashmir. And he's a pouf. And he's a catholic.

Whit the f*** wid he know aboot onythin?

[Roboramma]

Originally Posted by Dustin

There are 3 major races.
1.Caucasoid(Europeans)
2.Negroid(Africans,Native Australians)
3.Mongoloid(Asians)

This suggests that Native Austrailians are more closely related to Africans than they are to Asians.
But that doesn't make any sense to me. Wasn't Austrailia colonised from Asia?
Maybe I'm wrong. But if not, this just shows that trying to determine "race" by a few phenotypes isn't a good method.
In fact, I'd suggest that human variation between populations while present is too complicated to be embraced by the concept of race.

While there are differences between populations, the definition of races isn't likely to work - either there will be people who don't belong to any race (or combination of races) or there will be people that are put into one race by their dna but another by their ancestry.

Evolution doesn't tend to construct hard lines between things, at least not until all the intermediates are dead, and this is an especially true example of that.
Does this mean that we're all members of one population? Or that there has been no change in the frequences of alleles between different human populations over the past hundred thousand years or so? No. It means that variation is complex. Maybe the concept of race has meaning in some way, but certainly not in the way commonly understood.

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Originally Posted by Soapy Sam

Dustin-
Are you aware that your division of mankind into "races" is totally based on characters of appearance?

That's exactly how it's defined.

Originally Posted by Soapy Sam

Are you aware that your apparent inability to distinguish between the appearance of Africans and Australian Aboriginals is a failing not shared by either people?

Says who?

Who says that if you plop an African down into an australian aboriginal tribe the people there would be able to tell the difference?

I bet they would not.

Originally Posted by Soapy Sam

I once saw a group of Chinese scientists wholly unable to tell four British scientists apart, because the four were dressed alike and the Chinese lacked the practice necessary to recognise clues to appearance in westerners.

So?

Originally Posted by Soapy Sam

The inhabitants of a Bantu village , town or city don't look alike to each other, only to you because you are unable to tell them apart. Your failing, not their lack of variability.

Who said I could not tell two individuals apart? Where did that come from?

I can easly tell two individuals apart no matter what race they come from.

Originally Posted by Soapy Sam

Are you aware that there is more variation in nuclear DNA between native Africans (ie excluding European settlers of the last 400 years) than among virtually everyone else on the planet?

That right there demonstrates that even they consist of various sub-races.

Originally Posted by Soapy Sam

The use of mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosome DNA to establish "ethnic origin" is indeed full of potential error. So long as it's viewed as a possibly useful tool for palaeoanthropologists and as a bit of fun for the rest of us, this sort of procedure is fine- but it's at a very early stage. I would not put much faith in it's conclusions, which are also often misunderstood and misreported by journalists.

I think that's exactly what I was trying to say with this post.

Originally Posted by Soapy Sam

Are you aware that it's highly probable that you and I are both 100% African?

In the sense that all humans ancestors come from africa..Sure.

However in the sense that there are as i've demonstrated....Various "Races" of mankind....I myself belong to the Caucasoid race. Not the African race.

Originally Posted by Soapy Sam

Are you aware your posts seem to be acquiring distinctly racist overtones?

I'm sorry,But if you interpret my posts that way you're obviously not reading them fully.

Originally Posted by Soapy Sam

Slavery as an economic system is not historically restricted to America. The Vikings kept slaves, for example, generally white ones. One difference was that an Icelander could be legally punished for maltreating a slave. To claim that slavery requires a physiological difference is silly.

Actually, this thread is getting pretty silly.

Now I KNOW you're not reading my thread fully. I Never said that slavery was due to race.

I'll copy and paste exactly what I said so as you can re-read it.

When Europeans came to Africa and brought Africans over to America as slaves,Why did Racism even exist if Africans don't actually generally look different than Europeans like you're claiming?

I'm asking why Racism existed between Africans & europeans in America if Africans did not generally look different physically.

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Originally Posted by delphi_ote

What type of DNA were they comparing? How were they comparing it? How were they identifying "race" and what do you mean when you say that they used "a few hundred people from each continent?"

This is what they were doing..

https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/...hic/index.html


So apparantly looking at "markers" or mutations on the mitochondrial DNA to determine ancestory.

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos

This is exactly the point. It is genetic traits that vary geographically, not some sort of composite "race." We can certainly assign race names to clusters of genetic traits, but it's a complex matter of probabilities.

~~ Paul

That's how race is generally defined. By physical characteristics.


Native Africans have distinct physical characteristics which are different from native europeans. So based on the persons ancestory and physical characteristics we assign them to a specific race.

Say someone who's living in America who has black skin,Kinky hair,And facial features similar to the people of pictures I posted,We could accuratly determine that this person has some if not all African ancestory. I.e. this person is "African" by race.

The fact of the matter is this...The odd's of someone being a native european as far as ancestory goes...and all of their ancestors are european for 100's of years,And them having distinct african features(Black skin,kinky hair,african facial features) is incredibly slim.
The genes that determine these features number into the thousands,So for someone of the european stock to have these features randomly is astrological.
However for someone of the african stock to have these gene combonations is very very common since as we all know these people evolved these features for their environment and these specific gene combo's are proliferated among them.


I'd say more but my "e" button is not working so I have to copy paste the "e" every time!

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Originally Posted by Roboramma

This suggests that Native Austrailians are more closely related to Africans than they are to Asians.
But that doesn't make any sense to me. Wasn't Austrailia colonised from Asia?
Maybe I'm wrong. But if not, this just shows that trying to determine "race" by a few phenotypes isn't a good method.
In fact, I'd suggest that human variation between populations while present is too complicated to be embraced by the concept of race.

I do not know if Australians are closer related to asians or africans. Maybe they are. In which case they belong to a distinct race from "Negroids" and belong to the race "Australoids".

Also it's not Phenotype. A pale white european could not ever get the skin-tone of a jetblack sub-sahran african. natural Skincolor is determined by genotype not phenotype. That's why black women have black babies,White women white babies.(With black fathers for the former and white for latter)

Originally Posted by Roboramma

While there are differences between populations, the definition of races isn't likely to work - either there will be people who don't belong to any race (or combination of races) or there will be people that are put into one race by their dna but another by their ancestry.

There are mixtures of people,So what? That does not mean there is not such thing as "Race".

Originally Posted by Roboramma

Evolution doesn't tend to construct hard lines between things, at least not until all the intermediates are dead, and this is an especially true example of that.

No one said it was a hard line. Actually it's a gradual blending.

The difficulties don't exist when defining the 3 or 4 major races,But with cutting them up into dozens of dinstinct races.

Judging by physical features you can pretty accuratly determine if someone is "Asian","Caucasian" or "Negroid" and other peoples such as arabs would be caucasian and Native americans asians..ect.

Originally Posted by Roboramma

Does this mean that we're all members of one population? Or that there has been no change in the frequences of alleles between different human populations over the past hundred thousand years or so? No. It means that variation is complex. Maybe the concept of race has meaning in some way, but certainly not in the way commonly understood.

It has meaning enough. As i've demonstrated in my prior posts.
And it's a useful tool for grouping people.

[Crispy Duck]

I'm no expert, but I tend to support the view that there's no such thing as race, after reading an article about the subject in New Scientist a few years ago. Of course we can all tell the difference between a native Kenyan and a native Norwegian - that's not at issue. The issue is whether the convenient notion that all humans can be neatly categorised into 3, 5 or however many 'races' actually stands up. I think it doesn't.

Dustin, try this - take a sheet of paper and mark horizontal and vertical axes with any two of your 'obivous' racial indicators - darkness of skin, broadness of nose, etc. Any individual can be marked as a cross on the page based on where they fit on those two scales. Now, imagine you take 10,000 people at random from around the world (NB *not* just the USA, just South Africa, just Europe, etc) and plot them all on the page. Is it your contention that you would get clusters of crosses, corresponding to the different races? Or would you just have a big mess of crosses evenly distributed all over the page?

The question is generally similar to asking 'how many colours are there in a rainbow?' The 'correct' answer that everyone knows is 'seven'. But is that really true? I think not.

Also, Dustin, going back to your original point - I think your genetics / maths are faulty. If someone is 40% African, it doesn't follow that any one of their ancestors must have been 100% African - they might all have been 40% African, going back 500 generations. Or maybe two of your eight great-grandparents were 75% African, etc.

Just my thoughts...

Crispy.

[delphi_ote]

Originally Posted by Dustin

This is what they were doing..

https://www3.nationalgeographic.com/...hic/index.html


So apparantly looking at "markers" or mutations on the mitochondrial DNA to determine ancestory.

Then your criticisms just plain don't hold water.

Quote:

1.The number of people who they got their samples from around the world are just way too small. It would have to include everyone on the planet for it to be accurate.

As mitochondrial DNA is inherited almost 100% along the maternal line and is highly conserved (mutations in the "power plant" of our cells carry a high risk and little gain,) there is no reason for huge samples. I performed a similar test on plants once with only one sample from entirely different phyla, class, etc. As distantly related as tobacco, aspen, and rice are (just as an example) their mitochondrial and chloroplast DNA are virtually identical.

Quote:

2.They are simply compairing the DNA to other's who are in their sample population. However it's very likely that most of someone's ancestors who were european have died off and no DNA remains in the world of those people and the only DNA remotely related to yours happens to be in africa. That does not mean you're 30 or 40% african. It just means that most of your european ancestors have died out and you only happen to have relatives in africa who share some common DNA from thousands and thousands of years back,Who are really nowhere near related to you.

The idea is to produce a phylogenetic tree by comparing similarities in the DNA sequence, and then tracing back those similiarities to common ancestors. As a toy example...

Person 1: ACACACACA
Person 2: ACACAGACA
Person 3: ACACGGACA
Person 4: ADACACACA

We would say: (1) that persons 1, 2, and 3 shared a common ancestor, (2) persons 2 and 3 shared a more recent common ancestor, and that (3) there was probably a more distant ancestor that persons 1,2,3, and 4 shared.

Even if our common ancestry died off, we still have a record of their DNA in our own mitochondiral DNA.

Quote:

3.Just because someone lives in Africa it does not make them African by race. There are millions of white europeans living in Africa who's ancestors migrated there in the 16th and 17th century from europe.
The same goes for Asia or India. Just because 50% of someone's relatives happen to live in Africa it does not make them African by race.

Believe it or not, hundreds of people with PhDs are smart enough to think of something like that. By tracing our ancestry through our mitochondria, we can see who in our data set shared a common ancestor regardless of where their ancestors moved.

I think you've misunderstood the point of the study. They aren't trying to predict race from DNA. They are trying to predict maternal ancestry to gain an understanding about how the diversity we observe in the human species came to be. In some cases the results correlate with (and thus predict) race because we're studying reproductively isolated populations.

But in some cases, the results will also correlate with (and predict) language (because isolated populations develop divergent languages.) That doesn't mean your mitochondrial DNA determines your mother tongue.

[athon]

I wish I could just post an entire chapter I wrote for a book once, on the topic of 'races'.

Firstly, there is no clear definition for the term. Historically it related to your culture. A person who was born to white-skinned Anglo-saxon parents raised in a dark-skinned African village was 'African'. Your geographical region, language and cultural ties were your race. Hence 'Norman' and 'Saxon's' were described in texts as different races.

Today, we would disagree. In the 19th century there was an effort to classify on the basis of morphological features and academia endeavoured to divide mankind in the same way. As has been pointed out, this is difficult to do as we are designed to bias our perceptions of characterstics depending on the populations were are raised in.

Therefore, there is no clear way of distinguising race. Could we do it genetically? Yes, but that would be a construct based on the very definition of its own parameters. In other words, you would be classified 'African' because you have genes A, B and C, and 'Caucasian' because you have C, D and E.

The distinction does not exist in nature.

The problem arises when these constructed definitions are taken outside of their parameters. Assumptions are made that the definition does not cover. In addition, it takes a very strict set of rules to determine the definition to begin with. Are you still Negro if you have 'ABDE' and not 'C'?

That is where the debate gets silly. Creating definitions is definitely political over scientific. It is necessary, but keep in mind how far that goes.

Athon

[Rolfe]

Seems to me it's a bit like dog breeds. There are individuals you can pretty confidently say are Cocker Spaniels, or Italian Greyhounds or whatever, both on phenotypical appearance and by known pedigree. Then there are individuals without a known pedigree who nevertheless look phenotypically like good examples of these breeds. But there are also a lot of individuals who only look a bit like a breed, or a bit like one breed and a bit like another, and individuals who defy categorisation into any of the groups listed in the doggie books.

Does it matter? Only if you want to enter a dog show.

Rolfe.

[delphi_ote]

Originally Posted by Rolfe

Does it matter? Only if you want to enter a dog show.

Or if you want to study the history of the different breeds to gain a greater understanding of the species itself.

[Amapola]

And I can't help but wonder if those different breeds of dog have extremely divergent DNA. I would not think so. I would think one could not tell the breed based on DNA.

[drkitten]

Originally Posted by Amapola

And I can't help but wonder if those different breeds of dog have extremely divergent DNA. I would not think so. I would think one could not tell the breed based on DNA.

I'd be very surprised if you couldn't. For example, I believe there is a specific gene for the short legs of dachshunds; if a dog doesn't have that gene, it's not a dachshund.

The problem with the argument from divergent DNA is that it's a red herring. It doesn't matter how much overall variance there is, either within a single breed/race or within the species as a whole. The question is whether or not there are individual markers (or marker sets) within the overall variance that can be mapped onto our externally defined notions of breed/race.

[ranson]

Me, I wonder where I'd fall in all this. I have a fairly well-documented family history of African slaves, native Americans, Anglo-Saxons, various Mediterranean cultures, various Semitic cultures, Aryans (the real ones, from India and Persia), and Welsh, with a few other things thrown in the mix. All this is within the last two hundred and fifty years.

What do I like like? Why, I'm one of the whitest honkies you're likely to come across

So what race am I?

Edited for grammar.

[delphi_ote]

Originally Posted by Amapola

And I can't help but wonder if those different breeds of dog have extremely divergent DNA. I would not think so. I would think one could not tell the breed based on DNA.

That's the problem with armchair science...

Quote:

DNA identifies dog breed with 99 percent accuracy

http://www.azcentral.com/families/ar...BREEDS-ON.html

[delphi_ote]

Originally Posted by ranson

Me, I wonder where I'd fall in all this. I have a fairly well-documented family history of African slaves, native Americans, Anglo-Saxons, various Mediterranean cultures, various Semitic cultures, Aryans (the real ones, from India and Persia), and Welsh, with a few other things thrown in the mix. All this is within the last two hundred and fifty years.

What do I like like? Why, I'm one of the whitest honkies you're likely to come across

So what race am I?

Edited for grammar.

Follow your maternal line back as far as you can and you'll get an idea. Only one of those lines of inheritance contributed to your mitochondrial DNA.

[ranson]

Originally Posted by delphi_ote

Follow your maternal line back as far as you can and you'll get an idea. Only one of those lines of inheritance contributed to your mitochondrial DNA.

That's the side that has the grand mix, and it tends to dissappear into the hills after a while. Hard to tell.

[delphi_ote]

Originally Posted by ranson

That's the side that has the grand mix, and it tends to dissappear into the hills after a while. Hard to tell.

Just to make sure I'm clear on this: there is no mixing in mitochondria. You get the ENTIRE genome from your mother, who got it from her mother, who got it from her mother, who got etc. The path is linear. No branches. The only variations should be due to rare mutations.

So even with your jumble, we'd be able to trace back one line of inheritance. It would probably be very suprising!

My ancestry is 99.99% European, but I believe my mitochondrial DNA would actually be Native American. I only know about one such ancestor in my family tree about 7-8 generations back, but if I'm not mistaken she lies on a direct maternal path to me (i.e. she was my mom's mom's mom's mom's mom's mom's mom's mom.)

[Soapy Sam]

1.When Europeans came to Africa and brought Africans over to America as slaves,Why did Racism even exist if Africans don't actually generally look different than Europeans like you're claiming?
Heck,Racism would not even exist if as you're claiming..There was no identifiable differences between various races. There would of been no slavery,There would of been no Holocaust,There would of been no segregation in America,There would of been none of these things if there were no identifiable physical characteristics between say people who's ancestors came from Europe and someone's who's came from Africa.- Dustin

Nonsense.
Slavery was rife in Africa, among Africans, long before Europeans settled America. The first "foreign" slavers in tropical Africa were Arab.
Europeans had been involved in Slavery in Africa since Graeco-Roman times, but they also retained slaves from Europe, including rival Greek and Italian cities.
Slavery in America was primarily an issue of colour. Nowhere else in the world. At least learn some history before basing eugenic theory on such nonsense.