I first became fascinated with anthropology looking at these pictures, and many like them, as well as reading articles like this as a kid. Wow, have things changed!
How are humans currently classified by the scientific community; what's the latest practice? Or do they at all since current science suggests that there really is no such thing as race?
How is racial mixing and mutation of the past, recent past, explained if there are no scientific categories fro human stocks/race? Has this all shifted to labeling via motochondiral DNA?
I feel wrong for doing it, but using categories is the only way for me to articulate how races indeed mixed in the past.
How are humans currently classified by the scientific community; what's the latest practice? Or do they at all since current science suggests that there really is no such thing as race?
Classification of humans depends on what traits you are investigating. Every trait has its own distribution pattern. Blood-type classifications (A, B, AB, O) are useful in medicine. Adult lactose-tolerance (high among descendants of herders, low among descendants of farmers or hunters) is interesting to phylogeographers. The ratio of limb-length to torso (low among Inuits and Saami, high among Watutsi and Maasai) shows recent population adaptations. Scientists today use dozens of different ways of classifying our species into four or five categories. Every of those different classification schemes is useful to a specific field of study. My favorite source for human variation is Stephen Molnar, Human Variation: Races, Types, and Ethnic Groups, 5th ed. (Upper Saddle River NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002). See this thread for details.
mulan wrote:
How is racial mixing and mutation of the past, recent past, explained if there are no scientific categories fro human stocks/race? Has this all shifted to labeling via motochondiral DNA?
Populations have migrated historically and scientists can now track their migrations via DNA markers. Mitochondrial DNA markers are one way to do this because mtDNA is very rugged and each cell has many copies. Hence you can analyze it in old fossils, long after nuclear DNA has degraded. But nuclear DNA also has markers and is also used to track recent migrations. People studying migrations are interested in specific populations, and so they classify people into such populations. Again, though, the classification schemes used to study the different populations who re-colonized Europe after the ice melted around 16 kya, for example, are not the same as the classifications by blood-types, lactose-tolerance, or limb-to-torso ratio used to study other phenomena.
This site focuses on U.S. racialism. And so, the mass movements that replenished the New World’s population after Old-World diseases wiped out most of its inhabitants in the 1500s are of interest to many members. About two and a half million Europeans (mostly volunteers) and about eleven million Africans (mostly slaves) were brought to the New World from 1500 to 1800, and this site is interested in when, how, where, and why their descendants mixed (or not). Again, though, the classification scheme we use (Afro, Euro, and Native American) works here only because we are studying the consequences of colonization of the latter population by the first two. This three-way scheme is unrelated to those used for any of the other purposes mentioned above.
mulan wrote:
I feel wrong for doing it, but using categories is the only way for me to articulate how races indeed mixed in the past.
Do not “feel wrong.” Classification is necessary for intellectual discourse. It helps us to organize our thoughts and is vital to pedagogy. Just remember that each classification scheme is useful for its own field of study and that all classification schemes exist only in our heads—nature could care less.
Any classification scheme that is useful (blood types, say) will continue to be used. Any scheme that is useless will be abandoned. The all-purpose scheme that classified humans into “races” (or sub-species) turned out to be useless and so it has been abandoned. For a brief account of the “race” notion’s abandonment by science, see A Brief History of the "Race" Notion in Science.
Nice post and very interesting racial models from 60's viewpoint
Yeah like the other member said, it can be enticing for a person interested in studying this area of human civilization
Quote:
Do not “feel wrong.” Classification is necessary for intellectual discourse. It helps us to organize our thoughts and is vital to pedagogy. Just remember that each classification scheme is useful for its own field of study and that all classification schemes exist only in our heads—nature could care less.
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