I recall receiving the census and the strange questions about my race and the race of my family. I thought the race questions were strange because they did not include my families supposed racial category. This got me thinking about race.
What I was considering race would actually be more relative to ancestral heritage. A majority of my families ancestors can be traced back to Europe. With that being said, I would be remiss only considering the last handful of generations.
Besides, don’t we only refer to the physical characteristic of people for race. So in theory an individual can have ancestors from Europe and possess physical characteristics of an African, and be considered of the “black” race. The waters can be even more muddied when one considers the almost petty differences between groups considering themselves culturally different. For example; Serbian and Croat, Greek and Turkish, Arab and Kurd.
Despite the fact that these cultural groups may consider themselves separate and distinct, they often share many physical characteristics as well as genetic similarities.
I think it is interesting how often we forget that we all share a common ancestor from no more than 200,000 years ago. regardless of racial categories we have devised, we are all still Homo Sapiens.
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human
Humans, known taxonomically as Homo sapiens (Latin: “wise man” or “knowing man”),[3][4] are the only living species in the Homo genus of bipedal primates in Hominidae, the great ape family. Anatomically modern humans originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago, reaching full behavioral modernity around 50,000 years ago.[5]
Humans have a highly developed brain, capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection, and problem solving. This mental capability, combined with an erect body carriage that frees the hands for manipulating objects, has allowed humans to make far greater use of tools than any other living species on Earth. Other higher-level thought processes of humans, such as self-awareness, rationality and sapience,[6][7][8] are considered to be defining features of what constitutes a “person”.[9][10]
Like most higher primates, humans are social animals. However, humans are uniquely adept at utilizing systems of communication for self-expression, the exchange of ideas, and organization. Humans create complex social structures composed of many cooperating and competing groups, from families to nations. Social interactions between humans have established an extremely wide variety of values, social norms, and rituals, which together form the basis of human society. With individuals widespread in every continent except Antarctica, humans are a cosmopolitan species. As of August 2010[update], the population of humans was estimated to be about 6.8 billion.[11]
Humans are noted for their desire to understand and influence their environment, seeking to explain and manipulate phenomena through science, philosophy, mythology and religion. This natural curiosity has led to the development of advanced tools and skills, which are passed down culturally; humans are the only species known to build fires, cook their food, clothe themselves, and use numerous other technologies. The study of humans is the scientific discipline of anthropology.
I guess more to the point is this:
Race and ethnicity
Humans often categorize themselves in terms of race or ethnicity, sometimes on the basis of differences in appearance. Human racial categories have been based on both ancestry and visible traits, especially facial features, skin color and hair texture. Most current genetic and archaeological evidence supports a recent single origin of modern humans in East Africa.[101] Current genetic studies have demonstrated that humans on the African continent are most genetically diverse.[102] However, compared to the other great apes, human gene sequences are remarkably homogeneous.[103][104][105][106] The predominance of genetic variation occurs within racial groups, with only 5 to 15% of total variation occurring between groups.[107] Thus the scientific concept of variation in the human genome is largely incongruent with the cultural concept of ethnicity or race. Ethnic groups are defined by linguistic, cultural, ancestral, national or regional ties. Self-identification with an ethnic group is usually based on kinship and descent. Race and ethnicity are among major factors in social identity giving rise to various forms of identity politics, e.g., racism. (Humans have turned to violence and social exclusion as part of their identity politics; a side effect is name-calling, which has produced numerous offensive terms for humans.)
There is no scientific consensus of a list of the human races, and few anthropologists endorse the notion of human “race”.[108] For example, a color terminology for race includes the following in a classification of human races: Black (e.g. Sub-Saharan Africa), Red (e.g. Native Americans), Yellow (e.g. East Asians) and White (e.g. Europeans).
Referring to natural species, in general, the term “race” is obsolete, particularly if a species is uniformly distributed on a territory. In its modern scientific connotation, the term is not applicable to a species as genetically homogeneous as the human one, as stated in the declaration on race (UNESCO 1950).[109]
Genetic studies have substantiated the absence of clear biological borders, thus the term “race” is rarely used in scientific terminology, both in biological anthropology and in human genetics.[citation needed]
What in the past had been defined as “races”—e.g., whites, blacks, or Asians—are now defined as “ethnic groups” or “populations”, in correlation with the field (sociology, anthropology, genetics) in which they are considered.
Of course Wikipedia is not the end all be all of any discussion, but it does seem to succinctly express the idea.
Most interesting is the number years ago our species arrived on the scene, 200,000. I think that is a long time ago, but I guess we weren’t really human back then, as we didn’t reach our full behavioral modernity until around 50,000 years ago.
I can’t help but wonder what the next 50k will bring for our species.
Recent Comments