Hey guys,

Every once in a while we got some really interesting discussions going on about the ways human beings should be filed away according to chromosomal features. I have a bunch of questions about genetic science that I don't think have been answered anywhere (ya'll can please help me out if you know where they are), and please bear with me if i screw up the teminology here.

First off, what exactly is the derivation of the three biggie races? Is there an ironclad, watertight definition of the Mongoloid, Negroid and Caucasoid groups? Do all human beings fall into one (and only one?) of these categories? Do these three groups exist on the retrospectively applied observation that most people of Asian, African and European nations tend to look the 'same' as the other people in their political zones while somehow 'different' from people further away? How is a person determined to be of one of these groups? Is there an actual prototype or something? Like a classical guy out there who stands for the purest form of each race? Or are these groups just determined by averaging certain genetic features of people who were previously okayed as 'definitely Mongoloid,' etc? Similarly, what is an 'Austronesian' and what is a 'Negrito' and what goes into their definitions? Are there actual individuals exhibiting pure Austronesian, etc, features? Has the origin of each race been traced back to a certain time, area or specimen? Are these categories anything but general conveniences arranged around a pre-determined division of our species?

Obviously I'm clueless in this regard and I can't tell the difference between amateurish speculation and the academic kind, but how much of a 'match' is usually required before you can start making genetic generalizations? The genetically-backed arguments I've seen make liberal use of terms like 'prevalent,' 'relatively uniform,' 'mostly,' 'probable' 'common among,' and nothing ever looks like a 100% 'yes.' What's the usual cutoff point in genetic anthropology for determining that science has occurred? Do things tend to work out better on the micro level? How is racial science holding up against political 'reality,' or at the same time, does it have any applications outside of contemporary political stances, whether medical, having to do with criminology, or whatever?

Which animals display racial divergence?

Thanks.

This is hardly my strong area but just a quick observation here: groups like Austronesian, Altaic, Tungusic, Turkic or Indo-European are named by their language group rather than their genotype or even phenotype. It can be quite imprecise to try and classify a person into such a grouping based on how he or she looks, since language has often spread across ethnic boundaries in history. I'm not too sure whether 'Sinid' belongs in this category, though.

Time for Rudeboy to step in...

Thanks for pointing this out, Yun. But the thing with 'Austronesian' specifically is that it feels like this term is used by both linguistics and scientific segregation, albeit apparently in a different way. My impression is it might have to do with the observation that many speakers of these languages don't tend to exactly fit into the 3 major people groups, but I wouldn't know for sure.

My question though is are the groups established within genetics any more or less precise than the umbrella conveniences used in linguistic typology? Obviously there's a level where just about any human can pick up any language system given the proper exposure, while there's something understood to be more 'natural' about the fact that everybody has parents, and our parents have parents, and so on. But are there actual 'ethnic boundaries' out there applying to all human beings? Or are the discovered genetic 'differences' made to fit into categories that are socially defined?

If I were smart, I would probably just be quiet and wait for rudeboy, who knows what he's talking about much better than I when it comes to genetics.

But here goes: I am almost certain that the idea of Mongoloid/Negroid/Caucasoid (sometimes Australoid is called a fourth) division dates to before the discovery of the double helix and to before any serious study of human genetics was begun. I have seen textbook copies describing the three "biggies" that I think dated to the 1890s.

My understanding from listening to people who studied this subject a lot more than I did is that genetic study has virtually destroyed the concept of Mongoloid, Negroid and Caucasoid as genetic divisions. There are, of course, genetic variations in human populations, but I think they don't break along those lines. For instance, there is more genetic diversity among different groups of phenotypically "Negroid" people than there is between Negroids and other racial groups.

However, I also know that forensic scientists regularly claim that they can identify bones by Negroid, Caucasoid, or Mongoloid type. How this is possible if there is no genetic basis for the three or four biggies, I don't understand.

In sum, I'm confused too.

I've read a lot of posts by rudeboy (aka User1), I think I can answer that one. Mongoloid, Caucasoid and Negroid are only used in physical anthropology. It's a physical way of describing various skulls and skeletons of modern human, as there're slight noticeable differences between skeletons of Caucasian Europeans, East Asians and Black Africans...etc. So it's not exactly wrong to say a Chinese person has Mongoloid features. However these terms can't be used in genetics incisively because human genetics are too complicated and also there is no such thing as a pure race, because before genetics people thought that these were the three distinct races. Which have been proven wrong by genetics. Hope I'm at least half right here.

*waits till rudeboy comes*

Yes, I think we should wait till rudeboy comes.

In early genetic researches, we can't distinguish Blacks from Whites! Black and White and any other races still have very much similarity to each other.

Austronesians have definitely mixed with other group (like do Turks). Their (Austronesians, Turks) pure ancestors should look like Chinese.

We can find many 'Square Chinese' (who are descendant of Mongoloid and Caucasoid) in Kazakhstan, whose look are more similar to 'South Chinese' than 'North Chinese'. (so I think Hun/Turk looked more similar to Baiyue than Jurchen/Khitan, although HLA and Immunoglobulin shows the reverse)

See, this is what I'm talking about: 'Looking Chinese' shouldn't mean anything for a number of reasons, the most important of which is that 'Chinese' is a 100% political concept. What I'm trying to ask is if there are any ways out there to segregate humanity that aren't political. When we talk about mixing with other groups, do you mean groups that are genetically completely different?

Also, what is a 'pure ancestor?' Better yet, who were the parents of these ancestors?

Sorry for my very subjective point of view since I'm just an amateur.

I have a very narrow description of 'Chinese' so that most of the 'politically agreed Chinese' seems not really Chinese.

The 'Chinese-look' I meant can be found both in North and South.

The 'pure ancestors' I thought were the ones that are not half-races (people several thousands years BC).