Why do only humans have race?

Does it come from our need to belong? Why do we have races, and why do only(?) we distinguish among them?

 

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Whether some want to recognize it or not & whether we call it race or something else, there ARE groups of people who are distinguished as belonging to the group more so geneticly than the larger human group.
Xenophobia & conformism may be inherent aspects of being human tho so much of it does seem to be "nuture rather than nature".
1111

 

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all animals have "races" to a degree, they just aren't defined in the same way that human races are.

you could gather a group of dogs and say anything with spots and a large nose is one race, and anything with a single colour and a short tail another, but the standard just isnt commonly applied.

the only difference with humans is that we have clear definitions of race(eg asian, caucasian, australoid, negroid)

 

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The human races' offspring much more resemble the group consistently than groups of spotted dogs & such. A spotted dog often will have a litter with some spotted & some not, sometimes none spotted & hardly ever all spotted.
There is hardly any comparison. Maybe you're thinking of species or breeds or???
1111

 

Race = subspecies.
There is no such thing as subspecies within the humans species. Human races are made up.

 

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Really? Would you like to give a clear definition of an asian then?

Betrayer, domestic animals have races - we call them breeds, and they are generally about as meaningful as the term races for humans. (On economic grounds they are considerably more meaningful.) And wild animals have 'races' also. Just because you haven't discussed the subject with an elephant doesn't mean it isn't so.

 

Only in humans has objective intelligence and self-awareness risen to such a level that it is able to recognize the course of its own evolution through time and space.

 

This is not any kind of answer. And the one, I think, you are hinting at is wrong.

 

What one am I hinting at?

 

The same reason only homo sapies award their race bronze, silver and gold medals for humnan rights.

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What is currently called races exists whether you want to call it races or subspecies or burmolnes.
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During the times of tribal wanderings, small families roamed from Africa to Europe and Asia. A particular family experienced a genetic anomaly that either helped or ended up dominating their genetic line, which the family then propagated to the entire wandering tribe. In the case of Europeans, it resulted in paler skin, lighter hair and bluer eyes. As this tribe moved into Europe, they reproduced and filled the area. A similar thing happened, but with different traits, in Asia.

As time went on, various other genetic anomalies occurred in these areas that reinforced these traits.

While they may not have helped they certainly didn't hurt. The fact is, when the tribes wandered there, they may have only had a few hundred people making it easier to spread quickly (this is verifiable through the slim genetic diversity in Europe, Eastern Asia, Aboriginals and the America as compared to the genetic diversity within Africa which has the vast majority of the world's diversity on only one continent). Any anomaly would have easily grown from one "mutant" to fill the whole tribe, especially if that "mutant" was in a position to spread their genes (i.e. a male tribal leader with many lives, a warrior who raped many women or some man in a position to spread his genetic material to as many females as possible). Over time that tribe grew to fill the continent and carried those variances with it.

It started small, with the tribe, but became large trough reproduction.

~String

 

You've been reading too many comics string.

How often did these mutations occur for example? There are hundreds of millions of pale skinned people on earth but not one recorded case of someone being born with black skin. You only have a few thousand years for your out of Africa 'evolution' and it's not enough time for what you propose.

Neither does your logic hold with regards to transferring this mutation. Not only does this mutation have to happen, it has to happen to the chief or leader of a tribe. And then he has to f**k everything in sight to carry it. Let's not forget that mutants generally are not considered desirable by any group of humans. A white mutant appearing amongst blacks is generally not taken as a good omen. Not to mention the myriad other physical differences that separate blacks and whites.

And, of course, there are primates with black skin, white skin and shades in between.

Read Marcus Aurelius, simplicity first.

When humans moved out of the jungles and began molting their hair they became more susceptible to the suns rays. Paler skinned humans eventually migrated north whilst dark skinned humans stayed put or migrated along the equator becoming todays Aborigines.

Your trying to romanticize history just like people romanticize the Iraq War, telling us that everything's going well when in reality the bodies are piling up. Human history is based upon violent conflict over land and resources not on epic, feel-good journeys through sublime landscapes.

 

First off, you have no clue where and how these traits evolved, I was merely providing possible hypotheses as to how they might have come about. Second off, you obviously don't know me. I've never romanticized evolution. It's a violent and brutal process, one which (if you did any reading of any of my posts on the subject you'd know) more often ends with people dieing than people living.

So, question, how did these traits evolve. Lightning striking a tree? History may one day prove how they came to dominate certain areas, but at one point in history, they occurred in one person, who spread those traits to many.

~String

 

I was only providing a foil to your hypothesis.

We agree then.

Did they occur in one person? There is no concrete evidence to support such an assertion. It comforts us to believe that we are all interrelated in this manner, and it's certainly the traditional belief in Judeo-Christian religion, but given the right climatic conditions on early Earth, life may have arisen spontaneously across the entire world. Rejecting the common origins hypothesis gives us more breathing space, I think.

The question then is what determines the skin color of primates (of ourselves) if it's not the sun's energy?

The answer is that it is the result of some process invisible to us.

 

We don't - it's just a term we use to avoid using terms like 'breeds' and 'subspecies'.

 

Deep thought,
It's late. I can't be bothered to debunbk your nonsense today. I#ll have to make do with an ad hominem. Will you be changing your name to deep shit anytime soon?

 

If you ever had any ideas of your own it'd truly be a miracle silly peacock.

Apart from that, please continue your pathetic ad hominem attacks.

 

The beauty of working with the ideas of others is that there are more of them than there are of me, and many of them are smarter than me. You might benefit from a similar approach.

Thank you for the peacock reference. I have a tale to tell. I didn't believe you could spot it.

 

No, "race" is just another word for "subspecies".