Human Races and Subspecies

Repost from the old site. A question that comes up all the time in race realist circles is whether or not the various races of man, however defined, can be considered to be subspecies. No reputable scientist considers the major human races to be separate subspecies of Homo Sapiens. At any rate, Homo sapiens himself is already a subspecies called Homo sapiens sapiens. There was H.s. neanderthalis , H.s. idaltu, probably H.s. rhodesiensis and finally, Homo sapiens sapiens. So a human subspecies would be look more like a Neandertal, with dramatic differences between them and modern humans. Even Khoisans and Pygmies are much closer to the rest of us than Neandertal or Idaltu Man was. This area is still quite controversial, but the only scientists and theorists who are suggesting that the differences between the races are great enough to constitute subspecies are racialists, many of whom are explicit racists. Almost all are associated with White nationalism and usually with Nordicism. Nordicists are best seen as Nazis. You must understand the differences between races and subspecies. For instance there is the California kingsnake . There are no subspecies of the California kingsnake. However, there are numerous races, many of which look radically different from the California kingsnake norm. They are simply called races of the California kingsnake. So races of humans and other animals are really a level even below that of the subspecies. They are not protected by the Endangered Species Act, and I’m not sure anyone cares about them all that much. They’re better seen as regional variants. Subspecies are a variant of a species that only occurs in one limited geographical area in which no other subspecies of that animal reside. Hence, each subspecies is geographically isolated from the others such that interbreeding is rare to nonexistent. At some point, subspecies’ territories may start overlapping. They begin to interbreed a lot, since subspecies of a type are readily capable of interbreeding. Once their territories overlap and interbreeding begins, we often stop calling two types separate subspecies and wrap them into a single entity. Subspecies were differentiated in the past based on a significant degree of anatomical difference. Nowadays, genetics is much more popular. The combination of significant anatomical and behavioral differences combined with significant genetic difference at some point is deemed great enough to warrant a subspecies split. These discussions are carried on very civilly in academic journals and after a bit of back and forth, a consensus of some sort is arrived at regarding whether or not two variants of a species differ enough to be called subspecies. At that point, the discussion typically dies. In addition, new genetic discoveries now show that some subspecies are so far apart genetically that a good case can be made that they are actually full species and not subspecies. This argument is also written up carefully in a journal, and usually seems to be accepted if the argument is well thought-out. In addition to splitting, there is lumping. Some variants of a species have in the past been divided into various subspecies. Some new analyses have shown that all of these subspecies definitions were in error, and in fact, the species is fairly uniform, with few to no subspecies instead of the 10-15 they had in the past. This argument also gets written up in a journal and passed around. Usually the new designation is accepted if the argument is well-crafted. The species/subspecies question is not as wildly controversial among scientists as laypeople think. Designations change back and forth, all are based on good, solid science, and science simply coalesces around the paradigmatic view of a species as it may change over time. Science, after all, is always a work in progress. The reasons that the California kingsnake races were not split into subspecies is because apparently the genetic differences were too small to warrant a split into subspecies. It is also possible that these races are widely distributed over the kingsnake’s territory, with no particular race holding sway in any certain locale. So probably all of these kingsnake races can not only interbreed like subspecies but they probably are actively interbreeding as they are probably not geographically segregated. At some point, it is discovered that two animals, previously thought to be separate species, have interlapping territories and the two species are observed readily interbreeding. Since separate species cannot interbreed, once two species start interbreeding easily, science often decides that they are not separate species after all and instead that they are subspecies of a single species At some level X, two living things are split into species. At some lesser level of genetic differentiation Y, a species is further split into subspecies. At some lesser level of differentiation Z, we can start talking about races. I believe that all of the various breeds of dogs and cats are races. “Race” and “subspecies” are two terms often conflated in speech, even by biologists, but strictly speaking, they do have different meanings. I do not know any reputable biologist who thinks that any of the various extant human races or subraces, however defined, need to be preserved on solely anthropological grounds in order to preserve their phenotype. The various human races have been changing all through time continuously. North Africans were once pure African, now they are mostly Caucasian. Northeast Asians looked like Aborigines until 9,000 YBP (years before present). South Indians looked like Aborigines until 8,000 YBP. Southeast Asians looked like Negritos and Melanesians until about 5,000 YBP. Over 10,000 years ago, Amerindians looked like Aborigines. Between 7,000-9,000 years ago, they looked something like the Ainu or Polynesians. Europeans looked like Arabs 10,000 YBP, like Northwestern US Amerindians 23,000 YBP and 30-40,000 YBP, they looked very strange, possibly resembling a Khoisan more than anything else. White skin only shows up 9,000 YBP in Europe. Polynesians and Micronesians only show up in the past 2,000 years. So all of the modern human races and subraces, however defined, have been continuously changing down through time. The notion that they are some kind of unique subspecies in need of conservation like Northern Spotted Owls is completely mistaken and has little basis in modern science.

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14 thoughts on “Human Races and Subspecies”

  1. “North Africans were once pure African”
    I agree with the idea here, but I think this terminology is severely flawed. North African are just as African as sub-saharan Africans. They are not negroid, bu they’re certainly African. Can we refer to other non-negroids such as the khoi as being non-african? It’s time we decoupled the ideas of negroid and african.

  2. “The notion that they are some kind of unique subspecies in need of conservation like Northern Spotted Owls is completely mistaken and has little basis in modern science”
    I agree and disagree with this statement based on how you are defining race. If by race you mean something totally biological like the ideas that the persians and english are the same race I would agree. If by race you mean a historical-cultural group that is largely endogamous in which membership is determined by descent and not genetic testing then I disagree. I want to see the English race, the Zulu race, and the Japanese race preserved. I believe that the ideas of blood and soil forms of nationalism are the only way to preserve the cultures of the world. Nordicism and the like are really just globalist doctrines hiding themselves under the cloak of nationalism. I am no expert in biological anthropology, but I think the terminolgy used in this article and many others in bad. I believe that the english and the persians may be part of the same ‘population group’ in that they are both caucasoid. However, I believe that they are seperate races, just as the enlgish and the germans are seperate races even though they have similarities and distant common ancestry.
    I do think there is an interesting question that has been lost to debate due to the bad terminology. Suppose we call the persians and english and other groups caucasoid and stop calling them white. The term in the US has non-biological dimensions to it so we can use it here will out violoating our previous criteria. The question should then be asked, “Are white americans a unique racial group?” I think so, or at least we are headed that way. White americans had different heroes and a somewhat different culture that was different form their european forbears and was largely their own. In the past century, especially since the 60s, this culture has been under attack by economic and social forces, but I believe it still exists even if it is unpolite to acknowledge it in polite society. I would support a movement that sought to preserve(and restore) the history and culture of white americans specifically. I don’t think neo nazis would like it because it would be against all immigration, including european immigration, which is a fetish for many of them.

  3. “This areas is still quite controversial, but the only scientists and theorists who are suggesting that the differences between the races are great enough to constitute subspecies are racialists, many of whom are explicit racists. Almost all are associated with White nationalism, and usually with Nordicism. Nordicists are more or less Nazis.”
    In my opinion, the word “nationalism”, when used in a geographical sense, is all too often being speciously connected to the words “racism” and “Nazi.” Cultural preservation is ALSO getting an unfair bad rap these days. Social movements such as those are in response to the unwise immigration policies implemented by “progressives.”
    Although phenotypes are the genetically the same species, when it comes to “humans” there comes a tipping point when the differences in “cultural phenotypes” becomes very significant. Ingrouping and outgrouping behaviors—based on cultural phenotype—is part of what makes us human.

  4. I Googled ” Are white Europeans a subspecies of black Africans”
    It seemed to me that if animals have subspecies, then the same could apply to humans.
    If an animal was discovered in Africa that was black, and what appeared to be the same animal was discovered in Finland, but was white, it would be considered to be a subspecies.
    I think political correctness and the fear of of being accused of rascism limits the way these articles can be worded.
    By the way, I’m a white European that doesn’t do rascism or political correctness.

    1. I agree. One of my classmates’ thesis is arguing for two different species of plants based on only a few minor differences in phenotype, and these species are not even completely geographically isolated from each other (at least in modern times).

  5. yeah in the sense they are differentiated by geo boundaries they they subspecies. for sure, but not highly demarcated, just like the indian tiger and sumatran, the same. or the atlas tiger who is extinct. also not much more different than races of dog that are bred to look very different but are very close. subspecies is a very wide term, it means different populations of different colors, appearance, longer ears, etc. neanderthals were barely able to reproduce with humans, after 500 000 years of split, but they could, i mean otherwise there would be more than 1 percent human genome that’s neanderthal. it takes 20 000 … generations roughly… to differentiate homo type species from each other.

  6. Blacks are some of the most racist people out here with all kinds of made up faulty logic (wi wuz kangs) regarding race/color groups but articles like this only ever attempt to link racism/nationalism to white people. Utter faulty rationalizations through and through. Have you even see the garbage racist black people are spreading now online? Or the disproportionate amount of black on white hate (jealousy) crimes in allover the world?
    Some of their faulty logic.
    “White people are all inbred cavemen because they’re part Neanderthal”.
    When black people in Africa still live in huts with grass roofs in 2016 made out of elephant dong and rapes occur there more than everywhere else on planet Earth (Black genetic diversity in Africa and abnormally high rapes go together) . Sub Saharan Africans also have lower IQ’s, on average, and it’s no racist to state a fact.
    “Blacks are the original humans”. Except they’re not! There where many ‘homos’ on Earth before modern day humans and WE ALL come from them (see the light skinned palms on even Sub Saharan Africans). The point is they’re clearly being (anti-white) racists no matter how you try and justify this stuff.
    “Caucasians are an inferior sub-species of Black Africans”. Wait, how are we all the same and all modern day Homo Sapiens if we’re so different to them? Also, if we’re the “newest” wouldn’t that make us the most evolved?
    “Africans are the originals”. As if only blacks reside in Africa and as if there wasn’t other humans in Africa long before modern Homo Sapiens were even on the Earth, literally.
    If we’re all the same then stop blaming ONLY white people for racism/nationalism, period (See: South Africa white victims of murder rates). For one you’re straight up being dumb as we’re supposedly all the same and two blacks commit more hate crimes PER 100,000 citizens in the USA, South Africa, Brazil, etc.
    Either we’re not all the same or we are all the same. Pick a side, already.

  7. Many scientists acknowledge the fact that humans to exist as three separate sub-species – africanoid (“black”), caucasoid (“white”), and mongloid (“asian”) that have been found to differ 25% or more genetically. Since the sub-species can interbreed, many hybrids of the sub-species also exist as well. There is nothing racist about stating the facts. Some view the hybridization of the sub-species as resulting from a form of bestiality.
    Most scientists from the different sub-species find it unfortunate when these clear facts about the human sub-species are muddied with nothing more than unfounded claims or racism. None thought any sub-species of human was better than another. Many feared being falsely branded a “racist” and their lives ruined for merely stating facts.
    Many scientists choose to keep quiet about the facts about the human sub-species because there are some minority groups that get offended at the drop of the hat and only have illogical or emotional arguments or use the old tired racist/racialist card like the uninformed or intellectually dishonest author.
    It is true that some groups might use the knowledge about the human sub-species to justify wanting to staying with their own sub-species or phenotype that some deride and include in the ever expanding definition of racist, but it doesn’t change the facts. Some nuts like black power and white power might think their sub-species is the best, but they already think that anyway.
    The africanoid sub-species is the strongest genetically and masks other sub-species when hybrids between other sub-species are made, so the hybrids appear more africanoid.

    1. “africanoid”- You made this up, you mean “Negroid”. Also if you’re going to use genetic cluster quit that 3 race Rushton shit because typical genetic research finds the clusters to match the five race model of Coon.
      “The africanoid sub-species is the strongest genetically and masks other sub-species when hybrids between other sub-species are made, so the hybrids appear more africanoid.”
      The “strongest”? That basically a perception merely talking about how Mulattos are more often classed with Blacks than with Whites which is merely based on phenotype, NOT genetics.
      R selections does mean they breed more, thus having higher fitness, but We are talking about adapting a elevating in a progressive society without aid then tough luck with that theory.
      K selection does lead to vulnerabilities but, if desired, genetic engineering could solve that.

  8. Regardless of the method used in the analyses, all researchers reached estimated very close to that obtained by Lewontin: The differences observed by the subdivisions (populations, groups of populations, races) represented 10 to 15 percent of the total genetic variation found within the human species. Formally, these findings demonstrate, first, that the species is indeed subdivided into genetically definable groups of individuals and, second, that atleast some of these groups correspond to those defined by anthropologists as races on the basis of physical characters. They do not however, settle the arguments regarding the methods of racial classification. Unfortunately, Lewontin did not specify before initiating his analysis how large the difference has to be in order to call the groups “races”.

    Consequently, the results of the studies have led population geneticists to two diametrically opposite conclusions. Lewontin called the observed differences trivial, and proclaimed that “racial classification is now seen to be of no genetic or taxonomic significance” so that “no justification can be offered for its continuance.” This view is echoed by authors of similar studies, who seem to be surprised that genetic variation within populations is greater than that between them. By contrast, Sewell Wright who can hardly be taken for a dilettante in questions of population genetics, has stated emphatically that if differences of this magnitude were observed in any other species, the groups they distinguish would be called subspecies.

    One can extend Wright’s argument even further. The more than 200 species of haplochromine fishes in Lake Victoria differ from each other much less than the human races in their neural genes, although they are presumably distinguished by genes that control differences in their external appearances. The same can be said about atleast some of the currently recognized species of Darwin’s finches and other examples of recent adaptive radiations. In all these cases, reproductively isolated groups are impossible to tell apart by the methods used to measure differences in human races. Obviously, human races are not reproductively isolated (interracial marriages are common and the progenies of such marriages are fully fertile) but the external differences between them are comparable to cichlid fishes and Darwin’s finches. Under these circumstances, to claim that the genetic differences between the human races are trivial is a more political statement than a scientific argument. Trivial by what criterion? How much difference would Lewontin and those who side with him consider non-trivial?
    By mixing science with politics, geneticists and anthropologists are committing the same infraction of which they are accusing other scientists, who they themselves label as racist. Even worse, by labelling the genetic differences as insignificant, they play into the hand of genuine racists who can demolish this claim and so further their own agenda. It is intellectually more honest to acknowledge and then point out that by no means imply supremacy of one race over others. This can be done by demonstrating that the differences are in genes that cannot be linked to any features that would be required for the preeminence of a particular race.

    — Klein and Takahata (2002)
    Again, for emphasis:

    By contrast, Sewell Wright who can hardly be taken for a dilettante in questions of population genetics, has stated emphatically that if differences of this magnitude were observed in any other species, the groups they distinguish would be called subspecies.

    The creator of Fst believed so, that’s good enough for me to be honest.

  9. The notion of human beings being biologically very similar to one another just flies in the way of common sense, as they are obvious notable differences between human groups, e.g. with skin tone being by far the most obvious, though not quite the only one, as it’s so with hair, Negroid Africans & Australoids tending to have nappy hair, as opposed to Europeans & orientals having straight hair, average heights, orientals having shorter statute relative to whites & blacks(the last you saw an Asian NFL player?). & most controversially, Europeans & East Asians having higher than average species wide intelligence. If as someone as Darwin himself was racially aware, so why aren’t scientists also allowed to 2 least question the PC conventional notion of human races being practically non-existent, or very insignificant @ worst, lest that means the careers will go on towards a downward spiral, just ask James Watson about that.

  10. Subspecies is a non precise concept. Even species is a non precise concept (although if you use the classical definition, breeding viable offspring, you can connect it to function, albiet not perfectly as there are ring species and you can debate what viable means.
    Subspecies do not have to be perfectly isolated. You can have intergradation (mixing) at the borders. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intergradation
    Note I’m not arguing that human races are subspecies. I’m not sure if they are/aren’t as I don’t really have any definition (even personal, intuitive) of how different populations need to be to be called subspecies.
    There is a more radical definition that even races don’t exist (as anything) but this untrue as the differences can be seen by DNA. You can use tests to see origin of ancestry. This is also true in terms of careful forensic measurements.

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