Human Races- Are There Human Races

1835 Words4 Pages

The scientific community continues to be divided over the concept that different human races exist. The consensus seems to be that there are not different human races in a biological sense. According to some definitions there are human races. There are varying reasons why the whole of the scientific community has not accepted the consensus. Until the Human Genome project scientist had limited resources for determining whether human races existed. Since the scientific advances, it has become clear that humans are descended from the same species and migrated to populate the earth. There are numerous studies that show this in differing ways. There are those that discount the biological idea that race does not exist in order to benefit from the sociocultural use of races. Forensic anthropology is one field using old criteria of race even in light of new science although they have begun to make changes.
There continues to be divisions among the scientific community as to whether races exist biologically even following the era of genomic research. We know that humans have been geographically divided into continental groups through migration. Certainly we seem to be of the same species throughout the world. The term race is then used more for classification of the different people groups or demes than to describe various evolutionary sub species. When you think of the time factor of evolution being in the millions and billions, Homo sapiens are a fairly young species (Maglo 385)
The concepts of race and sub species are basically the same thing in the biological sense. Subspecies are populations of the same species with the difference being difference in the genes or differing groups of genes. It has been shown that populations that are isolated from one another for long enough periods of time geographically do develop significant genetic differences. These groups have

Open Document