| redbreegull |
12-02-2013 06:16 PM |
Quote:
Originally Posted by scottytheoneand
(Post 4026142)
Mitochondrial DNA only traces DNA passed through the mother. What about the father? For that matter, we're all African if you go back far enough. Keep going back and we're all reptilian
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I'm not sure what your point is. That there is no biological basis for race? We all know that already except for Nimrod's Son.
What we see as race is basically what could be described as the "boy/girl marries boy/girl next door effect." Because people only really reproduced with others with very close geographic origin to themselves until very recently in history, most people in any given part of the world have stronger "familial" ties to other people in that part of the world than elsewhere. This is what our brains process as "race." It's essentially just family resemblance. When you look at overall genetic diversity on Earth, there is more diversity within any given population or "race" than there is between what we see as races, which is why the concept cannot be quantified scientifically. But those few phenotypes which our brains have been trained to see so prominently do convey to us the general closeness of ancestry between different people although obviously it is very possible to be wrong if want to make those kinds of guesses. Native Australians and New Zealanders are more closely related to white Europeans than to black Africans.
but none of this has anything to do with what I was actually saying, which was just that most European Jews have direct ancestry from a single line of people. I don't see why it matters that mitochondrial DNA is passed by maternity unless you are arguing I am wrong because women don't count as people. This "familial" closeness of European Jews is just as legitimate a basis for race as any other. |
