The Neanderthal extinction always made me think that erasure of races in our modern times will follow a similar pattern. People think of the Native Americans as getting wiped out by disease/violence over a few years, but their ultimate end (and every other races end) probably will be similar to Neanderthals: slowly getting bred out of existence until finding someone with >2% DNA is a novelty. Same thing will probably happen to any smaller populations as globalization/interbreeding means massive populations like China/India will end up being the majority of the DNA.
Yes but draw an arbitrary line around any group. Call them HNdrathals if you want. Define them at one instaneous snapshot in time as 100% conserved gene corpus. Then watch generation after generation, as some of the HNers (against all odds) interbreed with the surrounding populace. After one hundred generations, should we expect many people to be more than 2% HNdrathal? Yet did the HNdrathals ‘die out’?
Careful, HNers are a population with a history of trauma associated with unclosed parentheses. By raising our cortisol levels you may be lowering our fertility rate by exposing us to them.
With neanderthals it was physical factors. With groups in modern times it’ll probably be cultural factors. Many groups have panda-like reproductive preferences.
Yes, unless some natural or anthropogenic disaster makes it impossible to visit other continents.
Funnily enough, stopping this 'race mixing' is one of the explicit goals of some pretty horrible people and they have historically tried all sorts of things from eugenics to genocide.
I'd not put it past someone in the future to try and end modern industrial civilization to this end.
I'm always surprised at the opposite. We have such distinct ethnicities. It feels like everyone should be mixed race, but so few are.
I will grant that by some historic definitions you could consider many people mixed race as neighboring cultures combine. But there are still very large and distinctly separate ethnic groups like black, white, asian, etc.
All these are arbitrary. The genetic distance between a European with a high percentage of neanderthal DNA and that of some African populations is probably more comparable than some might expect. And whether we should consider Neanderthals a separate species, is again, probably more debatable than some might expect.
What makes a "race" is basically just total nonsense. Arguably there should be many "races" in Africa given the genetic diversity.
> We all are the same species, but we also all are mixed races.
> I will grant that by some historic definitions you could consider many people mixed race as neighboring cultures combine. But there are still very large and distinctly separate ethnic groups like black, white, asian, etc.
Isn't this exactly what you'd expect? Historically travel between the more obvious-by-skin-color-and-features ethnically-different groups has been slow and hard with some exceptions.
So you'd expect to see the lines get erased first among groups that started out closest together, and that seems to match with Europe some and especially the US where the English/Irish/Italian/German/Spanish/etc flavors of "white" all frequently ended up in the same cities. You also see more broader mixes in the US since it's historically been more open for, and attractive to, the sort of immigration that would produce it than the "home" countries for many of those ethnicities.
Even when you have a diverse total population like in the US, you only get a few shots per generation for a person of background A to have kids with one of background B, so it's gonna be really really slow, even before factoring in cultural/political factors that have generally actively discouraged it (or made it illegal in living memory!). Even the mixing of white-European ethnicities was often quite controversial. But as it became more common most Americans lost the ability to even recognize the differences, since they were more subtle than "skin color."
Give it 400 years of affordable air travel and it could look very different in countries with historical or future high levels of in-migration.
By DNA there is rarely any non-mixed population of ethnic groups. That applies both to maternal(unless interbreeding is a preference) and paternal lineages, as people are quite mixed, but borders of cultures and beliefs(in various myths - including about their ancestry) is what is holding societies together.
By appearance admixture is the one that defines looks and that includes racial look and it is question of mere 3 generations for descendants to look like anyone else around them, as that is where admixture differences are washed out.
USA has a lot of issues in this matter, like with "one blood drop rule" that is still used in definitions of races and also cultural war issue, which is affecting rest of the world in these matters not to mention taboo subject of races.
That’s because you’re holding a particular snapshot of a race in your mind. If you really think about it, a lot of people are intensely mixed. Most African-Americans, all Hispanics, the Middle East, Central Asia, all of South Asia are racially mixed. That’s probably half the worlds population.
We could argue a long time about what counts as "mixed" or as a "race". But there are definitely genetic clusters[0]. I don't think it's that surprising given fast travel is a relatively recent invention. The clusters will probably become less distinct over the next centuries.
>It feels like everyone should be mixed race, but so few are.
Here in Belgium my grandma was first to go work 2 municipalities away. Her parents were farmers.
She cried when she came back and swore she would not go back the next day. Such a distant like was traveling to the end of the world to her i guess.
Later they traveled to the south of france by bus and such but they never went beyond a neighbouring country. Still it's a thing her parents could only have dreamed of.
I think people have a bias by which they forget the massive technological advancements of recent years on one hand.
And see the stories of travelers of the distant past on the norm on the other hand rather than things written about because they were so rare and interesting.
Most people stayed put untill you could pinpoint their location based on their genome and it influenced who you can get donor organs from. They repeatedly developed local cultures, languages and dialects in doing so.
The only DNA genes we have are coming from Middle East contact of Neanderthals with Homo Sapiens. There was no bred out of the extinction event, specific to Neanderthals only, as we are missing also majority of DNA of those early Homo Sapiens.
Races has nothing to do with any of that - Neanderthals themselves seems to had different looks, depending on region they were living and had contacts with other humans - and we all were the same species.
Yes, there are no distinct races of modern humans. Whenever people in the US describe ethnic groups as races I cringe and wonder how much damage this misinformation is still causing.
>Same thing will probably happen to any smaller populations as globalization/interbreeding means massive populations like China/India will end up being the majority of the DNA.
China's 1.0ish fertility rate means that they will be gone in 14 generations or so. India's not that far behind them. It's strange hearing people talk about the "erasure of races"... a meme that goes back 70 or more years at this point, when the only race that will be erased is the human race.
When fertility rates are 1.0, every subsequent human generation is half the size of the previous. Rapid population will become impossible to ignore in just a few decades. Human extinction looms.
ericmcer · · focus · HN ↗
ricksunny · · focus · HN ↗
howunfortunate · · focus · HN ↗
dijit · · focus · HN ↗
I lean your way of course, it’s not totally arbitrary, but where we draw a line tends to be a bit arbitrary.
delichon · · focus · HN ↗
ricksunny · · focus · HN ↗
BubbleRings · · focus · HN ↗
cindyllm · · focus · HN ↗
[dead]
helterskelter2 · · focus · HN ↗
modo_mario · · focus · HN ↗
Yes? If that's how we see it for other groups animals, cultures, peoples, neandertals then why not for HNdrathals or so?
rayiner · · focus · HN ↗
fooker · · focus · HN ↗
Funnily enough, stopping this 'race mixing' is one of the explicit goals of some pretty horrible people and they have historically tried all sorts of things from eugenics to genocide.
I'd not put it past someone in the future to try and end modern industrial civilization to this end.
naet · · focus · HN ↗
I will grant that by some historic definitions you could consider many people mixed race as neighboring cultures combine. But there are still very large and distinctly separate ethnic groups like black, white, asian, etc.
(I am not mixed race by my wife and son are)
senderista · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/35749414-who-we-are-and-how-we-got-here" rel="nofollow">https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/35749414-who-we-are-a...
453yuh46 · · focus · HN ↗
kypro · · focus · HN ↗
What makes a "race" is basically just total nonsense. Arguably there should be many "races" in Africa given the genetic diversity.
> We all are the same species, but we also all are mixed races.
We're also all mixed-species.
senderista · · focus · HN ↗
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jghn · · focus · HN ↗
[1] <a href="https://ewanbirney.com/2019/10/race-genetics-and-pseudoscience-an-explainer.html" rel="nofollow">https://ewanbirney.com/2019/10/race-genetics-and-pseudoscien...
d0mine · · focus · HN ↗
majormajor · · focus · HN ↗
Isn't this exactly what you'd expect? Historically travel between the more obvious-by-skin-color-and-features ethnically-different groups has been slow and hard with some exceptions.
So you'd expect to see the lines get erased first among groups that started out closest together, and that seems to match with Europe some and especially the US where the English/Irish/Italian/German/Spanish/etc flavors of "white" all frequently ended up in the same cities. You also see more broader mixes in the US since it's historically been more open for, and attractive to, the sort of immigration that would produce it than the "home" countries for many of those ethnicities.
Even when you have a diverse total population like in the US, you only get a few shots per generation for a person of background A to have kids with one of background B, so it's gonna be really really slow, even before factoring in cultural/political factors that have generally actively discouraged it (or made it illegal in living memory!). Even the mixing of white-European ethnicities was often quite controversial. But as it became more common most Americans lost the ability to even recognize the differences, since they were more subtle than "skin color."
Give it 400 years of affordable air travel and it could look very different in countries with historical or future high levels of in-migration.
453yuh46 · · focus · HN ↗
By appearance admixture is the one that defines looks and that includes racial look and it is question of mere 3 generations for descendants to look like anyone else around them, as that is where admixture differences are washed out. USA has a lot of issues in this matter, like with "one blood drop rule" that is still used in definitions of races and also cultural war issue, which is affecting rest of the world in these matters not to mention taboo subject of races.
dyauspitr · · focus · HN ↗
olalonde · · focus · HN ↗
[0] <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Principal_component_analysis_of_modern_human_populations.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Principal_component_...
modo_mario · · focus · HN ↗
Here in Belgium my grandma was first to go work 2 municipalities away. Her parents were farmers. She cried when she came back and swore she would not go back the next day. Such a distant like was traveling to the end of the world to her i guess. Later they traveled to the south of france by bus and such but they never went beyond a neighbouring country. Still it's a thing her parents could only have dreamed of.
I think people have a bias by which they forget the massive technological advancements of recent years on one hand. And see the stories of travelers of the distant past on the norm on the other hand rather than things written about because they were so rare and interesting.
Most people stayed put untill you could pinpoint their location based on their genome and it influenced who you can get donor organs from. They repeatedly developed local cultures, languages and dialects in doing so.
453yuh46 · · focus · HN ↗
Races has nothing to do with any of that - Neanderthals themselves seems to had different looks, depending on region they were living and had contacts with other humans - and we all were the same species.
icantevenhold · · focus · HN ↗
rndmdkdmmd · · focus · HN ↗
imagine being so politically correct you have pretend your eyes lie to you
tovej · · focus · HN ↗
prmoustache · · focus · HN ↗
deadlast2 · · focus · HN ↗
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NoMoreNicksLeft · · focus · HN ↗
China's 1.0ish fertility rate means that they will be gone in 14 generations or so. India's not that far behind them. It's strange hearing people talk about the "erasure of races"... a meme that goes back 70 or more years at this point, when the only race that will be erased is the human race.
When fertility rates are 1.0, every subsequent human generation is half the size of the previous. Rapid population will become impossible to ignore in just a few decades. Human extinction looms.
Zen1th · · focus · HN ↗