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Originally Posted by Lord Larehip
But if we do away with the concepts, how do classify a large group of people who share the same genetic traits that set them off from another group? It's like saying the grouping of dogs into terriers and hounds is arbitrary since they are all just wolf genes. Okay, so what? It's still a useful grouping. It's silly to classify grey hounds, dachschunds and basset hounds each as a group unto itself when, in fact, they share similar characteristics that makes them all hounds and sets them apart from dogs we classify as terriers. Even if hounds and terriers could say they find the classifications offensive, oh well, it's still useful and they shouldn't be offended. If they are--tough tittie. Grow a pair and get used to it.
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I meant I thought it was outdated because it doesn't actually represent 3 distinct genetic subgroups and is determined rather by superficial markers that don't necessarily point to a common origin. Thus maybe not all that useful.
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Even then, what does that mean? Genes are either dominant or recessive. Even within a racial group or genotype, certain genes become recessive or dominant due to contact with a different environment (what we call phenotype) that produces variations not seen in other members sharing that genotype. And this happens without interbreeding. In fact, you will often see greater differences in them than in people who are a product of interbreeding.
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Not really sure what your point here is. Or rather, I get your point but I'm not sure how it helps your argument that the pictures I posted are members of the 'negroid' group. Groups are diverse and can vary. Great. So why do they have to be a part of the diverse 'negroid' group with certain features that are atypical of that group as opposed to members of one of the other 2 diverse groups with certain features that are atypical of those groups.
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But that doesn't hold across the board. It's a general rule not absolute. Other Indians in Mexico that lived in the same region and climate had far different facial features. When blood-type studies were done on African tribes, there was no correlation between neighboring tribes as we would have thought. Instead, the blood-type correlations were found in tribes that lived far apart and often outside of Africa. Neighboring tribes show different origins.
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It's not an absolute, but it's a general rule for sound evolutionary reasons. So how far fetched is it that different populations living in different regions developed different features over that time span? Even if it was just selection for different traits that were already present in their gene pool.
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We don't know that. It's just as silly to think contact only happened once. Polynesian are called "Poly-" for a reason. They are a mixture of people so different groups of them made contact at different times in different regions. We know this for certain as Kennewick Man and Spirit Cave Man have already proven--Polynesians were living in North America but they bore no resemblance to Samoans or Melanesians. In fact, since they showed some genetic similarities to the Ainu of Japan, these two examples would have been more Caucasoid than Negroid.
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To me, it's silly to assume that contact happened at whatever point in time we want it to based on the facial features of a statue. It's reasonable to think the Polynesians made contact in the first millennium AD because there's actual evidence for that.