paul
Fact: genetically black Africans are more distant from white Europeans than polar bears are from brown bears.

Vlad I
Let me tell you why that's bullshit, because you obviously are retarded, Ok now use your big boy words because I don't want your head to hurt too much (I'm being condescending for a reason) ok buddy, Brown Bear known as Ursus arctos is a completely different species of animal than a polar bear which is known as Ursus maritimus, ok so a white person is known as a Homo sapiens sapiens, and now a black person is known as a homo sapiens sapiens, do you know why that is? BECAUSE WE ARE THE SAME FUCKING SPECIES YOU FUCKING MONGOLOID IGNORANT AND JUST PLAIN STUPID RACIST FUCKTARD!

paul
Its based on the last common ancestor . Source:  Research carried out by Alywyn Scalley and Richard Durbin from the University of Cambridge which puts the out of Africa migration event at between 100 - 120 thousand years ago whereas polar bears split from brown bears 343,000 to 479 ,000 years ago. Non Africans also have some Neanderthal add-mixture which means European also have neanderthal ancestry which means their last common ancestor with Africans must be the last neanderthal - Africans common ancestor at 700,000 to 1,000000 years ago. 

TheLaLa1
fact: genetically, light colored cocker spaniels are more distant from dark colored cocker spaniels than black Africans are from white Europeans.

Isaac
Don't like the use of the word Mongoloid there, but well done none the less.

deathtokoalas
the actual fact is that you can't even define the terms "genetically black africans" or "white europeans". almost everybody in europe is a mix of asian and african; almost everybody in africa has experienced genetic backflow from back migration. there's even areas of black africa with r1b as dominant. race has no biological meaning.

google quickly informs me that scalley & durbin have published some papers discussing the mutation rate in humans and arguing that the assumptions underlying the mutation rate are flawed. that's a valid academic discussion that exists in multiple conversations. while i haven't read these papers, i've read enough to state clearly that the idea that anything related to mutation rates is a "fact" is simply wrong. mutation rates are very fragile estimates. it seems that the crux of their argument is how fragile the estimates are, not how "factual" they are.

further, if the implication is that you can determine how different groups are from their common ancestor by taking a fixed rate and dividing for age then the answer is "no". emphatically. it's absurd. crocodiles and sharks have been virtually identical over that period, while dozens of species of birds have radiated quickly on islands. i can't believe they would publish something like that. so, are you drawing these conclusions yourself or is somebody lying to you? if the latter, who is it?

paul
Starting with the outlandish lie that most Europeans are African - Asian hybrids really pulls the rug out from under you're credibility. Race is a taxonomy term, By saying a taxonomy term has no biological meaning is painting yourself as a loon. I partially accept you're criticism of mutation rates. Evidently changing environmental conditions is the catalyst for rapid evolution and accelerated mutations rates. In this regard humans and polar bears share obvious parallels.

deathtokoalas
actually, there's a great deal of admixture in both.

1) while the sahara has acted as a mild geographic boundary, it hasn't prevented gene flow around it, specifically up the nile and around the arabian peninsula, as well as through what is now called morocco. this is something you can measure in the y dna. the most obvious way to make sense of it is to look at the semitic language group, which is thought to have originated in modern somalia and worked it's way up through the middle east. that is to say the jews and arabs speak a language that developed amongst dark skinned people in eastern africa - and you can trace the gene flow along with it through the spread of farming and right into central europe.

2) the r1* type probably originated in central asia and simultaneously moved south and west along with the indo-european language group. this movement of asian peoples into europe with r1* went as far west as you can go - right into ireland. the original carriers of r1*, which dominates in europe, were probably not pasty white.

3) there's also been large amounts of genetic movement from the far east of asia - and this can be measured in historical terms with movements of turkic and mongolian peoples. again, it's right into central europe.

if there was an "indigenous european genetic type", it's primarily tied to what are today the basque people. there's some further remnants in the british isles. for the most part, though, the genetics of europe are defined by those two gradients from the east and the south - which are from asia and africa, respectively - and not through a process of isolation or stasis.

further, the idea that race is a sociological concept with absolutely no biological basis is the consensus view today. i'm sorry if you've been led astray, but that's what virtually any scientific-minded person will tell you about it. what i'm telling you is the reason why. you simply cannot connect skin colour to any genetic trait other than skin colour. there's been far too much gene flow across phenotypic barriers to allow for it to make sense.

you can even find examples of white people born to two very black parents, or black people born to two very white parents.

now, with the mutation rates, the argument that the rate changes as a result of the environment is what is called orthogenesis. that requires a supernatural cause as a mechanism to explain it. it's bollocks. you may see selection act more strongly as a result of climate changes, but that doesn't imply a faster mutation rate.

the entire idea of a "mutation rate" is really deeply flawed. you could measure something statistically if you had enough data, but it's a totally abstract and largely imaginary idea.

mutations are random. the rate doesn't increase or decrease. how fast they happen isn't even important. what's important is the selective pressure.

i'm going to carefully agree that europeans are going to have different selective pressures than africans. but, as i've mentioned, there's been a lot of gene flow.

with humans, the truth is that our selective pressures are largely sexual rather than environmental. with the twerking craze, we're seeing attention drawn to the asses of women of colour. that's not environmental. it's sexual. similarly, blond hair colour amongst white people seems to be driven by sexual selection.

TheLaLa1
"painting yourself as a loon"? most leading anthropologists and geneticists these days all say that race is not a biological term.. the same scientists that write the papers you read.. so are they loons?

paul
A persons race can be determined with just about 100% accuracy by analysing their DNA. A persons race can also be identified using bone morphology. If its measurable then it is biologically real. Saying race is a social construct is simply political correctness imposed on biological reality. In view of the morphological and genetic differences among human populations, how can such differences be "constructs"

"All say race is a not a biological term"  So you have spoken to all of them then?

African or Asian admixture is basically at trace levels and is mostly restricted to southern Europe. Its also does not negate the integrity of human races or subspecies. For example polar bears on occasion interbreed with brown bears producing  hybrid offspring and Coyotes are known to interbreed with Grey wolves. Every organism on this planet shares at the very least 60 genes with any other. A blue whale shares some of its genes with bacteria. Biology is fuzzy borders, hence the species problem. You're add mixture argument is meaningless.

Lastly. I will concede you're point on mutations.

deathtokoalas
the entire r1* "white gene" is asian in origin. what we today call celts were living in afghanistan and practicing something closely resembling hinduism a few thousand years ago, living as one with ancestors of modern indians. it's not that i'm arguing that europeans aren't "pure", and more that i'm arguing that the entire idea of "racial purity" is impossible to define. you've got the finns. they're bottlenecked. otherwise, european populations are defined by immigration into the region, not by stasis since the ice age. it consequently just doesn't make any sense to try and say "this is white, this is black" regarding anything other than the skin colour itself.

the old cranial type typology regarding bone morphology has been thoroughly debunked. it's been demonstrated that human bone structure is defined by plasticity, not genetics. you can expect that europeans in california will demonstrate convergent evolution in their bone structures and melanin levels and eventually look similarly to the indigenous people of the region. another example of convergence is to compare people in the amazon with people from polynesia. they're very difficult to distinguish from each other in terms of morphology, but share almost no gene flow (amazonians descending from siberia over the bering land bridge, with polynesians coming relatively recently from "indochina"). the typology you're referencing is incomplete, overlaps with itself and is unreliable in characterizing what it wishes to typify. in short, it's useless at doing what it claims to be able to do.

the dna thing is also a weird argument. there's been tons of european r1* admixture into north america since colonization. substantial numbers of people living on reserves have european patrilineal lineages, with indigenous genes everywhere else on the family tree. so, are these people indigenous or european? again: the problem is that you can't define what this means.

antred11
Maybe they are. Now explain why that should matter.

deathtokoalas
they aren't. this idea of separate, equal races is just as wrong as racism is...

(deleted response)

deathtokoalas
i'm not sure if this person decided not to read what i wrote, or if this person was unable to follow what i wrote. laziness or stupidity? even when it seems obvious, it's never really entirely clear... 

(deleted response)

paul
" A persons geographical background can be determined rather than race/subspecies"  As with any other divergent subspecies of animal, both geographical ancestry and race or subspecies can be determined from genetic markers. Geographical isolation is part of the set criteria for determining if a populations is a divergent  subspecies or not. Morphologically distinguishable populations that arise from geographically isolated populations are generally categorized as subspecies. Human subspecies / races meet the scientific criteria for subspecies therefore are just as valid or invalid as any other subspecies of animal.

Species / races concept is Darwinian in origins. Race denial is the corruption of science for political purposes.

As I have previously stated that there is continuous gene flow between polar bears and brown bears and also Grey Wolves and coyotes to name just  two examples. If you want to persist with the add mixture argument then to be consistent you would also have to label the taxonomy category of species meaningless on precisely the same grounds. 

Anthropologist in crime labs across the United States are still using skeletal features to identify a persons race.

deathtokoalas
i've already corrected the points, there's no use in continuing - i'm not trying to convince "paul smith" so much as i'm trying to moderate his youtube graffiti.

the only other thing i want to point out is that "the legal system does it" is about the worst argument possible, given the legal system routinely ignores science in favour of ideology. they may very well be using these ideas, but they shouldn't be.

again: the defining factor for bone structure is not genetics, and trying to use bone structure to determine origin is going to produce unreliable results, at best.

further studies have deduced that population variation has reduced what you're talking about to an unreliable marker. that is, it may be the case that 75% of germans (many of whom have yiddish, turkish or roman ancestry) and 25% of spaniards (many of whom descend from german visigoths, and many of whom are part arabic - and many of whom are both) have some trait. that reduces testing for the trait to a statement involving a probability.

as you're dealing with populations that demonstrate variability rather than homogeneity, you can never know with any certainty whether an individual is of "northern european" or "mediterranean" background by looking at their bones - you can merely produce statements like "60% chance of north germanic ancestry".

paul
Anthropologist analyse skeletal remains for racial pointers because it yields pretty reliable results.

No one is claiming that Northern and Southern Europeans are different races.

As I have already pointed out, some add mixture does not even invalidate species status never mind subspecies or race. Some add mixture. So what, 

Its markers, And I doubt that population variation has reduced by any meaningful extent in ten years.

People started categorizing people into races when they started to encounter different peoples in the middle ages. Later the ideas featured in Darwin,s Origin Of species shaped how people viewed the natural world with its endless variation of organisms including humans. Calling Darwinian,s of the period " Haters " is ignorant.

Ethiopians aren't that hard to distinguish from Southern Indians. Given that Ethiopians have considerable caucasian add mixture similarities between the two populations reflects this. I note you didn't hold up Congo pygmies and Norwegians as examples or even Aborigines and Eskimos.

Obviously from you're comment you're denial of race is politically motivated.

deathtokoalas
the variation was always there. you're going to find caucasoid-types in east asia and africoid-types in scandinavia, they're just at lower percentages of the population.

paul
Before the insanity of open borders what percentage of africoid types were present in Scandinavia prior to the war. Give a percentage and a reliable source.

deathtokoalas
that question is not articulated well. you're dealing with combinations of skull shape, nose size, etc. so, you've got various combinations of "dolicephalic" or "brachycephalic" shapes in both populations. none of these characteristics are unique to any population, but you will see them differ in terms of proportions.

so, you'll end up with bones in scandinavian graveyards that have "negroid" types but in fact belonged to white people that may have had blonde hair and blue eyes; conversely, you'll end up with "caucasoid" bone structures in the middle of africa that came from people that were black.

now, if you're going to do an archaeological dig in these regions, you can make reasonable guesses about what these people looked like based on what we know about the historical population dynamics in the region. but, if you're going to unearth a recent graveyard in north carolina (for example) and you don't know the physical characteristics of the individual involved, the best you can come up with is a probability or an estimate of likelihood - because anything "negroid" has a minority variance in the "caucasoid" population and vice versa.

so, you're asking me for statistics about something that doesn't actually exist. somebody might have tried to compile them anyways (x% of scandinavians are doli or y% are brachy) but i'm not going looking for them.

stated clearly and simply: the typology is false, and at best unreliable.

paul
Anthropologist claim 85% accuracy in determining race which is extremely impressive considering South America and North America have large hybrid populations. I suspect a direct comparison between a Europeans Skull and a sub Saharan Africans skull would yield even higher accuracy.  Considering the skulls of subspecies of tigers are indistinguishable from each other, and lions and tigers skulls are quite difficult to tell apart, the accuracy claimed by anthropologist is profound.

deathtokoalas
well, i don't know where the number 85% came from, but i think that's a proper place to stop as it's an implicit concession of what i'm getting across.

John
So your point is?

He has no point because there isn't one.  Nothing to see here but a dolt.

Jen
Hmm.....so I am a light skinned African American whose parents are Haitian American & with a great grandfather who is white.......what does that make me? If you want to be racist, be a racist, whatever, you're still the minority so bask in your own racist bullshit in your own mind...good for you.......but the fact that you are using bullshit "facts" to support your own racism and bigotry is simply cowardly and pathetic. Come out of the racist closet & accept your racism for what it is, hatred, not logic, so stop trying to mask it as something that it is not. Good day my fellow bear. LOL

LudeMasta991
Gotta love the socialist progressive blowing a gasket.

deathtokoalas
there's nothing progressive about leninism. dude's a fascist and pretty clearly demonstrated it.

paul 
So I am a fascist and every anthropologist in America is seeing things. You need sanctioning.

deathtokoalas
i didn't previously claim you were a fascist, but i'm currently questioning your skills in reading comprehension.

we've been through this - populations exhibit variation in terms of skull size and skull shape.

alex 
I love how you fail to provide any type of scientific evidence to actually prove him wrong.

You bitch and rant about him being a racist then call him a "mongoloid". That's pretty ironic. Since you are obviously ignorant as to why it is I'll tell you that "mongoloid" is actually a racial slur.

His comment wasn't even racist. It was a interesting bit of knowledge that your "white knight" mind immediately interpreted as racist. Lol fuck off Vladdy.

Vlad I
Well actually you pretentious ass I did, I basically stated that science refers to us as one species while they are two different bear species, if black people were that genetically different from white people they would not be Homo sapiens sapiens they would be different, and mongoloid has two differing definitions one the Asian facial features they other would be referring to mentally slow individuals which I was referring to, ans was being used as if someone would use the word retarded.

Oh and it was racist he was implying in genetic standpoints that whites and blacks are as distant from each other as a bonobo is to an orangutan which is plain insulting.

deathtokoalas
you know, vlad, it seems to me that you were probably partially tatar, yourself.

can you piece together why equating "mongoloid" with "retard" is racist?

the biggest problem with communism is communists. sad truth.

i'm just going to leave this here, and remove myself from the thread:
http://www.livinganthropologically.com/anthropology/human-skulls-boas-head-shape/

the connection between race and skull size/shape was debunked decades ago, but the science continues to be ignored by people with ulterior motives in determining "biological race". it's not the only area of biology where people just refuse to get it, but it's one of the more frustrating examples of it because this idea of racial categorization is just so engrained, despite being so wrong.

generally, you get these sorts of arguments from older people, and i'm consequently going to guess that paul smith is probably older than 50. he may have even learned this in an accredited educational institution when he was younger. but it's completely out of date.

you know, and it's not like you can say "they're still uncovering it, they're still working on it".

to the contrary, just about everything has been tried, because a biological racial categorization is what so many people want, and nothing works. it can't be done with any level of certainty or rigour...

you can make probabilistic statements, based on genes and environment. but it's variation that dominates, not characteristics that can be put into boxes and labelled.

you could also read this...

http://physanth.org/about/position-statements/biological-aspects-race/

ALEX
Mongoloid is a racist slur period. What you are doing is basically calling someone a nigger then saying "oh no I meant the other kind of nigger"

Vlad I
Actually the Merriam Websters has two definitions for mongoloid which are both mentioned, and the physical characteristics associated with the Asian people is not considered a pejorative term it is simply a phenotype the same as one would say someone from a Native American would have the traditional characteristics of darker skin, higher cheek bones and jet black hair. Now you would know this if you knew what a homonym was, because the word has two modern meanings the same as faggot in America and faggot in England, I don't think you would get on a Brit's case for using fag would you? I simply was meaning to scold the idiot OP as he is a disgrace to the human race, for his backwardness and plain assholery. I'm sure the moron also believes in Phrenology as well.

deathtokoalas
the usage of the word "mongoloid" as an insult stems from it's use as a racial slur. the idea was that mongoloid types were of inferior intelligence. it's not a coincidence, it's a question of the etymology of the word.

a faggot is a bundle of sticks, which developed independently in two different directions. cigarettes and homosexuals are both things that are sometimes lit on fire, as bundles of sticks are.

"nigger" is the better comparison. the word has a meaning as a "slave" or "ignorant person", but it has a racial context that is not separable from it's use as an insult.

as an aside: you could always try not insulting people.

so, it's actually kind of topical, ironically, because the insult stems from a misperception that the mongoloid skull shape (it's an archaic anthropological term) indicated an affinity with mental retardation. that is, that the facial features of north asians were connected to the facial features of people with autism or down syndrome, and this was presented as an explanation for their inferior intellect. his insult is based on precisely what he's arguing against.

the reality is that he probably didn't understand what he was saying. the correct thing to do is to acknowledge the error and adjust his vocabulary.

Vlad I
I know what mongoloid means (Trust me I know both definitions beforehand, I didn't look it up I just happen to have a pretty good vocabulary), and I have heard it many times in my life, hell we learned both meanings one week for a vocabulary test in English, and I have never heard it once used as a pejorative phrase for someone of Asian descent. My English teachers would use it all the time to point out the dullards in class. I have heard many people use it, never once to an Asian person, but as a basically a synonym for the word retard. When most people use the word retard they do not mean it as insult to the mentally handicapped, they mean to use it as an advanced form of idiocy. Most people I know use words like these not out of hate or dislike for another group, but simply as an adjective for stupidity. Mongoloid may have it's roots in a racist term but it's modern definition has changed from that, I assume you probably say the word retard every now and then, which is considered an insult to the mentally ill, but you are simply referring to someone as a stupid person, because for the most part the societal definition of the word has changed.

deathtokoalas
personally, i'm sensitive enough to avoid the word "retard".

listen: this has been explained to you. the world can't stop you from being an asshole, but don't be surprised when people react badly when you talk like that.

Vlad I
You're being a little judgemental, what about this makes me an asshole, you're just more sensitive to a certain subject than I am, I personally don't believe in bad words, they are just a way to express an emotion such as my anger and disbelief considering OP's just plain stupid comment, what he said was basically equivocating that there is essentially a species gap between two races of people. Ignorant comments like his feed other peoples racism that they have within them when they see that other people believe the stupid shit they believe, they tend to wholeheartedly feel that their racism is ok then. As an individual with a staunch hate of racism his comment enraged me causing me to use unflattering words to characterize him, and I stand behind my decision to use them, because ignorant bigotry such as his is why there is such a gap in living conditions still today between the white experience and the black experience in America, leading to an unfair advantage to caucasians in life.

deathtokoalas
i need to be honest that i don't understand how you can express yourself so hypocritically, other than reducing it the pride of youth. you've let on that you're a young person. your teacher was using a word inappropriately, and you've copied it. your teacher is as much to blame as you are. if you really believe what you're saying, you should thank the posters here for correcting you and confront your teacher on the language. i somehow doubt your teacher didn't understand the language; it's not language that should be used in a classroom.

gantzisballs
Do you even know what the definition of a species is? When Polar bears and Brown bears breed, they produce hybrids, like when lions and tigers breed or when horses and donkeys breed. Hybrids are sterile and don't produce offspring because different species BY DEFINITION, can't create viable offspring. When black and white humans have children, those children are NOT sterile, because black and white humans belong to the same species. A less completely idiotic argument you could make is that different races are different sub-species, but it goes against the quota that generally defines a subspecies. Two separate populations that don't intermix are considered sub-species when at least 15% of species genetic diversity is between those 2 groups. With humans, the most distant genetic distance is between Africans and native Americans and even that is roughly 10% and thusly under the quota for a sub-species. The best argument you could make is that different races look different and therefore can be considered morphological sub-species despite the genetic similarity, since in biology some sub-species were divided based on looks over genes. I believe that Homo-Neanderthalis and Homo-Denisova were the last actual sub-species. Genetic evidence suggests these groups likely bred with homo sapiens and therefore were not separate species, but the last homo-sapien sub-species. They are currently dead (besides Ben Roethelisberger) and only Homo Sapiens Sapiens remains. I honestly don't know why I bothered to post this. Racists are usually far too stupid to comprehend basic biology and generally lack the attention span or reading comprehension to tackle long paragraphs.

deathtokoalas
i have to point out that the species definition is actually considered outdated at this point. it came from a combination of noah's ark and aristotlian classification, culminating in the linnaean classification. all of this happened way, way before we understood the idea of common descent. this system was rooted in the underlying assumption that, because god created each species separately, they could not mix with each other.

we know today that none of the assumptions underlying the aristotlian classification are true, but the idea hasn't died yet. aristotle needs to die hard, but just refuses to! so, we still look at species as independent units rather than existing in a shared tree of life.

if you take a course in biology today, they don't present the old classification anymore. instead, they use a system called cladistics that organizes descent in terms of common ancestors. it's a step forward in breaking free from aristotle's system, but it's not "there yet".

there's also the question of plant biology, which is far more complex. it's common to find plants that are actually hybrids of several species!

a proper system would look more like a directed graph, with all kinds of crossings. "species" would meet in the graph as often as they branch from each other.

it is true that hybrids are sometimes sterile. however, they are often viable and sometimes actually superior. there's a concept in evolutionary biology called hybrid vigour that describes the widespread phenomenon of hybrids outcompeting their ancestor species.

there's a plethora of examples of this happening in front of our faces, but i'm going to point to two examples that are in the news. one of them is the "killer bees" that have moved north from brazil into the united states, decimating local bee populations. the killer bee is a hybrid of african and european species. but, you might argue that these were artificially selected. a natural hybrid that's been occurring recently in the eastern part of north america is between coyotes and wolves, producing the coywolf. these animals are replacing both coyotes and wolves in their respective niches.

the conclusion to draw is actually that the species concept is too simplistic to be useful. one could turn around and define a species as a group of animals that are able to interbreed with each other, but if one were to do this then the entire aristotlian hierarchy would collapse.

it's known that grizzlies and polar bears can in fact produce viable offspring. using the definition of species presented, you'd end up arguing that bears are one species rather than that humans are multiple species.

but, that would be missing the point that we share a common descent and the only way to figure out if animals that look sort of similar can breed or not is to try it - on the individual level, rather than the species level.

gantzisballs
You are correct that that the Ernst Mayr definition of species that I was using is considered outdated by many in current evolutionary biology. Mayr's definition was created in the late 1940s when molecular genetics didn't exist yet and genetics in general was still in its "infancy" so to speak. Unfortunately, this definition is still widely used in US colleges for undergraduate biology courses. The more detailed, accurate, and modern methods are only taught at graduate level biology courses. I was a chemistry major and I am currently in medical school, so I have never had a graduate level course in evolutionary biology or species taxonomy. I was trying to correct Paul on what I felt was an idiotic statement, but I don't wish to debate you, deathtokoalas, since I am clearly outmatched in this topic.

deathtokoalas
fwiw, my academic background is in mathematics. i've never bothered to take any kind of science (except physics) beyond the 100 level because i find the lab work to be a tremendous waste of time, given that i don't have any aspirations to work in an actual lab. that said, i would have certainly taken higher level bio courses when i was in school if i didn't have to do the lab work. it's a topic of interest to me. but i'm in no way an authority on the topic, i'm just a typical math geek that's widely read up on this particular topic for the purposes of my own amusement.

hybridization, in particular, is something that was looked at very negatively for a long time. it was almost viewed as something subversive, in the way that it undercuts the species concept and the religious and philosophical aspects of it. but it's now widely established as a common way for species to form. and i may hypothesize (from the point of view of a mathematician-philosopher) that it may even have something to do with solving the gould-dawkins debate.

gantzisballs
The thing is with the Gould/Dawkins debate is that both are extremely dogmatic and inflexible. One is genes =everything and often completly ignores the effects of the environment on turning genes on or off (epigenetics). The other is a classical darwinist who is almost all environmental selection and ignores the effects of random mutation, or considers mutations too rare or insignificant. Both are right in some areas, but short sighted and wrong in other areas. Both are popular science writers that are actually better at writing books and making political statements than either are as actual scientists. The only thing Dawkins ever really contributed to science was the "meme" concept, which he himself largely ignores because it isn't genetic in nature. Gould created punctuated equalibrium, which was an important step, but his extreme dislike of eugenics led him to be highly skeptical of any gene centered models of evolution. In the end, the nature vs nurture debate is largely idiotic because both forces work together and one effects the other.

deathtokoalas
it's really a question of what causes the "punctuated equilibrium" that you see in the fossil record. as i pointed out above, the idea that the environment has an effect on mutation rates is orthogenesis. it can have an effect on the speed of selection, but that's not the same thing. so, any suggestion that the environment causes mutation rates to increase or decrease cannot be taken seriously (unless the cause is radiation).

rather, changes in climate should often have the opposite effect of the allopatric model. if species are to split in half when a mountain splits their range, it follows that they should recombine when erosion tears the mountain down - presuming they are still able to mate.

that's what happening with coywolves, and may also happen with grizzlies and polar bears. as the ice melts in the arctic, polar bears will move south; as the temperature warms, grizzlies will move north. the end result will be a hybrid species in the north of the range, and maybe some genetic isolation in the south.

when you look at the fossil record fifty thousand years from now, you're going to see these sudden morphological shifts that are correlated with changes in climate. we can see the cause of this in front of us, but we're still just not willing to let aristotle go...

gantzisballs
If I am not mistaken, Gould argues for Sympatric speciation at least as much if not more than allopatric speciation. the environment effects selection pressure, but few would argue that it directly effects the rate at which mutations happen. My point in bringing up epigenetics was a bit of a tangent and was not referring to the process of speciation, but in terms of undertanding human behavior and health for a single generation, which Gould and Dawkins would often argue over. Actually, the Dawkins fued was just "inherited" so to speak from Gould's fued with Dawkin's mentor EO Wilson. However, each viewed the other with at least some level of professional respect. The truly nasty and bitter fueds that Gould had were against psychologists like Jenson, Lynn, Rushton, and all of those guys that attempted to use IQ tests to prove the genetic superiority of East Asians and Northern Europeans (Nordics). Jenson was himself trained by a guy named Hans Eysenk, who was an ex member of the Gestapo and was once punched in the face after calling a Jewish protestor an Untermenschen. Gould was Jewish and did not enjoy being called "sub-human" vermin by a guy that was trained by an unrepentent Nazi war criminal. Unfortunately for the field of psychology, Eysenk switched sides after 1943 when he fled to Britain after it was obvious Germany was going to lose. He was like a real life version of Hans Landa from Inglorious Basterds. The field of psychology was swayed during the late 1980s and early 1990s by Eysenk and Jenson's more math based approach (albeit with massive experimental design problems) as opposed to the "touchy, feely" hippy crap that dominated psychology during the 1960s and 1970s under the leadership of Abraham Maslow.

deathtokoalas
yeah. i was referring specifically to the question of the gaps in the fossil record: is it "incomplete" as those who would align with dawkins would say, or is it fairly complete and there are simply spurts within it? i agree that both dawkins and gould were both primarily working under sympatric assumptions, and pointing this out is necessary context for the debate to actually make sense, but i would argue that the solution to the problem may be in abandoning sympatric assumptions in favour of a sort of "reverse allopatric model". that is, the "gaps in the fossil record" are neither the result of it being incomplete (in general - maybe sometimes) nor evidence of mutation rates adjusting to the environment (although i wouldn't deny that selection rates might, sometimes), but actually evidence of hybridization's dominant role in evolution. if you take this view, the debate resolves itself in realizing that the wrong model is being applied.

something you'll see if you sort carefully through the palaeontological literature is this pattern that i need to do in point form to articulate clearly:

- you have two related species. let's say one is bigger, one is smaller.
- you can track micro changes in both species over a decent period of time. let's say the smaller is getting a little bigger.
- a rapid evolution takes place in one (let's say the smaller gets bigger all of a sudden), which is correlated with the geological record to suggest changes in climate.
- the other species disappears.

this has generally been interpreted by both sides (who are both assuming sympatric models) as the smaller species evolving to out compete the larger. the debate then comes into how that works, exactly. but, this is a pattern that you see over and over again. a reverse allopatric model would argue that the populations are actually merging due to climate shifts, and neither competition nor extinction are truly happening.

again, that's a change in model, so it's bound to be resisted. now, i'm not the first person to point this out, but the (rather persistent) suggestions that hybridization may be a dominant factor in evolution have historically been rejected under the arguments you presented, which i believe are primarily excuses to uphold the aristotlian conception, which nobody really wants to abandon.

part of the problem is that bones are very ambiguous. dna is a better way to sort this out, and the computing power to do it has only been available to us for a few years. they did a study a few months ago that deduced that there wasn't a linear way to organize chimps, gorillas and humans. there's dna that only humans and chimps share, only humans and gorillas share and only chimps and gorillas share. you can't really make sense of this by using cladistics and competition, unless you start talking about things being deleted, and the timescales are too short for that. rather, you have to bring in a "species complex" that produced multiple hybrids that evolved in different directions. that is, all three of these primate species must have emerged from separate hybridization events of the same common ancestors. so, you get crossings in the tree - a significant point of complication.

again: we're not really "there yet" in terms of the academic establishment embracing the role of hybridization, or reverse allopatrism as a mechanism for it. but i think it's the direction the field is heading in.

to go back to the initial point, i believe the initial question is an empirical one. bears can breed, and should be viewed as the same species if that is the metric; humans can breed, as well. so, the question of which has a greater genetic distance is one to phrase in the form of a hypothesis and carry out research to determine. there's nothing particularly wrong with the question, itself. what is the genetic difference between breeds of dogs? between subspecies of squirrels? are they greater or less than the difference between humans? well, get the data and work it out...

rather, i responded because i do not believe that the op understood the research he was citing, nor do i think that the research suggests what he suggested it suggests (and he conceded most of these points). first, i think the evidence demonstrates that gene flow amongst humans has been too dramatic through the entire historical period at least (i think there's some evidence that it may have been less during the last ice age), and probably at least since the domestication of the horse, to even be able to phrase the question in a way that it can be investigated. the idea that europeans and africans "separated" at some point in the past seems to be entirely wrong. second, his dates were absurd. he separated "europeans" with the neanderthals, ignoring the out-of-africa fact. in actuality, the out-of-africa migration is more recent than when we would currently split polar bears off from brown bears, which negates the basis of his argument. third, he had to make assumptions about rates of change that are not consistent with the paper he cited, and seemed to actually be the opposite of the ideas expressed in it. even if it were true that polar bears separated more recently than out of africa, it wouldn't necessarily imply anything about genetic distance.

just as an aside: we know that dogs separated from wolves relatively recently, certainly more recently than out of africa.

that doesn't necessarily mean that dogs are closer to wolves than native americans are to africans (and there's arguably enough of a block in gene flow there, or was before colonization, to have the idea make sense). dogs have been through intense amounts of artificial selection. but, it's a valid empirical question that i don't know the answer to.