Is bone structure race specific?

[Quixote]

Twice in the last week I have read the claim that, contrary to recent statements that race is a social distinction, not a genetic one, the "race" (whatever that means) to which an individual belonged can be determined from an examination of his bones alone, presumably independent of information concerning the age of the bones, where they were found, etc. The claims came from highly unreliable sources and I have satisified myself so far by noting the silence that follows my request for a citation to their source.

Given that difficulty of determining the "race" of living humans without some arbitrary rule*, I can't imagine what the claim even means. Has anyone heard of this before?


*See, for example, Show Boat, in which Julie "passed" for white during most of the movie and Gaylord managed to pass for black at a critical moment because he had one drop of black blood (Julie's) in him.

 

[casebro]

I guess it is. Don't you often hear that "the bones being autopsied come from a 20 to 25 year old male of ______ extraction". So I think more could be gained from Googling "anthopology autopsy etnicity post-mortem facial features" and things like that.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

There are no genetic human race divisions.

And I believe those autopsy reports you mention, casebro, include skin or a skull. You cannot tell ethnicity nor skin color from only a skeleton. With the exception one might be able to determine facial features from a skull that are suggestive of certain ethnic features.

http://www.aaanet.org/stmts/racepp.htm

 

[Ladewig]

Twice in the last week I have read the claim that, contrary to recent statements that race is a social distinction, not a genetic one, the "race" (whatever that means) to which an individual belonged can be determined from an examination of his bones alone

I've heard the claim before. In 1991, I met a man who claimed that race cannot be only a social distinction because black people have more bones in their feet than white people.

 

[bpesta22]

Nature Genetics had some articles about 2 years ago where some argued a genetic basis for race.

http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v36/n12/abs/ng1204-1243.html

 

[Silly Green Monkey]

I am currently taking a class on forensic anthropology, and we are indeed learning to distinguish 'race' from bones. While there are no genetic races, different ethnicities do tend show a cluster of characteristics. Environment seems to play a strong role: 'blacks' and 'whites' in the US are much more similar to each other now than they were a century ago, and not from breeding.

The major thing we had to learn was variation. Variation is the rule rather than the exception with humans. It's fairly common to have additional bones, 106 is merely an average. Check the 'parts' thread in Forum Community for an example.

 

[Dylab]

Sorry if this is considered derailing but I have a question on race and the last topic on the matter scares me.

I'm reading Genes, People, and Languages by Cavalli-Sforza. He makes the often made point that there isn't any real genetic discontinuities geographically so choosing the boundaries is arbitrary. I understand this and as far as I can tell this is right. I just think it is misleading to go from there and then to say race doesn't exist. It seems to me that we group things that do not have sharp divisions all the time. One example is adults and children. There are no sudden changes at the age of 18 or 13 or whatever and some people classified as adults are more childlike than some people classified as children. Yet most people would agree that the child/adult division is based in reality. Why is race any different?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

There are no genetic human race divisions.

We shall see:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=69233

The scientists looked at people from three broad racial groups - African, Asian and European. Although there was an underlying similarity in terms of how common it was for genes to be copied, there were enough racial differences to assign every person bar one to their correct ethnic origin.

Might turn out that there are racial genetic profiles. Which means we might have to decide simply to live in harmony with one another, without having to eliminate all the marvelous variations in the name of oneness.

~~ Paul

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

We shall see:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=69233


Might turn out that there are racial genetic profiles. Which means we might have to decide simply to live in harmony with one another, without having to eliminate all the marvelous variations in the name of oneness.

~~ Paul

Well clearly there will be an expansion of our knowledge in this area but I await the details. If you have sickle cell trait I can assign you to African ethnicity and be correct most of the time. That doesn't mean every ethnic African has sickle cell trait. Which race are you when your parents are of two different ethnicities?

The means of getting genetic diversion is isolation and time. While the Australian Aboriginales were isolated for 60,000 years you might see more of a "race" identity in the DNA. But European ancestry vs Asian vs African? There has not been the same complete isolation. Who were in their samples? Did they take random people who looked black or caucasian or did they look for people with long stable family lines?

 

[marting]

Well clearly there will be an expansion of our knowledge in this area but I await the details. If you have sickle cell trait I can assign you to African ethnicity and be correct most of the time. That doesn't mean every ethnic African has sickle cell trait. Which race are you when your parents are of two different ethnicities?

The means of getting genetic diversion is isolation and time. While the Australian Aboriginales were isolated for 60,000 years you might see more of a "race" identity in the DNA. But European ancestry vs Asian vs African? There has not been the same complete isolation. Who were in their samples? Did they take random people who looked black or caucasian or did they look for people with long stable family lines?

As for who were in the samples, here is the description:

The HapMap collection comprises four populations: 30 parent–offspring trios of the Yoruba from Nigeria (YRI), 30 parent–offspring trios of European descent from Utah, USA (CEU), 45 unrelated Japanese from Tokyo, Japan (JPT) and 45 unrelated Han Chinese from Beijing, China (CHB). Genomic DNA from Epstein–Barr-virus-transformed lymphoblastoid cell-lines was used.

See the two links to Nature in this post for more detail:

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2124112&postcount=20

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Well clearly there will be an expansion of our knowledge in this area but I await the details. If you have sickle cell trait I can assign you to African ethnicity and be correct most of the time. That doesn't mean every ethnic African has sickle cell trait. Which race are you when your parents are of two different ethnicities?

If they are ethnicities that are "far apart," that probably makes profiling more difficult. That's good. We wouldn't want it to be too easy.

Cool example: Genzyme manufactures a drug for people with Gaucher disease. At first, all such people were Ashkenazi Jews. Then, surprise!, people in Japan started turning up with the disease. Then people in Sweden. More bucks for Genzyme and those of us clever enough to own their stock .

~~ Paul

 

[skeptifem]

my impression of that was that they could *usually* tell if a victim was black or white by looking at the bones surrounding the nose. you get a pretty good idea of how far the top of the nose projects and how wide the base is by looking at that part of the skull, I have never heard of any other races being identified by bones. So perhaps its only blacks that can be identified by that. I was also under the impression that black people are (in general) larger bone wise than whites.

 

[AWPrime]

my impression of that was that they could *usually* tell if a victim was black or white by looking at the bones surrounding the nose. you get a pretty good idea of how far the top of the nose projects and how wide the base is by looking at that part of the skull, I have never heard of any other races being identified by bones. So perhaps its only blacks that can be identified by that. I was also under the impression that black people are (in general) larger bone wise than whites.

Asians also have differnent shaped skulls.

 

[skeptifem]

thanks for the info.

I got most of this from court tv and their website so im not an expert or anything...

 

[Yahzi]

I just think it is misleading to go from there and then to say race doesn't exist.

I think the confusion stems from what the word "race" means.

To most English speakers, "race" means the classic social theory of race: caucasion, mongoloid, negroid. This concept of "race" does not exist genetically; it is as accurate a description of human genetic differences as the Ptomelic model of the solar system.

If you define "race" to mean any arbitrary grouping of genetic clusters, then yes, there are many, many races. Possibly even Southern Italian and Northern Italian, depending on how finely you want to draw the lines, and how immobile geographic populations have been.

Since "race" has such a well-defined meaning, it is appropriate to say that "race" does not exist, even while acknowledging that human populations can be grouped by genetic similarity to whatever degree of distinction you find useful.

 

[Yahzi]

I got most of this from court tv and their website so im not an expert or anything...

Just so long as you don't get it from "Bones."

Their magic holographic box has made the show virtually unwatchable.

 

[idunno]

Read this on Race differences.
If it`s true blacks are genetically less inteligent this may spell trouble in the future,as blacks naturally want the good jobs as well.

http://www.amren.com/9412issue/9412issue.html#cover

 

[pipelineaudio]

lets put ten philipino males picked at random vs ten samoan males picked at random in a tug of war contest against each other

I will give you ten to 1 odds in favor of the philipinos...wanna take it?

I got 1000 dollars on the samoans, and you only have to risk 100 on the philipinos for it...come on

PC religion is stupid and without basis in fact, standing in the way of true knowledge

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

I think the confusion stems from what the word "race" means.

To most English speakers, "race" means the classic social theory of race: caucasion, mongoloid, negroid. This concept of "race" does not exist genetically; it is as accurate a description of human genetic differences as the Ptomelic model of the solar system.

If you define "race" to mean any arbitrary grouping of genetic clusters, then yes, there are many, many races. Possibly even Southern Italian and Northern Italian, depending on how finely you want to draw the lines, and how immobile geographic populations have been.

Since "race" has such a well-defined meaning, it is appropriate to say that "race" does not exist, even while acknowledging that human populations can be grouped by genetic similarity to whatever degree of distinction you find useful.

No Yahzi, it wasn't about terminology. It's about the bulk of genetic research until now which showed there were no specific genes that all people considered to be of a particular race had in common. While certain genetic traits are more common in particular groups such as sickle cell trait, sickle cell trait is not a marker for that group. In addition, prior to this research, all humans on the planet had most of our DNA in common and the variation which results in our outward appearance is such a small % of the total as to be meaningless in defining groups.

Why I don't buy the reported conclusion immediately that one can define race with these new findings is easily demonstrated by the following example:

It is arbitrary to use visible characteristics to define race. Why not use blood types to define race instead?

Even if it is determined one can describe the outward appearance of a person by certain genetic markers, you still have the problem with the claim that outward appearance alone distinguishes one group of humans from another. Our appearance may indicate something about our ancestry, but it is as arbitrary as blood type in dividing humans into groups.

 

[Skeptic Ginger]

Read this on Race differences.
If it`s true blacks are genetically less inteligent this may spell trouble in the future,as blacks naturally want the good jobs as well.

http://www.amren.com/9412issue/9412issue.html#cover

If it is true this garbage article certainly does nothing to test that hypothesis.

This is nothing but some racist propaganda. If one is going to make claims such as intelligence is genetic then one needs to back such a claim up with science. This article merely reports problems/aspects of culture and claims everyone of whichever "race" by the web authors' definition belongs to that culture (not true right there) and they have those cultural traits because of their genes (as if prenatal care, diet, health, education, economic status and so on have nothing to do with it).

This should have been a clue to you right here!

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