Human Biological Diversity and the Debunking of Race

  • The Concept of Race: A Biological Misconception
    • Biological Meaninglessness: Races are biologically meaningless categories that do little to explain human variation.
    • Biological Diversity: As anthropologists, we view biological diversity as crucial for understanding how humans evolve and adapt.
    • Complex Feedback Loop: Physical characteristics result from a complex feedback between a person's (or group's) genetic composition and their environment.
    • Alleles and Phenotypes: These effects are controlled by multiple versions of a single gene, called alleles, which lead to a variety of phenotypes (observable traits).
    • Polytypic Species: When polymorphisms are distributed across geographically dispersed populations, it's called polytypic. Humans are a polytypic species, meaning