Origin Of Human Race Research Articles

Alfred Russel Wallace, antropólogo: contribuciones a la antropología física

La figura de Alfred Russel Wallace dentro de la antropología ha sido escasamente reconocida dentro de la historia de la disciplina. Un punto importante es ubicar al autor dentro de las discusiones antropológicas de la época victoriana, desde su interés temprano como naturalista por historizar a los seres humanos, hasta su labor institucional como el primer presidente de un departamento de antropología en Inglaterra. En ese contexto, el objetivo del trabajo es presentar la visión de Wallace respecto a la antropología física, a partir de su obra antropológica, que incluye referencias al origen de las razas humanas en términos naturalistas, al desarrollo de características físicas distintivas de los seres humanos o a la relación evolutiva entre primates. Con esto, se amplía la perspectiva sobre el desarrollo de la antropología física en el siglo XIX, al abrir el abanico a autores que contribuyeron de manera importante a su desarrollo.

The Origin of the Plant Diversity and the Origin of Human Races

The Origin of the Plant Diversity and the Origin of Human Races

GEOLOGY COURSES IN GREEK HIGH SCHOOLS: AN OVERVIEW AND PROPOSALS FOR THE FUTURE

An overview of the earth science courses in the curriculum in the greek high schools from 1899 to 1999 is given in the paper. It was based on detailed searching within files related to educational issues included in the Official Journal of the Greek Government. Although all segments of society can benefit by an enhanced awareness of earth sciences, severe cutbacks in geology education took place last years. It is proposed that the school program should be designed to include a geology course for students of the 3rd class of Gymnasium or the 1s t class of the Lyceum, comprising a series of talks and demonstrations on diverse themes related to the evolution of the earth, management of water and mineral and energy resources, natural hazards, the responsible use of the geosphere, the earth processes affecting evolution of life, the origin of human race and the preservation of natural monuments.

The Hierarchy Structure in Directed and Undirected Signed Networks

The concept of social stratification and hierarchy among human dates is back to the origin of human race. Presently, the growing reputation of social networks has given us with an opportunity to analyze these well-studied phenomena over different networks at different scales. Generally, a social network could be defined as a collection of actors and their interactions. In this work, we concern ourselves with a particular type of social networks, known as trust networks. In this type of networks, there is an explicit show of trust (positive interaction) or distrust (negative interaction) among the actors. In a social network, actors tend to connect with each other on the basis of their perceived social hierarchy. The emergence of such a hierarchy within a social community shows the manner in which authority manifests in the community. In the case of signed networks, the concept of social hierarchy can be interpreted as the emergence of a tree-like structure comprising of actors in a top-down fashion in the order of their ranks, describing a specific parent-child relationship, viz. child trusts parent. However, owing to the presence of positive as well as negative interactions in signed networks, deriving such “trust hierarchies” is a non-trivial challenge. We argue that traditional notions (of unsigned networks) are insufficient to derive hierarchies that are latent within signed networks.

Genetics and the origin of human races

In the last decades, the concept of human races was considered scientifically unfounded as it was not confirmed by genetic evidence. None of the racial classifications, which strongly differ in the number of races and their composition, reflects actual genetic similarity and genealogy of human populations inferred from variability of classical markers and DNA regions. Moreover, intercontinental ("interracial") variability was shown to be far lower than that within populations: the former constitutes 7 to 10% and the latter, about 85% of the total genetic variation. It is believed that the low level of differentiation of regional population groups contradicts their race status and suggests a recent origin of humans from one ancestral population. The results of studies of various genetic systems are in agreement with last conclusion rejecting the hypothesis of regional continuity. According to this hypothesis, the populations of continents regarded as large races have developed during long evolution from local types of archaic humans, in particular, Neanderthals. Phenotypic similarity of different, sometimes unrelated, populations united into one "race" is explained by strong selection since race-diagnostic traits characterize body surface and thus are directly subjected to the influence of environmental (primarily climatic) factors. It has been recently established that variability of the most important of these traits, body and hair pigmentation, is largely controlled by one locus (MC1R), which accounts for its high evolutionary lability. Other traits used for race identification are also likely to be labile and controlled by major genes. However, the fact that the currently existing race classifications are groundless does not mean that such classifications are impossible in principle. Commonly used argumentation (races do not exist because populations are not genetically separated) does not hold water. A polytypic species is characterized by genetic continuity of allopatric populations rather than the presence of narrow genetic boundaries between them. Borderlines between races are usually conventional and arbitrary. As to intergroup variation in humans, it is indeed low but comparable with that in some other species. There are no obstacles to the development of genetic systematics of human races.

Some Early Speculations on the Origin of Human Races

T HE publication of Professor Count's anthology This Is Race has done much to stimulate interest in the history of research and speculation concerning the races of man, a subject which historians of science have only begun to explore. In 1946 Count (p. 142) divided the history of raciology into four periods-the eighteenth-century (to 1815), the pre-Darwinian period (1815-1860), the post-Darwinian period (1860-1914), the twentieth-century (since 1914)-and went on to describe the leading developments of the second period, with some reference to the earlier work of Blumenbach and Kant.' The present article deals with the period before 1815 and especially with theories of race formation.

(1) The Evolution and Progress of Mankind (2) The Racial History of Man (3) Ancient Man in Britain

THE three anthropologists the titles of whose works are given above have approached problems relating to the origin of human races and of their civilisations by totally different routes, but all of them have this in common: they have reached their respective destinations by giving their imaginations the freest of reins. No one who examines the frontispiece of the late Prof. Hermann Klaatsch's book-his death in 1916 at the age of fifty-two robbed German science of one of its boldest exponents-would readily associate his burly body and prize-ring face with fanciful speculations regarding man's evolution. Nor do we expect Prof. Roland B. Dixon, who holds the chair of anthropology at Harvard University, to use a few measurements of the skull as fairy wands wherewith to rear wonderful anthropological castles in the air of long past ages. His castles, we fear, like those which children build on the sands, are doomed to disappear as the incoming tide of reason flows over them-but of this, more anon. There can be no doubt that Dr. Donald A. Mackenzie's imagination is a part of himself; he is a student of Celtic literature, of Egyptian mythology, of primitive folk-lore. He has that invaluable quality, denied to men of strictly scientific training, of entering the primitive human mind, seeing the world through its eyes, and understanding its modes of reasoning. He has used his gifts and training in drawing a word-picture of ancient man in Britain and the sort of life he lived. (1) The Evolution and Progress of Mankind. By Prof. H. Klaatsch. Edited and Enlarged by Prof. A. Heilborn. Translated by J. McCabe. Pp. 316. (London T. Fisher Unwin, Ltd., 1923.) 25s. net. (2) The Racial History of Man. By Prof. R. B. Dixon. Pp. xvi + 583 + 44 plates. (New York and London: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1923.) 25s. net. (3) Ancient Man in Britain. By D. A. Mackenzie. Pp. xv + 257 + 16 plates. (London, Glasgow and Bombay: Blackie and Son, Ltd., 1922.) 12s. 6d. net.

The Origin of Human Races and Types

The Origin of Human Races and Types

The Origin of Human Races and the Antiquity of Man Deduced from the Theory of "Natural Selection"

The Origin of Human Races and the Antiquity of Man Deduced from the Theory of "Natural Selection"