Fabian wrote:
> Curt Fischer hu kiteb:
> 
>> Fabian wrote:
>>
>>> b hu kiteb:
>>>
>>>>> But I was obtusely pointing out that the whole concept of
>>>>> race is kind of pointless nowadays
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> well said. the defining characteristics of raciation cannot be
>>>> applied to homo sapiens, as humans are too heterogenous.
>>>> There is not enough coherence to define "races", unless you want to
>>>> extend the word to physical characteristics such as the blond hair
>>>> race, whatever... there are physical differences, "ethnic groups" if
>>>> you like, but from a scientific point of view the concept of "race"
>>>> doesn't hold.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>  From a scientific point of view, the human race is one of the most
>>> homogenous on the planet.
>>
>>
>> How is that?
> 
> 
> There was a big die-off amongst humanity around the time of the first 
> ice-age, and as such humankind re-grew from a very small stock compared 
> to most other animals around today.

Just because the stock was smaller does not mean it was less diverse,
does it?  What I think would settle the issue is the degree of
variability in the "junk" regions of the genome.  If humans have less
variability than other species, then I guess I would have to buy your
argument, but I am too lazy to look up the details.

The scientific argument against the concept of race that I have seen was
that there are smooth variations in many traits (skin color, nose shape,
etc.) instead of discrete jumps.  Since these traits vary from person to
 person in a smooth, continuum-type way, assignment of a person to a
given class based on those features is arbitrary and has no special
scientific meaning.

-- 
Curt Fischer