ANTH 103 Study Guide - Neural Tube Defect, Heredity, Melanin
Document Summary
Understand why race is a discredited concept in human biology. Consider at least three ways in which the notion of race fails to account for human genetic variation. We are more alike than different so creating distinctions is not biologically accurate. We make these distinctions based on things like skin color and hair type without taken into account other phenotypes like height and weight: races are not biologically distinct, many populations do not fit well into the tripartite scheme. There are dark people in india and australia but they are not considered black or negroid. If other phenotypes were taken into consideration, they are not considered a unit and more problems would arise: genetic markers do not correlate with phenotypes. There is more genetic variations within the races than between them. Scientists have developed genetic trees or haplogroups, based on the mitochondrial dna in females and the y chromosomes of males that show how closely related we are.
