ANTHRO 7 Chapter Notes -Spina Bifida, Natural Selection
Document Summary
Race is not a biologically meaningful category of classification because it leads people to believe that they can be naturally divided into three distinct races which are descendants from europe, North africa, and western asia, descendants from people from sub-saharan africa, and descendants from of people of eastern asia. Also that people belonging to different races differ genetically in important ways that will tell what us what they are like just by their race and that races are different from each other because of biological heritage. All of this is of course flawed because it is not consistent with scientific knowledge, we cannot classify humans by race like we can crayons; and simply because there are much more differences within a group than between groups. Natural selection can shape behaviors that are learned by making our brains bigger and by adjusting our cognitive skills in order to allow us to better survive.