If skin color is the only thing different between races!?

Question

Why can they tell what race u was by ur bones? Answer that all u liberal brainwashed people out there!!

Answer 1

Race is just the dominance of some traits over others, not only skin color. Color is the most obvious, but not the only defining feature.

Answer 2

There is more difference between races than skin tones. Actually, skin tones are a pretty unreliable way to tell one's ethnicity. From a biological view, skin tone is a phenotype and can express itself in a wide range of ways. The genotype is what determines the differences in sucepability to diseases and that would be one of a few differences. From an anthropological standpoint there are factors in the human skull that can help determine racial groups. The closures in the plates of the skull, the shape of the eye socket, the direction of the cheekbones, the shape of the nose cavity, the projection of the mandibles, the overall shape of the skull, and even the shape of certain teeth. There are ALWAYS variations of this as well and it is extremely difficult to tell the difference between an Asian and a Native American skull and a South American (not Mexican) with a Caucasion skull. Once upon a time, people tried to use science as a way to prove superiority of one ethnic group over another, but it was unsuccessful and very much an outdated school of thought. Especially in today's society when many people are of mixed ancestry. These traits are used to mainly to construct the contours of the face and identify remains. It cannot prove anything more than that. There are differences between racial groups, but there is a wider variation within each group itself.

Answer 3

Ask you question and answer it yourself.  Maybe you could figure it out.  I just think you dont pay attention to facts but to fiction.  Nice try though.

Answer 4

No there are other differences - susceptibility to sickle cell anemia or multiple sclerosis varies by race. Some medications have different effects on different races. These are facts and are hardly racist.

Answer 5

No, there are many differences between races ...

Answer 6

If someone thinks it's only skin color, they are clearly wrong.  Facial features are different, some basic body structures are different, body hair is different, etc...

Answer 7

I too have an anthropology degree, and yes there are some signs that can be seen on bones that relate to race, but it's not really like a tall tale sign, it's not like you can look at the bones and say "aha - do you see that notch right there - that prooves that these bones are from a caucasion".  Problem is that many bones are found, and incorrectly identified (both race and gender).  There is no hard fast rules.  The patterns that you do see in bones and ability to make an educated guess at the race are there because of a sort of 'selective breeding'.  Certain races carry certain characteristics due to the history of human evolution and how humans evolved differently in different regions separate from each other with little or no interbreeding of different regions.  



Often times, those that want to separate races and view things in an antiquated way that some races are better or worse than others, and want a way to support their separatist view of things; are the ones that are the most dissappointed by the statements that there really is no biological basis for our "race" category.  For the most part, it was made up... It was a way to categorize, and alienate people that looked 'different'.  Many races saw white people differently, some races saw white people as sacred, because of our white skin, and others saw us as evil... All goes to what role the color played in their society.  You wanna know something really neat?

In the united states: black is the color of death so we have funerals where everyone wears black.  In Japan, it's just the opposite... white is the traditional color of funerals (due to the what happens to the body - when somone dies they turn white)...

It's not about being liberal or brainwashed... It's about using actual scientific proof.  If you want to discuss politics or religion, then this is not the right category :)

Answer 8

Speaking as someone with degrees in Anthropology *and* Biology with a specialization in Neuroscience, I want to tell you that skin color alone is not an indicator of ethnicity. Jaw shape, forehead shape and pelvis shape are also indicators.

HOWEVER, there is no way, whatsoever, to tell the brains of different ethnicities apart. If you have a brain, or a brain imprint in a fossilized skull, you absolutely cannot tell which "race" the brain belonged to.

The brain is the most important part. Being that the brain and organs are the same, comparing races is like comparing the exact same computer components in different cases. You may have a tower or desktop case, a black or gray one, or a fancy shiney red one, but if the components and motherboard are identical, it's the same d**n computer.

Answer 9

Skin and eye color has nothing to do with classification in a racial grouping.

The skeletal and skull shape is the way to determine predominant race.

Aside from the big four - *******, Australoid, Mongoloid and Caucasoid, there are so many sub-groups that have always been indistinct that even thinking in terms of "race" is really meaningless.

There are so many physical types and so much inter-mixing that it's ludicrous to assume or to speak about any sort of "pure" racialness anywhere in Europe or Asia, though.

Aryan is a word that carries so much baggage and has long since been discarded from any academic studies, so...

that said, there was also another question from months ago about blondness and blue or green eyes and racial origins.

First of all, there are many blonde Aborigines in Australasia among very dark-skinned peoples, and also in South Africa, also among dark-skinned people - not from inter-breeding with others, but from ancient times.

Blondness and light-colored eyes have nothing to do with racial characteristics, but skeletal build and skull formation does.

One lady wrote about her origins from Russia, citing her blondness and light eyes, and here the difference between the Slavs and the Nordics and the Germanic tribes are instructive.

The Germanic and Slavic tribes were heavily mixed with Hunnic and Mongol and other Asiatic peoples.

A tiny number of Nordics did go to the land of Rus in the Viking times, but certainly not enough to really affect the populations there.

The Celts and the Nordics were fair-skinned and light-eyed quite often and Benjamin Franklin even called the Swedes "swarthy", meaning darkish people.

The shorter build of the Germans, the round heads and so on, compared to the taller (the Norweigians are the tallest nation on Earth), remind of their inter-mixing with other Asiatic tribes, and that same roundish skull is also seen in half of the Nordics.

None of these terms are really scolarly, and yet remember that the Germans were called "The Huns", by the English in the two world wars due to their ancestral heritage.

Pushed Westward out of Asia by the Huns, the Gothic tribes, the Germanics, remained in Central Europe and had already been mixed with the other Asiatic tribes.

The invasions were constant throughout history.

What does it matter?

Vive les differences and the differences flow in everyone's veins - that should be a great point with which to start world peace.

Get over the idea of coloring as any sort of racial proflling - coloring is meaningless to Anthropology.

Also, remember as in Mongrel dogs, mixing the races creates a better hybrid every time

Answer 10

I don't actually want to deign to reply to this moronic string of questions, but I just wanted to salute all those above me who gave such thoughtful, educated and factual answers.

Answer 11

I dont think the only difference between the races is "skin color".. it goes all the way to ur appearence...

Sometimes u  can tell the difference between two different races from..the eyes, nose, ears, mouth, shape(as in long legs, skinny, pear shaped, big butt, flatt but, big upper body, small upper body,.....etc...its not just skin but a lot of things..

I dunnoabout the bones but i kno thats its not just color...

Answer 12

"Only skin deep" is a metaphor.  The differences are, in fact, largely cosmetic and do not affect the personalities or intelligence of that group.  There are differences in the bones of the different races, but those are pretty minor overall, too.  Facial structures are one big difference, as is height or relative lengths of bones.  None of these make for a major difference in the individuals, except cosmetically or in slight advantage in survival for a certain area.  They do not affect intelligence or personality in the slightest.

One of the bone differences that anthropologists like is in the ratio for two measurements of our skulls.  Some people have longer skulls, some wider.  You need calipers and a bare skull to measure this difference.  It can be really useful, like if in a town's cemetary, there are long skulled people until suddenly it's all wide skulls.  That would indicate something like an invasion.  But again, there's absolutely no way to tell who is from which group without pulling out the calipers.

Answer 13

There are physical differences. These exist because of the different environments different population of the human race inhabited and adapted to. Genetically, there is less variance among ALL humans than there is among a small family of chimps. The physical differences are no different, or more significant, genetically, than the physical differences that are found among the same "race". "Race," in fact, is a social construct. Genetically, it does not exist.

Answer 14

What does being liberal have anything to do with it? Your epithets are what sound brainwashed.

Among traditional lines of race classification, certain morphological features vary consistently. Skulls of Africans tend to have a post-bregmatic depression, for instance. These differences are not hard and fast rules, however. Definitively saying that one skull is of a particular race because of skull characteristics (and it's only the skull, you can't tell race from other bones at all) simply isn't possible.

Even gender can't be determined from bones with a high degree of accuracy much of the time, so it's no surprise that race classification isn't an exact science. Of course, it's been recognized as a horribly flawed and biased science for the past 100 years, but that doesn't keep people from swinging it around like it means something today.

So saying "they tell what race u was by ur bones" isn't exactly accurate. It's more of a really good guess. Furthermore, like the answer above mine stresses, the brains of humans, no matter the race category, do not differ significantly.