What is the biological differene between the races of humans?

Question

Hi

we were always tought at school that no matter what colour our skin is, we are all the same underneath.

So what are the scientific differences between white and black people and other races.

This question is in no way racist as i'm sure anybody on here would be inteligent enough to realise that it is interesting to find out what the differences are and we all know it has no bearing on how we see different races as people.

Answer 1

There are no "races,: In Biology, "race" is a word used to describe subspecies within a species that have significant differences in patterns of particular traits. Humans don't have any races.

Skin color is just one of a whole variety of traits; it just happens to be the most noticeable. Race is a completely cultural construct, invented by humans because humans like to categorize things and, to a certain extent, segregate themselves from other groups in order to feel superior.

Here's an example of a race problem. Look at this picture:

http://www.mfat.govt.nz/images/soi2007/l...

The people in the picture are Papua New Guineans. Are they black? Papua New Guinea is an island in Southeast Asia, and all the people on the island of Papua New Guinea are descendants of what we would view as Asians.

And yet, if you put a Papua New Guinean man on a street corner in any American city, we would make no distinctions between him and any other "black" man. And yet, the Papua New Guineans are more genetically related to Yao Ming than they are to Michael Jordan.

Skin color is just one trait, no different from blood type or hair color. The biological differences between races in humans? There aren't any, because there are no races. We have to begin to talk about populations rather than races before we can make a serious attempt to locate any biological differences, and even then, the differences will be small. Did you know that the common ancestor of all humans today probably lived as recently as 5,000 years ago? 5,000 years is not enough time for a population to accrue significant biological differences from other populations within the same species; evolution just doesn't work that fast.

Answer 2

I have made many observations on different races but I am keeping them to myself.

Answer 3

Since we all came out of Africa with common ancestry, there is little in the way of scientific difference.

DNA testing is interesting because it links different groups of people to areas of the globe travelled by our ancestors some 40,000 years ago.

Blood groups are also more common to some races than others, but it was all part of the minute changes over the centuries.

Answer 4

"we all know it has no bearing on how we see different races as people."

Wake up and smell the coffee!! There are MANY people (eg despots, dictators) who do not.

Some nice links at the bottom of this article

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_...

There are many well-regarded, peer-reviewed articles in modern (neuro-)psychology and psychiatric publications that include the significance of genetics, and race. Try medline.

Ax

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Answer 5

there is none. race is an artificial construct. it is created only our minds.

Answer 6

All humans descend from one common ancestor. They migrated in waves to different parts of the earth. The races are nothing more than adaptation to the environment and mutation.

Red hair in Northern tribes around the area of Scandinavia was due to a mutation in order to better process vitamin D, which fixes calcium to the bones when the body is exposed to sunlight. This is important when you realize that Scandinavians do not get enough sunlight at all. Currently, redheads are become more and more scarce because the gene is no longer needed.

Black skin was another mutation that hiked melanin production to darken the skin and protect it from the strong sunlight. The hair was also an adaptation because it protected the scalp from the fierce sunlight and it helped cool the head.

White skin was prevalent in Northern lands because of the cold climate, but a funny thing are the Innuit, known as Eskimo. They are red skinned people with oriental features, who migrated from a warmer climate into a colder one thanks to the ice age, and they stayed there and adapted. Their bodies are short and stout to conserve body heat and much needed fat to survive in that weather.

Hope this helps.

Answer 7

There are no different races. It all has to do with biological adaptation to particular environmental regions.

Answer 8

mostly just ancestral variations caused by unequal sun exposure on the earth's surface, the chemical that causes dark skin acts as a natural sunblock, but it inhibits the production of vitamin D(sunlight is needed in the process) near the equator this sunblocking ability was useful, but farther north it because problematic, survival of the fittest took over, and now we pretty much supplement our inability to produce vitamin D, or our lack of natural sunblock. so as i said, its just ancestral at this point.

Answer 9

Race is not a scientific term

It is true to say that there are diferences in geographical populations.

We know that people there is a significant relationship between skin colour and tolerance to cold temperatures.

People from malaria infested countries may have mosquito repellant in their sweat, and are prone to scycle cell disease.

People from tea drinking countries may have less alcohol tolerence.  (tea and alcohol, being different methods of water purification historically).

Disease immunity varies from population.  There is a gene which protects against bubonic plague. This is more common in areas where there have been major epidemics. It turns out this rare gene also gives some protection against AIDS.  There are still a few tribal populations for whom common cold viruses are fatal as they have no immunity.

Some desert tribesman have better water retention and heat tolerance than other populations.  It is more than simple conditioning.

Isolated populations have often selected mates for specific traits. Island populations in particular, often have unusual characterists.  Irish red hair and the large frame of Samoans are examples of this.  In North Africa there is a tribe where it is normal to have less than five toes.

It seems sensible to assume that different groups will have different average physical and mental attributes.  City dwellers need better communication skills, rural communites will need more strength and better spatial ability.

You shouldn't ignore the differences between men and women.  These vary geographically as well.

Finally, you cannot make any assumptions about the Black African population, by studying the Black American population.  Aside from the European blood added by routine raping of slaves, the slave population was filtered by various ordeals and their value as labourers.  It is highly unlikely that slave owners selected/bred slaves for their intellect.  Since slavery, black americans will have developed normally.  The American white population is also atypical. The gene pool consists of more religious and political outcasts, criminals, adventurers, mercenaries and fortune seekers, than you would find anywhere else.  These groups are all risk takers, and we know from studying criminals there is a high genetic component to risk taking.

Answer 10

Broadly speaking, I don't think there is any significant difference between one human race to another.  But an indepth study might explain to me why the blacks generally can run faster than the whites in athletics.  As for the chinese, they normally have shorter legs and just cannot match.

Answer 11

I don't think that there are major differences - just some races are more pre-disposed to certain illnesses/medical conditions!

Answer 12

Get your facts right billy, there is only one race

Answer 13

no difference except for the few obvious things like size and color. everything else is the same.

Answer 14

We evolved to suit the climatic circumstances in which we found ourselves, including types of food available, and the types of predation we were exposed to together with exposure to different diseases. This would obviously vary around the globe.

Answer 15

The major differences would be our natural ability to withstand certain environments. The darker your skin the less susceptible you are to skin cancer in environments close to the equator. Many Caucasians have lighter colored eyes because their eyes are weaker than darker colored eyes pertaining to the sun. There are alot of biological differences. I think too many too be named.

Answer 16

Some differences are..

Twinning rates, Nigerian 1/20, England 1/78, Japan 1/150. Overall the ratios are pretty constant on each continent, Africans twin the most, East Asians the least.

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa...

The gestation period is five days shorter for black and South Asian women. There was a WHO alert on this a couple of years ago, as black babies were dying because a lot of doctors hadn't seen the new research. Two studies showed this, in different countries.

http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/conten...

Black babies have the best chance of survival born prematurely, Mongoloid babies the worst. This does kind of suggest East Asians may have a slightly longer pregnancy, but non-one has researched it.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles...

The majority of Europeans are lactose tolerant. The majority of everyone else isn't. Europeans have the highest levels of gluten intolerance though.

Europeans or people with some European ancestry, are the people who have have the rhesus negative blood allele, as a rule. Other races have it at less than 0.1%.

The duffy null antigen (blood type) is specific to Sub Saharan ancestry.

Sub Saharan Africans teeth are very different, with much larger,complex grinding surfaces on their molars. They seem designed to grind tougher food.

'Sinodonty' is seen in people of North east Asian descent, giving the front incisors a slight shovel shape on the inside.

Pygmies stop growing at about 12, hit their fertility peak at 16, and are geriatric at 50. The usual age for menopause in one group of pygmies is 28, in Andaman islanders it's the mid thirties. Pygmies still have these features on a modern diet, it's a genetic difference.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=why-...

Black American army recruits are twice as likely to suffer frostbite as the Caucasian ones.

http://amsa.army.mil/1msmr/1997/v03_n01_...

West Africans have a slightly denser musle structure, with more 'short twitch' muscle fibres, that gives them great bursts of power for short durations.

Nilotic East Africans have more 'slow twitch' musle fibres, making them great stamina runners. Most of the worlds top Marathon runners come from one small highland Kenyan tribe, the Kalenjin.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/hottopics/m...

South West Asians have a very high rate of heart attacks, even on a low fat vegetarian diet.

Africans retain salt better than Europeans. Handy in a hot climate, but this leads to high blood pressure on a modern salty diet.

That's all I can remember off the top of my head.