Which race of people is the most genetically evolved?

Question

Which race of people is the most genetically evolved?

Answer 1

There is just one human race. We are all descended from Adam and Eve, and more recently from Noah and his wife.

Evolution is an interesting hypothesis - just waiting for evidence to give it any credence.

Answer 2

none...they are all the same genetically.

Answer 3

Every non-extinct life form on this planet is equally evolved.  This includes all humans.

Answer 4

there is only one human race!

Answer 5

In a recent study conducted by scientists Lluís Quintana-Murci and his colleagues at the Pasteur Institute, in Paris, published a study in Nature Genetics that looked at which genes have undergone recent natural selection at different rates in different parts of the world, and might thus contribute to any biological differences between races.

Applying various statistical techniques to the 2.8m SNPs so far catalogued by HapMap, Dr Quintana-Murci found 55 genes that showed evidence of having undergone significant localised evolution. Six controlled skin pigment and hair development. Four helped the immune system combat disease-causing organisms, such as malarial parasites, that are a problem in some places, but absent from others. A further six regulated metabolism in various ways, probably in response to the different diets enjoyed by different people. (Some of these genes are of wider interest as they are involved in obesity, diabetes and hypertension.) Nine others had various other jobs that were also of no political significance. All in all, the school of thought which holds that humans, for all their outward variety, are a pretty homogenous species received a boost.

"Rapid population growth has been coupled with vast changes in cultures and ecology, creating new opportunities for adaptation," the authors wrote in the paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"The past 10,000 years have seen rapid skeletal and dental evolution in human populations, as well as the appearance of many new genetic responses to diet and disease."

Human migrations into new European and Asian environments created selective pressures favouring less skin pigmentation (so more sunlight could be absorbed through the skin to make Vitamin D), adaptation to cold weather and dietary changes.

One example of a genetic adaptation to human culture involves the gene that makes the milk-digesting enzyme lactase.

The gene normally stops activity about the time a person becomes a teenager, but northern Europeans developed a variation of the gene that allowed them to drink milk their whole lives -- a relatively new adaptation that is directly tied to the introduction of domestic farming and use of milk as an agricultural product.

"Human races are evolving away from each other," said Henry Harpending, an anthropology professor at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

"Genes are evolving fast in Europe, Asia and Africa, but almost all of these are unique to their continent of origin. We are getting less alike, not merging into a single, mixed humanity."

He said that is happening because humans dispersed from Africa to other regions 40,000 years ago and "there has not been much flow of genes between the regions since then

The findings are based on analysis of data from an international genomics project. A team of scientists examined DNA from 270 individuals in four ethnically different populations to see how genetic variations or SNPs (single nucleotide polymorphisms) evolved over time.

In conclusion it would be worthwhile to note that an abysmal chapter in the history of evolutionary thought involves the notion that certain races weren't quite as advanced as others. Consider the complete title of Darwin's famous book: "The Origin of Species by Natural Selection" with the subtitle, "The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life". By this he meant human races as well as animal subspecies.

In the 1800's the scientific community believed that Negroes were lower on the evolutionary chain that Caucasians. Not only were Darwin and Thomas Huxley racists, but virtually all the leading evolutionists and anthropologists - Osborn, Hooton, Hrdlicka, and Haeckel. (Morris 1989, 61, 63) Consider this quote:

"The ******* stock is even more ancient that the Caucasian and Mongolian, as may be proved by an examination not only of the brain, of the hair, of the body characters, such as teeth, the genitalia, the sense organs, but the instincts, the intelligence. The standard of intelligence of the average adult ***** is similar to that of the eleven-year-old youth of the species Homo Sapiens." (Henry Fairfield Osborn, "The Evolution of Human Races", Natural History Jan/Feb 1926. Reprinted in Natural History 89 (April 1980):129) (Morris, 1989, 62)

H. F. Osborn was the most prominent American anthropologist of the first half of the twentieth century and director of the American Museum of National History. These remarks were not based on innate prejudice, but on the evolutionary science of the day. (Morris, 1989, 62)

The idea that some races had progressed further than others was rationalized by Ernst Haeckel's "recapitulation theory" or "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" where stages of embryonic development express the evolutionary sequence. Here the activities of children (of advanced races) were equated to the activities of adults of the lower races. (Morris 1989, 61, 62)

It should be noted that today anthropologists agree that the different human races have a common origin - a Biblical doctrine. (Morris 1989, 64)

Answer 6

DACHSHUNDS!

Oh I'm sorry!

Were you referring to humans?

Answer 7

Evolution is not progressive and linear, so you question does not make sense.

Variations among populations of humans does not make one more " evolved " than another.

Answer 8

Every evolutionist should have an answer to this question. What if some group of people is evolving into another, more advanced species? Then racism, or speciesism, would make sense (but of course it doesn't!). Minor genetic variation doesn't make us non-human and never will.

If you believe in evolution, be prepared to find out that you really are less evolved than people from some other country, and that they're justified in treating you like an animal. Evolution was used for exactly this only a few decades ago, with some African peoples being murdered by white-skinned people who thought they were less evolved vermin. It's evil, but perfectly logical.