Races and their causes. Racial differences in intelligence

The date: 17.03.2022

S. Drobyshevsky: You understand everything correctly! There are no "Caucasoid" or "Negroid" haplogroups in nature at all. Races were distinguished by the external signs of modern people. Haplogroups are variants of genes that are found in different morphological races with different frequencies. It's just that some geneticists tend to either simplify the recording, or do not understand what they themselves write. When a haplogroup is FREQUENTLY found among Caucasians, geneticists call it "Caucasoid". When it is often found among some peoples, they can easily call it "Turkic", "Indo-European" or "Finno-Ugric". And this is completely nonsense, because linguistics is not directly related to races and genes at all. But this is convenient. In short, than to say: "a haplogroup that is most common among representatives of peoples who speak languages of the Ugric linguistic family compared to representatives of other peoples." If a haplogroup is found in Central Africa, this means that it exists there and is just as "Negroid" as it is "Caucasoid". And here you can weave some kind of migration in both directions. And even more so nonsense - to attribute to the carriers of a certain haplogroup a certain specific skin color! Skin color is determined by the mass of genes that have their own history. Now in Africa, the carriers of this haplogroup are black, why then did the haplogroup have to be brought by white people? And if the pre-Holocene movement of haplogroup carriers is somehow proven, it’s stupid to talk about skin color, because we don’t really know what it was then. Before the Holocene, there were no Caucasoids at all in the modern version, this has been no secret for 50-60 years. With the same success, one can speak of the migrations of the Slavs in the Middle Paleolithic. Some people say though...

Letter to the Editor: Are black South Asians Australoids? Or are Australoids only Blacks, Melanesians and Australian Aborigines, and South Asians are closest to Caucasians?

S.D.: Are black South Asians Vietnamese with Javanese? Or Dayaks with Bajao? Or semangs with aets? It's not all the same. If the Vietnamese are with the Javanese, then they belong to the South Asian race of Mongoloids and are not much closer to the Caucasians than the same Melanesians; but then they themselves are not Australoids. If the Dayaks are from Bajao, then they are classically classified as Veddoids, although I personally have great doubts in this regard, but in any case they will be representatives of the variant of the eastern equatorials with some admixture of the South Asian race; they will belong to Australoids in a broad sense (synonyms - Eastern Equatorians, Australo-Melanesoids), but not to Australoids in a narrow sense (these are only Australian Aborigines). If you meant the Semangs, Aeta and Andamans, then these are the Negritos you mentioned, which definitely belong to the Australoids in a broad sense. None of the aforementioned is any closer to Europeans. Closer to Caucasians are African Negroes, representatives of the Ural race and part of the Western Mongoloids mixed with Caucasians - people of the South Siberian race.

Mr_Bison (forum paleo.ru) : Is it possible to say that the mixing of races in the genetic plan does not have harmful consequences for the offspring and are there any exceptions (pygmies?)?

S.D.: We can absolutely say that there are no harmful effects. This has been tested and retested a hundred times, in terms of incidence of disease, mental disorders, fertility, children's performance in school, and so on. Moreover, the most diverse mestizos were studied: Negro-European of various spills, Polynesian-Japanese-European, Japanese-Negro, Bushman-European, Mongoloid-European, Australian-European, Russian-Buryat, Russian-Kazakh, and so on and so forth. Now, in general, a GOOD percentage of the world's population is mestizos of various options. More than half of the population of Central and South America, for example. Almost all Mexicans. But the pygmies are just very weakly miscegenated. It is from them that the flow of genes goes to blacks, and no one goes to live with pygmies. Mestizos of blacks and pygmies are quite normal, this is a considerable percentage of the population of Central Africa.

The fact is that races differ from each other very weakly, mainly by external signs, but not even at the level of subspecies. Actually, the difference between races and subspecies is that subspecies are usually well isolated from each other, and races are not isolated at all, there are always transitional options. And always, at all times, mixing went on. Therefore, there are no harmful effects. Not so long ago, races arose and were never separated by sharp barriers.

Svetlana Borinskaya: There may be various effects. I didn’t look at the article on interracial offspring - you can ask anthropologists, but fellow geneticists have data on interethnic marriages. Children from interethnic marriages in Moscow (it is necessary to look in more detail - these are the old works of Yu.P. Altukhov) at birth had, on average, lower health indicators. According to the distribution, for example, of weight, they more often fell not in the middle of the bell-shaped weight distribution curve (which is optimal), but at the edges. The descendants of Russians and Selkups, on average, had higher cholesterol levels than Russians or Selkups (works by M.I. Voevoda, it seems). Causes can be either genetic Parents are adapted to different environmental conditions, but to what will the child be adapted?), and social - in interethnic marriages in Moscow, at least one spouse was most likely a visitor, and visitors may have less favorable social conditions.

Mr_Bison: Could you name as an example some differences in the phenotype of races that are not adaptive, but are caused, say, by the bottleneck effect and / or random mutations? Do these maladaptive differences prevail over adaptive ones?

S.D.: Blonde hair in many groups is such an example. Light hair color does not seem to be adaptive or very weakly adaptive. And it appeared many times independently: in northern Europe, in the North Caucasus, among the Kabils in the Atlas Mountains, among the inhabitants of the Hindu Kush, among the Melanesians of the Solomon Islands, among the natives of Central and Northern Australia. Most likely, this brightening is due precisely to the bottleneck effect on the scale of small isolated populations.

The epicanthus probably also arose - the version that it protects the eye from dust, although widespread, does not stand up to criticism (a lot of groups live in dusty places without epicanthus - Bedouins, Arabs and Australians, for example - and the Mongoloids did not originate at all in dusty places).

The shape of the bridge of the nose is most likely also from this series, although it may be affected by sexual selection.

It's hard to say which prevails. On the one hand, we may not know the adaptive value, on the other hand, we generally represent a distinct adaptive value for a very small number of features. In addition, one does not interfere with the other: the value may be so weak that the statistical effects of changing gene frequencies may outweigh this value. In general, it is difficult to count the signs. Is hair color considered as one trait or several, given that even black is coded differently in the genome of different people? Such calculations will by definition be speculative.

S.B.: There are a lot of genetic neutral differences between races. For example, the same mtDNA haplogroups or Y - (for individual haplogroups, a connection with adaptive traits was assumed, but, it seems, has not been proven).

Mr_Bison: Is it possible to say that when mixing races, the health of the offspring should rather increase, other things being equal, rather than decrease, since the probability of the transition of harmful recessive genes characteristic of each race to a homozygous state and a heterozygous advantage (like the HbSHbS mutation protecting against malaria or CFTR protecting against cholera) has now almost lost its role while its harmful side effects in the homozygous state remained?

S.B.: It is forbidden. According to the signs of HbS, most of the representatives of the groups where malaria was rampant are heterozygous without additional efforts. At the population level, interracial or interethnic marriages are not essential to reduce the frequency of homozygotes (their 1%-2% is not essential for the survival of the population, although it is essential for a separate family in which a sick child can be born).

There are many such works. For example,

Genetic structure of human populations.

Rosenberg NA, Pritchard JK, Weber JL, Cann HM, Kidd KK, Zhivotovsky

Within-population differences among individuals account for 93 to 95%

of genetic variation; differences among major groups constitute only 3

Mr_Bison: I have seen many times on the Internet the statement that the genetic distance between large races does not exceed 0.03 according to Masatoshi Nei, but unfortunately I have not found a reliable source. Forum posts only. Is it true? And is, as a rule, the genetic distance between subspecies according to Ney 0.17-0.22?

S.B.: There are many such works. For example, Genetic structure of human populations. Rosenberg NA, Pritchard JK, Weber JL, Cann HM, Kidd KK, Zhivotovsky LA, Feldman MW. Science. 2002 Dec 20;298(5602):2381-5: Within-population differences among individuals account for 93 to 95%of genetic variation; differences among major groups constitute only 3 to 5%.

Mr_Bison: Do I understand correctly that it is still impossible to talk about the effect of heterosis (an increase in the viability of hybrids) when different races are mixed, since the races are too genetically close to each other?

S.B.: It is correct that the effect of heterosis in relation to interracial or interethnic marriages does not apply. Wrong description of reasons. What is important is not the label of race or nationality, but the fact that living in an environment to which a person is not adapted has harmful consequences for offspring. And it is usually adapted to the conditions in which its ancestors lived. Representatives of different races (or ethnic groups) were adapted to different environments. The consequences for the offspring depend on how different the living environment is from the one to which the ancestors who passed on the genes are adapted.

For example, in Europeans, the e4 allele of the apolipoprotein E gene is associated with elevated cholesterol levels and occurs with a frequency of 5% to 15%. In Africans (allele frequency up to 40%), the e4 allele does not increase cholesterol levels, while in African Americans, cholesterol is elevated, but less than in Europeans.

In fact, over the past 10,000 years, most people began to live in conditions that their ancestors were not adapted to - they ceased to be hunter-gatherers. Genetic changes have taken place, but environmental changes have not kept pace - the environment changes faster than genes. See the lean gene hypothesis in Genes and Diet Traditions. In interracial or interethnic marriages, a child may receive both the advantages of both parents and maladaptive traits. Therefore, from the point of view of genetics, the only question is that the habitat and lifestyle correspond to the genotype.

Vasily (letter to the Editor; style saved): AND COULD YOU ANSWER THE QUESTION. CRO-Magnons AND THEIR EASTERN CONTEMPORARY PEOPLE FROM PSHEDOMOSTI DISENT OR THEIR GENES ARE IN MODERN EUROPEANS AND WHAT PEOPLES ARE LIKE THEM. AND HOW THEY DIED IF PEOPLE LIVE NOW AS LIKE THEM ARE MORE PRIMITIVE IN THE STRUCTURE OF THE SKULL. AUSTRALIANS FOR EXAMPLE.

S.D.: The question of the succession of the Upper Paleolithic European Cro-Magnons and modern Europeans has two versions of the solution. Anthropology shows that the Cro-Magnons are quite suitable for the ancestors of the Mesolithic Europeans, and the latter - the Neolithic, and those - modern people. Moreover, many modern groups in Europe are not fundamentally different from the Cro-Magnons and, apparently, are their more or less direct descendants - groups in Northern Europe, England, the Balkans, the Caucasus (taking into account all sorts of migrations and mixing, of course). But genetic data give two versions. According to one, about 95% of modern Europeans are the descendants of the Cro-Magnons, the remaining 5% are the descendants of the Neolithic settlers from the Middle East, who brought agriculture, which the "Cro-Magnons" mastered. Surprisingly, different calculations, other geneticists show that 95% of modern Europeans are the descendants of Neolithic settlers from the Middle East who brought agriculture, and the remaining 5% are the descendants of the Cro-Magnons, whom advanced migrants completely displaced. How to understand such a difference in calculations is a question for geneticists. It seems that the approach itself with the calculation of the percentage of local and migrants is erroneous. Migration was not one and did not occur simultaneously, some of the genes were originally common, some disappeared due to all sorts of gene drifts, some changed a lot. The problem is that geneticists analyze only modern DNA (and then - what samples do they have ??? did they look at everyone ???), and draw conclusions about the Paleolithic and Neolithic. And this is wrong.

The question - which peoples are similar to Cro-Magnons, does not make sense, because peoples are determined by social characteristics, and now no one hunts mammoths and does not sprinkle burials with ocher. Anthropologically similar are many groups (NOT PEOPLES!), mostly on the periphery of Europe, which is logical in a way. But a complete set of Cro-Magnon traits is not now found in Europe, except in an individual case. It is clear that in 20 thousand years everything has been mixed up and changed several times, it would be strange to look for Cro-Magnons, even if Europe were an isolated island like Tasmania.

Australians are not more primitive than Cro-Magnons in terms of skull structure. What exactly is primitiveness? In a smaller brain? Then the Europeans are more primitive than the Cro-Magnons. In a strong development of the brow? Among the Cro-Magnons, it was also not weak. Large teeth? The Cro-Magnons have no less. Primitiveness is generally determined by proximity to the ancestral state. The Australians are no closer to any Heidelbrians than the European Cro-Magnons. In general, the question of how the Cro-Magnons died out, if anyone is more primitive than them, seems strange. First, who said that the Cro-Magnons are extinct? Secondly, how could the population of Australia prevent or help some group in Europe become extinct? Globalization of the Stone Age? Tritons, coelacanths, all sorts of foraminifers live now, and now they do not die out because we are still on the planet. And here the level difference is much greater.

Question to Svetlana Borinskaya from the Editorial Board of the portal ANTROPOGENESIS.RU: On October 8, a film with the odious title "Genetics vs. Darwin" is released on the Russia-1 channel. In the announcement of the film, among several well-known surnames, your ...

It was I who once, in some corridor, when asked to comment on the considerations of some freak (that monkeys descended from humans), replied that this was complete nonsense.

I was not informed that my interview would be included in a film called "Genetics vs. Darwin". Naturally, I am not against Darwin. I am against scammers on TV.

Racial differences

Classification, starting with Linnean, distinguished between "races" if it was possible to determine with high accuracy the differences between group members from each other. Reliable discrimination requires that some races differ from others by a certain frequency of alleles of certain genes that affect observable traits. This criterion can be adopted in relation to most subgroups of humanity as a biologist. kind. The most widely used class. races subdivides them into Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid races. Other, more subtle differentiations of humanity as a species include the 9 races of Garn and the 7 major races of Lewontin.

All people, regardless of race, share a common evolutionary history. It seems highly unlikely that the selection factor would vary significantly from group to group. All humans have faced the same general problems for almost their entire evolutionary history. OK. 6% of genetic differences in humans as a species are due to race, 8% to differences between populations within racial groups, and over 85% to differences between individuals of the same populations within racial groups.

In zap. In the world, racial divisions are often based on skin color. However, even Charles Darwin rightly noted that "color is usually regarded by the systematic naturalist as an unimportant feature." Other distinctions, such as morphology, fiziol are much more important. and behavior.

Phys. differences may be the result of natural selection, mainly due to adaptive evolution. For example, most of the groups inhabiting the high Arctic latitudes are distinguished by a stocky torso and short limbs. This type of body leads to an increase in the ratio of its mass to the total area of its surface and, consequently, to a decrease in thermal energy losses while maintaining body temperature. Tall, thin, long-legged representatives of the Sudanese tribes, maintaining the same body temperature as the Eskimos, but living in extremely hot and humid climatic conditions, developed a physique that suggests a max. the ratio of the total surface area of a body to its mass. This type of body best meets the goals of heat dissipation, which otherwise would lead to an increase in body temperature above normal.

Dr. physical differences between groups may arise due to non-adaptive, neutral in terms of sp. evolution of changes in different groups. Throughout most of their history, people lived in small tribal populations (dims), in which the random variability of the gene pool, provided by the founders of this dim, became fixed signs of their offspring. Mutations that arose within a dim, if they turned out to be adaptive, spread first within the given dim, then in neighboring dims, but probably did not reach spatially distant groups.

If we consider R. r. with t. sp. physiol. (metabolism), a good example of how a genetic influence on differences between races can be explained would be sickle cell anemia (SCA). SKA is typical for the black population of Zap. Africa. Since the ancestors of black Americans lived in the West. Africa, this disease also affects the black population of America. People suffering from it live less. Why is the likelihood of SCD so high only for certain groups? Allison found that people heterozygous for the hemoglobin S gene (one of this pair causes red blood cells to sickle and the other does not) are quite resistant to malaria. People with two "normal" genes (i.e., hemoglobin A genes) are at a significantly higher risk of malaria, people with two "sickle cell" genes are anemic, and those with heterozygous genes are at a much lower risk of both diseases. This "balanced polymorphism" has developed independently - presumably as a result of random mutation selection - among a number of different racial/ethnic groups in malaria-infested regions. The various types of sickle cell anemia are not genetically identical across racial/ethnic groups, but they all share the same underlying heterozygosity advantage.

Since we do not yet have all the facts, such information is, as it were, a warning signal: despite the fact that R. r. may exist, the reasons for these differences require a comprehensive and thorough research. The proposed genetic differences may be predominant in their origin. - or exclusively - due to environmental factors.

It has long been known that black Americans score lower on intelligence (IQ) tests than white Americans. At the same time, it has been repeatedly reported that people of Asian descent show higher results on intelligence tests than whites, on which these tests b. hours were standardized. The question, at least with regard to differences between blacks and whites, is not whether there are differences in their test scores, but what might be the reasons for these differences.

The IQ controversy has flared up again after a quiet period following the publication of an article by Arthur Jensen. Although Jensen accurately outlined in his article the data available to him regarding within-group heritability, later research. found that within-group differences are much less subject to genetic control than Jensen believed. In addition, Hirsch et al. showed that even if within-group differences have a genetic basis, these differences are not really relevant in assessing the degree of genetic influence on differences between groups.

De Vries et al. published an article that is especially relevant in this context, as it shows that the differences between generations of the same ethnic groups are close to the magnitude of the reported difference between black and white Americans. Intergenerational and gender differences correlate well with changes in status (eg, parental education, occupation) that have occurred from generation to generation—a strong argument for significant environmental influences on performance on cognitive tests.

Personality characteristics are more difficult to measure than the level of intelligence. The results of personality tests assessing actual characteristics are potentially fuzzy due to changes in mood, emotions and behavior. R. r. in personality traits (eg, aggressiveness, caring) may exist. It is generally believed that these differences are due solely to environmental influences. However, this seems to be an oversimplified view of things. Friedman and Friedman presented data proving the existence of genetically determined R. r. in personality traits. Dr. the data indicate the presence of a genetic component in the variability of personality traits within the studied racial/ethnic groups. Group differences may exist, albeit at a subgroup rather than a racial level.

In modern humanity, there are three main races: Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid. These are large groups of people who differ in some physical features, such as facial features, skin color, eyes and hair, hair shape.

Each race is characterized by the unity of origin and formation in a certain territory.

The Caucasian race includes the indigenous population of Europe, South Asia and North Africa. Caucasoids are characterized by a narrow face, a strongly protruding nose, and soft hair. The skin color of northern Caucasians is light, while that of southern Caucasians is predominantly swarthy.

The Mongoloid race includes the indigenous population of Central and East Asia, Indonesia, and Siberia. Mongoloids are distinguished by a large, flat, wide face, slit eyes, hard, straight hair, and dark skin color.

In the Negroid race, two branches are distinguished - African and Australian. The Negroid race is characterized by dark skin color, curly hair, dark eyes, a wide and flat nose.

Racial characteristics are hereditary, but at present they are not essential for human life. Apparently, in the distant past, racial traits were useful for their owners: the dark skin of blacks and curly hair, creating an air layer around the head, protected the body from the effects of sunlight, the shape of the Mongoloid facial skeleton with a larger nasal cavity, perhaps, is useful for heating cold air before it enters the lungs. In terms of mental abilities, i.e., abilities for cognition, creative and labor activity in general, all races are the same. Differences in the level of culture are associated not with the biological characteristics of people of different races, but with the social conditions for the development of society.

The reactionary essence of racism. Initially, some scientists confused the level of social development with biological characteristics and tried to find transitional forms among modern peoples that connect humans with animals. These mistakes were used by the racists, who began to talk about the alleged inferiority of some races and peoples and the superiority of others to justify the merciless exploitation and direct destruction of many peoples as a result of colonization, the seizure of foreign lands and the outbreak of wars. When European and American capitalism tried to conquer the African and Asian peoples, the white race was declared the highest. Later, when the Nazi hordes marched across Europe, destroying the captured population in the death camps, the so-called Aryan race was declared the highest, to which the Nazis ranked the German peoples. Racism is a reactionary ideology and politics aimed at justifying the exploitation of man by man.

The failure of racism is proved by the real science of races - racial science. Racial science studies racial characteristics, the origin, formation and history of human races. The data obtained by racial science indicate that the differences between races are not sufficient to consider races as different biological species of people. Mixing of races - miscegenation - occurred constantly, as a result of which intermediate types arose at the boundaries of the ranges of representatives of different races, smoothing out the differences between races.

Will races disappear? One of the important conditions for the formation of races is isolation. In Asia, Africa and Europe, it still exists to some extent today. Meanwhile, newly settled regions, such as North and South America, can be compared to a cauldron in which all three racial groups are melted down. Although public opinion in many countries does not support interracial marriages, there is little doubt that racial interbreeding is inevitable and will sooner or later lead to the formation of a hybrid human population.

The population of our planet is so diverse that one can only be surprised. What kind of nationalities, nationalities you will not meet! Everyone has their own faith, customs, traditions, orders. Its beautiful and unusual culture. However, all these differences are formed only by the people themselves in the process of social historical development. And what underlies the differences that appear externally? After all, we are all very different:

blacks;
yellow-skinned;
white;
with different eye colors
various heights, etc.

It is obvious that the reasons are purely biological, not dependent on the people themselves and formed over thousands of years of evolution. This is how the modern races of man were formed, which theoretically explain the visual diversity of human morphology. Let us consider in more detail what this term is, what is its essence and meaning.

The concept of "race of people"

What is a race? It is not a nation, not a people, not a culture. These concepts should not be confused. After all, representatives of different nationalities and cultures can freely belong to the same race. Therefore, the definition can be given such as the science of biology gives.

Human races are a set of external morphological features, that is, those that are the phenotype of a representative. They were formed under the influence of external conditions, the impact of a complex of biotic and abiotic factors, and were fixed in the genotype during evolutionary processes. Thus, the signs that underlie the division of people into races should include:

growth;
skin and eye color;
structure and shape of hair;
hairiness of the skin;
features of the structure of the face and its parts.

All those signs of Homo sapiens as a biological species that lead to the formation of the external appearance of a person, but do not affect his personal, spiritual and social qualities and manifestations, as well as the level of self-development and self-education.

People of different races have a completely identical biological springboard for the development of certain abilities. Their general karyotype is the same:

women - 46 chromosomes, that is, 23 pairs of XX;
men - 46 chromosomes, 22 pairs XX, 23 pairs - XY.

This means that all representatives of a reasonable person are one and the same, among them there are no more or less developed, superior to others, higher. From a scientific point of view, everyone is equal.

Types of human races, formed over about 80 thousand years, have an adaptive value. It is proved that each of them was formed in order to provide a person with the possibility of a normal existence in a given habitat, to facilitate adaptability to climatic, relief and other conditions. There is a classification showing which races of Homo sapiens existed before, and which are at the present time.

Race classification

She is not alone. The thing is that until the 20th century it was customary to distinguish 4 races of people. These were the following varieties:

Caucasian;
australoid;
negroid;
Mongoloid.

For each, detailed characteristic features were described by which any individual of the human species could be identified. However, later the classification became widespread, which includes only 3 human races. This became possible due to the unification of the Australoid and Negroid groups into one.

Therefore, the modern types of human races are as follows.

Large: Caucasoid (European), Mongoloid (Asian-American), Equatorial (Australian-Negroid).
Small: many different branches that were formed from one of the large races.

Each of them is characterized by its own characteristics, signs, external manifestations in the appearance of people. All of them are considered by anthropologists, and the science itself that studies this issue is biology. Human races have interested people since ancient times. Indeed, completely contrasting external features often became the cause of racial strife and conflict.

Genetic studies of recent years allow again to talk about the division of the equatorial group into two. Consider all 4 races of people who stood out earlier and have become relevant again recently. We note the signs and features.

australoid race

Typical representatives of this group include the indigenous people of Australia, Melanesia, Southeast Asia, and India. Also the name of this race is Australo-Veddoid or Australo-Melanesian. All synonyms make it clear which minor races are included in this group. They are the following:

australoids;
veddoids;
Melanesians.

In general, the characteristics of each group represented do not vary too much among themselves. There are several main features that characterize all small races of people of the Australoid group.

Dolichocephaly - an elongated shape of the skull in relation to the proportions of the rest of the body.
Deep-set eyes, wide slit. The color of the iris is predominantly dark, sometimes almost black.
The nose is wide, the bridge of the nose is pronounced flat.
The hairline on the body is very well developed.
The hair on the head is dark in color (sometimes natural blonds are found among Australians, which was the result of a once-fixed natural genetic mutation of the species). Their structure is rigid, they can be curly or slightly curly.
The growth of people is average, often above average.
The physique is thin, elongated.

Within the Australoid group, people of different races differ from each other sometimes quite strongly. So, a native of Australia can be a tall blonde with a dense build, with straight hair, with light brown eyes. At the same time, the native of Melanesia will be a thin, short dark-skinned representative who has curly black hair and almost black eyes.

Therefore, the general features described above for the entire race are only an average version of their cumulative analysis. Naturally, miscegenation also takes place - a mixture of different groups as a result of natural crossing of species. That is why it is sometimes very difficult to identify a specific representative and attribute him to one or another small and large race.

Negroid race

The people who make up this group are the settlers of the following territories:

Eastern, Central and Southern Africa;
part of Brazil;
some peoples of the USA;
representatives of the West Indies.

In general, such races of people as Australoids and Negroids used to unite in the equatorial group. However, research in the 21st century has proved the failure of this order. After all, the differences in the signs shown between the designated races are too great. And some similarities are explained very simply. After all, the habitats of these individuals are very similar in terms of the conditions of existence, therefore, the adaptations in appearance are also close.

So, the representatives of the Negroid race are characterized by the following signs.

Very dark, sometimes blue-black, skin color, as it is especially rich in melanin content.
Wide eye slit. They are large, dark brown, almost black.
The hair is dark, curly, coarse.
Growth varies, often low.
The limbs are very long, especially the arms.
The nose is wide and flat, the lips are very thick, fleshy.
The jaw is devoid of a chin protrusion and protrudes forward.
Ears are large.
Facial hair is poorly developed, beard and mustache are absent.

Negroids are easy to distinguish from others by external data. Below are the different races of people. The photo reflects how clearly Negroids differ from Europeans and Mongoloids.

Mongoloid race

Representatives of this group are characterized by special features that allow them to adapt to rather difficult external conditions: desert sands and winds, blinding snow drifts, and so on.

Mongoloids are the indigenous people of Asia and much of America. Their characteristic features are as follows.

Narrow or slanting eyes.
The presence of epicanthus - a specialized skin fold aimed at covering the inner corner of the eye.
The color of the iris is light to dark brown.
characterized by brachycephaly (short head).
Superciliary ridges thickened, strongly protruding.
Sharp high cheekbones are well defined.
The hairline on the face is poorly developed.
The hair on the head is coarse, dark in color, straight in structure.
The nose is not wide, the bridge of the nose is low.
Lips of different thickness, usually narrow.
Skin color varies in different representatives from yellow to swarthy, there are also light-skinned people.

It should be noted that another characteristic feature is short stature, both in men and women. It is the Mongoloid group that prevails in numbers, if we compare the main races of people. They populated almost all climatographic zones of the Earth. Close to them in terms of quantitative characteristics are Caucasians, which we will consider below.

Caucasian race

First of all, we will designate the predominant habitats of people from this group. It:

Europe.
North Africa.
Western Asia.

Thus, representatives unite the two main parts of the world - Europe and Asia. Since the living conditions were also very different, then the general signs are again an average option after analyzing all the indicators. Thus, the following features of appearance can be distinguished.

Mesocephaly - medium head in the structure of the skull.
Horizontal section of the eyes, absence of strongly pronounced superciliary ridges.
Narrow protruding nose.
Lips of different thickness, usually of medium size.
Soft curly or straight hair. There are blondes, brunettes, brown-haired.
Eye color from light blue to brown.
Skin color also varies from pale, white to swarthy.
The hairline is very well developed, especially on the chest and face of men.
The jaws are orthognathic, that is, slightly pushed forward.

In general, a European is easy to distinguish from others. Appearance allows you to do this almost unmistakably, even without using additional genetic data.

If you look at all the races of people, the photo of whose representatives is located below, the difference becomes obvious. However, sometimes the signs are mixed so deeply that the identification of the individual becomes almost impossible. He is able to belong to two races at once. This is further aggravated by intraspecific mutation, which leads to the appearance of new traits.

For example, Negroid albinos are a special case of the appearance of blonds in the Negroid race. A genetic mutation that disrupts the integrity of racial traits in a given group.

Origin of human races

Where did such a variety of signs of the appearance of people come from? There are two main hypotheses that explain the origin of human races. It:

monocentrism;
polycentrism.

However, none of them has yet become an officially accepted theory. According to the monocentric point of view, initially, about 80 thousand years ago, all people lived in the same territory, and therefore their appearance was approximately the same. However, over time, growing numbers have led to a wider settlement of people. As a result, some groups found themselves in difficult climatic conditions.

This led to the development and fixation at the genetic level of some morphological adaptations that help in survival. For example, dark skin and curly hair provide thermoregulation and a cooling effect on the head and body in Negroids. And the narrow cut of the eyes protects them from sand and dust, as well as from blinding by white snow among the Mongoloids. The developed hairline of Europeans is a kind of thermal insulation in severe winters.

Another hypothesis is called polycentrism. She says that different types of human races descended from several ancestral groups that were unevenly settled around the globe. That is, there were initially several foci, from which the development and consolidation of racial characteristics began. Again, under the influence of climatic conditions.

That is, the process of evolution proceeded linearly, simultaneously affecting aspects of life on different continents. This is how the formation of modern types of people from several phylogenetic lines took place. However, it is not necessary to state for sure about the validity of this or that hypothesis, since there is no evidence of a biological and genetic nature, at the molecular level.

Modern classification

The races of people according to the estimates of current scientists have the following classification. Two trunks stand out, and each of them has three large races and many small ones. It looks like this.

1. Western trunk. Includes three races:

Caucasians;
capoids;
negroids.

The main groups of Caucasians: Nordic, Alpine, Dinaric, Mediterranean, Falian, East Baltic and others.

Minor races of capoids: Bushmen and Khoisans. They inhabit South Africa. In the fold above the eyelids, they are similar to the Mongoloids, but in other ways they differ sharply from them. The skin is not elastic, which is why the appearance of early wrinkles is characteristic of all representatives.

Groups of Negroids: Pygmies, Nilots, Negroes. All of them are settlers of different parts of Africa, therefore they have similar signs of appearance. Very dark eyes, the same skin and hair. Thick lips and no chin protrusion.

2. Eastern trunk. Includes the following major races:

australoids;
americanoids;
Mongoloids.

Mongoloids - are divided into two groups - northern and southern. These are the indigenous inhabitants of the Gobi Desert, which left its mark on the appearance of these people.

Americanoids are the population of North and South America. They have a very high growth, the epicanthus is often developed, especially in children. However, the eyes are not as narrow as those of the Mongoloids. Combine the characteristics of several races.

Australoids consist of several groups:

Melanesians;
veddoids;
Ainu;
Polynesians;
Australians.

Their characteristic features have been discussed above.

Minor races

This concept is a rather highly specialized term that allows you to identify any person to any race. After all, each big one is subdivided into many small ones, and they are already compiled on the basis of not only small external distinguishing features, but also include data from genetic studies, clinical analyzes, and molecular biology facts.

Therefore, small races - this is what allows you to more accurately reflect the position of each individual in the system of the organic world, and specifically, in the composition of the species Homo sapiens sapiens. What specific groups exist was discussed above.

Racism

As we found out, there are different races of people. Their signs can be strongly polar. This is what led to the emergence of the theory of racism. She says that one race is superior to another, since it is made up of more highly organized and perfect beings. At one time, this led to the appearance of slaves and their white masters.

However, from the point of view of science, this theory is completely absurd and untenable. The genetic predisposition to the development of certain skills and abilities is the same for all peoples. The proof that all races are biologically equal is the possibility of free interbreeding between them with the preservation of the health and viability of the offspring.

racial differences) Classification, starting with Linnean, distinguished between "races" if it was possible to determine with high accuracy the differences between group members from each other. Reliable discrimination requires that some races differ from others by a certain frequency of alleles of certain genes that affect observable traits. This criterion can be adopted in relation to most subgroups of humanity as a biologist. kind. The most widely used class. races subdivides them into Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid races. Other, more subtle differentiations of humanity as a species include the 9 races of Garn and the 7 major races of Lewontin. All people, regardless of race, share a common evolutionary history. It seems highly unlikely that the selection factor would vary significantly from group to group. All humans have faced the same general problems for almost their entire evolutionary history. OK. 6% of genetic differences in humans as a species are due to race, 8% to differences between populations within racial groups, and over 85% to differences between individuals of the same populations within racial groups. In zap. In the world, racial divisions are often based on skin color. However, even Charles Darwin rightly noted that "color is usually regarded by the naturalist-systematist as an insignificant feature." Other distinctions, such as morphology, fiziol are much more important. and behavior. Phys. differences may be the result of natural selection, mainly due to adaptive evolution. For example, most of the groups inhabiting the high Arctic latitudes are distinguished by a stocky torso and short limbs. This type of body leads to an increase in the ratio of its mass to the total area of its surface and, consequently, to a decrease in thermal energy losses while maintaining body temperature. Tall, thin, long-legged representatives of the Sudanese tribes, maintaining the same body temperature as the Eskimos, but living in extremely hot and humid climatic conditions, developed a physique that suggests a max. the ratio of the total surface area of a body to its mass. This type of body best meets the goals of heat dissipation, which otherwise would lead to an increase in body temperature above normal. Dr. physical differences between groups may arise due to non-adaptive, neutral in terms of sp. evolution of changes in different groups. Throughout most of their history, people lived in small tribal populations (dims), in which the random variability of the gene pool, provided by the founders of this dim, became fixed signs of their offspring. Mutations that arose within a dim, if they turned out to be adaptive, spread first within the given dim, then in neighboring dims, but probably did not reach spatially distant groups. If we consider R. r. with t. sp. physiol. (metabolism), a good example of how a genetic influence on differences between races can be explained would be sickle cell anemia (SCA). SKA is typical for the black population of Zap. Africa. Since the ancestors of black Americans lived in the West. Africa, this disease also affects the black population of America. People suffering from it live less. Why is the likelihood of SCD so high only for certain groups? Allison found that people heterozygous for the hemoglobin S gene (one of this pair causes red blood cells to sickle and the other does not) are quite resistant to malaria. People with two "normal" genes (i.e., hemoglobin A genes) are at a significantly higher risk of malaria, people with two "sickle cell" genes are anemic, and those with heterozygous genes are at a much lower risk of both diseases. This "balanced polymorphism" has developed independently - presumably by selection of random mutations - among a number of different racial/ethnic groups in malaria-infested regions. The various types of sickle cell anemia are not genetically identical across racial/ethnic groups, but they all share the same underlying heterozygosity advantage. Since we do not yet have all the facts, such information is, as it were, a warning signal: despite the fact that R. r. may exist, the reasons for these differences require a comprehensive and thorough research. The proposed genetic differences may be predominant in their origin. - or exclusively - due to environmental factors. It has long been known that black Americans score lower on intelligence (IQ) tests than white Americans. At the same time, it has been repeatedly reported that people of Asian descent show higher results on intelligence tests than whites, on which these tests b. hours were standardized. The question, at least with regard to differences between blacks and whites, is not whether there are differences in their test scores, but what might be the reasons for these differences. The IQ controversy has flared up again after a quiet period following the publication of an article by Arthur Jensen. Although Jensen accurately outlined in his article the data available to him regarding within-group heritability, later research. found that within-group differences are much less subject to genetic control than Jensen believed. In addition, Hirsch et al. showed that even if within-group differences have a genetic basis, these differences are not really relevant in assessing the degree of genetic influence on differences between groups. De Vries et al. published an article that is especially relevant in this context, as it shows that the differences between generations of the same ethnic groups are close to the magnitude of the reported difference between black and white Americans. Intergenerational and gender differences correlate well with changes in status (eg, parental education, occupation) that have occurred from generation to generation—a strong argument for significant environmental influences on performance on cognitive tests. Personality characteristics are more difficult to measure than the level of intelligence. The results of personality tests assessing actual characteristics are potentially fuzzy due to changes in mood, emotions and behavior. R. r. in personality traits (eg, aggressiveness, caring) may exist. It is generally believed that these differences are due solely to environmental influences. However, this seems to be an oversimplified view of things. Friedman and Friedman presented data proving the existence of genetically determined R. r. in personality traits. Dr. the data indicate the presence of a genetic component in the variability of personality traits within the studied racial/ethnic groups. Group differences may exist, albeit at a subgroup rather than a racial level. The original premise of modern researches in the field of R. river. is that R. r. do exist and may have a genetic basis. However, the differences between races turn out to be smaller than the differences between their subgroups, and the differences between races, as well as between their subgroups (whether they are due to genetic factors, environmental factors or their interactions or interrelations) are, in turn, insignificant in comparison with differences among their constituents. See also Cross-cultural psychology, Heritability, National character S. Yuen