Journey of Man

Journey of Man
by Clive Maltby

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DVD Reviews of Journey of Man

DVD Review: "Adam" fallacies and the "race" problem
Summary: 4 Stars

Outstanding work. I've always found this bit of a gap between the domains of the anthropologists over the longer term and the more recent domains of historians and archaeologists to be one of the last great mysteries of human origins. Seems like Wells and crew have driven a big stake in the ground to help fill in the blanks.
I found the notion of central asians such as Mr. Niazov to be descendants close to the "source" for European caucasians, north asians & native americans to be most enlightening. We tend to think of some of these ethnic groups as being somehow "in-between" the extremes, perhaps from blending, when in fact they are the center. Absolutely fascinating.

I saw most of the show on PBS, have not yet read the book, but will.

First, Wells et al did NOT find our "first" male ancestor, as some of the professional and amateur reviews simplistically suggest. Rather, they identified a candiate for the **most recent common ancestor** based on their particular sample, extrapolating to the entire population with a confidence level based on the statistics. Not exactly the same thing. Of course there were earlier men -- its just that we are descended more from their daughters than their sons.
A much larger sample of human DNA might possibly uncover men whose Y chromosomes are not descended from this particular ancestor, therefore pushing the Adam further back in time.

We always think of a couple has having this ever expanding family tree of descendants. But in the [hopefully<g>] long view our distantly related descendants *do* intermarry/breed, causing
various genes that have diverged to come back together at various points in evolutionary time -- possible as long as we are the same species at that same point in time. And this is further muddled because this family tree of descendants is merging with the trees of others in every generation. So my hat is off to Wells and his colleagues for some difficult detective work.

Now touching on the delicate topic of race and the mantra "there is no such thing as race (biologically)...

The fact that "we are all related" is almost a truism -- if one accepts the obvious that we are all H. Sapiens then the correct view of evolution requires this: when talking about family trees of *species*, there is no convergence, only divergence (at least for animals-- bacteria & plants are murkier). This too is almost by definition as the simplest notion of a species is a population that has diverged genetically enough that it can no longer successfully interbreed with other populations.

But when biologists discuss any animal *other* than humans they are perfectly willing to use the notion of sub-species and recognize that today's sub-species -- subgroups with distinct
and persistent traits -- are the candidates for emergent new species. Some sort of isolation, whether geographic or otherwise, is required to cut off lateral gene flows so that enough divergence can take place to break inter-group fertility. As long as the groups *are* inter-fertile, it is obvious that these populations have more in common (in the big picture) than they differ, again almost by definition.

But that in no way makes the distinction into subspecies useless or inherently invalid concepts.

Although the term "race" obviously has much social and cultural baggage (as well as scientific -- think the embarassments of eugenics), clearly it exists as collections/clusters of
genetically determined anatomical features which are clearly adaptations for various ancestral environments such as different variations of pigment, body fat distribution, and facial
features (noses & eye folds) which both arose and have robustly *persisted* (although modern trends are now working against this persistence, long term).
As a weak analogy, just because there is no single underlying gene for height does not mean it is not a relevant concept.

The blanket notion that "race has no scientific basis" is itself unscientific, science skewing itself to be "progressive", not being totally free, honest & open about inquiry just because
some bigoted idiots might misuse the results. The closest analogy would be the medical establishment in the US being so hesistant to recommend the potentially healthful benefits of
moderate alcohol intake for millions of people becasue they don't want to give the small number of alcoholics an excuse to fall off the wagon.

I remember my physical anthroplogy class in the late 80s where the "race is unscientific" mantra was repeated, using lateral gene flows to try to discredit the concept. However I
always wondered, if the notion of race is so absurd, how did these distinct groupings of traits arise and persist in the first place? I saw then that they were themselves unscientific -- not in suggesting that the differences between "races" are relatively small (as they so obviously are), but where they suggest differences-- other than cultural -- are
inconceivable in principle and not worthy of investigation. This latter attitude is clearly unscientific to me.
Aside -- it is clear that moving the around the globe (even before the last 1000 years) there are no precise "borders" between races on a small enough scale, either geographically or
genetically. However, the same problem exists in identifying species *over time* -- yet the concept of species is still useful.

Another problematic formulation is that "race is only skin deep". When thinking about evolution we tend to focus on changing appearances and shapes, ie macroscopic structures.
However, these are driven by changes in genes which *also* control the biochemistry (the medical field finds "race" to have some relevance) AND much of behavior (including humans, see the evolutionary psychologists). Evolution works at *all* levels simultaneously, though with varying impact.

Wells went through a lot of trouble to get DNA samples from isolated populations who have basically stayed put for thousands of years in order to avoid the mixing problem in building
his family tree and map of migrations. Although he would never use the (rightly) loaded word "pure", essentially he *was* looking for "purity" in his groups. Something Wells did not
attempt to do with his DNA investigations was to see if it was possible to develop clusters of genetic markers which *could* be used to correctly identify a person's likely "race". A newer
genetic finding that is frequently tossed about is that individuals within a "race" may differ from each other more overall than from race-to-race. However this in no way invalidates the possibility of identifying a set of race markers given enough work on looking at the right complex of genes. The fact that the problem is very subtle or difficult does not mean it is impossible or inherently invalid. Think this could have no legitimate use even if it was doable? What about police forensics? Isn't there an interest in figuring out what a suspect might look like, however vaguely? In a sense this would be the opposite of the hated profiling.

As to genetic "racial" variation behaviors & psychological characteristics AT THE POPULATION LEVEL, statistically speaking, these are vary hard to distinguish from social/cultural ones (as Murray's Bell Curve ran head on into), perhaps impractically so. But this does not mean they are scientifically inconceivable as a matter of principle.
Small sample sizes would have been against Wells in terms of controlling for social/cultural/environmental factors, but I'm very curious about what results Wells might have seen around the world if he had performed a full battery of psychological tests (yes, including intelligence) on his "pure" subjects. I'd expect that, however large or small the differences at the extremes, that people would be more similar to their genetic neighbors than to others thousands of miles away. [FWIW, in modern America we tend to have people who come from the various extremes of the larger human population, and not do not tend to have many people from the in-between groups.]
But to insist that such testing could never in principle (as opposed to merely wouldn't) find any statistically significant variations (however small) is itself a matter of progressive
faith and is unscientific.

Disclaimer: for those easily riled up, let me state for the record that I would expect that variations in bell curves for various groups would of course greatly overlap and could never
logically serve as a basis for pre-judging any individuals. But is even the question of asking about the shapes of those statistical distributions, those curves, inherently invalid? I don't think so. Perhaps it is unwise in the larger scheme of things, but it is hardly "unscientific".

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