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Why it might be time to rethink the human family tree

29 points2 daysnautil.us
lolokbro40 minutes ago

The races roughly correspond to long-term biomes along longitudinal regions, meaning there are multiple races of black, white, and brown respectively.

There are Slavic white, who are in the same vertical slice (roughly, around water) as Arab brown and Ethiopian black, genetically.

Then there are western African black along another band that are closer to Irish and Scottish than some other black people.

There are white, black, and brown East Asians - the whole spectrum from North Korea and Japan down to Malaysia, Vietnam, and Samoan.

It’s not as simple as black, white, brown - this spectrum emerged multiple times in our evolution mostly due to climate patterns and differences in coastal vs inland, and cave vs outdoor, living conditions that relate to the weather.

Any large vertical region we inhabited in ancient times, with dark cold places in the north and hot sunny places along the equator with coastal and inland options, a racial spectrum like that would emerge over time.

messe9 minutes ago

What does this have to do with the article?

mmooss18 minutes ago

Here's the paper:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13485234/

Towle I. Clades, Grades, and the Genus Problem: A Case for Revising Hominin Taxonomy. Am J Biol Anthropol. 2026 Aug;190(4):e70344. doi: 10.1002/ajpa.70344. PMID: 42612121; PMCID: PMC13485234.

m30472 days ago

Research is coming out specifically regarding the COVID genome which suggests missing sequence data was routinely filled in from baseline reference sequences. In turn, the reference sequences suggest during later analysis constant reversion back to the baseline. These gaps are the (dot) product of limitations of PCR * computer processing algorithms. No reason to believe the problem is limited to COVID.

BigTTYGothGF1 hour ago

I haven't heard anything about this, could you drop a couple references?

trollbridge2 hours ago

Does this explain the conspiracy theories about “insertions”? When I looked into it, many other virus species had similar “insertions” - the problem seeming to be the sequencing itself not being accurate (as opposed to every viral disease being cooked up in a lab for the last 5,000 years)

bibimsz2 days ago

isn't it kind of suspect that there was all this diversity and branching conveniently right up to today and then it stopped. seems ideological.

sokoloff2 days ago

On a chart section spanning around 5 million years, are you asking about the millions of years where there was “all this diversity and branching” as contrasted with the last ten thousand years or so where there is less observed branching?

Around 15 branches in 5,000,000 years and 0 in the last 10,000 years seems more likely statistical than ideological to me.

jsbisviewtiful1 hour ago

Totally agree. Unfortunately we are living in an age of mass stupidity’s volume overtaking critical thought and analysis by those who are truly educated. The amount of moon landing conspiracy theories I see online is deeply disturbing - some even going as far as suggesting space doesn’t even exist. Truly disturbing times.

trollbridge2 hours ago

If a group of humans gets isolated in an island, the moon, etc., experiences a population bottleneck and bigtime selection pressures, a new species might emerge after 500 generations (about 10,000 years).

ThrowawayTestr2 days ago

Are you not aware of the multiple genetic bottlenecks homo sapiens have gone through?

guywithahat2 days ago

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tsimionescu1 hour ago

A species is defined by one simple thing: if individuals can interbreed and produce fertile offspring. There are complications related to ring species and few others, but they're not applicable here.

All human beings from all over the world can interbreed and their children will be fertile themselves (with the same rate of accidental infertility they would find in their own populations). As such, it would be completely preposterous to claim that there is more than one species of human on the planet today.

mono4421 hour ago

wolves are considered different species from dogs but they can produce offspring

ryoshoe2 days ago

I feel like you're conflating race/ethnicity with species when the two are completely separate concepts. There's a great amount of diversity between dog breeds, including wolves, but little disagreement that they are the same species. Variation between members of a certain species is expected

binaryturtle1 hour ago

Isn't the general separation between species that they no longer can cleanly interbreed (generate fertile offsprings)? I'm no biology expert though, but I always thought this is how to separate things.

Humans of all kinds can breed and make new humans easily. Same for dogs... easily can breed with each other and increase diversity. So in both cases same species. But humans and chimpanzees? Probably not (albeit there are rumours? :) ), so different species.

sokoloff2 days ago

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archonis1 hour ago

Please educate yourself about basic biological taxonomy before you accidentally and publically position yourself as a practitioner and champion of flawed race science.

OtomotO2 hours ago

You don't seem to understand what species means and what race means, in biology