The Sum of Awe
Brought to you by the moment that spacetime began.
For example, one might say black and white are races, but are they like Pug and Boston Terrier?
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Are Races of Humans like Sub-Species of Non-Humans?
- Thread starter The Sum of Awe
- Start date
Gjallarhorn
N'yog-Sothep
More or less. They're phenotypic variations.
freethinker44
Well-Known Member
I have always thought so.
They're fairly similar: sub-species are vaguely defined and some biologists claim that they're a completely unnecessary distinction, since they try to make a continuous distribution out to be a bunch of discrete parts. By the same token, race is a vague and fluid concept that changes over time.
So yeah... they're both arguably arbitrary and unnecessary, so I guess they're similar.
So yeah... they're both arguably arbitrary and unnecessary, so I guess they're similar.
Skwim
Veteran Member
No. Races, breeds, forms, varieties, and cultivars all sit below the species and subspecies ranks.(They're not recognized by international taxonomic codes.) As Gjallarhorn said, they're variations of Homo sapiens, or Homo sapiens sapiens.The Sum of Awe said:
"While biological scientists sometimes use the concept of race to make practical distinctions among fuzzy sets of traits, others in the scientific community suggest that the idea of race is often used by the general publicin a naive or simplistic way.
Social conceptions and groupings of races vary over time, involving folk taxonomies that define essential types of individuals based on perceived sets of traits. Scientists consider biological essentially mobsolete, and generally discourage racial explanations for collective differentiation in both physical and behavioral traits."
Source: Wikipedia
Social conceptions and groupings of races vary over time, involving folk taxonomies that define essential types of individuals based on perceived sets of traits. Scientists consider biological essentially mobsolete, and generally discourage racial explanations for collective differentiation in both physical and behavioral traits."
Source: Wikipedia
Last edited:
ScottySatan
Well-Known Member
A subspecies is arbitrarily assigned by scientists where there is a need to make a distinction. For humans, there hasn't been a need so far. The distinction I've heard has to do with continent of origin for a given physical trait. Fpr example, Chinese people are said to have "Mongoloid skulls".
Tiberius
Well-Known Member
The question assumes that all life forms fit neatly into descrete containers. This is a red fox. This is Blue whale. It is based on the idea that there are certain defining qualities that all members of a particular species has and which are not held by any other species. However, evolution is a graduated change. If a particular species of bird has blue head feathers and evolves into a species that differs because it has red head feathers, then there is no single point where the species goes from the blue to the red feathers. It's a gradual change where the feathers become less and less blue and more and more red. This change happens over several generations.
It is the limitations of the language used to describe it that lead to this confusion, not any actual aspect of humans (or any other species that has subspecies).
It is the limitations of the language used to describe it that lead to this confusion, not any actual aspect of humans (or any other species that has subspecies).
The Sum of Awe
Brought to you by the moment that spacetime began.
I asked my science teacher, and he told me Apes, Monkeys, Chimps, and other primates are those sub-species.
Kilgore Trout
Misanthropic Humanist
Chimps are a subspecies of human? Well, the human species is looking better already.
The Sum of Awe
Brought to you by the moment that spacetime began.
Not humans, humans are a subspecies themselves, in the primate family. I worded it wrong.
And hehehehe.
I think sub-species are supposed to be able to interbreed.
I'm pretty sure humans are to chimps what a lion is to a cat. Ie/ not sub-species.
Gjallarhorn
N'yog-Sothep
We can't test it because it's not an ethical experiment, so...to be determined?
Primates are an order - one taxonomic rank above family. Humans (homo sapiens) form a species. Modern humans (homo sapiens sapiens) are often considered a different sub-species from certain other extinct humans (e.g. Neanderthals, as Skwim's graph points out).
I meant my first post in the thread as a bit of a joke; no serious biologist considers human races to be sub-species.