Attempting to describe and explain the manner in which people differ from one another constitutes one of the traditionally central research questions in anthropology. This also affords a classic illustration of the manner in which humans interpret the world by imposing patterns upon it, and of the social functions of science.
The first to suggest that the human species might actually be divisible into a small number of natural groups was a French traveler and physician, Francois Bernier, in 1684. He proposed dividing the human species into the peoples of Europe, North Africa, India, and the Near East; the peoples of sub-Saharan Africa; the people of east Asia; the Lapps (Saami) of Scandinavia; and the Hottentots (Khoi) of southern Africa. The apparent naturalness of this system was so powerful that the father of biological classification, Carolus Linnaeus, formally incorporated it into his System of Nature in the eighteenth century. Here, four landmasses became eponymous homes to four formally designated subspecies of humans: red Americans, yellow Asians, white Europeans, and black Africans. Subsequent studies attempted to fine-tune the classification, observing the distinctive physical features of many different peoples, but still failing to question the fundamental assumption that there were indeed a small number of basic types of people to be identified and classified.
Not until the advent of genetic data did the racial paradigm begin to be seriously questioned. It was shown that the vast bulk of the genetic differences in the human species occurred within and between local populations, the differences between continental regions accounting for only about 6% of the total. Thus, racial (continental) differences were found to be quantitatively trivial.
Genetic variation appears to be patterned in two principal ways. Ubiquitous polymorphisms, like the ABO blood group, constitute the majority of detectable genetic variation, where most populations contain most alleles. Private polymorphisms constitute another component of human variation, in which a particular variant is found mostly in a restricted region of the world. Even then, it will be found only in low frequency. See also Gene; Human genetics.
In the twenty-first century the study of race has been superseded by studies of human variation and ethnicity, reflecting two significant discoveries. First, race (that is, contrasts among the most biologically divergent peoples) amounts to little in the overall biological variation in the human species. Second, “racial” issues transcend biology; they are issues of equality, rights, opportunities, and prejudices.
However, several biological generalizations can be made. First, the continuity found across human populations in nature is precisely what should be expected from microevolutionary processes operating. Second, some differences among populations are adaptations, molded by the action of natural selection on the gene pool. Third, the most divergent peoples are simply the most adapted to different circumstances—not the most primordial. Fourth, specific populations are not reliable as representatives of large continents. Finally, the observation of consistent differences between populations is not a sufficient basis on which to infer that those differences are innate. It is nearly impossible to control all the relevant social, economic, and developmental variables and to study simply innate biological differences between populations. See also Physical anthropology; Sociobiology.
