CopperLine wrote: ... What is quite illegitimate is those who post asserting a genetic basis for cultural, political, social and economic variation. They assume exactly that which needs to be explained, which as we know is the antithesis of scientific enquiry.
It is such studies as this one which will put an end to the myths, eventually.
Here we see the
relationship between all peoples. Even the ones which become genetically isolated by environmental factors such as the ice age or mountainous terrains. It is the influences of these environmental factors, which we know about from other disciplines, which can finally be assessed in terms of what they did to force more migrations or allow groups to stay put and the differences in cultural / social developments which consequently take place ... (e.g. sickle cell anemia was a mutation which was selected for due to an environmental pressure) ...
However the environmentally forced changes,
do not alter us genetically enough to put us into different races. I cannot stress this point enough unless I make you sequence DNA from two groups which you consider are as far apart as can be in terms of phenotype, and then you might appreciate that the exceptionally few differences in DNA bases which you pick up, would be comparable to the differences you will see if you sequenced DNA from two siblings ...
and you would not attempt to put two brothers into different races just because one had DNA for blue eyes and and the other had DNA for brown eyes.
At best there is a 30% : 30% : 30% : ratio of Nature : Nurture : Individual make-up for each individual (applies to most mammals) ... which applies to all members of the Human Race equally!
Any changing, short lived, environmental / cultural traits are proposed to be set down as memes not genes. I have seen evidence to suggest they may influence things such as obesity (if the mother was malnourished during pregnancy, resulting child would would become predisposed to obesity) and if the meme mould-ability is still active in the first year of nurturing things such as language have meme like attachment (Tim may know more about this).
Whilst I've been trying to get my head round the importance or otherwise of memes, as the evidence is gathered for their case ... we are now faced with
"temes".
I would really appreciate opinions on this video about temes .....
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/susa ... temes.html
( CopperLine please let go of preconceived notions once in a while
)
).
