Racism is due to speciation tendencies in humans

I disagree, genetics can be responsible for some but not all behavior: some is learned and some learned behavior is passed from one generation to the next.See Japanese Macaques.

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Scientists have begun to rethink their ideas on culture within monkey society in a large part because of the Japanese macaques. It has been observed that the macaques invent new behaviors and pass them on by immitation. In 1963 a young female named Mukubili waded into a hot spring in the Nagano Mountains to retrieve some soybeans that had been thrown in by the keepers. She liked the warmth and soon other young monkeys joined her. At first the behavior caught on only with the young macaques and their mothers. Over the years the rest of the troop took up the behavior, which now finds shelter in the 109 F (43 C) hot springs to escape the winter cold. Young monkeys have also learned how to roll snowballs, which doesn't have any survival purpose, but with which they have a lot of fun, much like human children.

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Potato washing by a troop in Koshima was first started by a one and a half year old female named Imo. Researchers would put sweet potatoes along the beach to bring the monkeys out in the open. Imo found that she could get the sand off the potato better by dipping it into the river water, rather than brushing it off with her hands, like the other monkeys were doing. Her brothers and sisters imitated her first and then their mother. Over time the entire troop took to washing sand off potatoes with river water. At first they simply washed the sand off, but Imo soon found that the potatoes tasted better if seasoned with salt water from the ocean. They began to bite into the potato then dip it into the sea water to season it and bite again.

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Genetics can enable a variety of behaviors, but the behavior learned is not determined by genetics. There were probably many more "cultural" clues of differences that we can determine from the evidence. Personally I think legends of trolls and goblins and such may be explained by sapiens meeting neander.But we are also talking an instance when speciation has already occurred long before. So far just your opinion, imho. I can equally argue that these mechanisms are responsible for preserving all the cultural diversity (polytypic?) for thousands of years instead of ending up with homogeneous (monotypic) humans.Again, the question is, why did they (and many other similar groups) engage in this behavior? Was this xenophobia reinforced by religious tradition and dogma? Or was the tradition and dogma due to the xenophobia?One would expect the tendencies to ebb and flood depending on whether there was high or low selective pressure, as I would also expect different individual to behave differently (ie - to different degrees) such that selection would operate on the basis of the behavior. With low selective pressure there would be high tolerance, with high selective pressure there would be low tolerance. Look at the immigration issue in the south: when times are tough you don't want a bunch of (them) foreign neighbors but other (us) people moving into the area are tolerated. Again, the point I have been making is that IF speciation were to occur within humans what would it look like? Given that (sexual selection) behavior is involved, one would look for instances of behavior that divides populations into "us" and "them" -- it would look like racism and xenophobia, preserving cultural heritage, self-segregation, and, when competition was high, genocide.Enjoy.Edited by RAZD, : involvedEdited by RAZD, : clarity

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Racism as we know it was most likely rare pre-Columbus and pretty much non-existent in the ancient world.In the ancient world most racial traits had a clinal distribution, whereby your neighbors looked pretty much like you did and you couldn't easily travel far enough to see huge differences. Long-distance travel was not common in ancient times (I am not counting migrations, as those took large amounts of time and racial traits could change during the course of the migration).The European explorations post-AD 1500 allowed people to travel long distances, far outstripping the gradual clines and bringing into contact groups with far different racial characteristics. Coupled with the link that was often made between racial and cultural levels, the racism we know today became possible.

The hypothesis doesn't strike me as at all likely. Substantial genetic differentiation between human populations is almost always the result of geographic isolation, not cultural antagonism. How many instances are there of populations living in close proximity but nonetheless developing nontrivial genetic differences?As far as I can see, xenophobia typically permits you to hate strangers, act with violence toward their males and steal their women. That is not a formula for genetic isolation.

And kill the male children. Rape all the women and girls. Just like in the Bible eh? Certainly this is isolation of male genes isn't it?How long until male genes in one group are different from male genes in another group, starting with a common population? The question is: if speciation is behavioral, what would it's effects look like in humans?Enjoy.

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And kill the male children. Rape all the women and girls. Just like in the Bible eh? Certainly this is isolation of male genes isn't it?

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No, killing all the male children eliminates male genes; it doesn't isolate them. And if one group doesn't kill the males in the other but only impregnate the females, they have mixed all genes (except for mtDNA) from one group into the other.

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The question is: if speciation is behavioral, what would it's effects look like in humans?

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It would look like a failure to mate between groups that had the opportunity to do so. Since this is almost never what we observe in humans -- who will mate with just about anything with two legs (and some aren't even that discriminating) -- the hypothesized mechanism seems not to be operating in humans, at least not often enough to make speciation at all likely.

I know that. I was making the point that the Warblers' behaviour is not cultural. I know that cultural behaviour exists, and I've observed it in Asian Macaques myself (they build up city cultures, so it's easy to observe the young learning definite non-genetic behaviour from their elders, like how to drink from a Coke bottle!).I made the comparison with the Warblers to us and the Neanderthal because, as you say: Basically, the birds don't find each others' calls sexy for the same reason that Neanderthal features wouldn't look good to us. Separate biological evolution due to (lengthy) geographic isolation. Negative sexual selection for biological reasons bears no relationship to our cultural taboos on different groups mixing. The two groups in Northern Ireland do not have a much lower intermarriage rate than black and white Londoners because of any biological differences, and if they managed to keep up their culture of separation for the next three thousand years (which they won't), they would still show less biological differences than black and white Londoners. How could the inhabitants of six continents and numerous islands have been "homogeneous" a thousand years ago? Both cultural and minor genetic differences would have been inevitable. Because we're the "ultra-cultural" animal. We can become extremely addicted to our cultures. That's a necessarily shallow answer to your question, because many aspects of human behaviour are still a mystery, as you know. Different religious traditions and dogma always drive xenophobia, although its questionable as to whether fear of a religion is always actually a phobia, as they're notorious killers of "out groupers". Here's where I think you're wrong. It would look like, for example, you being able to look at a group of humans, lets say the Japanese, and say that you find none of the Japanese women sexually attractive. Then you ask around, and find that sexual distaste for the Japanese is widespread amongst both sexes of all other groups in the world.That's the kind of way that symptoms of speciation via sexual selection would show.I think we're far too much of a mobile and social animal for sympatric speciation to take place, and sympatric now means the world.We don't really have speciation tendencies, or if we do, they're easily overridden by our tendency to fuck far and wide and promisciously.

Racism as we know it didn't even exist in most parts of the world even during colonial periods, Europe included. As noted by many non-European descent people who had lived in both Europe and the colonies around the world, racism was simply almost non-existent in Europe while it was like a plague in the colonies. Europeans who lived in Europe simply didn't think about it much and they actually treated people of other races pretty much the same as they did each other. It's only the Europeans who live in the colonies in Asia, Australia, and the Americas that were extreme racists.

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I'm trying to see things your way, but I can't put my head that far up my ass.

Seems like a convenient way to conflate that which you denigrate from a social perspective, with something you agree with from a scientific perspective. It may be the case, but it is entirely anecdotal.The longer you remain at EvC, the more you assert either anthropomorphic or God-like tendencies to nature, it seems to me. You seem to ascribe nature a will and cognitive ability to choose something, as if nature itself has a mind, will, and purpose.I'm not saying that it is completely out of the question, but I see more of a personal motivation spawning from these hypotheses than it does with any actual scientific basis. The philosophy of science often produces these things only to pawn it off as having some scientific backing. Edited by Nemesis Juggernaut, : edit to add

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And kill the male children. Rape all the women and girls. Just like in the Bible eh? Certainly this is isolation of male genes isn't it?

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In ancient times, superstition was a very real premise - the main factor here is that it is an authentic, true reporting - this is how it was. Certain kinds of wars forbid taking prisoners, the same faith being applied if one lost a war. It was seen as a cursed seed being left to grow again, thus a superstition, which predated today's religions. Today's racism is from the exploiting of inherent, generic belief tendensies in humans, and attaching subsistance of that belief on the hatred of another, and this is resultant from scriptural crimes.That this racism can pass off within genes or some other means of transmission, is evident from it is not subject to truth in the racism - thus it is mixed up with belief in God and salvation. This can turn into a deep hatred, usually becoming more intense when the lie is exposed - because the host has nowhere else to turn, so it releases hate and war instead.Edited by IamJoseph, : No reason given.

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Racism as we know it didn't even exist in most parts of the world even during colonial periods, Europe included.

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Funny you should say so. IMHO, europe invented racism in the modern world, killing off more humans than any other group in geo-history. This is true even when europe's last two worst centuries are not in the equation. And all those murders were resultant from the Gospels. The two most racist religions are the two which claim ascendence to Judaism. Its elementary, Dr. Watson: both these groups want the witnesses for the prosecution dead. Europe has only gotten calmer since America entrenched a new form of christianity - one based on laws [The Constitution].

ethinc religions are more racist than universal religions.Judaism - God's one chosen people.
Hinduism - they still will only marry each other, and discriminate agasint each other based on geography, and language.Im not saying they're arent racists in christianity, but the desire for conversion usually trumps it.