From the genes of the people who inhabited land comes their culture as their expression, so culture, religion, arts, and other creations are organic to the people and show what is original in them.

It seems to be that though a natural nation is composed of very related people from a small group of originators, there are close relations from neighbors who come from the same stock or have experienced early tribal migrations. Even as closely related neighbors develop their culture uniquely there will remain similarities because they will have continue to have common points of origin. This is why neighboring nations can understand each other's cultures and get along even when languages are different and in those cases there is respect and warmth like cousins have for one another.

Mckinley, interesting post. On a macro level I can see how you may be looking at human variation as very insignificant (and you have the numbers to back up your argument). But that 5% difference between our DNA and that of people who look completely different, may still be significant to humans - significant enough that perhaps we ought to abide nature and allow ourselves to evolve in smaller groups/tribes rather than breed globally and create a "grey race" per the author. I think the point of the article is that we see genetic markers as a result of those previously more localized breeding patterns over thousands of years, where we may have evolved slightly differently in different geographical areas, and how these distinctions provide valuable insight as to the importance of natural evolution vs. modern society.

I do believe that if differences in geography over time, assuming no immigration/emigration (for the sake of argument) would provide even just a slight genetic marker, marking distinct tribes or populations, we should embrace this. Why not preserve those differences, as it appears this led to distinct cultures which accomplished great things in the past, even if the differences in genetic information between said groups do not necessarily constitute completely separate sub-species or populations?

In response to the comment denying that race exists: People get in quite a tangle with the word "race" - so what about "ethnicity"? Does anyone seriously argue that there are not different ethnic groups?

According to the "out of Africa" theory we all evolved to be human in Africa (our ancestors did not look like current Africans since evolution did not stop). In Africa, anyone with eyes in their head can see there are ethnic differences between pigmies and Massai for example. And amongst many Africans, such as the tribal problems in Kenya recently, the Africans can see distinct ethnic differences that baffle any non-African, and kill each other because of it.

Science is clear that the most human genetic diversity amongst individuals exists in Africa, even when looking specifically at any one African ethnicity. The diversity amongst people becomes dramatically reduced the further away from Africa people have settled during our evolution. Guess what - white skin evolved outside of Africa! But anyway, effectively Africans can be compared to a mixed bag of rocks of all shapes and sizes (representing the diversity - even within each individual) while those further away are each like a bag of rocks that is more uniform - becoming especially so in the most homogenous ethnicities - like Germanics/Nordics and presumably Japansese, although Chinese somewhat less so. The particular recessive phenotypic genes peculiar to the Germanic also serve to physically identify the type. If you could take this process to the extreme (let's not argue as to whether this ever happened) you would get people who were extremely homogenous - far away from Africa - enough to be considered a "pure" race - assuming they were isolated from and didn't breed with anyone else.

All of this follows logically from the fact of racial diversity being less the further from Ethiopia people migrated.

So why are we worrying about wether we go 'grey race ' n multicultural misgenated as we interbreed with our 'own kind' in Africa whilst putting the centre of the world in Africa and exporting it to those countries that are populated by Africans?

Your arguement is great news for all those europeans who freely pursue equality between races and the best way to gain this is to have 5 children by an African as many increasingly are...as they welcome Africa in to there midst . home at last I have a dream....we are all human together race doesnt exist there social constructions... I can hear them say

but we are very different and such information isnt that important in reality

I'm not sure about the oversimplification of "ethnicity/race=culture...". Culture is an amalgam of many different things, chief among them geographical location. From geographic land base also springs other watermarks of culture--language, arts, cosmology, et cetera. Racial characteristics develop over time as a response to environment, as the referenced chart alludes to. In other words, ethnicity is an ongoing biological process developed as a response to specific environmental conditions, and as such, is an attribute of any given culture, not the sole criterion.

1. You haven't and cannot scientifically define 'race' or 'ethnicity'. Hence, the trouble with your comments are, to my mind, that they involve a kind of circular argument - i.e. not to be personal, but in this instance, unsound reasoning in which one needs already to have established the conclusion in order to be entitled to assert one of the premises offered in support of the conclusion one is trying to establish. Hence the argument assumes the truth of the very point one is trying to prove. (‘My client did not steal this money because she is not a thief’).

2. Forget reasonable or honest, no GOOD scientist can today formally defend on scientific grounds even a definition of race or ethnicity. Socially and culturally, you can go to town until the sun comes down giving definitions, But not scientifically. It's not that a definition is scientifically wanting, it's that there is no science to support a formal set of distinctions within present-day population genetics to even begin to formulate a definition of "race". If you go that way, and, as a good population genetic scientist must, take into account space and time, in genetic studies, you'll have to define the human race the world over - to be "racist," in the social sense - as 'African'- and her descendants.

3. Population genetics, anthropology, and other disciplines point to a dispersion out of Africa some 60-to-70,000 years ago of the species that we know as Homo sapiens sapiens or, 'modern humans'. Since at least then, the story of humans as a species has been written in DNA mutations, variations, and regional adaptations that amount to no more than a ~5% variation - despite all the visible and colorful differences we pay attention to! When a blue-eyed person marries a green-eyed person that is, technically, as "biracial" as a pale-skinned Scottish person marrying a dark skinned pygmy from the Congo! Get over it! More than 40% of our DNA is shared in common with bananas - now there's something different! ;-) !

4. Despite the wild variation of it, "culture" IS complex ("the way we do things around here"), but despite what the layman thinks of, or has heard about single-nucleotide polymorphisms (individual spots where DNA differs among humans), and recent findings in copy number variation, "race" as a scientific concept does not exist. DNA is brutally clear: Humans are a single species with a presently estimated variation within that species (taking into account factors like copy number variation) of no more than ~5%! Said otherwise, modern humans evidence an ~95% similarity at the DNA level. The world over!

5. Population genetics is a field of biology that studies the genetic composition of biological populations and the changes in genetic composition that result from the operation of various factors and evolutionary forces, including natural selection, genetic drift, mutation and gene flow. It also takes account of population subdivision and population structure in space. Three things are very clear from population genetics: (1) "Populations" can be described and to some degree distinguished on the basis of clusters of genetic features; and (2) Clusters of genetic features can be used to describe and distinguish populations of people; (populations should not be conflated with political geography) and (3) Not any single one, or any cluster of these distinctions leads to any consistent definition of to which the word "race" (as a social construct) might scientifically apply, or from which it might scientifically arise.

If you want comfort, support, or reassurance from genetics or epigenetics, for scientific notions of 'race' or ethnicity, those disciplines sure don't look like they're heading in the direction of providing that. What they do provide is an invaluable insight to the evolutionary histories in biology across space, time, and more generally, context. And what they're making uncomfortably clear to some is that modern humans are 'Africans' with variations. Probably not what you sound like you want to 'hear'.

"The illiterates of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn." — Alvin Toffler