What Science Says About Race and Genetics

Via Matthew

 

The New York Times' former science editor on research showing that evolution didn't stop when human history began.

A longstanding orthodoxy among social scientists holds that human races are a social construct and have no biological basis. A related assumption is that human evolution halted in the distant past, so long ago that evolutionary explanations need never be considered by historians or economists.

New analyses of the human genome have established that human evolution has been recent, copious, and regional.In the decade since the decoding of the human genome, a growing wealth of data has made clear that these two positions, never at all likely to begin with, are simply incorrect. There is indeed a biological basis for race. And it is now beyond doubt that human evolution is a continuous process that has proceeded vigorously within the last 30,000 years and almost certainly — though very recent evolution is hard to measure — throughout the historical period and up until the present day.New analyses of the human genome have established that human evolution has been recent, copious, and regional.

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