race

Term sometimes applied to a physically distinctive group of people, on the basis of their difference from other groups in skin colour, head shape, hair type, and physique. Formerly, anthropologists divided the human race into three hypothetical racial groups: Caucasoid, Mongoloid, and Negroid. Others postulated from 6 to 30 races. Scientific studies, however, have produced no proof of definite genetic racial divisions. Race is a cultural, political, and economic concept, not a biological one. Genetic differences do exist between populations but they do not define historical lineages, and are minimal compared to the genetic variation between individuals. Most anthropologists today, therefore, completely reject the concept of race, and social scientists tend to prefer the term ‘ethnic group’ (see ethnicity).

Isolation in Homo sapiens has never lasted long enough for the establishment of the isolating mechanisms that prevent interbreeding and lead to speciation. Humans do, however, follow many of the rules that apply to animals; for example, pigmentation is more intense in the humid tropics than in arid, cooler regions. Body extremities and body surface as a whole are reduced in animals in very cold climates; this principle is demonstrated by the Inuit. It has proved impossible to measure mental differences between groups in an objective way, and there is no acceptable scientific evidence to suggest that one race is superior to others. The attempt to categorize human types, as in South Africa for the purposes of segregation, is inevitably doomed by the absence of any straightforward distinction. Since humans can all interbreed to produce fertile offspring, they must all belong to the same genetic species.