- One of the ways that
biological anthropology
can inform some really
important discussions
that are happening in our
world about things like race
is to put a much wider perspective on it.
So, for instance, one of
the things that we have
been able to discover by
studying the genetics of humans
across the planet is that humans are
and descended from, came from Africa,
that we are an African species.
And we find fossils of things,
the earliest fossils that we have
that are Homo sapiens, that are us,
are from the African continent,
and so to a biological
anthropologist, we are African.
We are a single African species
and a very small subset
of an African species
no longer lives in Africa,
and happens to live in Asia,
and Europe, and the Americas
and has been very successful of course
inhabiting all different
ecosystems around the globe,
but ultimately we are a
recent African species
that evolved only 150,000
to 200,000 years ago.
And so, this notion of racial categories
to a biological
anthropologist is actually,
it doesn't fit with our data.
Our scientific data doesn't match up
with these racial categories
that have been culturally constructed.
Now, one of the anatomies that's used,
or one of the characteristics that's used
in order to categorize people
has been skin coloration
and to a biological anthropologist,
it's an opportunity to
demystify race a little bit
and to talk about why do
humans around the world
have these different skin colorations?
And what's been learned
is that there's this
absolutely fascinating tug of war
that's been going on
between vitamin D production
and folic acid protection in the skin
as a result of the ultraviolet radiation
coming from the sun,
and that individuals
with rather light skin
around the equator are
going to have the problem
of folic acid destruction.
So those individuals who had darker skin
are going to be selectively advantageous,
that those individuals
are gonna be able to
grow healthier babies than those
with lighter skin coloration.
Then those who are
further from the equator
are going to have a challenge
of vitamin D production
and those with darker skin who are sort of
been able to block UV
radiation from the sun
are not making as much vitamin D
and vitamin D is essential
for growing skeletons.
And so those individuals
may not survive as well.
But what's really interesting,
what's been superimposed on all of this
is of course culture, and the fact that
you can now drink milk
that's vitamin D fortified
and you can live in an
area and wear sunscreen
and so all of the
aspects of modern culture
superimpose on biological
changes to one aspect
of our anatomy, skin coloration,
I think forms this really,
really fascinating dance
in terms of our understanding of race,
but what I wanna emphasize
is that skin coloration
is one aspect of so many different ways
that humans can be understood
and clustered into groups, and the fact
that that has been used
to categorize humans
into these different racial categories,
when you could use a thousand different
other characteristics that would give you
a different story, is really
puzzling and frustrating
to a biological anthropologist.
And so to us, race is not a
biological concept at all.
Race, biologically doesn't exist,
but of course it does exist.
And so this is a cultural construct
and something we live with,
but a biological anthropologist
can inform the discussion
by saying, look, there's
no biological basis
for these categories that
you have been forming.
