1932

Abstract

For more than 50 years, biological anthropology has argued against the use of the biological race concept. Despite such efforts, aspects of the concept remain in circulation within society and within the discipline itself. As commonly articulated, anthropology's rejection of the biological race concept lacks an evolutionarily based explanatory grounding. Biological patterns of variation in living humans do not map onto commonly utilized categorizations of race, but this knowledge does not explain why human evolution has not produced such structures. This article attempts to offer one such explanation by constructing a biocultural framing of race around ancestry. By examining ancestry through two related lenses, genealogical and genetic, it is shown that the coherence of race as a biological concept has been disrupted by demographic changes in our recent evolutionary past. The biological construction of race is invalid not because it is impossible but because evolutionary forces have actively worked against such patterns in our evolutionary past.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102218-011154
2019-10-21
2024-03-28
Loading full text...

Full text loading...

/deliver/fulltext/anthro/48/1/annurev-anthro-102218-011154.html?itemId=/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102218-011154&mimeType=html&fmt=ahah

Literature Cited

  1. Ashley EA, Butte AJ, Wheeler MT, Chen R, Klein TE et al. 2010. Clinical assessment incorporating a personal genome. Lancet 375:1525–35
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Auerbach BM, Cabana GS. 2013. Evolving biological anthropology in twelve acts. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 150:S567
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Baker LD. 1998. From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896–1954 Berkeley: Univ. Calif. Press
  4. Boas F. 1912. Changes in the bodily form of descendants of immigrants. Am. Anthropol. 14:530–62
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Bolnick DA. 2008. Individual ancestry inference and the reification of race as a biological phenomenon. Revisiting Race in a Genomic Age BA Koenig, SS-J Lee, SS Richardson 70–85 Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers Univ. Press
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Bolnick DA, Fullwiley D, Duster T, Cooper RS, Fujimura JH et al. 2007. The science and business of genetic ancestry testing. Science 318:399–400
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Boyd R, Silk JB. 2018. How Humans Evolved New York: Norton
  8. Brooks AS, Yellen JE, Potts R, Behrensmeyer AK, Deino AL et al. 2018. Long-distance stone transport and pigment use in the earliest Middle Stone Age. Science 360:90–94
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Burchard EG, Ziv E, Coyle N, Gomez SL, Tang H et al. 2003. The importance of race and ethnic background in biomedical research and clinical practice. New Engl. J. Med. 348:1170–75
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Cann RL. 1988. DNA and human origins. Annu. Rev. Anthropol. 17:127–43
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Cartmill M. 1998. The status of the race concept in physical anthropology. Am. Anthropol. 100:651–60
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Caspari R. 2003. From types to populations: a century of race, physical anthropology, and the American Anthropological Association. Am. Anthropol. 105:65–76
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Caspari R. 2009. 1918: three perspectives on race and human variation. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 139:5–15
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Caspari R, Lee SH. 2004. Older age becomes common late in human evolution. PNAS 101:10895–900
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Cavalli-Sforza LL, Feldman MW. 1973. Cultural versus biological inheritance: phenotypic transmission from parents to children. (A theory of the effect of parental phenotypes on children's phenotypes). Am. J. Hum. Genet. 25:618–37
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Coon CS. 1962. The Origin of Races Oxford, UK: Knopf
  17. Coop G. 2013a. How many genetic ancestors do I have?. gcbias Blog Nov 11: https://gcbias.org/2013/11/11/how-does-your-number-of-genetic-ancestors-grow-back-over-time/
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Coop G. 2013b. How much of your genome do you inherit from a particular ancestor?. gcbias Blog Nov 4: https://gcbias.org/2013/11/04/how-much-of-your-genome-do-you-inherit-from-a-particular-ancestor/
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Coop G. 2017. Your ancestors lived all over the world. gcbias Blog Nov 28: https://gcbias.org/2017/11/28/your-ancestors-lived-all-over-the-world/
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Coop G, Przeworski M. 2007. An evolutionary view of human recombination. Nat. Rev. Genet. 8:23–34
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Donnelly KP. 1983. The probability that related individuals share some section of genome identical by descent. Theor. Popul. Biol. 23:34–63
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Du Bois WEB. 1968. Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publ.
  23. Duster T. 2005. Race and reification in science. Science 307:1050–51
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Feller W. 1950. An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications, Vol. 1 New York: Wiley
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Fledel-Alon A, Wilson DJ, Broman K, Wen X, Ober C et al. 2009. Broad-scale recombination patterns underlying proper disjunction in humans. PLOS Genet 5:e1000658
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Foster LA. 2016. A postapartheid genome: genetic ancestry testing and belonging in South Africa. Sci. Technol. Hum. Values 41:1015–36
    [Google Scholar]
  27. Frankenberg R. 1997. Displacing Whiteness: Essays in Social and Cultural Criticism Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press
  28. Fu Q, Hajdinjak M, Moldovan OT, Constantin S, Mallick S et al. 2015. An early modern human from Romania with a recent Neanderthal ancestor. Nature 524:216–19
    [Google Scholar]
  29. Fullwiley D. 2008. The biologistical construction of race: ‘admixture’ technology and the new genetic medicine. Soc. Stud. Sci. 38:695–735
    [Google Scholar]
  30. Goodman AH, Leatherman TL. 1998. Building a New Biocultural Synthesis: Political-Economic Perspectives on Human Biology Ann Arbor: Univ. Mich. Press
  31. Gravlee CC. 2009. How race becomes biology: embodiment of social inequality. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 139:47–57
    [Google Scholar]
  32. Gravlee CC, Dressler WW, Bernard HR 2005. Skin color, social classification, and blood pressure in southeastern Puerto Rico. Am. J. Public Health 95:2191–97
    [Google Scholar]
  33. Gravlee CC, Non AL, Mulligan CJ 2009. Genetic ancestry, social classification, and racial inequalities in blood pressure in southeastern Puerto Rico. PLOS ONE 4:e6821
    [Google Scholar]
  34. Hawks J, Wang ET, Cochran GM, Harpending HC, Moyzis RK 2007. Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution. PNAS 104:20753–58
    [Google Scholar]
  35. Hein J, Schierup MH, Wiuf C 2004. Gene Genealogies, Variation and Evolution: A Primer in Coalescent Theory Oxford, UK: Oxford Univ. Press
  36. Henn BM, Cavalli-Sforza LL, Feldman MW 2012. The great human expansion. PNAS 109:17758–64
    [Google Scholar]
  37. Hirschfeld LA. 1998. Race in the Making: Cognition, Culture, and the Child's Construction of Human Kinds Cambridge, MA: MIT Press
  38. Hunley KL, Cabana GS, Long JC 2016. The apportionment of human diversity revisited. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 160:4561–69
    [Google Scholar]
  39. Jorde LB, Wooding SP. 2004. Genetic variation, classification and ‘race.’. Nat. Genet. 36:S28–33
    [Google Scholar]
  40. Kreitman M. 1983. Nucleotide polymorphism at the alcohol dehydrogenase locus of Drosophila melanogaster. . Nature 304:412–17
    [Google Scholar]
  41. Krieger N. 2005. Embodiment: a conceptual glossary for epidemiology. J. Epidemiol. Community Health 59:350–55
    [Google Scholar]
  42. Kuhn SL. 1992. On planning and curated technologies in the Middle Paleolithic. J. Anthropol. Res. 48:185–214
    [Google Scholar]
  43. Kuzawa CW, Sweet E. 2009. Epigenetics and the embodiment of race: developmental origins of US racial disparities in cardiovascular health. Am. J. Hum. Biol. 21:2–15
    [Google Scholar]
  44. Lalueza-Fox C, Sampietro ML, Caramelli D, Puder Y, Lari M et al. 2005. Neandertal evolutionary genetics: mitochondrial DNA data from the Iberian Peninsula. Mol. Biol. Evol. 22:1077–81
    [Google Scholar]
  45. Larsen CS. 2017. Our Origins: Discovering Physical Anthropology New York: Norton
  46. Lazaridis I, Patterson N, Mittnik A, Renaud G, Mallick S et al. 2014. Ancient human genomes suggest three ancestral populations for present-day Europeans. Nature 513:409–13
    [Google Scholar]
  47. Lewontin RC. 1972. The apportionment of human diversity. Evol. Biol. 6:e381–98
    [Google Scholar]
  48. Lieberman L, Stevenson BW, Reynolds LT 1989. Race and anthropology: a core concept without consensus. Anthropol. Educ. Q. 20:67–73
    [Google Scholar]
  49. Lipson M, Cheronet O, Mallick S, Rohland N, Oxenham M et al. 2018. Ancient genomes document multiple waves of migration in Southeast Asian prehistory. Science 361:92–95
    [Google Scholar]
  50. Livingstone FB. 1962. On the non-existence of human races. Curr. Anthropol. 3:3279–81
    [Google Scholar]
  51. Long JC, Kittles RA. 2009. Human genetic diversity and the nonexistence of biological races. Hum. Biol. 81:777–98
    [Google Scholar]
  52. Lowe L. 1996. Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics Durham, NC: Duke Univ. Press
  53. Marks J. 2017. Human Biodiversity: Genes, Race, and History New York: Routledge
  54. Moraga C, Anzaldúa G 2015. This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color New York: SUNY Press
  55. Mutambudzi M, Meyer JD, Reisine S, Warren N 2017. A review of recent literature on materialist and psychosocial models for racial and ethnic disparities in birth outcomes in the US, 2000–2014. Ethn. Health 22:311–32
    [Google Scholar]
  56. Nelson A. 2016. The Social Life of DNA: Race, Reparations, and Reconciliation After the Genome Boston: Beacon
  57. Nielsen R, Akey JM, Jakobsson M, Pritchard JK, Tishkoff S, Willerslev E 2017. Tracing the peopling of the world through genomics. Nature 541:302–10
    [Google Scholar]
  58. Non AL, Gravlee CC, Mulligan CJ 2012. Education, genetic ancestry, and blood pressure in African Americans and Whites. Am. J. Public Health 102:1559–65
    [Google Scholar]
  59. Obasogie OK, Harris-Wai JN, Darling K, Keagy C 2015. Race in the life sciences: an empirical assessment, 1950–2000. Fordham Law Rev. 83:3089–114
    [Google Scholar]
  60. Ousley S, Jantz R, Freid D 2009. Understanding race and human variation: why forensic anthropologists are good at identifying race. Am. J. Phys. Anthropol. 139:68–76
    [Google Scholar]
  61. Pálsson G. 2011. Decode me! Anthropology and personal genomics. Curr. Anthropol. 53:S185–95
    [Google Scholar]
  62. Pickrell JK, Reich D. 2014. Toward a new history and geography of human genes informed by ancient DNA. Trends Genet 30:377–89
    [Google Scholar]
  63. Prüfer K, de Filippo C, Grote S, Mafessoni F, Korlević P et al. 2017. A high-coverage Neandertal genome from Vindija Cave in Croatia. Science 358:655–58
    [Google Scholar]
  64. Robb JE, Farr RH. 2005. Substances in motion: Neolithic Mediterranean “trade.”. Archaeol. Mediterr. Prehist. 1:24–46
    [Google Scholar]
  65. Roberts D. 1997. Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty New York: Pantheon
  66. Roberts D. 2011. Fatal Invention: How Science, Politics, and Big Business Re-Create Race in the Twenty-First Century New York: New Press
  67. Roseman CC. 2014. Troublesome reflection: racism as the blind spot in the scientific critique of race. Hum. Biol. 86:233–40
    [Google Scholar]
  68. Rosenberg NA, Mahajan S, Ramachandran S, Zhao C, Pritchard JK, Feldman MW 2005. Clines, clusters, and the effect of study design on the inference of human population structure. PLOS Genet 1:e70
    [Google Scholar]
  69. Rotimi CN. 2003. Genetic ancestry tracing and the African identity: a double‐edged sword. Dev. World Bioeth. 3:151–58
    [Google Scholar]
  70. Sauer NJ. 1992. Forensic anthropology and the concept of race: If races don't exist, why are forensic anthropologists so good at identifying them? Soc. Sci. Med 34:107–11
    [Google Scholar]
  71. Shoumatoff A. 1986. The Mountain of Names: A History of the Human Family New York: Touchstone
  72. Shriver MD, Kittles RA. 2004. Genetic ancestry and the search for personalized genetic histories. Nat. Rev. Genet. 5:8611–18
    [Google Scholar]
  73. Slon V, Mafessoni F, Vernot B, de Filippo C, Grote S et al. 2018. The genome of the offspring of a Neanderthal mother and a Denisovan father. Nature 561:113–16
    [Google Scholar]
  74. Stevens H. 2012. Dr. Sanger, meet Mr. Moore: Next‐generation sequencing is driving new questions and new modes of research. BioEssays 34:103–5
    [Google Scholar]
  75. Stiner MC, Munro ND, Surovell TA, Tchernov E, Bar-Yosef B 1999. Paleolithic population growth pulses evidenced by small animal exploitation. Science 283:190–94
    [Google Scholar]
  76. Stocking GW Jr 1982. Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press
  77. TallBear K. 2013a. Genomic articulations of indigeneity. Soc. Stud. Sci. 43:4509–33
    [Google Scholar]
  78. TallBear K. 2013b. Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science Minneapolis: Univ. Minn. Press
  79. Wachter KW, Hammell EA, Laslett P 1979. Statistical Studies of Historical Social Structure Cambridge, MA: Academic
  80. Wilson EO, Brown WL. 1953. The subspecies concept and its taxonomic application. Syst. Biol. 2:97–111
    [Google Scholar]
  81. Winther RG. 2014. The genetic reification of “race”?: a story of two mathematical methods. Crit. Philos. Race 2:204–23
    [Google Scholar]
  82. Zimmer C. 2018. She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potential of Heredity New York: Dutton
/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102218-011154
Loading
/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-anthro-102218-011154
Loading

Data & Media loading...

  • Article Type: Review Article
This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An Error Occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error