please read the articles and answer these two questions: http://archive.wired.co
ID: 211490 • Letter: P
Question
please read the articles and answer these two questions:
http://archive.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2002/10/56101 Article from Wired Magazine on Franz Boas' research on variation in skull shape and recent challenges to his interpretations of the data.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/does-race-exist.html Essays from two physical anthropologists, one supporting and one opposed to the concept of biological race.
1. What were Franz Boas' findings on head shape in immigrant populations? How do the recent findings of Jantz and Sparks described in the Wired article differ from Boas?
2. Why does Loring Brace oppose and George Gill support the concept of biological races in humans? Make sure to summarize the scientific evidence used by each scientist.
Explanation / Answer
Q) 1. What were Franz Boas' findings on head shape in immigrant populations? How do the recent findings of Jantz and Sparks described in the Wired article differ from Boas?
Answer:- According to Franz Boas, skull shapes are determined by environment, In Immigrant population to America Boas found that the length of exposure to the American environment, puts impact on the cranial form. Accoding to him it is an evidence of cranial "plasticity," which says environment does changes the skull dimension, This is more due to environmet than heredity.
He found in Eastern European Jews who used to have round heads after immigration their head shape became more long, at the same time southern Italians who were having long-heads started to have short-heads.
Recent findings of Jantz and sparks differ from boas because they found in America, blacks and whites have not converged towards a common skull shape, as expected according to Boas' theory , that environment causes changes.
According to Jantz and Sparks analysis there is a small difference between the European-born and American-born members of the same population groups, but there is no large difference between population groups.
Q 2). Why does Loring Brace oppose and George Gill support the concept of biological races in humans? Make sure to summarize the scientific evidence used by each scientist.
Answer:- Loring Brace opposes the concept of biological races , according to him it is true that people living in a particular area for thousands of years, have certain particular features, those features are thought to be the characteristic features of that particular area to which they belong. But Brace says we can't call those regional patterns as "races" because they don't make a logical and consistent biological entities. and this is not reality , rather it's just our perception or thinking.
He found that in Pictures and the television we see people of Oslo in Norway, Cairo in Egypt, and Nairobi in Kenya are very different in their look. But when we actually meet we see the differences.
But when it is observed in Nile from Cairo, across the Tropic of Cancer to Khartoum in the Sudan and to Nairobi, no visible boundary is seen between one people and another. The same thing happens when one goes from north from Cairo, through the Caucasus, and up to Russia, eventually going west across the northern end of the Baltic Sea to Scandinavia. The people at the adjacent places along the way look like one another more than they look like anyone else as they are related to each other.
When one goes from Moscow to Nairobi, it is seen that there is a major but gradual change in skin color from white to black, and this change is related to the latitudinal difference in the intensity of the ultraviolet ray falling on that area from sunlight. But there are certain other traits found not related to intensity of ultraviolet light . When skin color is taken into account, all the northern populations of the Old World have lighter skin than the long-term inhabitants found near the equator. Though Europeans and Chinese are different in look but they are closer in skin color then compared to equatorial Africans. But when the distribution of the ABO blood-group system is considered, Europeans and Africans are closer to each other than they are to Chinese.
Another evidence seen in case of sickle cell-anaemia, it is usually thought as an African disease, but it is found that though it shows high frequencies in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa, but it has not originated from there. Its distribution is in southern Italy, the eastern Mediterranean, parts of the Middle East, and upto India.It shows a kind of adaptation which helps in surviving when a particular kind of malaria attacks, and wherever that malaria is a prominent threat, sickle-cell anemia supposed to occur in higher frequencies. It is seen that the gene that controls that trait was introduced to sub-Saharan Africa by traders from Middle East where it had started associated with the conditions created by the early development of agriculture.
According to Brace each time we plot the distribution of a trait having a survival value which is more under some circumstances than under others, it is found that there is a different pattern of geographical variation, and no two such patterns coincide. Nose form, tooth size, relative arm and leg length, and various other traits are controlled by a particular force. The gradient of the distribution of each is called a "cline" and clines are independent of each other. This is the force behind the changes that is clines but not the race.
George W. Gill supported the concept of biological races.
Forensic anthropologists found a high degree of accuracy in determining geographic racial affinities (white, black, American Indian, etc.) by using new and traditional methods of bone analysis. Many individual methods like midfacial measurements, femur traits, gives 80 percent accuracy, and when done in combination produces very high levels of accuracy for making racial acessment.
Morphological characteristics, like skin color, hair form, bone traits, eyes, and lips follow the geographic boundaries coinciding with climatic zones. As it is evidenced that teh selective forces of climate are probably the primary forces of nature which shaped human races related to skin color and hair form but also the bony structures of the nose, cheekbones, etc. (For example, more prominent noses humidify air better.) Skeletal biologists, specially forensic anthropologists, see races biologically real.
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