Frank B. Livingstone

On the Non-Existence of Human Races

[Ann Arbor, Mich., U.S.A., 12.10.61.] In this paper I would like to point out that there are excellent arguments for abandoning the concept of race with reference to the living populations of Homo sapiens. Although this may seem to be a rather unorthodox position among anthropologists, a growing minority of biologists in general are advocating a similar position with regard to such diverse organisms as grackles, martens, and butterflies (Brown 1957, Hagmeier 1958, Gillham 1956). Their arguments seem equally applicable to man. It should be pointed out that this position does not imply that there is no biological variability between the populations of organisms which comprise a species, but just that this variability does not conform to the discrete packages labelled races. The position can be stated in other words as: There are no races, there are only clines. The term, race, has had a long history of anthropological usage and it can be generally defined as referring to a group of local or breeding populations within a species. Thus, it is a taxonomic term for sub-specific groupings greater than the local population. Most anthropologists today use a genetic definition of races as populations which differ in the frequency of some genes. The term, race, or its newer synonym, geographical race, is used in a similar way with reference to biological species other than man. Where the term is used, it can be considered as approximately synonymous with the term, subspecies. In 1953 Wilson and Brown first suggested discarding the concept of subspecies since it did not accord with the facts. Their main argument was that the genetic variation among the local populations of a species was discordant. Variation is concordant if the geographic variation of the genetic characters is correlated, so that a classification based on one character would reflect he variability in any other. Such a pattern of variation is almost never

Redefining Race: The Potential Demise of a Concept in Physical Anthropology [and Comments and Reply]

Analysis of physical anthropology textbooks published in the United States in the years 1932-79 reveals a significant decline in support for the race concept, expecially in the 1970s. Before 1970 the great majority of texts expressed the view that races exist and that the race concept is a valid tool for the description and study of human variation. In the 1970s an increasing proportion of texts rejected the race concept, with the no-race view becoming the most frequent one by 1975-79. Although the accumulation of new knowledge about human variation has contributed to the dramatic shift in textbook treatments of race, we argue that changes in the social context of anthropology have also been important. The political milieu of the 1960s coupled with the rapid institutional expansion of anthropology and the changing sociocultural characteristics of anthropologists and their students have contributed to the decline of the race concept in physical anthropology textbooks.

Did the Australopithecines Sing

Some years ago Hockett and Ascher (CA 5:135-68) developed several hypotheses as to how and when human language evolved from a primate call system. Their blending hypothesis for the opening of the call system has been criticized (Reynolds 1968), but to my mind no acceptable alternative has been offered. Carinis (CA 11:165-67) derivation of language from infant babbling is evolutionarily backward, as Washburn and Lancaster (CA 12:384-85) point out. The genetic propensity of human infants to babble is the result of selection by language. Carinis reply (CA 12:385) only emphasizes the differences in theoretical approach. His comparison of language with writing, by which he attempts to demonstrate that language had no communicative function but was purposeless at first, is implicitly antiDarwinian. Washburn and Lancaster outline the great many biological characteristics of man which are due to selection by language. Perhaps Carini would accept these as due to evolution, but he must postulate that babbling was a nonadaptive, purposeless, random behavior which simply existed for no reason prior to its role in the origin of language. This position is reminiscent of many previous postulations of nonadaptive traits in man, invariably discarded because of their inconsistency with genetic theory. Mutation, the source of all genetic variation, is indeed random; but if, for example, the sickle cell gene was ultimately a mutation from normal hemoglobin, nevertheless its widespread high frequencies are due to selection. A functionalist or Darwinian approach emphasizes deterministic, causative explanations for the existence of widespread, complex differ-

Incest Avoidance as a Function of Environment and Heredity [and Comments and Reply]

Although it has repeatedly been demonstrated that behavior is best understood as a function of the interrelatedness of nature and nurture, many social scientists persist in posing these determinants adversatively and then contend that genes and biology are, at best, minor determinants of behavior. Analysis in incest avoidance illustrates the inadequacy of efforts to reduce to irrelevance genetic determinants. Man and many other species exhibit strong tendencies to avoid incest. Conspecifics who are intimately associated during the infancy and childhood of one or both do not find each other sexually attractive if alternative mates are available. Migration shortly after puberty, usually by the male, is characteristics of social primates. Incest vere seldom occurs, and when it does the copulatory act differs markedly from normal mating. Incest within intact human families is rare. Inbreeding with other close relatives is inhibited by human awareness of inbreeding depression, not by any apparent genetic predisposition. Societies which discourage close inbreeding should be more viable than those which encourage it. Their behaviors can only be explained as a result of environment interacting with heredity. Concern is expressed about the damage done to the social sciences by denial of relevance to biological and genetic factors.

THE FREQUENCIES OF HAPTOGLOBIN TYPES IN FIVE POPULATIONS

Haptoglobin types have been determined by starch gel electrophoresis of blood from five populations. The gene frequencies obtained for allele Hp1 were as follows: American whites, 043; American Negroes, 0.59; African Negroes, 0.72; Apaches, 0.59; and Asiatic Indians, 0.18. In tribes of the Ivory Coast and Liberia, there was a suggestion of a cline which parallels that for haemoglobin S.

Genetics, Ecology and the Origins of Incest and Exogamy

The biological consequences of inbreeding are often advanced as the cause of the evolution of incest and exogamy in human societies. This paper attempts to show that genetic analysis does not support such a conclusion. An alternate reconstruction of the origins of incest and exogamy based on cultural and populational consequences of these phenomena is proposed to show that reconstructions of human cultural evolution can contribute to the interpretation of human biological evolution.

Frequencies of hemoglobin variants : thalassemia, the glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency, G6PD variants, and ovalocytosis in human populations

Haemoglobin variation is central to many studies of molecular and biochemical genetics, population genetics and anthropology. This synthesis of information has been written by an international authority on the field.

Who gave whom hemoglobin S: The use of restriction site haplotype variation for the interpretation of the evolution of the βS-globin gene

The hypothesis that three separate mutations to the βS‐globin gene have occurred in Africa in challenged. The distributions of the βS and other β‐globin haplotypes and a simulation of the diffusion of the βS gene are presented and argued to be more in accord with the rapid diffusion of a single mutant that by recombination and gene conversion now occurs on several different haplotypes.

Thalassaemia in Liberia

The tribes of central and south-eastern Liberia have been shown to differ strikingly from the tribes of such near-by areas as Sierra Leone and Ghana in the low frequency of the haemoglobin C trait (Neel et al., 1956) and the sickle-cell trait (Livingstone, 1958). Furthermore, 7 out of 904 Liberians, representing all of the tribes of that country, whose haemoglobin was analysed electrophoretically were found to have haemoglobin N (Liberian I haemoglobin; Robinson et al., 1956), a type of haemoglobin reported since then in only two other Africans, one from Ghana and one from Nigeria (Ager and Lehmann, 1958). All but one of these seven individuals were from the Mande-speaking tribes of central Liberia (Loma, Kpelle, Mano, Gio); in these tribes the frequency of individuals possessing haemoglobin N was about 2%. This note records additional unusual haematological observations made by us among some of the tribes of central and south-eastern Liberia. A number of children with intractable anaemias and massive splenomegaly have been seen in the past several years at the hospital maintained by the Firestone Company at its rubber plantation in south-eastern Liberia. This report is concerned with two of these children who, after treatment for malaria and intestinal parasites, underwent splenectomies. The first child (Wle), a 5-year-old boy, exhibited a severe anaemia with the characteristics of thalassaemia major. Blood films obtained in March and July, 1958, revealed striking leptocytosis, anisocytosis, microrytosis, poikilocytosis, and normoblastaemia (Fig. 1). While the interpretation of this blood picture is complicated by the fact that it was obtained after splenectomy, the morphology

New Evidence for a Late Introduction of Malaria into the New World [and Comments and Reply]

New evidence is offered to strengthen the case for a post-Conquest introduction of malaria into the New World. An investigation of human physiological factors influencing host selection by malaria vectors revealed a strong preference by Anopheles gambiae for human hosts with blood-group O. The unique, overwhelming group-O frequency present among indigenous American populations is seen as a result of mother-child ABO incompatibility effects operating in the absence of the positive selection pressures by malaria vectors favoring enhanced survival for genes A and B that the investigation findings suggest. It is proposed that had malaria been present to act upon the original gene pool, a balanced ABO polymorphism would be found in the New World Indians today.