TED Talk Discussion: Building a Family Tree for All Humanity
Adam and Eve Were from Africa
TED Talk: Building a Family Tree for All Humanity
Speaker: Spencer Wells
Spencer Wells studies diversity of human beings all over the world. The field researchers involved with Wells' studies have taken DNA samples from people all over the world. They wanted to make a genetic family tree. They found a genetic Adam and Eve, from Africa.
The results confirmed a long standing anthropological belief that we all wandered from Africa to different parts of the world. What they didn't expect was how recently it happened. The African man in Africa we all split from was in Africa only 60,000 years ago.
At the end of the talk, Spencer Wells asks for your participation in ongoing study of geneography by sending our DNA samples for study.
Watch the Ted Talk Here
Spencer Wells' TED Talk has serious implications on the modern world. It challenges old ideas about race differences. Wells' results may shorten the psychological gap of differences between groups of people by establishing a common beginning. This new genetic understanding can make the skill of interrelation a bit easier because people have a connection, if only in the biological sense.
The interrelation and gap ideas brought up two questions for me.
Does the understanding of geneographics (The study of gene or genetics as it relates to geography and migration or through time) hold the key to ending racism or is racism based on such illogical beliefs so the use of logic will not sway racists from their beliefs?
Do the results of these geneographic studies make the economic, social, political, military and emotional investment in Africa feel more urgent and necessary to people outside of Africa? Why?
Read more comments.
http://atheistnexus.org/group/tedtalkdiscussions
More Useful Links
www.nationalgeographic.com/genographic
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/spencer_wells_is_building_a_family_tree_for_all_humanity.html
Published by LaRae Meadows
Writing has always been a passion for me. I have written legislation, legislative opinion papers, comedy, movie reviews and editorials. View profile
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- The interrelation and gap ideas brought up two questions for me.
8 Comments
Post a Commenti'd love to hear some discussion about why our female line is 200,000 years old but our male line is only 60,000. why the 140,000 year difference?
For example, we can choose to define our in-group as being other people who resist the temptation to use stereotypes as the sole characterization of other people. So all of us who are open minded and conscious of our own tendency to bias can become our "in-group" and all of the racist or classist or otherwise bigoted people (or those just too lazy to make the effort of catching their own innate biases) can be the "out group". In this case, we got lucky: evolution left us some wiggle room. Now we just have to get people to use it.
At the very least, this kind of science pulls any kind of "legs" that people who accept (and run with) their innate in-group/out-group biases can claim for having rational reasons for their attitudes about whoever they've defined as the out-group. What I think is most encouraging is the fact that there are no hardwired definitions for the "in-group", even though the "us vs them" dynamic is innate. If the specifics are, as science writer Matt Ridley says, "delegated by the genes to the brain they've built", that means that with effort we can CHOOSE an inclusive definition of the in-group.
I agree that logic is not going to undo racism but I think research like this is a weapon us un-racists have in discussions with racists.
But I am not optimistic that this can really overcome ethnic biases until there is sufficient inter-ethnic breeding that all humans are relatively uniform in appearance - and then we'll just find something else to define the "in-group" and "out-group". As a great line from the Anthrax song "Schism" said: "if we were all blind would we hate each other by the sound of our voices?"
The exact opposite of the "learned racism" idea is true: people have to be taught NOT to hate and fear people who are different, and have to try with all their might to notice expressions of nonconscious innate bias in their behavior and the choices they make. The problem is that this takes work, and it specifically takes enormous self-scrutiny, something that few people are inclined to do, and many, from my experience are really not well able to do. The fact that in-group/out-group bias is innate means that we have to be on our guard constantly for nonconscious assumptions coloring our perceptions and many people are simply not going to make the effort, because it is hard work. Self examination is NOT one of the many things that our species has an innate gift for. I am encouraged that this research is being done, and the conclusions help give reasons for believing what many of us already did. But I am not optimistic that this can really overcome ethnic biases until there is suffi
And yet racist attitudes are no less severe than ten years ago, or twenty years ago, or fifty years ago. Public expressions of racism are much reduced, at least in our culture, but the inner ideas, since they are innate in human brains, are still as strongly present as ever. In-group/out-group "us vs them" perceptions of people are an evolved trait built into our social minds. Bias is not only innate, but operates far below the level of consciousness. It used to be said that people had to be taught to be racist, that racists came from racist families. While people are certainly more likely to associate their innate bias with conscious concepts of race if people around them do so, the "us vs them" is NOT learned - it's part of how humans are made. The exact opposite of the "learned racism" idea is true: people have to be taught NOT to hate and fear people who are different, and have to try with all their might to notice expressions of nonconscious innate bias in their behavior and
In 1998, an early study on this topic made big enough news that commentary on it was in mainstream publications (I saw it in the Marin IJ). DNA research showed clearly that there were insignificant genetic differences between people of different "races" at least that far back (actually probably earlier). So at least a decade ago, it was not only known by scientists, but was widely disseminated in the popular media that "race" was a human construct. Since then, evidence from evolutionary psychology indicates that racism (or more accurately, ethnocentrism - favoritism of one's own group) is inherent in the nature of human beings. However, the concept of "race" appears not to be. Given that it is only in the last century that most human beings ever saw a person from another cultural group, a biological basis for specific racial typing makes no evolutionary sense - there was no need for such an adaptation and there's no time for it to have developed yet when it would be useful. And y