I just can't wait to read Runner's opinion of this piece.

“Sweden’s well-known author Lasse Berg”?

Well known by whom?

All this is rubbish. I don’t think that anyone but Africans are going to look at themselves in the mirror and agree that they are African. Racists are not going to suddenly stop being racists because they are told that, deep down, they are really Africans.

This article wins the award for useless trivia.

Well yes, we are all humans. Chimps and bonobos are our closest
relatives, sharing around 98% of our dna. Runner has a REALLY
hard time with that one :)

All science points to us having common ancestors (and it certainly ain't monkeys). At least we have made some progress since science believed the aboriginals were the missing link. The Adamic nature is no more visible anywhere than many of the OLO posters. True science will always validate Scripture( not that the Scriptures need the validation of man). Maybe Obama needs to be sent this article in order to stop him sprouting racial nonsense. He needs to know he is now President of all Americans not just African/Americans. His ridiculous accusations of the Police recently just displayed how far he has to come.

G'Day All, Well someone has finally admitted that we are all of the same ancestary WOW! Yes we are all of the human race.It goes to show that if we do away with the "Glory & Colour" of the story we will find that most legends, myths & religous beliefs are mostly based on a true story. Take the XX & XY principles it is now stated that the Y factor is actually a deformed X so that would put credence to God creating a perfect mate with the XX being actually perfection. OH this goes against the grain as I am a Chauvinist having to accept this. That is just the way it is. The Feminists out there stop laughing let me bear this "indignity" in peace. I would go as far to say that if Antartica ever was exposed again it would probably be where the human race was first born as it seems apparent that Africa, Aussie, Sth America were all connected to Antartica & that was the original Godwana Land. Just some food for thought. Thanks again for your time. Dave.

Runner,
True science will always validate Scripture( not that the Scriptures need the validation of man).

Please read some of the fifty items at the following site or better still watch the Bible video linked to the site. I doubt if you can logically argue against any of the points made in the fifty items which were apparently written to sink the unsinkable rubber ducks.
Maybe Leigh should also read the arguments.
http://godisimaginary.com/

Foyle

What amazes me is that so many spend so much time and effort trying to prove the God that don't believe in. It actually takes more faith to believe in the fantasy of evolution and your silly little explanations of origins. Jesus accurately described the state of the human heart and to this day is without equal when it comes to teachings about life. Your pathetic links are not scientific or rational in nature, just a pathetic excuse not to yield to the Creator of the universe. A corrupt mind and imagination will always lead to the nonsense you espouse.

"we need to internalise what Berg tells his audience: we are all blacks."
Well my skin is pink/white, my wife's is brown/black, my children are light brown but why are we are all blacks?

When scientists took some uniquely female body parts, the placenta discarded after childbirth and DNA Tested them, from every race on earth, they found they had one common gene marker.

The conclusion that modern man is descended from one female was reached, and the time was indicated at about 250,000 years ago. I do not know where the idea that all Africans are black comes from. Egypt is in Africa, half the Mediterranean fronts Africa. We can be Africans without being black. They say that 10,000 years in the sun makes a person naturally selective towards darker skin. I have known Sri Lankans, who had to smile on a dark night before you could see them.

Racism is not an option

runner: << All science points to us having common ancestors (and it certainly ain't monkeys). >>

Nice to see Prof Runner get something right for a change. If he could bring himself to watch ABC1 TV tonight with an open mind, he might actually learn something about what appears to be our oldest common ancestor so far discovered:

<< The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor?
8:30pm Thursday, 30 Jul 2009

The Link: Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor? tells the story of the 47-million-year-old fossil known as Ida, which scientists believe could be an indication of one of the roots of anthropoid evolution - the point at which our primate ancestors began first developing the features that would evolve into our own >>

Ignorant fools like Leigh might like to rubbish evolutionary anthropology that provides a scientific basis for the unity of humankind, but more enlightened folk find such evidence useful in debunking the racist bigotry that is still all too common.

Peter the Believer,

Just a few comments regarding your post.

"When scientists took some uniquely female body parts, the placenta discarded after childbirth and DNA Tested them... "

The placenta is an organ which develops from the implanted blastocyst, thus will have the DNA of the baby, be it male or female. I believe this piece discusses studies of mtDNA which actually stands for mitochondrial DNA. This DNA is present in every cell of the body, 99% of which is derived from the mother due to the process of fertilization.

"The conclusion that modern man is descended from one female was reached, and the time was indicated at about 250,000 years ago."

Is this your conclusion or the authors of the study? Do you have a reference for this study?

I generally agree agree with the argument that race is not 'black and white' and unfortunately racism would still be present even if we were all 'black' as the author says.

Whether our relatives all did come out of Africa 250,000years ago or not will make not a jot of difference to people’s tribal loyalties if or when war breaks out. This author is overlooking one other big piece of scientific knowledge from BASIC biology, that overrides this. We are born from the multiplication of a couple of original cells, those cells grow into human beings they then produce new young cells (children) because they must die, but the new cells will be their continuing immortality here on earth. Their most closest living cells are the ones they will fight wars to protect NOT dead cellular connections from 250,000years ago.

I was taught this very basic biology in primary school. That is why humans spend most of their lives fussing over and protecting their children. It is a basic instinct in an otherwise pretty self interested animal. Now I know someone will say we do this because we love out children. Yes, but we only love our children because we are instinctively wired to do so.

Have you ever seen the gentleness with which a big mother crocodile holds those fragile little baby crocodiles in her huge bone crushing jaws. Not usual behaviour in a fierce animal like that. That’s the kind of power that the survival instinct has in the wiring of that mother’s brain to protect her new cellular self. The same biologocal wiring that exists in the human mother’s brain. She and the father will protect the living, those closest cells alive NOW not from some dead and distant past.
None of us needs science books to tell us who and where those cells are. Just think who’s side you would fight on if world war three breaks out.

We may share 98% DNA or whatever with Africans, as we share close DNA with monkeys but those few percentage make one hell of a difference in the makeup between a human and an ape. So having that close DNA with Africans means nothing, its the small percentage that makes the huge differences between people.

yet another science fact...were all africans...well here is the point...there is africans in africa...and according to the article they are 99.8 the same as the rest of the human race...and the closest monkey=98% the same

so here is the evolution of man[having somehow magiclly evolved 2 percent maybe 200,000 years ago]...presumable overnight by one of your scientific natural selections or survival of the fittest..[or whatever the latest buxzz spin[word] is from the ape out of africa theory #...that still is not proven even by this latest buzz piece

but lets recall other science[like continental drift]...africa was once gondwanna land...how scientific is this ...name..'africa'...all this theory is yet not proving anything...and we still got some nutters on abc converting..subverting ..[coverting].. the religious belief of evolution being a science..when its simply belief[cloaked in science]

[wake up ...you believers in evolution...its as much faith based as any other systemised belief...its about getting the believers you retarded reversion/sports..[with their own white clad high priests and saints..[darwin]...sacred texts...extreemists[dorkins]and crazies[take your pick]as any religion

G'Day All,
When are we going to learn that while ever we keep walking down the path of Faith & belief then we are going to always have arguments. A persons Faith is their own & they have the right to that faith.
A thing that my Dad said to me is this "Noone can prove God exists & noone can prove that he doesn't. If we live our life according to his rules & we get to the end of life & there is no God then big deal we have lived a good life. BUT! If we live our life according to his rules & we get to the end of life & there is a God & he is what we say he is then we may have bought a favour or two & a favour or two in the hip pocket from God might be well worth having. Yeah! butter your bread both sides, you only get a greasy hand & you can wash it.
Thanks for your time. Dave.

This piece is not about evolution so much as it is about the left wing academics grasping at scientific straws to try to push their peace and brotherhood of man, illusions.
As I said in my earlier post, Basic Biology and I mean BASIC BIOLOGY, overrides totally any ideas they have of convincing mankind to lay down their weapons and embrace each other as brothers.

250,000 years ago is totally unconnected to the daily biological struggle for genetic immortality that plays out across this planet across all species (man too) every day on this planet. It is a about survival of the living species of today and tomorrow. Nature is a hard task master caring not for the sensibilities of man and his emotional insecurities and the lies he tells himself for comfort. If God dictated the harsh biological rules for survival on this planet then he is a harsh God indeed. It always makes me laugh when people go to God and pray after some huge natural disaster like a sunami.

Why didn’t God protect them BEFORE it happened. After is too late.

Even the great studier of life on this planet David Attenborough didn’t believe in a benign loving God because he saw too many horrors like worms borrowing in to helpless childrens eyes and sending them blind. Too late to pray to God after this has happened to your child. Now go and tell yourselves a few comforting life insurance stories(religion) so you don’t really have to accept the reality of that.

sharkfin: << Even the great studier of life on this planet David Attenborough didn’t believe in a benign loving God >>

Indeed, but he certainly subscribes to the 'out of Africa' theory of human evolution - as you would know, if you watched the documentary I referred to in my earlier post. It's still available to watch at ABC iView.

Why are you so threatened by the reality that human biological differences are trivial, and that "race" is a social construct?

Good Evening C J ,
C J, It’s not so much if I agree with the 'all of mankind out of Africa' science or not, and I am still basically open to it may well be, or it may prove not to be, on this question. It is that I don’t think that mankind will become less racist (tribal, is the word I prefer) because of this, if that is what people are hoping for.

To answer your question <why are you so threatened by the reality that human biological differences are trivial, and that “race” is a social construct?> I don’t believe that “race” is a social construct, I believe that it is a biological construct and that mankind is driven by biological dictates. That is to say; that his intellect jumps to the tune of his hidden desires which are in reality his basic instincts. Am I threatened by this? You bet! Terrified! It can lead to bloody ethnic cleansing and massacre in a heartbeat.
The trivial biological differences(the 1% or whatever the figure is) that designates racial,ethnic(tribal)difference is obviously powerfully implicated in racism, ethnic cleansing and all wars. In this sense it cannot be viewed as trivial.
What a lovely, temperate,winters evening it is tonight up here in the tropics, Happy August everybody.

<BERG tells his audience we are all blacks>

Berg is showing his bias or agenda by saying this because by his own reasoning we are also all whites,all Chinese,Arabs,Japanese,whatever.
One and the same so to speak,so why does he focus on skin colour?

Dear Sharkfin,

Berg focusses on colour because bergs like the one that sunk the Titanic are white.

Not that it matters much, but saying that we are all African is not the same as saying that we are all blacks.

As has already been pointed out, not all Africans are "negroid"/blacks, and if I recall correctly, I think that it is currently suspected that early humans were likely to have been that most prevalent of human colourings, brown, and that truly black skin types may have developed when humans migrated from Africa to S. E. Asia, and that skin colouration then migrated back to Africa.

Personally, I prefer to be classed as a Carbon Based Biped.

CLOWNFISH: <saying that we are all African is not the same as saying
that we are all blacks>

True, but I am quoting directly from this article by Nayan Chanda
who is quoting an author he calls Lasse Berg. The last line in the article states <we need to internalise what Berg tells his audience: we are all blacks>

sharkfin: << I don’t believe that “race” is a social construct, I believe that it is a biological construct and that mankind is driven by biological dictates. >>

For sharkfin and others who are obtuse, uneducated or just bloody-minded about "race", this is what the (US) National Human Genome Research has to say about the subject:

<< Notwithstanding the genetic differences between individuals, all humans have a great deal of their genetic information in common. These similarities help define us as a species. Furthermore, genetic variation around the world is distributed in a rather continuous manner; there are no sharp, discontinuous boundaries between human population groups. In fact, research results consistently demonstrate that about 85 percent of all human genetic variation exists within human populations, whereas about only 15 percent of variation exists between populations (Figure 4). That is, research reveals that Homo sapiens is one continuously variable, inter-breeding species. Ongoing investigation of human genetic variation has even led biologists and physical anthropologists to rethink traditional notions of human racial groups. The amount of genetic variation between these traditional classifications actually falls below the level that taxonomists use to designate subspecies, the taxonomic category for other species that corresponds to the designation of race in Homo sapiens. This finding has caused some biologists to call the validity of race as a biological construct into serious question. >>

http://science.education.nih.gov/supplements/nih1/genetic/guide/genetic_variation1.htm

C J Morgan, I beg to differ, I think that you are the obtuse, bloody minded one about race.

Are you seriously stating that nature(biology)had no input into the obviously different physical characteristics we see between different groups of humans (races) around the world, that it is all a social construct. Maybe we should all get our glasses tested we are obviously seeing differences that aren’t there. Funny I could swear I see racial differences between say the Japanese, Europeans, and Africans. But I can’t be seeing it because it is a made up social construct.

Yes I did read the article you referred me to in your post.
The article states<this finding has caused SOME biologists to call the validity of race as a biological construct into serious question. Sorry I don’t agree with that. What else is it, if not a biological construct? Did Some magic fairy wave her magic wand and create the very visible racially different looks. The human species may only have .1% difference in it’s genetic coding as to what makes it the human animal that it is, never the less all ethnic cleansing and wars are based historically on ethnic (RACIAL) territorial hostility.
Territorial behavior in all species is a biologically driven behavior.

As for uneducated, define educated . If you hang around libraries all your life like I have you can become very self educated. Intelligence is a particular way of perceiving things,usually in a clear sighted way. Not everyone who is educated has this ability, take some of the people who run this country as an example.

Incidentally C J, I have seen the documentary about IDA. You would do well to not except blindly everything the scientists tell us. They have had to modify or change their minds about other things they have proclaimed as certain on more than one occasion. Much like a lot of the religious teachings that were proclaimed as certain as well, like the earth being flat for example and the centre of the universe with the sun revolving around it. (Christian religion)

Hi sharkfin - good for you for reading the article, but you still don't seem to get it. You've talked about basic biology, but do you understand the difference between genotype and phenotype?

Just because people look different from each other doesn't mean that their behaviour and intellectual capacity derive from those superficial differences. Sure, people are treated differently by others because of those superficial differences, but that doesn't mean that there's any biological basis to it. What this research does is effectively pull the rug out from under any biological or genetic arguments in favour of 'race', and hence racism.

<< You would do well to not except (sic) blindly everything the scientists tell us. They have had to modify or change their minds about other things they have proclaimed as certain on more than one occasion >>

Which is, of course, the value of education over autodidacticism. Scientific method demands that all knowledge is provisional. The "racial" classifications that you seem to think are biological facts were devised by scientists centuries ago, and have had to be discarded as new evidence has come to light. That's the way science works.

Making some issue out of the origin of the species will nto solve or resolve anything. Soemtimes people relate to the previous ten generations and others to merely the immediate previous and the next and others still only to their own existence.

It all adds up to squat.

You will only resolve racial differences by ignoring origins and accepting

we are all individuals and worthy of mutual respect for being that unique character which we each represent.

Hello COL Rogue
<you will only resolve racial differences by ignoring origins and accepting we are all individuals and worthy of mutual respect for being that unique character which we each represent.>
I agree that would be the best way to solve racism and ethnic cleansing, but we have been telling the world this for 40 or 50years at least and it hasn’t worked and glancing around the globe at many trouble spots it is still not working. Trying to solve this at the educational level has failed.

So go to plan B-: Try to tackle it from the biological level(the survival level) Our observations as (opposed to our genetic lab experiments that C J Morgan informs us of) tell us that whenever you have two ethnic groups large in numbers that there is a strong possibility that violence and death will result.
This leads to two possible ways to advance :-
1.-- Something dear to CJ’s heart-- Keeping a sustainable
Population and so keep the territorial aggression to a manageable level- I believe it’s called racial tolerance.

2.---Control immigration by bringing in all males for a set period of time until they intregrate and then bringing in all females for a set number of years until they intregrate. In other words discourage the formation of tribes and tribal areas (segregration )in cities.

Acknowledge that our observations (seeing is believing) , tell us that people consistently show more loyalty to their tribes than they do to any country. There may be other ways of managing mass migration so it doesn’t result in tribalism and divided loyalties. Stop flogging a dead horse with the education and trust that people will understand solution and try a physical solution.
Active solutions not talking ones.

Sorry I misspelled your name Col, I was having issues with my computer cords and in the end I was tired of it and posted it and went and had lunch for a while.

C J Morgan <Autodidacticism, are you trying to seduce me with these sexy BIG words? Does size matter? Yes I do mean that the way you are all thinking.

From what I can deduce from my trusty Oxford Dictionary it means the automatic teaching that something is so. That was why Einstein fell out with his university professors wasn’t it he didn’t agree that some of the things they were teaching were so.
I don’t think we can see eye to eye on this race issue CJ, it doesn’t matter what science says about race the fact is that most world conquerors didn’t ask for their opinion and they won’t in the future either.
I wish you salubrious-ness in all that comes your way.

Sharkfin “but we have been telling the world this for 40 or 50years at least and it hasn’t worked and glancing around the globe at many trouble spots it is still not working.”

Life is like that, simply because something is not listened too does not detract from its merit…. Likewise just because something is a populist choice does not infer it is right.

My preference is to go with the right views, regardless of its popularity… ultimately the alternative (the popularly wrong objective) is for politicians and others (of slippery / malleable moral standing).

Ultimately attempting to develop changes in attitude by any other method than education is what does not work. The education process is unfortunately not as expeditious a method to suit the demands of the “here today gone tomorrow” politicians who we appoint to direct such spending into education but that is just one of the facts of life.

As for the sustainable solution… I think that ship left the harbor along time ago… the only solution is population control with view to reduction of human numbers. The problem then becomes - who gets to say who is allowed to procreate or otherwise?

And if you read my original post I would be the last person to complain about typographical errors (albeit in your instance to my name) :-)