Ethnicity: Past and Present

Critique of anthropology, 2007

■ Montagu referred to race as 'man's most dangerous myth', while Lévi-Strauss called it 'the original sin of anthropology'. Although persuasive arguments against the concept of race were made throughout the 20th century, race remains a particular problem for anthropologists who deal in the classification of human populations. Racial terminology has been perpetuated within anthropology largely owing to the fact that, historically, race formed the very core of anthropological study. Despite the conceptual inadequacy of race, the anthropological enterprise has yet to move beyond it as an explanatory tool for understanding human biological variation because of the lack of a conceptual and/or methodological replacement. This article re-analyses historical anthropological literature on ethnicity and biocultural interaction as a replacement for the race concept, and recasts it in the context of modern philosophical and psychological perspectives on population variation.

Current Anthropology, 1962

Born in 1930, he was educated at the University of Warsaw (M.Sc. 1951) and the University of L6dz (Ph.D. 1957). He has done much archeological and anthropometrical fieldwork in Poland (1949-1961) and in Egypt (1959). He is the author of over 20 scientific publications dealing with raciology, methodology and paleoanthropology. He developed, together with A. Goralski, the formal approach to the tempo of development of human skull in phylogeny and ontogeny with cybernetical interpretation.

havioral repertoire on human biological variation and Unique aspects of human behavior account for spe-morphological evolution. Anthropologists, particularly cial features of human evolution. For instance, the best those trained in America, group most of these forms of data on the mating patterns of undisturbed hunting– behavior under the term ''culture.'' Culture is taken to gathering populations are those of Norman Tinsdale be exclusively human and is defined in terms of learned for Australian Aborigines. Among some 574 linguisti-behavior that is transmitted between individuals and cally distinct tribes, he collected information on 755 across generations. There are some learned behaviors marriages from the period prior to significant contact that other species, particularly nonhuman primates, with Europeans. One can extrapolate from these data also transmit between individuals and across genera-on 1510 individuals. In an average tribe of some 500 in-tions. However the concept of culture is applied only to dividuals, 62–65 of them would have had one parent those aspects and degrees of behavior that are unique who was a member of a different tribe and 7 or 8 of to humans. Furthermore, despite great variation them would have been offspring of a parent from a dis-among cultures, all human groups display a set of basic tant tribe, not an adjacent one. Such rates of in-cultural attributes. tergroup marriage, generation after generation, would During human evolution there must have been many have produced considerable gene flow, a pattern that transitional patterns of behavior. However, it is impos-likely has occurred during most of human prehistory. sible to label study of the biological evolution of Homo The pattern of descent is trellis-like, not one of succes-sapiens as ''anthropology'' without attention to the sive fissioning. Some genetic diversity between tribes forces that arose with our unique behavioral tendencies must have existed, but most genetic variation would that evolved with culture. Culture is not only hu-have been within rather than between tribal groups. mankind's most significant form of adaptation to its One implication of this pattern is that ethnically defined groups are not a suitable basis for studying ecological niche; culture is also a major selective force human genetic diversity. Geographically stratified influencing the biological evolution of the genus Homo. random sampling of the species would be more likely Thus, the framework within which one must study hu-to ensure an unbiased estimate of genome variabil-man evolution is different from that used in the study ity.

2015

Where a licence is displayed above, please note the terms and conditions of the licence govern your use of this document. When citing, please reference the published version. Take down policy While the University of Birmingham exercises care and attention in making items available there are rare occasions when an item has been uploaded in error or has been deemed to be commercially or otherwise sensitive.

Clark, G. A. &. Willermet, C. M (eds.). Conceptual issues in modern human origins research. Pp 191-201., 1997

It seems that in the long-lasting controversy on modern human origins little agreement has been reached between the proponents of the multiregional evolution and Out of Africa models. The current situation looks somewhat like a "thicket" of misreadings, polarization, and biases, which instead of clarifying the problems have caused more confusion (cf. Frayer et al. 1994a; Stringer and Brauer 1994). Thus, a number of basic questions about preconceptions, biases, and assumptions will be addressed in this paper, providing some insights into major causes for such a development. We have not restricted ourselves to our own model because the relevant problems become more evident and clear in comparison with opposite views. In addition, proposals for more efficient research are outlined.

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory., 2014

This paper aims to analyze the emergence of ethnicity and cultural differentiation in hunter-gatherer groups using computer simulation methods. The existence of differences and similarities between populations has long been a major topic of investigation for archaeologists, who have traditionally used material culture as a means to identify different human groups. Today this approach is perceived as being too simplistic. However, in the absence of satisfactory models, it often continues to be assumed as valid. In this paper we present a preliminary model and its computer implementation to predict how huntergatherer societies interacted and built cultural identities as a consequence of the way they interacted. Our starting point for such analysis assumes the definition of ethnicity as the production and reproduction of group identity among members of a community resulting from restricted cooperation flows. Results are compared with ongoing ethnoarchaeological research of Patagonian hunter-gatherers.

History and philosophy of the life sciences, 2007

Human racial classification has long been a problem for the discipline of anthropology, but much of the criticism of the race concept has focused on its social and political connotations. The central argument of this paper is that race is not a specifically human problem, but one that exists in evolutionary thought in general. This paper looks at various disciplinary approaches to racial or subspecies classification, extending its focus beyond the anthropological race concept by providing a comparative analysis of the use of racial classification in evolutionary biology, genetics, and anthropology.