Open AccessThe many species of humanity
Author(s) -
Milford H. Wolpoff,
Rachel Caspari
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
anthropological review
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.262
H-Index - 12
eISSN - 2083-4594
pISSN - 1898-6773
DOI - 10.18778/1898-6773.63.01
Subject(s) - humanity , phyletic gradualism , variation (astronomy) , essentialism , race (biology) , subspecies , evolutionary biology , epistemology , anthropology , biology , environmental ethics , sociology , zoology , philosophy , phylogenetics , genetics , theology , physics , botany , astrophysics , gene
Naming new human species may seem to be a harmless endeavor, of little interest to all but a few specialists playing out the consequences of different evolutionary explanations of phyletic variation, but it has significant implications in how humanity is viewed because studies of race and human evolution are inexorably linked. When essentialist approaches are used to interpret variation in the past as taxonomic rather than populational, as increasingly has been the case, it serves to underscore a typological view of modern human variation.In terms of how they are treated in analysis, there often seems to be no difference between the species, subspecies, or paleodemes of the past and the populations or races whose interrelationships and demographic history are discussed today. This is not inconsequential because both history and current practice shows that science, especially anthropology, is not isolated from society.