If this seems counterintuitive to you, it might be because the space of genetic variation is of very high dimension. See here for more discussion and an illustration.
(Click images for larger version.)
Population Structure and Human Evolution
L. L. Cavalli-Sforza
Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, Vol. 164, No.995, A Symposium from Mendel's Factors to the Genetic Code (Mar. 22, 1966), pp. 362-379
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/75457.pdf
Measurement of Differentiation: Reply to Lewontin, Powell, and Taylor
Jeffry B. Mitton
The American Naturalist, Vol. 112, No. 988 (Nov. - Dec., 1978), pp. 1142-1144
http://www.jstor.org/stable/2460361?origin=JSTOR-
Current state of the art, as discussed here. Figure: The three clusters shown below are European (top, green + red), Nigerian (light blue) and E. Asian (purple + blue).
According to the mathematical analysis given in this paper, populations with FST as low as .0001 can be resolved with current technology. (Typical FST between northern and southern Europe is about .006, between Europe and E. Asia about .1 and between Europe and Nigeria about .14 .)
Where would chimps and bonobos be on these plots? How about dogs and earthworms?
ReplyDeleteI'm assuming the distances are euclidian so plotting the animals might give us an intuitive feel for the meaning of the distances between the various groups.
Steve,
ReplyDeleteExcuse me, but don't the sociologists say that race does not exist? ;-)
It's just so hilarious to think of all those people who argued for lack of scientific (they meant objective) definition for race.
ReplyDeleteI guess they were already thick enough to ignore reality, those graph won't really make a difference to them.
But they are so bloody hilarious.
Glad someone took the time to do them, if there ever was a need for the obvious.