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13: Race and Human Variation

  • Page ID
    199765
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    Learning Objectives

    • Illustrate the troubling history of “race” concepts.
    • Explain human variation and evolution as the thematic roots of biological anthropology as a discipline.
    • Critique earlier “race” concepts based on a contemporary understanding of the apportionment of human genetic variation.
    • Explain how biological variation in humans is distributed clinally and in accordance with both isolation-by-distance and Out-of-Africa models.
    • Identify phenotypic traits that reflect selective and neutral evolution.
    • Extend this more-nuanced view of human variation to today’s research, the implications for biomedical studies, applications in forensic anthropology, and other social/cultural/political concerns.

    This chapter is a revision from Chapter 13: Race and Human Variation ” by Michael B. C. Rivera. In Explorations: An Open Invitation to Biological Anthropology, first edition , edited by Beth Shook, Katie Nelson, Kelsie Aguilera, and Lara Braff, which is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0 .


    This page titled 13: Race and Human Variation is shared under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Beth Shook, Katie Nelson, Kelsie Aguilera, and Lara Braff, Eds. (Society for Anthropology in Community Colleges) via source content that was edited to the style and standards of the LibreTexts platform.