• cilantrofellow [any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Well, genetic diversity is highest on the African mother continent as migration necessitates subsampling of the population - founder effects. But that migration was an evolutionarily recent trend, with little time for significant genetic drift. Most of the differences are noise from our ancestral minimum population.

    And that’s uncharacteristically small. Modern humans universally are the result of a population bottleneck via some kind of disaster (volcano, meteorite, etc.), so we are a very homogeneous species. Compared to us, two chimpanzees at opposite ends of the same forest have more diversity than a Norwegian and an Angolan.

    Ultimately this is a fortuitous and situational argument for universal human rights, and fails to anchor sentience and consciousness as inherently valuable. If there had been more time between migration and modern re-contact, or more significant chance mutations in our time, this would not be be a valid argument against eugenics or racial hierarchies.

    • WhatDoYouMeanPodcast [comrade/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      Damn, I guess I was making a cultural diversity argument at the risk of encouraging calipers, huh? I was trying to illustrate the idea that someone from Ethiopia and another from Burkina Faso might not get along that well and it would be derivative to say that they share the same melanin in their skin because of gene n3029239872987.

      • cilantrofellow [any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Oh I wasn’t disagreeing with you. I think I started replying and then just started rambling about whatever came to mind lol