Is there any species, other than humans, that is found all across the globe (i.e. geographically separated), and has not differentiated into subspecies? Wolves, elephants, tigers, bears, and foxes have all been categorized into multiple subspecies each, distinct but able to interbreed.

• greazy

  today at 12:53 AM

  The definition of what constitutes a species is a human construct.

  Two birds living in the same locale but divided by a mountain range therefore not naturally breeding with each other would classify as a different species, even if they could breed with each other.

  So your question is hard to answer.

• yabutlivnWoods

  today at 1:14 AM

  > ...distinct but able to interbreed

  I mean people won't like the idea but that's not my point; what you describe variety in superficial traits while maintaining common traits

  Applied to humans; skin color, eyes, dwarfism, hypertrichosis... can still interbreed

  When it comes to categorization and taxonomy in leaky abstractions like languages the boundaries get a bit hand wavy and usually land on whatever fits the prevailing social desirability bias of the day

• erichocean

  today at 12:47 AM

  Humans have, obviously. Just interbreeding with ancient species was enough to do it, even without separate evolution.

• renewiltord

  today at 12:59 AM

  They have to be. The snail darter is genetically identical to another animal and is a separate species. Most likely different humans are as well.

• meroes

  today at 12:15 AM

  Dogs?

  • paulryanrogers

    today at 12:20 AM

    Aren't dogs technically one species?

    • hooo

      today at 12:51 AM

      This distinction seems more arbitrary over time. Growing up I was taught different species couldn’t interbreed. But what about Neanderthal and Sapiens?

  • like_any_other

    today at 12:24 AM

    I don't think you could have chosen a worse example. Dogs are themselves a subspecies, and are split into many different breeds, of wildly different character and physiology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog#Taxonomy

    • idiotsecant

      today at 12:57 AM

      Breeds and species are different things. Parent post is making a (very good) point that dogs can pretty much all breed with one another.

This comment section will be full of rational and well meaning discourse for sure.

Not that surprising when you consider, as the paper does, the explosion of very meaningful traits such as the ability to digest lactose and various anti-malaria adaptations e.g. Sickle Cell and the Duffy-null mutation.

It's just controversial for obvious reasons. The notion that human groups may have meaningfully evolved in different ways over the past 10,000 years, and may still be evolving, is an unpopular one on both ends of the political spectrum.

• AlotOfReading

  yesterday at 11:48 PM

  The reason no one wants to talk is that these discussions are always co-opted by racists wanting to affirm their beliefs, regardless of the underlying science. Reich in particular is borderline deliberate about attracting those sorts with his lab's research, because of how badly he chooses to handle the topic and terminology of race.

  • MontyCarloHall

    today at 1:08 AM

    >Reich in particular is borderline deliberate about attracting those sorts with his lab's research, because of how badly he chooses to handle the topic and terminology of race.

    Sorry, do you have any examples? His views that I've read [0, 1] are scientifically rigorous and terminologically precise, deftly navigating the politics that some consider extremely controversial. To wit, one of my favorite passages from [1]:

       But “ancestry” is not a euphemism, nor is it synonymous with “race.” Instead, the term is born of an urgent need to come up with a precise language to discuss genetic differences among people at a time when scientific developments have finally provided the tools to detect them. It is now undeniable that there are nontrivial average genetic differences across populations in multiple traits, and the race vocabulary is too ill-defined and too loaded with historical baggage to be helpful. If we continue to use it we will not be able to escape the current debate, which is mired in an argument between two indefensible positions. On the one side there are beliefs about the nature of the differences that are grounded in bigotry and have little basis in reality. On the other side there is the idea that any biological differences among populations are so modest that as a matter of social policy they can be ignored and papered over. It is time to move on from this paralyzing false dichotomy and to figure out what the genome is actually telling us.
    

    [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-r...

    [1] https://sackett.net/reich_who_we_are_and_how_we_got_here.pdf

  • nostromo

    today at 12:10 AM

    Science is about truth not social outcomes.

    People keep wondering why trust in scientific findings is in free fall. A big part of it is because many scientists have become comfortable lying when they feel it’s for a noble cause.

    • orsorna

      today at 12:45 AM

      I really don't care if the people around me have physiological differences from me. It would be wonderful to explore that and such differences. But as OP pointed out the discussion gets co-opted by people who would kill others over physiological differences. How is such a viewpoint conducive to a peaceful society where millions of people with physiological differences exist?

      For good reason, the wider community isn't able to have a productive conversation about it. I wouldn't even call that a noble reason, but a necessary one, unless you would be okay with inviting people that want you dead into discussion on scientific consensus.

      • like_any_other

        today at 12:56 AM

        > people who would kill others over physiological differences

        Most of them just want to enforce borders. And then the dogma that we are all the same is co-opted by people who would see their ethnic group wiped out, as they are told that they don't even exist except as a meaningless social construct, and their desire for ethnic self-preservation is therefore illegitimate - there is nothing to preserve!

        The same rhetoric targeting Palestinians: https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/perpetuating-the-myth-of-a-p...

• phainopepla2

  today at 12:22 AM

  Is it unpopular on the right? Genuine question. I have only seen people associated with the left deny or downplay this.

  • jetrink

    today at 12:29 AM

    The religious right, specifically. They would say that all people are descended quite recently from Noah and his family.

    • FunHearing3443

      today at 1:03 AM

      Not all of us. Many are evolutionary or old earth creationists that generally don’t have an issue with many aspects of evolution.

  • today at 12:32 AM

  • burnto

    today at 12:28 AM

    Evolution itself has some skeptics among the religious right.

[flagged]

"To supercharge the search, Reich, Ali Akbari, a computational geneticist at Harvard Medical School, and their colleagues amassed the largest-ever collection of genomic data from ancient humans — from a total of 15,836 individuals from western Eurasia — including more than 10,000 newly sequenced genomes."

Without commenting on the content of this sentence or article, I will say that it is refreshing to see sentences like this in the wild after being regularly and constantly subjected to LLM slop.

• nefarious_ends

  today at 12:23 AM

  Seriously what’s the point of this comment

• sho_hn

  yesterday at 11:28 PM

  And yet you managed to center AI in the discussion.