African-American English (or AAE ; or Ebonics , also known as Black American English or simply Black English in American linguistics ) is the set of English sociolects spoken by most Black people in the United States and many in Canada ; most commonly, it refers to a dialect continuum ranging from African-American Vernacular English to a more standard American English . Like all widely spoken language varieties, African-American English shows variation stylistically, generationally, geographically (that is, features specific to singular cities or regions only), in rural versus urban characteristics, in vernacular versus standard registers , etc. There has been a significant body of African-American literature and oral tradition for centuries.
172-478: Race is a categorization of humans based on shared physical or social qualities into groups generally viewed as distinct within a given society . The term came into common usage during the 16th century, when it was used to refer to groups of various kinds, including those characterized by close kinship relations. By the 17th century, the term began to refer to physical ( phenotypical ) traits, and then later to national affiliations. Modern science regards race as
344-415: A multi-layered network of cooperating, distinct, or even competing social groups – from families and peer groups to corporations and political states . As such, social interactions between humans have established a wide variety of values, social norms , languages , and traditions (collectively termed institutions ), each of which bolsters human society . Humans are also highly curious , with
516-720: A social construct , an identity which is assigned based on rules made by society. While partly based on physical similarities within groups, race does not have an inherent physical or biological meaning. The concept of race is foundational to racism , the belief that humans can be divided based on the superiority of one race over another. Social conceptions and groupings of races have varied over time, often involving folk taxonomies that define essential types of individuals based on perceived traits. Modern scientists consider such biological essentialism obsolete, and generally discourage racial explanations for collective differentiation in both physical and behavioral traits. Even though there
688-668: A theory of mind . The human mind is capable of introspection , private thought , imagination , volition , and forming views on existence . This has allowed great technological advancements and complex tool development through complex reasoning and the transmission of knowledge to subsequent generations through language . Humans have had a dramatic effect on the environment . They are apex predators , being rarely preyed upon by other species. Human population growth , industrialization, land development, overconsumption and combustion of fossil fuels have led to environmental destruction and pollution that significantly contributes to
860-451: A concept devised by Mark Shriver and Tony Frudakis , is not an objective measure of the biological aspects of race as Shriver and Frudakis claim it is. She argues that it is actually just a "local category shaped by the U.S. context of its production, especially the forensic aim of being able to predict the race or ethnicity of an unknown suspect based on DNA found at the crime scene". Recent studies of human genetic clustering have included
1032-601: A concept often translated as "race" was associated with supposed common descent from the Yellow Emperor , and used to stress the unity of ethnic groups in China. Brutal conflicts between ethnic groups have existed throughout history and across the world. The first post- Graeco-Roman published classification of humans into distinct races seems to be François Bernier 's Nouvelle division de la terre par les différents espèces ou races qui l'habitent ("New division of Earth by
1204-443: A consequence of better nutrition, healthcare, and living conditions. The average mass of an adult human is 59 kg (130 lb) for females and 77 kg (170 lb) for males. Like many other conditions, body weight and body type are influenced by both genetic susceptibility and environment and varies greatly among individuals. Humans have a far faster and more accurate throw than other animals. Humans are also among
1376-404: A debate over how genetic variation is organized, with clusters and clines as the main possible orderings. Serre & Pääbo (2004) argued for smooth, clinal genetic variation in ancestral populations even in regions previously considered racially homogeneous, with the apparent gaps turning out to be artifacts of sampling techniques. Rosenberg et al. (2005) disputed this and offered an analysis of
1548-419: A few other places), saw the emergence of agriculture and permanent human settlement ; in turn, this led to the development of civilization and kickstarted a period of continuous (and ongoing) population growth and rapid technological change . Since then, a number of civilizations have risen and fallen, while a number of sociocultural and technological developments have resulted in significant changes to
1720-463: A great capacity for altering their habitats by means of technology, irrigation , urban planning , construction, deforestation and desertification . Human settlements continue to be vulnerable to natural disasters , especially those placed in hazardous locations and with low quality of construction. Grouping and deliberate habitat alteration is often done with the goals of providing protection, accumulating comforts or material wealth, expanding
1892-405: A great deal more diversity than elsewhere and that diversity should decrease the further from Africa a population is sampled. Hence, the 85% average figure is misleading: Long and Kittles find that rather than 85% of human genetic diversity existing in all human populations, about 100% of human diversity exists in a single African population, whereas only about 60% of human genetic diversity exists in
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#17327723976332064-612: A higher body fat percentage. At puberty , humans develop secondary sex characteristics . Females are capable of pregnancy , usually between puberty, at around 12 years old, and menopause , around the age of 50. As omnivorous creatures, they are capable of consuming a wide variety of plant and animal material, and have used fire and other forms of heat to prepare and cook food since the time of Homo erectus . Humans can survive for up to eight weeks without food and several days without water . Humans are generally diurnal , sleeping on average seven to nine hours per day. Childbirth
2236-516: A host of other similarities and differences (for example, blood type) that do not correlate highly with the markers for race. Thus, anthropologist Frank Livingstone's conclusion was that, since clines cross racial boundaries, "there are no races, only clines". In a response to Livingstone, Theodore Dobzhansky argued that when talking about race one must be attentive to how the term is being used: "I agree with Dr. Livingstone that if races have to be 'discrete units', then there are no races, and if 'race'
2408-475: A human can lose personhood (such as by going into a persistent vegetative state ). Humans are apes ( superfamily Hominoidea ). The lineage of apes that eventually gave rise to humans first split from gibbons (family Hylobatidae) and orangutans (genus Pongo ), then gorillas (genus Gorilla ), and finally, chimpanzees and bonobos (genus Pan ). The last split, between the human and chimpanzee–bonobo lineages, took place around 8–4 million years ago, in
2580-722: A large multiethnic population in the United States, and "detected only modest genetic differentiation between different current geographic locales within each race/ethnicity group. Thus, ancient geographic ancestry, which is highly correlated with self-identified race/ethnicity – as opposed to current residence – is the major determinant of genetic structure in the U.S. population." Witherspoon et al. (2007) have argued that even when individuals can be reliably assigned to specific population groups, it may still be possible for two randomly chosen individuals from different populations/clusters to be more similar to each other than to
2752-631: A locus-by-locus analysis of variation to derive taxonomy, it is possible to construct a human classification system based on characteristic genetic patterns, or clusters inferred from multilocus genetic data . Geographically based human studies since have shown that such genetic clusters can be derived from analyzing of a large number of loci which can assort individuals sampled into groups analogous to traditional continental racial groups. Joanna Mountain and Neil Risch cautioned that while genetic clusters may one day be shown to correspond to phenotypic variations between groups, such assumptions were premature as
2924-581: A more barrel-shaped chests in contrast to the funnel shape of other apes, an adaptation for bipedal respiration. Apart from bipedalism and brain size, humans differ from chimpanzees mostly in smelling , hearing and digesting proteins . While humans have a density of hair follicles comparable to other apes, it is predominantly vellus hair , most of which is so short and wispy as to be practically invisible. Humans have about 2 million sweat glands spread over their entire bodies, many more than chimpanzees, whose sweat glands are scarce and are mainly located on
3096-504: A much clearer picture of life at the time. Between the 8th and 6th century BCE, Europe entered the classical antiquity age, a period when ancient Greece and ancient Rome flourished. Around this time other civilizations also came to prominence. The Maya civilization started to build cities and create complex calendars . In Africa, the Kingdom of Aksum overtook the declining Kingdom of Kush and facilitated trade between India and
3268-471: A positive meaning. In addition, ANS also has its own pronunciation rules, such as the use of the letter “d” instead of “th” and the dropping of the “g” in words ending in “ing”. A commonality between African Nova Scotian English and African-American Vernacular English is (r)-deletion . This rate of deletion is 57% among Black Nova Scotians, and 60% among African Americans in Philadelphia. Meanwhile, in
3440-453: A product of the colonial enterprises of European powers from the 16th to 18th centuries which identified race in terms of skin color and physical differences. Author Rebecca F. Kennedy argues that the Greeks and Romans would have found such concepts confusing in relation to their own systems of classification. According to Bancel et al., the epistemological moment where the modern concept of race
3612-408: A race for political reasons. When people define and talk about a particular conception of race, they create a social reality through which social categorization is achieved. In this sense, races are said to be social constructs. These constructs develop within various legal, economic, and sociopolitical contexts, and may be the effect, rather than the cause, of major social situations. While race
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#17327723976333784-449: A randomly chosen member of their own cluster. They found that many thousands of genetic markers had to be used in order for the answer to the question "How often is a pair of individuals from one population genetically more dissimilar than two individuals chosen from two different populations?" to be "never". This assumed three population groups separated by large geographic ranges (European, African and East Asian). The entire world population
3956-451: A result, humans are a cosmopolitan species found in almost all regions of the world, including tropical rainforest , arid desert , extremely cold arctic regions , and heavily polluted cities; in comparison, most other species are confined to a few geographical areas by their limited adaptability. The human population is not, however, uniformly distributed on the Earth 's surface, because
4128-478: A sample of 40 populations distributed roughly evenly across the Earth's land surface, Xing & et al. (2010 , p. 208) found that "genetic diversity is distributed in a more clinal pattern when more geographically intermediate populations are sampled". Human Humans ( Homo sapiens , meaning "thinking man" or "wise man") or modern humans are the most common and widespread species of primate , and
4300-639: A similar species. Migrating out of Africa , they gradually replaced and interbred with local populations of archaic humans. Multiple hypotheses for the extinction of archaic human species such as Neanderthals include competition, violence , interbreeding with Homo sapiens , or inability to adapt to climate change . Humans began exhibiting behavioral modernity about 160,000–60,000 years ago. For most of their history, humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers. The Neolithic Revolution , which began in Southwest Asia around 13,000 years ago (and separately in
4472-515: A simple linear or branched progression but involved interbreeding between related species . Genomic research has shown that hybridization between substantially diverged lineages was common in human evolution. DNA evidence suggests that several genes of Neanderthal origin are present among all non sub-Saharan-African populations, and Neanderthals and other hominins, such as Denisovans , may have contributed up to 6% of their genome to present-day non sub-Saharan-African humans. Human evolution
4644-456: A social construct, differences in genetic ancestry that happen to correlate to many of today's racial constructs are real". In response to Reich, a group of 67 scientists from a broad range of disciplines wrote that his concept of race was "flawed" as "the meaning and significance of the groups is produced through social interventions". Although commonalities in physical traits such as facial features, skin color, and hair texture comprise part of
4816-565: A social identity marker for many African-Americans. The goal with teaching SAE is not to end its use, but to help students differentiate between settings where its use is and is not considered acceptable. In addition, research has also found that AAE can be used as a bridge to mainstream academic English. By understanding the similarities and differences between AAE and mainstream American English, teachers can provide students with effective strategies for learning and using both dialects. Recently, linguists like John McWhorter have tried to persuade
4988-445: A sociocultural language continuum, and AAVE shows some slight variations by region or city. African-American Standard English, a term largely popularized by linguist Arthur Spears, is the prestigious and native end of the middle-class African-American English continuum that is used for more formal, careful, or public settings than AAVE. This variety exhibits standard English vocabulary and grammar but often retains certain elements of
5160-451: A successful labor increased significantly during the 20th century in wealthier countries with the advent of new medical technologies. In contrast, pregnancy and natural childbirth remain hazardous ordeals in developing regions of the world, with maternal death rates approximately 100 times greater than in developed countries. Both the mother and the father provide care for human offspring, in contrast to other primates, where parental care
5332-406: A wide variety of plant and animal material. Human groups have adopted a range of diets from purely vegan to primarily carnivorous . In some cases, dietary restrictions in humans can lead to deficiency diseases ; however, stable human groups have adapted to many dietary patterns through both genetic specialization and cultural conventions to use nutritionally balanced food sources. The human diet
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5504-585: A “linguistic bridge between Africa and the New World” (“Gullah Culture”). The Gullah culture is deeply rooted in African traditions, particularly in the practice of storytelling and the use of handicrafts. Gullahs have a strong connection to the land, and their traditional fishing, farming, and basket-weaving practices reflect this. In recent years, efforts have been made to preserve Gullah culture and language. The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor Commission
5676-511: Is 38 weeks, but a normal pregnancy can vary by up to 37 days. Embryonic development in the human covers the first eight weeks of development; at the beginning of the ninth week the embryo is termed a fetus . Humans are able to induce early labor or perform a caesarean section if the child needs to be born earlier for medical reasons. In developed countries, infants are typically 3–4 kg (7–9 lb) in weight and 47–53 cm (19–21 in) in height at birth. However, low birth weight
5848-543: Is a broad scientific agreement that essentialist and typological conceptions of race are untenable, scientists around the world continue to conceptualize race in widely differing ways. While some researchers continue to use the concept of race to make distinctions among fuzzy sets of traits or observable differences in behavior, others in the scientific community suggest that the idea of race is inherently naive or simplistic. Still others argue that, among humans, race has no taxonomic significance because all living humans belong to
6020-485: Is a mixture of the two parental sets. Among the 23 pairs of chromosomes, there are 22 pairs of autosomes and one pair of sex chromosomes . Like other mammals, humans have an XY sex-determination system , so that females have the sex chromosomes XX and males have XY. Genes and environment influence human biological variation in visible characteristics, physiology, disease susceptibility and mental abilities. The exact influence of genes and environment on certain traits
6192-446: Is a natural taxonomy of the human species, because multiple other genetic patterns can be found in human populations that crosscut racial distinctions. Moreover, the genomic data underdetermines whether one wishes to see subdivisions (i.e., splitters) or a continuum (i.e., lumpers) . Under Kaplan and Winther's view, racial groupings are objective social constructions (see Mills 1998) that have conventional biological reality only insofar as
6364-424: Is a population decline in the winter months of this realm. Humans established nation-states in the other seven realms, such as South Africa , India , Russia , Australia , Fiji , United States and Brazil (each located in a different biogeographical realm). By using advanced tools and clothing , humans have been able to extend their tolerance to a wide variety of temperatures, humidities , and altitudes. As
6536-408: Is also observed for many alleles that vary from one human group to another. Another observation is that traits or alleles that vary from one group to another do not vary at the same rate. This pattern is referred to as nonconcordant variation. Because the variation of physical traits is clinal and nonconcordant, anthropologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries discovered that the more traits and
6708-524: Is an English creole : a natural language grammatically independent from English that uses mostly English vocabulary. Most Gullah speakers today are probably bidialectal. A sub-dialect of Gullah is also spoken in Oklahoma and Texas, known as Afro-Seminole Creole . The language is derived from a mixture of African languages and English, with words and phrases from Caribbean and West African languages such as Akan, Wolof, and Fula. Gullah has been described as
6880-400: Is based on a strategy, communicative flexibility, that focuses on language used at home and analyzes speech during dramatic play. Using this method, children are taught to recognize when SAE is being used and in which occasions, rather than conforming to the speech around them in order to sound correct. Although the stigmatization of AAE has continued, AAE remains because it has functioned as
7052-402: Is characterized by a number of morphological , developmental , physiological , and behavioral changes that have taken place since the split between the last common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees . The most significant of these adaptations are hairlessness , obligate bipedalism, increased brain size and decreased sexual dimorphism ( neoteny ). The relationship between all these changes
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7224-456: Is common in developing countries, and contributes to the high levels of infant mortality in these regions. Compared with other species, human childbirth is dangerous, with a much higher risk of complications and death. The size of the fetus's head is more closely matched to the pelvis than in other primates. The reason for this is not completely understood, but it contributes to a painful labor that can last 24 hours or more. The chances of
7396-405: Is compatible with the observation that most human genetic variation is found within populations, not between them. It is also compatible with our finding that, even when the most distinct populations are considered and hundreds of loci are used, individuals are frequently more similar to members of other populations than to members of their own population." Anthropologists such as C. Loring Brace ,
7568-421: Is dangerous, with a high risk of complications and death . Often, both the mother and the father provide care for their children, who are helpless at birth . Humans have a large, highly developed, and complex prefrontal cortex , the region of the brain associated with higher cognition. Humans are highly intelligent and capable of episodic memory ; they have flexible facial expressions, self-awareness , and
7740-485: Is frequently criticized for perpetuating an outmoded understanding of human biological variation, and promoting stereotypes. Because in some societies racial groupings correspond closely with patterns of social stratification , for social scientists studying social inequality, race can be a significant variable . As sociological factors, racial categories may in part reflect subjective attributions, self-identities , and social institutions. Scholars continue to debate
7912-479: Is generally aging, with the median age around 40 years. In the developing world , the median age is between 15 and 20 years. While one in five Europeans is 60 years of age or older, only one in twenty Africans is 60 years of age or older. In 2012, the United Nations estimated that there were 316,600 living centenarians (humans of age 100 or older) worldwide. Humans are omnivorous , capable of consuming
8084-443: Is inherited only from the mother, geneticists have concluded that the last female common ancestor whose genetic marker is found in all modern humans, the so-called mitochondrial Eve , must have lived around 90,000 to 200,000 years ago. Most human reproduction takes place by internal fertilization via sexual intercourse , but can also occur through assisted reproductive technology procedures. The average gestation period
8256-408: Is mostly done by the mother. Helpless at birth , humans continue to grow for some years, typically reaching sexual maturity at 15 to 17 years of age. The human life span has been split into various stages ranging from three to twelve. Common stages include infancy , childhood , adolescence , adulthood and old age . The lengths of these stages have varied across cultures and time periods but
8428-415: Is much more complex and studying an increasing number of groups would require an increasing number of markers for the same answer. The authors conclude that "caution should be used when using geographic or genetic ancestry to make inferences about individual phenotypes". Witherspoon, et al. concluded: "The fact that, given enough genetic data, individuals can be correctly assigned to their populations of origin
8600-649: Is not necessarily any evolutionary significance to these observed differences, so this form of classification has become less acceptable to evolutionary biologists. Likewise this typological approach to race is generally regarded as discredited by biologists and anthropologists. In 2000, philosopher Robin Andreasen proposed that cladistics might be used to categorize human races biologically, and that races can be both biologically real and socially constructed. Andreasen cited tree diagrams of relative genetic distances among populations published by Luigi Cavalli-Sforza as
8772-521: Is not well understood. While no humans – not even monozygotic twins – are genetically identical, two humans on average will have a genetic similarity of 99.5%-99.9%. This makes them more homogeneous than other great apes, including chimpanzees. This small variation in human DNA compared to many other species suggests a population bottleneck during the Late Pleistocene (around 100,000 years ago), in which
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#17327723976338944-515: Is now called scientific racism . After the Nazi eugenics program, along with the rise of anti-colonial movements, racial essentialism lost widespread popularity. New studies of culture and the fledgling field of population genetics undermined the scientific standing of racial essentialism, leading race anthropologists to revise their conclusions about the sources of phenotypic variation. A significant number of modern anthropologists and biologists in
9116-413: Is often the source of comedic moments. Nonstandard African-American varieties of English have been stereotypically associated with a lower level of education and low social status. Since the 1960s, however, linguists have demonstrated that each of these varieties, and namely African-American Vernacular English , is a "legitimate, rule-governed, and fully developed dialect". The techniques used to improve
9288-810: Is prominently reflected in human culture and has led to the development of food science . African-American English African-American English began as early as the 17th century, when the Atlantic slave trade brought West African slaves into Southern colonies (which eventually became the Southern United States in the late 18th century). During the development of plantation culture in this region, nonstandard dialects of English were widely spoken by British settlers, which probably resulted in both first- and second-language English varieties being developed by African Americans. The 19th century's evolving cotton-plantation industry, and eventually
9460-518: Is still not very well understood; in part, this is because of a lack of data from comparable groups, but also because of the tendency to compare AAVE to northern vernaculars or even standard varieties of English while conflating regional and ethnic differences, as well as disregarding the sociohistorical context of AAVE origins. AAVE shares several linguistic features with Southern White Vernacular English (and even more with older Southern dialects ), many of which either emerged or became widespread during
9632-584: Is the native variety of the majority of working-class and many middle-class African Americans , particularly in urban areas, with its own unique accent, grammar, and vocabulary features. Typical features of the grammar include a "zero" copula (e.g., she my sister instead of she's my sister ), omission of the genitive clitic (e.g., my momma friend instead of my mom's friend ), and complexity of verb aspects and tenses beyond that of other English dialects (e.g., constructions like I'm a-run , I be running , I been runnin , I done ran ). Common features of
9804-445: Is the omission of the final consonant in word-final consonant clusters , so words such as past or hand may lose their final consonant sound. Black Appalachian Americans have been reported as increasingly adopting Appalachian / Southern dialect commonly associated with White Appalachians. These similarities include an accent that is rhotic, the categorical use of the grammatical construction "he works" or "she goes" (rather than
9976-445: Is the subject of ongoing debate. Hylobatidae ( gibbons ) Pongo abelii Pongo tapanuliensis Pongo pygmaeus Gorilla gorilla Gorilla beringei Pan troglodytes Pan paniscus Homo sapiens (humans) Until about 12,000 years ago, all humans lived as hunter-gatherers . The Neolithic Revolution (the invention of agriculture ) first took place in Southwest Asia and spread through large parts of
10148-411: Is to say, found in diverse groups of people at different frequencies; (3) what was not cultural or polymorphic was principally clinal – that is to say, gradually variable over geography; and (4) what was left – the component of human diversity that was not cultural, polymorphic, or clinal – was very small. A consensus consequently developed among anthropologists and geneticists that race as
10320-654: Is typified by an unusually rapid growth spurt during adolescence. Human females undergo menopause and become infertile at around the age of 50. It has been proposed that menopause increases a woman's overall reproductive success by allowing her to invest more time and resources in her existing offspring, and in turn their children (the grandmother hypothesis ), rather than by continuing to bear children into old age. The life span of an individual depends on two major factors, genetics and lifestyle choices. For various reasons, including biological/genetic causes, women live on average about four years longer than men. As of 2018 ,
10492-420: Is understood to be a social construct by many, most scholars agree that race has real material effects in the lives of people through institutionalized practices of preference and discrimination . Socioeconomic factors, in combination with early but enduring views of race, have led to considerable suffering within disadvantaged racial groups. Racial discrimination often coincides with racist mindsets, whereby
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#173277239763310664-714: Is used as an 'explanation' of the human variability, rather than vice versa, then the explanation is invalid." He further argued that one could use the term race if one distinguished between "race differences" and "the race concept". The former refers to any distinction in gene frequencies between populations; the latter is "a matter of judgment". He further observed that even when there is clinal variation: "Race differences are objectively ascertainable biological phenomena ... but it does not follow that racially distinct populations must be given racial (or subspecific) labels." In short, Livingstone and Dobzhansky agree that there are genetic differences among human beings; they also agree that
10836-548: The British Empire expanded to become the world's largest empire . A tenuous balance of power among European nations collapsed in 1914 with the outbreak of the First World War , one of the deadliest conflicts in history. In the 1930s, a worldwide economic crisis led to the rise of authoritarian regimes and a Second World War , involving almost all of the world's countries . The war's destruction led to
11008-580: The Caral–Supe civilization is the oldest complex civilization in the Americas. Astronomy and mathematics were also developed and the Great Pyramid of Giza was built. There is evidence of a severe drought lasting about a hundred years that may have caused the decline of these civilizations, with new ones appearing in the aftermath. Babylonians came to dominate Mesopotamia while others, such as
11180-511: The Church would provide centralized authority and education. In the Middle East, Islam became the prominent religion and expanded into North Africa. It led to an Islamic Golden Age , inspiring achievements in architecture , the revival of old advances in science and technology, and the formation of a distinct way of life. The Christian and Islamic worlds would eventually clash, with
11352-474: The Homo genus. The name " Homo sapiens " means 'wise man' or 'knowledgeable man'. There is disagreement if certain extinct members of the genus, namely Neanderthals , should be included as a separate species of humans or as a subspecies of H. sapiens . Human is a loanword of Middle English from Old French humain , ultimately from Latin hūmānus , the adjectival form of homō ('man' – in
11524-579: The Kingdom of England , the Kingdom of France and the Holy Roman Empire declaring a series of holy wars to regain control of the Holy Land from Muslims . In the Americas, between 200 and 900 CE Mesoamerica was in its Classic Period , while further north, complex Mississippian societies would arise starting around 800 CE. The Mongol Empire would conquer much of Eurasia in the 13th and 14th centuries. Over this same time period,
11696-854: The Mali Empire in Africa grew to be the largest empire on the continent, stretching from Senegambia to Ivory Coast . Oceania would see the rise of the Tuʻi Tonga Empire which expanded across many islands in the South Pacific. By the late 15th century, the Aztecs and Inca had become the dominant power in Mesoamerica and the Andes , respectively. The early modern period in Europe and
11868-587: The Old World over the following millennia. It also occurred independently in Mesoamerica (about 6,000 years ago), China, Papua New Guinea , and the Sahel and West Savanna regions of Africa. Access to food surplus led to the formation of permanent human settlements , the domestication of animals and the use of metal tools for the first time in history. Agriculture and sedentary lifestyle led to
12040-455: The Out of Africa and Multiregional models). In the early 20th century, many anthropologists taught that race was an entirely biological phenomenon and that this was core to a person's behavior and identity, a position commonly called racial essentialism . This, coupled with a belief that linguistic , cultural, and social groups fundamentally existed along racial lines, formed the basis of what
12212-652: The Poverty Point culture , Minoans and the Shang dynasty , rose to prominence in new areas. The Late Bronze Age collapse around 1200 BCE resulted in the disappearance of a number of civilizations and the beginning of the Greek Dark Ages . During this period iron started replacing bronze, leading to the Iron Age . In the 5th century BCE, history started being recorded as a discipline , which provided
12384-845: The United States who live in Nova Scotia , Canada. Though most African-American freedom seekers in Canada ended up in Ontario through the Underground Railroad , only the dialect of African Nova Scotians retains the influence of West African pidgin. In the 19th century, African Nova Scotian English would have been indistinguishable from English spoken in Jamaica or Suriname . However, it has been increasingly de-creolized since this time, due to interaction and influence from
12556-740: The colonization of the Americas and the Columbian Exchange . This expansion led to the Atlantic slave trade and the genocide of Native American peoples . This period also marked the Scientific Revolution , with great advances in mathematics , mechanics , astronomy and physiology . The late modern period (1800–present) saw the Technological and Industrial Revolution bring such discoveries as imaging technology , major innovations in transport and energy development . Influenced by Enlightenment ideals,
12728-425: The one-drop rule used in the 19th-century United States to exclude those with any amount of African ancestry from the dominant racial grouping, defined as " white ". Such racial identities reflect the cultural attitudes of imperial powers dominant during the age of European colonial expansion . This view rejects the notion that race is biologically defined. According to geneticist David Reich , "while race may be
12900-456: The world , they speculated about the physical, social, and cultural differences among various human groups. The rise of the Atlantic slave trade , which gradually displaced an earlier trade in slaves from throughout the world, created a further incentive to categorize human groups in order to justify the subordination of African slaves . Drawing on sources from classical antiquity and upon their own internal interactions – for example,
13072-535: The 18th century, primarily by white authors. A notable exception is Clotel (1853), the first novel written by an African American ( William Wells Brown ). Depictions have largely been restricted to dialogue and the first novel written entirely in AAVE was June Jordan 's His Own Where (1971), though Alice Walker 's epistolary novel The Color Purple (1982) is a much more widely known work written entirely in AAVE. Lorraine Hansberry 's 1959 play A Raisin in
13244-399: The 20th century's Great Migration , certainly contributed greatly to the spread of the first of these varieties as stable dialects of English among African Americans. The most widespread modern dialect is known as African-American Vernacular English . Despite more than a century of scholarship, the historical relationship between AAVE and the vernacular speech of whites in the United States
13416-576: The AAVE "he work" and "she go"), and Appalachian vocabulary (such as airish for "windy"). However, even African-American English in Appalachia is diverse, with African-American women linguistically divided along sociocultural lines. Despite its distinctiveness, AAAE shares many features with other varieties of Appalachian English, including the use of nonstandard pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary. AAAE also shares features with other varieties of African American English, particularly those spoken in
13588-518: The Americas and Europe experienced a period of political revolutions known as the Age of Revolution . The Napoleonic Wars raged through Europe in the early 1800s, Spain lost most of its colonies in the New World , while Europeans continued expansion into Africa – where European control went from 10% to almost 90% in less than 50 years – and Oceania. In the 19th century,
13760-466: The Guysborough group having been in the province three generations earlier. Howe & Walker (2000) use data from early recordings of African Nova Scotian English, Samaná English , as well as the recordings of former slaves to demonstrate that speech patterns were inherited from nonstandard colonial English. The dialect was extensively studied in 1992 by Shana Poplack and Sali Tagliamonte from
13932-800: The Human Genetic Diversity Panel showing that there were small discontinuities in the smooth genetic variation for ancestral populations at the location of geographic barriers such as the Sahara , the Oceans, and the Himalayas . Nonetheless, Rosenberg et al. (2005) stated that their findings "should not be taken as evidence of our support of any particular concept of biological race ... Genetic differences among human populations derive mainly from gradations in allele frequencies rather than from distinctive 'diagnostic' genotypes." Using
14104-594: The Mediterranean and up the Nile into Africa. From one end of this range to the other, there is no hint of a skin color boundary, and yet the spectrum runs from the lightest in the world at the northern edge to as dark as it is possible for humans to be at the equator. In part, this is due to isolation by distance . This point called attention to a problem common to phenotype-based descriptions of races (for example, those based on hair texture and skin color): they ignore
14276-761: The Mediterranean. In West Asia, the Achaemenid Empire 's system of centralized governance became the precursor to many later empires, while the Gupta Empire in India and the Han dynasty in China have been described as golden ages in their respective regions. Following the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476, Europe entered the Middle Ages . During this period, Christianity and
14448-832: The Near East ( c. 1450 –1800) began with the final defeat of the Byzantine Empire , and the rise of the Ottoman Empire . Meanwhile, Japan entered the Edo period , the Qing dynasty rose in China and the Mughal Empire ruled much of India. Europe underwent the Renaissance , starting in the 15th century, and the Age of Discovery began with the exploring and colonizing of new regions. This included
14620-724: The South. For instance, a study of African American communities in the Appalachian region of Virginia found that the dialects of these communities shared many features with both African American English and Southern White English. African-American English in the North Carolina Outer Banks is rapidly accommodating to urban AAVE through the recent generations, despite having aligned with local Outer Banks English for centuries. The dialect has been studied by linguists and has been documented in various works, such as
14792-496: The Sun also has near exclusive use of AAVE. The poetry of Langston Hughes (1901–1967) uses AAVE extensively. Some other notable works that have incorporated representations of black speech (with varying degrees of perceived authenticity) include: As there is no established spelling system for AAVE, depicting it in literature is instead often done through spelling changes to indicate its phonological features, or to contribute to
14964-463: The University of Ottawa. The grammar of ANS is largely based on standard English, but there are several distinct features that set it apart from other varieties of English. These features include the use of the negative concord—which is the use of multiple negative words in a sentence to emphasize the negative—and the double negative, which is the use of two negative words in a sentence to express
15136-486: The West came to view race as an invalid genetic or biological designation. The first to challenge the concept of race on empirical grounds were the anthropologists Franz Boas , who provided evidence of phenotypic plasticity due to environmental factors, and Ashley Montagu , who relied on evidence from genetics. E. O. Wilson then challenged the concept from the perspective of general animal systematics, and further rejected
15308-503: The anthropologist Stephen Molnar has suggested that the discordance of clines inevitably results in a multiplication of races that renders the concept itself useless. The Human Genome Project states "People who have lived in the same geographic region for many generations may have some alleles in common, but no allele will be found in all members of one population and in no members of any other." Massimo Pigliucci and Jonathan Kaplan argue that human races do exist, and that they correspond to
15480-478: The available food, improving aesthetics , increasing knowledge or enhancing the exchange of resources. Humans are one of the most adaptable species, despite having a low or narrow tolerance for many of the earth's extreme environments. Currently the species is present in all eight biogeographical realms , although their presence in the Antarctic realm is very limited to research stations and annually there
15652-436: The basis for a phylogenetic tree of human races (p. 661). Biological anthropologist Jonathan Marks (2008) responded by arguing that Andreasen had misinterpreted the genetic literature: "These trees are phenetic (based on similarity), rather than cladistic (based on monophyletic descent, that is from a series of unique ancestors)." Evolutionary biologist Alan Templeton (2013) argued that multiple lines of evidence falsify
15824-561: The best long-distance runners in the animal kingdom, but slower over short distances. Humans' thinner body hair and more productive sweat glands help avoid heat exhaustion while running for long distances. Compared to other apes, the human heart produces greater stroke volume and cardiac output and the aorta is proportionately larger. Like most animals, humans are a diploid and eukaryotic species. Each somatic cell has two sets of 23 chromosomes , each set received from one parent; gametes have only one set of chromosomes, which
15996-403: The book African American Outer Banks English: A Sociolinguistic Study by Elizabeth C. Zsiga (2000). This book provides a detailed description of the language, including its grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. It also provides a history of the dialect and examines how it has changed over time. African Nova Scotian English is spoken by descendants of Black Nova Scotians , black immigrants from
16168-415: The categories are chosen and constructed for pragmatic scientific reasons. In earlier work, Winther had identified "diversity partitioning" and "clustering analysis" as two separate methodologies, with distinct questions, assumptions, and protocols. Each is also associated with opposing ontological consequences vis-a-vis the metaphysics of race. Philosopher Lisa Gannett has argued that biogeographical ancestry,
16340-425: The claim that "races" were equivalent to "subspecies". Human genetic variation is predominantly within races, continuous, and complex in structure, which is inconsistent with the concept of genetic human races. According to the biological anthropologist Jonathan Marks , By the 1970s, it had become clear that (1) most human differences were cultural; (2) what was not cultural was principally polymorphic – that
16512-603: The collapse of most global empires, leading to widespread decolonization. Following the conclusion of the Second World War in 1945, the United States and the USSR emerged as the remaining global superpowers . This led to a Cold War that saw a struggle for global influence, including a nuclear arms race and a space race , ending in the collapse of the Soviet Union. The current Information Age , spurred by
16684-787: The combined eastern and western Roman Empire in the 4th century AD. Bubonic plagues , first recorded in the 6th century AD, reduced the population by 50%, with the Black Death killing 75–200 million people in Eurasia and North Africa alone. Human population is believed to have reached one billion in 1800. It has since then increased exponentially, reaching two billion in 1930 and three billion in 1960, four in 1975, five in 1987 and six billion in 1999. It passed seven billion in 2011 and passed eight billion in November 2022. It took over two million years of human prehistory and history for
16856-449: The consequence that the number and geographic location of any described races is highly dependent on the importance attributed to, and quantity of, the traits considered. A skin-lightening mutation, estimated to have occurred 20,000 to 50,000 years ago, partially accounts for the appearance of light skin in people who migrated out of Africa northward into what is now Europe. East Asians owe their relatively light skin to different mutations. On
17028-478: The continent, gradually replacing or interbreeding with local populations of archaic humans. Humans began exhibiting behavioral modernity about 160,000–70,000 years ago, and possibly earlier. This development was likely selected amidst natural climate change in Middle to Late Pleistocene Africa. The "out of Africa" migration took place in at least two waves, the first around 130,000 to 100,000 years ago,
17200-432: The degrees to which racial categories are biologically warranted and socially constructed. For example, in 2008, John Hartigan Jr. argued for a view of race that focused primarily on culture, but which does not ignore the potential relevance of biology or genetics. Accordingly, the racial paradigms employed in different disciplines vary in their emphasis on biological reduction as contrasted with societal construction. In
17372-423: The desire to understand and influence phenomena having motivated humanity's development of science , technology , philosophy , mythology , religion , and other frameworks of knowledge ; humans also study themselves through such domains as anthropology , social science , history , psychology , and medicine . There are estimated to be more than eight billion living humans . Although some scientists equate
17544-516: The development of the Internet and Artificial Intelligence systems, sees the world becoming increasingly globalized and interconnected. Early human settlements were dependent on proximity to water and – depending on the lifestyle – other natural resources used for subsistence , such as populations of animal prey for hunting and arable land for growing crops and grazing livestock. Modern humans, however, have
17716-458: The different species or races which inhabit it"), published in 1684. In the 18th century the differences among human groups became a focus of scientific investigation. But the scientific classification of phenotypic variation was frequently coupled with racist ideas about innate predispositions of different groups, always attributing the most desirable features to the White, European race and arranging
17888-467: The difficulty of defining a population, the clinal nature of variation, and heterogeneity across the genome (Long and Kittles 2003). In general, however, an average of 85% of statistical genetic variation exists within local populations, ≈7% is between local populations within the same continent, and ≈8% of variation occurs between large groups living on different continents. The recent African origin theory for humans would predict that in Africa there exists
18060-640: The early 20th century, there has been continuous human presence in Antarctica through research stations and, since 2000, in space through habitation on the International Space Station . All modern humans are classified into the species Homo sapiens , coined by Carl Linnaeus in his 1735 work Systema Naturae . The generic name " Homo " is a learned 18th-century derivation from Latin homō , which refers to humans of either sex. The word human can refer to all members of
18232-685: The emergence of early civilizations . An urban revolution took place in the 4th millennium BCE with the development of city-states , particularly Sumerian cities located in Mesopotamia . It was in these cities that the earliest known form of writing, cuneiform script , appeared around 3000 BCE. Other major civilizations to develop around this time were Ancient Egypt and the Indus Valley Civilisation . They eventually traded with each other and invented technology such as wheels, plows and sails. Emerging by 3000 BCE,
18404-529: The following films and TV shows, occur when certain speech events, vocabulary, and syntactic features are used to indicate AAVE usage, often with particular emphasis on young, urban African Americans: African American English has been used in television and film since the early days of Hollywood. For example, in the 1940s, the popular radio show Amos 'n' Andy featured African American characters who spoke in African American English. This show
18576-674: The former, and a more liberal view on race by the latter. Today, all humans are classified as belonging to the species Homo sapiens . However, this is not the first species of homininae : the first species of genus Homo , Homo habilis , evolved in East Africa at least 2 million years ago, and members of this species populated different parts of Africa in a relatively short time. Homo erectus evolved more than 1.8 million years ago, and by 1.5 million years ago had spread throughout Europe and Asia. Virtually all physical anthropologists agree that Archaic Homo sapiens (A group including
18748-404: The frequency of one or more of the genes it possesses. It is an arbitrary matter which, and how many, gene loci we choose to consider as a significant 'constellation'". Leonard Lieberman and Rodney Kirk have pointed out that "the paramount weakness of this statement is that if one gene can distinguish races then the number of races is as numerous as the number of human couples reproducing". Moreover,
18920-812: The genetic classification of ecotypes , but that real human races do not correspond very much, if at all, to folk racial categories. In contrast, Walsh & Yun reviewed the literature in 2011 and reported: "Genetic studies using very few chromosomal loci find that genetic polymorphisms divide human populations into clusters with almost 100 percent accuracy and that they correspond to the traditional anthropological categories." Some biologists argue that racial categories correlate with biological traits (e.g. phenotype ), and that certain genetic markers have varying frequencies among human populations, some of which correspond more or less to traditional racial groupings. The distribution of genetic variants within and among human populations are impossible to describe succinctly because of
19092-511: The genomes of 1,184 individuals from 11 populations and identified 1.6 million single nucleotide polymorphisms . African populations harbor the highest number of private genetic variants. While many of the common variants found in populations outside of Africa are also found on the African continent, there are still large numbers that are private to these regions, especially Oceania and the Americas . By 2010 estimates, humans have approximately 22,000 genes. By comparing mitochondrial DNA , which
19264-595: The global average life expectancy at birth of a girl is estimated to be 74.9 years compared to 70.4 for a boy. There are significant geographical variations in human life expectancy, mostly correlated with economic development – for example, life expectancy at birth in Hong Kong is 87.6 years for girls and 81.8 for boys, while in the Central African Republic , it is 55.0 years for girls and 50.6 for boys. The developed world
19436-435: The haplotype for beta-S hemoglobin , on the other hand, radiate out of specific geographical points in Africa. As the anthropologists Leonard Lieberman and Fatimah Linda Jackson observed, "Discordant patterns of heterogeneity falsify any description of a population as if it were genotypically or even phenotypically homogeneous". Patterns such as those seen in human physical and genetic variation as described above, have led to
19608-435: The historical process of exploration and conquest which brought Europeans into contact with groups from different continents, and of the ideology of classification and typology found in the natural sciences. The term race was often used in a general biological taxonomic sense , starting from the 19th century, to denote genetically differentiated human populations defined by phenotype. The modern concept of race emerged as
19780-503: The historical reconstruction of older AAVE: written interviews, ex-slave audio recordings, the modern diaspora dialects of isolated black communities, and letters written by 18th- and 19th-century African Americans. The use of the zero copula (the absence of is or are , as in she gon' leave ), nonstandard plural forms ( the three man , mans , or even mens ) and multiple negatives (as in no one didn't leave me nothing ) were occasional or common variants in these earlier dialects, and
19952-687: The hostility between the English and Irish powerfully influenced early European thinking about the differences between people – Europeans began to sort themselves and others into groups based on physical appearance, and to attribute to individuals belonging to these groups behaviors and capacities which were claimed to be deeply ingrained. A set of folk beliefs took hold that linked inherited physical differences between groups to inherited intellectual , behavioral , and moral qualities. Similar ideas can be found in other cultures, for example in China , where
20124-443: The human lifestyle. Genes and the environment influence human biological variation in visible characteristics, physiology , disease susceptibility, mental abilities, body size, and life span. Though humans vary in many traits, humans are among the least genetically diverse species. Any two humans are at least 99.5% genetically similar. Humans are sexually dimorphic : generally, males have greater body strength and females have
20296-555: The human population to reach one billion and only 207 years more to grow to 7 billion. The combined biomass of the carbon of all the humans on Earth in 2018 was estimated at 60 million tons, about 10 times larger than that of all non-domesticated mammals. In 2018, 4.2 billion humans (55%) lived in urban areas, up from 751 million in 1950. The most urbanized regions are Northern America (82%), Latin America (81%), Europe (74%) and Oceania (68%), with Africa and Asia having nearly 90% of
20468-517: The human population was reduced to a small number of breeding pairs. The forces of natural selection have continued to operate on human populations, with evidence that certain regions of the genome display directional selection in the past 15,000 years. The human genome was first sequenced in 2001 and by 2020 hundreds of thousands of genomes had been sequenced. In 2012 the International HapMap Project had compared
20640-521: The idea of a phylogenetic tree structure to human genetic diversity, and confirm the presence of gene flow among populations. Marks, Templeton, and Cavalli-Sforza all conclude that genetics does not provide evidence of human races. Previously, anthropologists Lieberman and Jackson (1995) had also critiqued the use of cladistics to support concepts of race. They argued that "the molecular and biochemical proponents of this model explicitly use racial categories in their initial grouping of samples ". For example,
20812-568: The impression that AAVE is being used ( eye dialect ). More recently, authors have begun focusing on grammatical cues, and even the use of certain rhetorical strategies. Portrayals of black characters in film and television are also done with varying degrees of authenticity. In Imitation of Life (1934), the speech and behavioral patterns of Delilah (an African American character) are reminiscent of minstrel performances that set out to exaggerate stereotypes, rather than depict black speech authentically. More authentic performances, such as those in
20984-518: The individuals and ideologies of one group come to perceive the members of an outgroup as both racially defined and morally inferior. As a result, racial groups possessing relatively little power often find themselves excluded or oppressed, while hegemonic individuals and institutions are charged with holding racist attitudes. Racism has led to many instances of tragedy, including slavery and genocide . In some countries, law enforcement uses race to profile suspects. This use of racial categories
21156-422: The large and highly diverse macroethnic groups of East Indians, North Africans, and Europeans are presumptively grouped as Caucasians prior to the analysis of their DNA variation. They argued that this a priori grouping limits and skews interpretations, obscures other lineage relationships, deemphasizes the impact of more immediate clinal environmental factors on genomic diversity, and can cloud our understanding of
21328-443: The largest groups of social relevance, and these definitions can change over time. Historical race concepts have included a wide variety of schemes to divide local or worldwide populations into races and sub-races. Across the world, different organizations and societies choose to disambiguate race to different extents: The establishment of racial boundaries often involves the subjugation of groups defined as racially inferior, as in
21500-602: The last quarter of the 19th century. The farm tenancy system that replaced slavery in the American South drew in Southern Whites, leading to a context for an interracial speech relationship dynamic among socioeconomic equals throughout the South and leading to many shared features until the start of WWII; leading to the situation wherein changes that became robust after the 1930s most strongly mark ethnic distinctions in speech. African-American Vernacular (AAVE)
21672-442: The last surviving species of the genus Homo . They are great apes characterized by their hairlessness , bipedalism , and high intelligence . Humans have large brains , enabling more advanced cognitive skills that enable them to thrive and adapt in varied environments, develop highly complex tools , and form complex social structures and civilizations . Humans are highly social , with individual humans tending to belong to
21844-671: The last two decades of the 18th century, the theory of polygenism , the belief that different races had evolved separately in each continent and shared no common ancestor, was advocated in England by historian Edward Long and anatomist Charles White , in Germany by ethnographers Christoph Meiners and Georg Forster , and in France by Julien-Joseph Virey . In the US, Samuel George Morton , Josiah Nott and Louis Agassiz promoted this theory in
22016-567: The late Miocene epoch. During this split, chromosome 2 was formed from the joining of two other chromosomes, leaving humans with only 23 pairs of chromosomes, compared to 24 for the other apes. Following their split with chimpanzees and bonobos, the hominins diversified into many species and at least two distinct genera. All but one of these lineages – representing the genus Homo and its sole extant species Homo sapiens – are now extinct. The genus Homo evolved from Australopithecus . Though fossils from
22188-485: The latter item even the preferred variant in certain grammatical contexts. Other nonstandard grammatical constructions associated with AAVE are documented in older dialects too; however, many of them are not, evidently being recent innovations of 20th-century urban AAVE. Sea Island Creole English , or "Gullah", is the distinct language of some African Americans along the South Carolina and Georgia coast. Gullah
22360-562: The least diverse population they analyzed (the Surui, a population derived from New Guinea). Statistical analysis that takes this difference into account confirms previous findings that "Western-based racial classifications have no taxonomic significance". A 2002 study of random biallelic genetic loci found little to no evidence that humans were divided into distinct biological groups. In his 2003 paper, " Human Genetic Diversity: Lewontin's Fallacy ", A. W. F. Edwards argued that rather than using
22532-419: The level of alleles and allele frequencies. Nature has not created four or five distinct, nonoverlapping genetic groups of people. Another way to look at differences between populations is to measure genetic differences rather than physical differences between groups. The mid-20th-century anthropologist William C. Boyd defined race as: "A population which differs significantly from other populations in regard to
22704-623: The mid-19th century. Polygenism was popular and most widespread in the 19th century, culminating in the founding of the Anthropological Society of London (1863), which, during the period of the American Civil War, broke away from the Ethnological Society of London and its monogenic stance , their underlined difference lying, relevantly, in the so-called "Negro question": a substantial racist view by
22876-419: The more human groups they measured, the fewer discrete differences they observed among races and the more categories they had to create to classify human beings. The number of races observed expanded to the 1930s and 1950s, and eventually anthropologists concluded that there were no discrete races. Twentieth and 21st century biomedical researchers have discovered this same feature when evaluating human variation at
23048-559: The ongoing mass extinction of other forms of life. Within the last century, humans have explored challenging environments such as Antarctica , the deep sea , and outer space . Human habitation within these hostile environments is restrictive and expensive, typically limited in duration, and restricted to scientific , military , or industrial expeditions. Humans have visited the Moon and made their presence known on other celestial bodies through human-made robotic spacecraft . Since
23220-442: The only primates to have short, relatively flush canine teeth . Humans have characteristically crowded teeth, with gaps from lost teeth usually closing up quickly in young individuals. Humans are gradually losing their third molars , with some individuals having them congenitally absent. Humans share with chimpanzees a vestigial tail, appendix , flexible shoulder joints, grasping fingers and opposable thumbs . Humans also have
23392-514: The other hand, the greater the number of traits (or alleles ) considered, the more subdivisions of humanity are detected, since traits and gene frequencies do not always correspond to the same geographical location. Or as Ossorio & Duster (2005) put it: Anthropologists long ago discovered that humans' physical traits vary gradually, with groups that are close geographic neighbors being more similar than groups that are geographically separated. This pattern of variation, known as clinal variation,
23564-414: The other races along a continuum of progressively undesirable attributes. The 1735 classification of Carl Linnaeus , inventor of zoological taxonomy, divided the human species Homo sapiens into continental varieties of europaeus , asiaticus , americanus , and afer , each associated with a different humour : sanguine , melancholic , choleric , and phlegmatic , respectively. Homo sapiens europaeus
23736-474: The palm of the hand and on the soles of the feet. It is estimated that the worldwide average height for an adult human male is about 171 cm (5 ft 7 in), while the worldwide average height for adult human females is about 159 cm (5 ft 3 in). Shrinkage of stature may begin in middle age in some individuals but tends to be typical in the extremely aged . Throughout history, human populations have universally become taller, probably as
23908-938: The philosophers Jonathan Kaplan and Rasmus Winther, and the geneticist Joseph Graves , have argued that the cluster structure of genetic data is dependent on the initial hypotheses of the researcher and the influence of these hypotheses on the choice of populations to sample. When one samples continental groups, the clusters become continental, but if one had chosen other sampling patterns, the clustering would be different. Weiss and Fullerton have noted that if one sampled only Icelanders, Mayans and Maoris, three distinct clusters would form and all other populations could be described as being clinally composed of admixtures of Maori, Icelandic and Mayan genetic materials. Kaplan and Winther therefore argue that, seen in this way, both Lewontin and Edwards are right in their arguments. They conclude that while racial groups are characterized by different allele frequencies, this does not mean that racial classification
24080-461: The phonology include non-rhoticity (dropping the r sound at the end of syllables), the metathetic use of aks instead of ask , simplification of diphthongs (e.g., eye typically sounds like ah ), a raising chain shift of the front vowels , and a wider range of intonation or "melody" patterns than most General American accents. AAVE is often used by middle-class African Americans in casual, intimate, and informal settings as one end of
24252-408: The policing and disproportionate incarceration of certain groups. Groups of humans have always identified themselves as distinct from neighboring groups, but such differences have not always been understood to be natural, immutable and global. These features are the distinguishing features of how the concept of race is used today. In this way the idea of race as we understand it today came about during
24424-515: The population density varies from one region to another, and large stretches of surface are almost completely uninhabited, like Antarctica and vast swathes of the ocean. Most humans (61%) live in Asia; the remainder live in the Americas (14%), Africa (14%), Europe (11%), and Oceania (0.5%). Estimates of the population at the time agriculture emerged in around 10,000 BC have ranged between 1 million and 15 million. Around 50–60 million people lived in
24596-684: The possible species H. heidelbergensis , H. rhodesiensis , and H. neanderthalensis ) evolved out of African H. erectus ( sensu lato ) or H. ergaster . Anthropologists support the idea that anatomically modern humans ( Homo sapiens ) evolved in North or East Africa from an archaic human species such as H. heidelbergensis and then migrated out of Africa, mixing with and replacing H. heidelbergensis and H. neanderthalensis populations throughout Europe and Asia, and H. rhodesiensis populations in Sub-Saharan Africa (a combination of
24768-873: The previous generation had known it – as largely discrete, geographically distinct, gene pools – did not exist. The term race in biology is used with caution because it can be ambiguous. Generally, when it is used it is effectively a synonym of subspecies . (For animals, the only taxonomic unit below the species level is usually the subspecies; there are narrower infraspecific ranks in botany , and race does not correspond directly with any of them.) Traditionally, subspecies are seen as geographically isolated and genetically differentiated populations. Studies of human genetic variation show that human populations are not geographically isolated. and their genetic differences are far smaller than those among comparable subspecies. In 1978, Sewall Wright suggested that human populations that have long inhabited separated parts of
24940-529: The proficiency of African-American students learning standard written English have sometimes been similar to that of teaching a second language. Contrastive analysis is used for teaching topics in African-American Vernacular English. Both the phonological and syntactic features of a student's speech can be analyzed and recorded in order to identify points for contrast with Standard American English. Another way AAE can be taught
25112-480: The public that "Black English" is not a separate language from or imperfect form of " Standard English ". He argues that Black English is a separate dialect, distinct from Standard English in the same way that Canadian French and Swiss French are distinct from the standard dialect of Parisian French . He also acknowledges that we have a long way to go as a society in recognizing Black English as anything but "full of slang and bad grammar". African American English
25284-402: The race concept, this linkage is a social distinction rather than an inherently biological one. Other dimensions of racial groupings include shared history, traditions, and language. For instance, African-American English is a language spoken by many African Americans , especially in areas of the United States where racial segregation exists. Furthermore, people often self-identify as members of
25456-520: The races. Blumenbach also noted the graded transition in appearances from one group to adjacent groups and suggested that "one variety of mankind does so sensibly pass into the other, that you cannot mark out the limits between them". From the 17th through 19th centuries, the merging of folk beliefs about group differences with scientific explanations of those differences produced what Smedley has called an " ideology of race". According to this ideology, races are primordial, natural, enduring and distinct. It
25628-590: The relationship between genes and complex traits remains poorly understood. However, Risch denied such limitations render the analysis useless: "Perhaps just using someone's actual birth year is not a very good way of measuring age. Does that mean we should throw it out? ... Any category you come up with is going to be imperfect, but that doesn't preclude you from using it or the fact that it has utility." Early human genetic cluster analysis studies were conducted with samples taken from ancestral population groups living at extreme geographic distances from each other. It
25800-483: The same subspecies , Homo sapiens sapiens . Since the second half of the 20th century, race has been associated with discredited theories of scientific racism , and has become increasingly seen as a largely pseudoscientific system of classification. Although still used in general contexts, race has often been replaced by less ambiguous and/or loaded terms: populations , people (s) , ethnic groups , or communities , depending on context. Its use in genetics
25972-404: The second ( Southern Dispersal ) around 70,000 to 50,000 years ago. H. sapiens proceeded to colonize all the continents and larger islands, arriving in Eurasia 125,000 years ago, Australia around 65,000 years ago, the Americas around 15,000 years ago, and remote islands such as Hawaii , Easter Island , Madagascar , and New Zealand in the years 300 to 1280 CE. Human evolution was not
26144-547: The sense of humanity). The native English term man can refer to the species generally (a synonym for humanity ) as well as to human males. It may also refer to individuals of either sex. Despite the fact that the word animal is colloquially used as an antonym for human , and contrary to a common biological misconception , humans are animals . The word person is often used interchangeably with human , but philosophical debate exists as to whether personhood applies to all humans or all sentient beings , and further if
26316-411: The social sciences, theoretical frameworks such as racial formation theory and critical race theory investigate implications of race as social construction by exploring how the images, ideas and assumptions of race are expressed in everyday life. A large body of scholarship has traced the relationships between the historical, social production of race in legal and criminal language, and their effects on
26488-495: The speech of black characters, investigating how black identity is established and how it connects to other characters. Brasch (1981 :x) argues that early mass media portrayals of black speech are the strongest historical evidence of a separate variety of English for black people. Early popular works are also used to determine the similarities that historical varieties of black speech have in common with modern AAVE. The earliest depictions of black speech came from works written in
26660-524: The surrounding mostly white communities of Nova Scotia, (r)-deletion does not occur. Older or earlier African-American English refers to a set of many heterogeneous varieties studied and reconstructed by linguists as theoretically spoken by the first African Americans and African slaves in British America and, later, the United States. Of primary interest is the direct theoretical predecessor to AAVE. Mainly four types of sources have been used for
26832-433: The term "humans" with all members of the genus Homo , in common usage it generally refers to Homo sapiens , the only extant member. All other members of the genus Homo , which are now extinct, are known as archaic humans , and the term "modern human" is used to distinguish Homo sapiens from archaic humans. Anatomically modern humans emerged around 300,000 years ago in Africa, evolving from Homo heidelbergensis or
27004-427: The transition are scarce, the earliest members of Homo share several key traits with Australopithecus . The earliest record of Homo is the 2.8 million-year-old specimen LD 350-1 from Ethiopia , and the earliest named species are Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis which evolved by 2.3 million years ago. H. erectus (the African variant is sometimes called H. ergaster ) evolved 2 million years ago and
27176-1087: The true patterns of affinity. In 2015, Keith Hunley, Graciela Cabana, and Jeffrey Long analyzed the Human Genome Diversity Project sample of 1,037 individuals in 52 populations, finding that diversity among non-African populations is the result of a serial founder effect process, with non-African populations as a whole nested among African populations, that "some African populations are equally related to other African populations and to non-African populations", and that "outside of Africa, regional groupings of populations are nested inside one another, and many of them are not monophyletic". Earlier research had also suggested that there has always been considerable gene flow between human populations, meaning that human population groups are not monophyletic. Rachel Caspari has argued that, since no groups currently regarded as races are monophyletic, by definition none of these groups can be clades. One crucial innovation in reconceptualizing genotypic and phenotypic variation
27348-514: The unique AAVE accent, with intonational or rhythmic features maintained more than phonological ones. Frequently, middle-class African Americans are bi-dialectal between this standard variety and AAVE, tending toward using the former variety in school and other public places, so that adults will frequently even codeswitch between the two varieties within a single conversation. The phonological features maintained in this standard dialect tend to be less marked . For instance, one such characteristic
27520-443: The use of the race concept to classify people, and how the race concept is used, is a matter of social convention. They differ on whether the race concept remains a meaningful and useful social convention. In 1964, the biologists Paul Ehrlich and Holm pointed out cases where two or more clines are distributed discordantly – for example, melanin is distributed in a decreasing pattern from the equator north and south; frequencies for
27692-527: The white Nova Scotian population. Desegregation of the province's school boards in 1964 further accelerated the process of de-creolization. The language is a relative of the African-American Vernacular English , with significant variations unique to the group's history in the area. There are noted differences in the dialects of those from Guysborough County (Black Loyalists), and those from North Preston (Black Refugees),
27864-570: The world should, in general, be considered different subspecies by the criterion that most individuals of such populations can be allocated correctly by inspection. Wright argued: "It does not require a trained anthropologist to classify an array of Englishmen, West Africans, and Chinese with 100% accuracy by features, skin color, and type of hair despite so much variability within each of these groups that every individual can easily be distinguished from every other." While in practice subspecies are often defined by easily observable physical appearance, there
28036-440: The world's 3.4 billion rural population. Problems for humans living in cities include various forms of pollution and crime , especially in inner city and suburban slums . Most aspects of human physiology are closely homologous to corresponding aspects of animal physiology. The dental formula of humans is: 2.1.2.3 2.1.2.3 . Humans have proportionately shorter palates and much smaller teeth than other primates. They are
28208-712: Was described as active, acute, and adventurous, whereas Homo sapiens afer was said to be crafty, lazy, and careless. The 1775 treatise "The Natural Varieties of Mankind", by Johann Friedrich Blumenbach proposed five major divisions: the Caucasoid race , the Mongoloid race , the Ethiopian race (later termed Negroid ), the American Indian race , and the Malayan race , but he did not propose any hierarchy among
28380-542: Was established in 2006 to help protect and promote the Gullah culture. The commission has partnered with universities, museums, and other organizations to develop programs and initiatives to preserve Gullah language and traditions. There is a long tradition of representing the distinctive speech of African Americans in American literature . A number of researchers have looked into the ways that American authors have depicted
28552-399: Was formally renounced by the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in 2023. Modern scholarship views racial categories as socially constructed, that is, race is not intrinsic to human beings but rather an identity created, often by socially dominant groups, to establish meaning in a social context. Different cultures define different racial groups, often focused on
28724-625: Was further argued that some groups may be the result of mixture between formerly distinct populations, but that careful study could distinguish the ancestral races that had combined to produce admixed groups. Subsequent influential classifications by Georges Buffon , Petrus Camper and Christoph Meiners all classified "Negros" as inferior to Europeans. In the United States the racial theories of Thomas Jefferson were influential. He saw Africans as inferior to Whites especially in regards to their intellect, and imbued with unnatural sexual appetites, but described Native Americans as equals to whites. In
28896-591: Was invented and rationalized lies somewhere between 1730 and 1790. According to Smedley and Marks the European concept of "race", along with many of the ideas now associated with the term, arose at the time of the scientific revolution , which introduced and privileged the study of natural kinds , and the age of European imperialism and colonization which established political relations between Europeans and peoples with distinct cultural and political traditions . As Europeans encountered people from different parts of
29068-462: Was popular and influential, and it established AAE as a part of popular culture. In the decades since, AAE has continued to be used in television and film as a way to depict African American characters. It is often used to provide comedic relief or to illustrate the unique characteristics of African American culture. For example, the 1990s television show Martin featured a main character who speaks in AAE and
29240-402: Was the anthropologist C. Loring Brace 's observation that such variations, insofar as they are affected by natural selection , slow migration, or genetic drift , are distributed along geographic gradations or clines . For example, with respect to skin color in Europe and Africa, Brace writes: To this day, skin color grades by imperceptible means from Europe southward around the eastern end of
29412-402: Was the first archaic human species to leave Africa and disperse across Eurasia. H. erectus also was the first to evolve a characteristically human body plan . Homo sapiens emerged in Africa around 300,000 years ago from a species commonly designated as either H. heidelbergensis or H. rhodesiensis , the descendants of H. erectus that remained in Africa. H. sapiens migrated out of
29584-535: Was thought that such large geographic distances would maximize the genetic variation between the groups sampled in the analysis, and thus maximize the probability of finding cluster patterns unique to each group. In light of the historically recent acceleration of human migration (and correspondingly, human gene flow) on a global scale, further studies were conducted to judge the degree to which genetic cluster analysis can pattern ancestrally identified groups as well as geographically separated groups. One such study looked at
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