Relethford used the measurement Fst to find the degree of variation in global skin colour and craniometric data. They organized the article by explaining their findings for each variable, and concluded by answering the question “Does Race Exist?”. They proved that race was a “culturally constructed label that crudely and imprecisely describes real variation” (Relethford, 2009, p.20) because although they did find a positive correlation between geographic location and skin colour as well as craniometric measurements, they claimed that imposing a label on groups was subjective. This relates to my thesis because it explains how genetic variation occurs in small increments and there are no distinct differences or boundaries that can clearly separate
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They use various calculations, including discriminant function analysis (DFA), principal components analysis (PCA) and KNN to “...maximize the differences among groups”, compare individuals within groups, and many other analyses with different combinations of variables which was very thorough. Afterwards, they repeat the calculations in a global scale and discovered that “within-continent analyses complicate the craniometric differences between continents” because with examples from Europe and Japan, “it would seem that the number of biological races may be limited only by the number of samples, contradicting the classic view that there are only a few discrete biological races” (Ousley, Jantz, Freid, 2009, p.72). Therefore, they concluded that they were able to correctly distinguish black and white Americans, but in a global scale where many other biological traits are considered, there are many different races to the extent where the concept of race is insignificant (Ousley, Jantz, Freid, 2009, p.74). This article is particularly interesting because they began with proving their hypothesis but discovered that it is not the same case when it is …show more content…
They called their example skull as “Mr.Johnson”, and made calculations to compare the likelihoods of it being a male or female, and its race and geographic origin. They also used the DFA for race, which was used in the second required reading as well. What was different in this finding was that they did not find the skull’s origin, but found the likelihood of its classification based on whether or not anthropologists knew that “Mr.Johnson” was an “American white”. This article supports the focus of my essay because in the discussion, they note that “such a low level of variation between groups relative to total variation argues for the nonexistence of any grouping” (Konigsberg, Algee-Hewitt, and Steadman, 2009, p.85). It can be declared that although the three articles were proving slightly different hypotheses and had different methods, they concluded with the general idea that geographic origin can be accurately estimated but it is not logical to group them into races. This may be because all of them based their calculations on Howell’s craniometric data set, and the last two articles focused on Sauer’s question: “if races do not exist, why are forensic anthropologists so good at identifying
They use various calculations, including discriminant function analysis (DFA), principal components analysis (PCA) and KNN to “...maximize the differences among groups”, compare individuals within groups, and many other analyses with different combinations of variables which was very thorough. Afterwards, they repeat the calculations in a global scale and discovered that “within-continent analyses complicate the craniometric differences between continents” because with examples from Europe and Japan, “it would seem that the number of biological races may be limited only by the number of samples, contradicting the classic view that there are only a few discrete biological races” (Ousley, Jantz, Freid, 2009, p.72). Therefore, they concluded that they were able to correctly distinguish black and white Americans, but in a global scale where many other biological traits are considered, there are many different races to the extent where the concept of race is insignificant (Ousley, Jantz, Freid, 2009, p.74). This article is particularly interesting because they began with proving their hypothesis but discovered that it is not the same case when it is …show more content…
They called their example skull as “Mr.Johnson”, and made calculations to compare the likelihoods of it being a male or female, and its race and geographic origin. They also used the DFA for race, which was used in the second required reading as well. What was different in this finding was that they did not find the skull’s origin, but found the likelihood of its classification based on whether or not anthropologists knew that “Mr.Johnson” was an “American white”. This article supports the focus of my essay because in the discussion, they note that “such a low level of variation between groups relative to total variation argues for the nonexistence of any grouping” (Konigsberg, Algee-Hewitt, and Steadman, 2009, p.85). It can be declared that although the three articles were proving slightly different hypotheses and had different methods, they concluded with the general idea that geographic origin can be accurately estimated but it is not logical to group them into races. This may be because all of them based their calculations on Howell’s craniometric data set, and the last two articles focused on Sauer’s question: “if races do not exist, why are forensic anthropologists so good at identifying