Humans are special. We have separated ourselves from nature. This has given us the ability, and seemingly endless mission to scrutinize, and eventually classify everything we interact with. We have created structure for nearly everything in the observable universe, even ourselves, though the latter has proven to be a trickier endeavor. There are continuing debates over these categories we have placed ourselves in to. Some of the ways in which we classify ourselves have to do with genetic variation between populations, while others involve the struggle through self-identification through gender roles and sexuality. These challenges we face in trying to classify ourselves can be attributed to the source material we are …show more content…
To pose a quick argument to this idea before I delve into the subject of race, when observing the fossilized remains of early human ancestors, there is no way for us to tell what color their skin was, not to mention there are only minute differences in the structure of modern human skeletons, and that can be passed up to random variation. Lewontin notes that "any two unrelated human beings differ by about 3 million distinct DNA variants," and that " by far the largest amount of that variation, about 85%, is among individuals within local national or linguistic populations" (Lewontin, p. 1). In terms of genetics, “data from many sources have shown that humans are genetically homogeneous, and that genetic variation tends to be shared widely among populations” (Jorde p. S32). This isn 't to say that differences between populations don 't exist, but rather that these differences don 't exactly represent a separate classification all on their …show more content…
“It is generally agreed today that what most clearly distinguishes the human species from other life forms is out ability to use symbols” (Renfrew and Bahn, p. 391). Most would agree that humans are perhaps the most intelligent species alive today, but a point of contention arises when deciding whether the use of symbols or the highly technical planning by humans is the true measure of modern cognitive ability. The problem with trying to find supporting evidence for which of these behaviors is more important comes down to the fact that we can only observe the behaviors of our ancestors through indirect means, and through interpretation. Surely the use of symbolism is what separates us from other animals, but our use of tools, or at least our advancement of their functions, such as precision, reliability, and lethality is also matched by no other species, aside from some of our early ancestors. It 's is most likely that the use of symbolism developed after the use of tools, but I feel that it represents only one feature on a line of cognitive progression that was made possible by the use of tools, and thus is not significantly more