ABSTRACT
A century ago, the then-new sciences of genetics and evolutionary biology often were misused to propagate racism, anti-miscegenation laws, and anti-immigration. We need to be careful about repeating such mistakes. Current evolutionary genetic research affirms ideas from mid-20th century anthropologists that there are no races, as commonly perceived; instead, we see that most variation can be found within populations and that there are clines in the frequency of genetic variants. We look at studies of ancient DNA that show modern humans exchanged a trickle of genes with not only Neanderthals but also with Denisovans and other archaic humans. Ancient DNA studies show that there is no such thing as a pure human population; we have always been mixing. Challenging common perceptions about race, the ancient DNA studies revealed that Cheddar Man, who lived 10,000 years ago in what is now England, had light-colored eyes but dark skin. We also examine the evolutionary genetics behind skin color. Finally, we turn to a book written by Nicholas Wade, a science journalist, that has misapplied findings of evolutionary genomics that incorrectly propagate ideas about the reality of races and racial stereotypes.
