Chimps Must be Human Too, by the Lewontin Argument! By Brian Simpson
Richards Lewontin famously argued that there is more genetic variation between individuals, than between race’s, so, races don’t exist. He did not say that explicitly but that is where the Left took the argument.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12879450/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genetic_Diversity:_Lewontin%27s_Fallacy
Let us run with Lewontin’s argument. Why restrict it to the human race? Isn’t that speciest, a form a “racism”? Sure. There is a very close relationship between the genomes of the genera Homo (humans) and Pan (chimps), having the high genetic similarity as noted by D. E. Wildman (et al.), “Implications of Natural Selection in Shaping 99.4 % Nonsynonymous DNA Identity between Humans and Chimpanzees: Enlarging Genus Homo,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 100, 2003, pp. 7181-7188:
“What do functionally important DNA sites, those scrutinized and shaped by natural selection, tell us about the place of humans in evolution? Here we compare 90 kb of coding DNA nucleotide sequence from 97 human genes to their sequenced chimpanzee counterparts and to available sequenced gorilla, orangutan, and Old World monkey counterparts, and, on a more limited basis, to mouse. The nonsynonymous changes (functionally important), like synonymous changes (functionally much less important), show chimpanzees and humans to be most closely related, sharing 99.4% identity at nonsynonymous sites and 98.4% at synonymous sites. On a time scale, the coding DNA divergencies separate the human– chimpanzee clade from the gorilla clade at between 6 and 7 million years ago and place the most recent common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees at between 5 and 6 million years ago. The evolutionary rate of coding DNA in the catarrhine clade (Old World monkey and ape, including human) is much slower than in the lineage to mouse. Among the genes examined, 30 show evidence of positive selection during descent of catarrhines. Nonsynonymous substitutions by themselves, in this subset of positively selected genes, group humans and chimpanzees closest to each other and have chimpanzees diverge about as much from the common human–chimpanzee ancestor as humans do. This functional DNA evidence supports two previously offered taxonomic proposals: family Hominidae should include all extant apes; and genus Homo should include three extant species and two subgenera, Homo (Homo) sapiens (humankind), Homo (Pan) troglodytes (common chimpanzee), and Homo (Pan) paniscus (bonobo chimpanzee).”
Apart from the genetics, there are similarities between human and chimp brain structure, internal organs, and other aspects of physiology. Thus, many scientists are now proposing that Pan troglodytes and Pan paniscus be moved to the genus Homo, or even that Homo sapiens be transferred to Pan.
“Proposed changes in the primate order are stirring up evolutionary debate. Humans and chimpanzees should be grouped in the same genus, Homo, according to WSU researchers in a May 19 article (#2172) published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Although WSU’s Morris Goodman, PhD, has already proven with non-coding DNA sequences that chimpanzees are closest in kinship to humans rather than to gorillas, evolutionary traditionalists say chimps and humans are functionally markedly different and therefore belong on different branches of the family tree.
New analyses show humans and chimpanzees to be 99.4 percent identical in the functionally-important DNA, which codes for proteins and is shaped by natural selection. This provides further evidence for revisions in our genus classification. Dr. Goodman proposes that all living apes should occupy the family Hominidae (which currently contains only humans), and that both humans and chimpanzees should occupy the genus Homo.
In traditional taxonomic schemes that are still widely employed, humans are classified as Hominids, while orangutans, gorillas, and chimpanzees are classified as Pongids. Genetically, however, chimpanzees are more closely related to humans than they are to gorillas. “The accumulating DNA evidence provides an objective non-anthropocentric view of the place of humans in evolution. We humans appear as only slightly remodeled chimpanzee-like apes,” Dr. Goodman said.
The WSU research team compared 97 functional genes in six different species: humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, orangutans, old world monkeys, and mice. Based on genetic mutation tracking rates, the scientists constructed an evolutionary tree that measured the degree of relatedness among the six species. Chimpanzees and humans were the most closely related, sharing 99.4 percent identity at nonsynonymous (functionally important) sites and 98.4 percent at synonymous sites (functionally much less important).
Researchers determined that humans and chimpanzees diverged from a common ancestor roughly five to six million years ago, which in turn diverged from gorillas about six to seven million years ago.
“Revisions to our classification system would have far-reaching implications, much more important, in fact, than proving that humans and chimps are barely divergent. Such revisions would ensure that objective, scientific measures of similarity and dissimilarity are used, rather than anthropocentric, subjective observations. Sound genetic analysis should always be the basis for understanding the place of humans in evolution,” Dr. Goodman asserts.
These taxonomic changes had been proposed previously by several evolutionary experts, including Dr. Goodman, but a difference of scientific philosophies is at play. Traditional anthropologists argue that chimps are functionally different than humans because, for example, they lack spoken language and their genetic disease susceptibilities are different.
In contrast, Dr. Goodman opens his article with a quote from Charles Darwin that says: “As we have no record of the lines of descent, the lines can be discovered only by observing the degrees of resemblance between the beings which are to be classed. For this object numerous points of resemblance are of much more importance than the amount of similarity or dissimilarity in a few points.”
Dr. Goodman is a distinguished professor in the Wayne State University School of Medicine’s Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology and the Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics.
In 1962, he sparked great debate when he originally asserted that chimpanzees and gorillas are genetically more closely related to humans than to other apes. His research has since been widely accepted and his work in this area has not only impacted the study of humankind’s place in nature, but also has important implications for medical science.”
Thus, naturally enough, the rejection of the existence of human races leads to a further form of anti-racism, where by the Lewontin argument, we will fast be accepting the universalism of all species, like the Deep Greens propose. In fact, philosophers such as Peter Singer have extended the anti-racist argument into a more general one for animal rights. In reply, in articles at this site, I have noted that plants exhibit some of the properties that give animals rights, having a proto-typical form of mentation. So, we are led to biological universalism. But, one can always turn round the conclusion and maintain that all this is absurd, that humans and chimps do fundamentally differ, having more differences than similarities, regardless of genetics. And that genetics is mainstream genetics too, not the alternative morphogenetic field theory as proposed by Rupert Sheldrake in A New Science of Life (1981), where humans and chimps would clearly have vastly different morphogenetic fields.
On that basis we should reject Lewontin’s anti-race argument.
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