Another view, propounded by my housemate (who is a scientist (albeit a chemist rather than a biologist, which his father is)), is that there is a single human race, but that black people are less evolved than other types of people (I will call them "races" for simplicity's sake). This is, according to him, because black people are biologically closer to apes (from which every human being evolved) than other races. Think about the logic of this: apes -> black people -> white people.
You can tell your friend he hasn't understood a single point of the evolution theory, since every living beings on Earth are just "as evolved" as any other one, because their lineages have managed to survive so far.
Current bacterias are no less "evolved" than men, since their genetic codes had to adapt over the same amount of time than our ancestors. So it depends which criteria you choose to say what "evolution" means for you. For instance, is it the length of the DNA, or the capacity to quickly produce variety and complexity? Then Orchids are, far, far more complex than us. They all have one common ancestor around 5-6 million years ago, and see the result: 35.000 known species today!
Should we have taken the stomach instead of the brain as the way to measure "evolution", then cows would be considered as the supreme dominant organism.
Furthermore, while speaking of us, no living man is closer to "apes" than the other, unless you want to mean than we all are a subspecie of chimpanzees (technically, we are). We can say every hominoids diverged from simians exactly at the same moment. Again, this proves that your so-called friend is just prejudiced, and hasn't understood a word of what "evolutionary science" or phylogenetics are.
The genetic variation of men is very tiny compared to most animals: there are far more differences between various breeds of dogs than between the Neanderthals and us, so technically, we can't use the word "race".
But on the other hand, we can use the word "haplogroup" for instance, and they reveal a very different story than most of modern myths about races, since a lot of genes can have a far deeper effect than the colour of our skins (which is only a slightly minor effect).
And there are a lot of different haplogroups within "whites", blacks" or "asians".
If there is a real difference between Africa and Europe, it's the fact that Europeans haplogroups are more diverse, and more mixed as a whole. While African ones show that the ethnic barriers have been far more rigid within this continent, that the exchanges of DNA material have been far more limited.
When we go as far as 20.000 to 50.000 years ago, a typical European group will share traces of about 20 mitochondrial "Eves" (with a maximum of 38), while an African one will have barely 3 or 4.
So technically, they prove that African people have been far more xenophobic during their long story than any other group of men. Curious, isn't it?
But sometimes, you can have great surprises. Take for instance... The Finnish people! They are caucasoids in appearance, but their dominant mtDNA haplogroup (Z) say that genetically, they are closer to Koreans than Danes...
And now, take myself! In appearance, I am a typical white guy, and within my family, you will find many people with blue coloured eyes, or blond or red hair. In theory, I am a cross between Celtic and Ashkenazic lineages. This means I should very likely be of haplogroup
H something...
But I'm not.
I am a mtDNA Y, one of the most uncommon and odd haplogroups. There should only be 4 or 5 mtDNA Ys in France (counting my mother and brother), and my uncommon genotype has already caused me some issues when I had to deal with some medicines or surgical operations.
According to genetics, I should be an Ainu: you know, the northern Japanese tribe that used to live on the island of Hokkaido? I have the same kind of blood type (AB-), and my internal organs are arranged in the same way, and that means:
quite out of the ordinary. My heart and my liver are not where they are supposed to be, according to the average European physiology. Let me reassure you, I'm not an alien of some sort, but there is a difference of at least 10 centimeters (in the case of my liver).
All I can tell is that my genes have travelled far, very far away to reach the western tip of Europe. Some of my ancestors did make a long journey through the wild spaces of Siberia...
Anyway.
Do my haplogroups make me more clever, more intelligent? The answer is clearly no.
So far, the only genes related to intelligence are those that can impair your cognitive abilities, not the ones that can enhance them.
So according to our current scientific knowledge, there is no way you can predict the intelligence of someone when you analyze his chromosomes, unless he is suffering from a specific syndrome that will eventually lead to retardation.
And at last but not the least, there is the whole question of
what is a really high intelligence? And why?
And I do not think there is an objective way to measure it, and if we ever could find one, I guess it won't look like our current IQ tests (1).
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(1)
For the sake of scientific objectivity, please read "the mismeasure of Man" of Stephen Jay Gould