Are there genetic differences between “races”?
Mark Pagel, evolutionary biologist at Reading University. His research includes work on language and cultural evolution. “Flawed as the old ideas about race are, modern genomic studies reveal a surprising, compelling and different picture of human genetic diversity. We are on average about 99.5% similar to each other genetically. This is a new figure, down from the previous estimate of 99.9%. To put what may seem like minuscule differences in perspective, we are somewhere around 98.5% similar, maybe more, to chimpanzees, our nearest evolutionary relatives. “The new figure for us, then, is significant. It derives from among other things, many small genetic differences that have emerged from studies that compare human populations … Like it or not, there may be many genetic differences among human populations – including differences that may even correspond to old categories of “race” – that are real differences in the sense of making one group better than another at responding to some
