Race classification. All people living at the present time belong to the same species; any marriages between them produce fertile offspring. It is impossible to get a reliable answer to the question of whether any ancient forms of man, such as Neanderthal man, were representatives of the species Homo sapiens. The species Homo sapiens is divided into populations, which are commonly referred to as races. A race is a large population of individuals who have a significant part of their genes in common and which can be distinguished from other races by their common gene pool. In ancient times, members of the same race often lived together in similar sociocultural conditions. The concept of "race" overlaps with other concepts used to refer to smaller population units, such as the concept of "dem". The classification and history of races constituted one of the main directions of research in the field of classical anthropology, carried out in the 19th and especially at the beginning of the 20th centuries. Previously proposed classifications were based on the corresponding visual impressions and on the analysis of statistical distributions of anthropometric features. With the development of human genetics, data on the frequencies of polymorphic genetic markers have been increasingly used for this. The classifications of different authors differ somewhat in detail; however, the division of mankind into Negroids, Mongoloids and Caucasians is beyond doubt. To these three great races are often added two smaller groups, namely the Khoisanids or Capoids (Bushmen and Hottentots) and the Australoids (Australian Aborigines and Negritos).

Genetic differences between races. The definition of race given here is genetic, and therefore it would be desirable to build a racial classification on the basis of traits well studied at the gene level. Several groups of such signs can be distinguished.

Many genes function in all human beings, showing perhaps only small quantitative differences in the level of expression. For example, each person has genes that determine the structure of enzymes necessary for the implementation of many basic metabolic processes. Unusual individuals - carriers of rare mutations that alter these genes - suffer from inborn errors of metabolism. Many of the genes belonging to this group are also found in other living beings.

There are traits and, consequently, genes that determine them, common to all or almost all representatives of any one race; they are absent in individuals of other races. The number of such features seems to be very small; from a genetic point of view, they are poorly characterized. One example of signs of this kind is the vertical fold of the upper eyelid in Mongoloids.

The third group of signs should include those that are found only in one of the three main races, while representatives of the other two are absent. This group includes a large number of gene markers that make up many well-characterized systems of genetic polymorphism (Table 7.5). One of these signs is the Diego factor detected in a blood test. This blood type was discovered in 1953 in representatives of four generations of one Venezuelan family; while it was shown that most white people lack the Diego factor. The phenotypic frequencies of this factor obtained in the study of American Indian populations vary from 0.025 to 0.48. In populations of whites and blacks, the corresponding allele was not found at all. On the other hand, among Mongoloids, such as the Japanese and Chinese, it occurs, although with a lower average frequency. These data confirm the assumption put forward in classical anthropology, according to which the American Indians are part of a large Mongoloid race.

There is another class of traits that are more common in some populations than others. These include traits and alleles that are present in all human races, but occurring in them with different frequencies. This class includes, for example, alleles of most systems of genetic polymorphism and genes that determine quantitative traits such as height, body proportions and physiological functions. Polymorphic alleles are increasingly being used in studies undertaken to characterize different populations from a genetic point of view. This made it possible to fairly objectively classify populations. The results of works devoted to this problem are summarized in Murant's monograph. The available data indicate the similarity of the frequencies of some homologous genes in different populations and that the construction of racial classifications is not an easy task: within-group differences between representatives of any racial group often exceed the differences between representatives of different large races (Mongoloids, Negroids and Caucasians).

How did evolution proceed, leading to the emergence of genetic differences between races? The main factor in the evolution of phenotypes and, in particular, the main factor in racial genesis is natural selection, which determines adaptation to various environmental conditions. In order for selection that leads to the emergence of genetic differences (for example, between large races) to be effective, significant reproductive isolation of subpopulations is necessary. Was there a period in early human history when the human population was subdivided into three more or less isolated subpopulations?

During most of the last ice age (about 100,000 years ago), a huge area of ​​the Earth's surface was covered with ice (Figure 7.11). The Himalayan and Altai mountains with glaciers located on them divided the Eurasian continent into three regions, thus creating conditions for the separate evolution of whites in the west, Mongoloids in the east and Negroids in the south. The modern areas of settlement of the three great races do not coincide with those areas in which they were formed; this discrepancy can be explained by migration processes.

Genetic differences due to the action of certain selective mechanisms: skin pigmentation and radiation. The most notable differences between the great races are differences in skin pigmentation. Most modern primates are dark-pigmented, and so there is reason to believe that ancient human populations also consisted of dark-skinned individuals, especially considering that the first humans arose in Africa. Why, then, is the skin of whites and Mongoloids so poorly pigmented?

According to one plausible hypothesis, in the places of settlement of these two races, people have adapted to low levels of ultraviolet (UV) radiation. UV light is involved in the conversion of provitamin D to vitamin D in human skin (Fig. 7.12). Vitamin D, in turn, is necessary for the classification of bones; its deficiency leads to rickets. One of the most dangerous manifestations of rickets is a deformity of the pelvis that disrupts normal childbirth, which in life primitive people often led to the death of mother and child. This effect obviously creates a strong selection pressure. On fig. Figure 7.13 is a map showing the degree of human skin pigmentation and the intensity of exposure to UV light in different parts of the world.

Rice. 7.13. The intensity of ultraviolet light and the degree of pigmentation of the skin of the native population in various parts of the world. The numbers given are the average values ​​of the intensity of solar radiation incident on a horizontal plane on the earth's surface (annual averages over 24 hours, expressed in mW × cm -2)

From this hypothesis, it follows that UV radiation penetrates lightly pigmented skin more easily than highly pigmented skin, and therefore, at the same doses of UV radiation, more vitamin D is formed in light skin than in dark skin. This conclusion is supported by data obtained in pigs. There is a breed of pig in which the middle part of the body is highly pigmented, while the rest of the skin is almost devoid of pigment. The formation of vitamin D after in vitro UV irradiation in unpigmented skin was higher than in pigmented areas of the same animal (Fig. 7.14). The relationship between the geographical localization of the population and the pigmentation of the skin of its members is not confirmed in two cases - for the Eskimos and the African pygmies. Both populations, especially the last one, consist of dark-skinned individuals, although in the Arctic regions and on the ground under the canopy of a tropical rainforest, UV radiation is relatively weak. Eskimos seem to get their vitamin D from fish and seal livers, while Pygmies get their diet from insect larvae.

Rice. 7.14. Vitamin D formation (mg/cm 2 skin: ordinate) in pigs after exposure to UV light (S 300; distance 50 cm). The abscissa shows the exposure time. Parentheses indicate the standard deviations of the mean values

The discovery that Duffy's blood type is related to the functioning of the receptors for Plasmodium vivax is of great importance. In this case, the elucidation of the biological role of the erythrocyte polymorphism system occurred after its discovery. Virtually all Africans are Duffy-negative. It can be assumed, therefore, that due to its selective advantage, this allele has spread throughout the population.

An alternative hypothesis has recently been developed. According to her, the preexisting high frequencies of the Duffy-negative allele prevented P. vivax malaria from becoming an endemic disease in West Africa. The thesis is substantiated that malaria caused by P. vivax appeared in an ancestral primate and could not spread across Africa due to the presence of a Duffy-negative allele in it.

Absorption and malabsorption of lactose. Lactose is a nutritionally essential carbohydrate in milk (Fig. 7.15). In order for lactose to be absorbed in the small intestine, it must be hydrolyzed by a special enzyme, lactase, which is localized in the brush border of intestinal epithelial cells. Lactose is found in the milk of almost all mammals; lactase activity is high in newborns and infants of any population and race, and decreases with weaning. Subsequently, lactase activity is maintained at a low level, usually accounting for less than 10% of the activity of this enzyme in a newborn.

Until a few years ago, there was an idea that in “normal” people, high lactase activity persists into adulthood. Persons with high lactase activity can tolerate large amounts of lactose; after a lactose load in their blood, the concentration of glucose and galactose, the sugars that make up the lactose molecule, increases significantly.

Malabsorption of lactose. In persons with low lactase activity, after drinking milk, an increase in blood glucose either does not occur at all, or it is insignificant. In such people, after taking 25-50 g of lactose (1 liter of cow's milk contains 45-50 g of lactose), clinical symptoms of intolerance appear. They include diarrhea, cramping abdominal pain, flatulence. Small amounts of milk and dairy products in which most of the lactose is hydrolyzed (yogurt or curdled milk) are tolerated without any unpleasant consequences. A comparative analysis of lactose tolerance in black and white Americans found that blacks were much more likely to be milk intolerant than whites. Currently, many populations have been studied in this regard (Fig. 7.16). The most reliable results can be obtained by measuring lactase activity in intestinal biopsies. It is clear that such a method is not suitable for population or family studies. For them, standard tests have been developed based on the measurement of H 2 content in the exhaled air after oral administration of a certain dose of lactose.

In most Mongoloid, Indian, and Eskimo populations, retention of lactase activity in older children and adults is very rare or non-existent. An equally low frequency of lactose tolerance is recorded in most Arabs and Jews, as well as in the populations of tropical Africa, Australian Aborigines and Melanesians. A significant predominance of individuals who retain lactase activity in adulthood (> 75%) is typical only for residents of Northern and Central Europe and for their descendants on other continents. Note, however, that a high frequency of lactose tolerance was also noted in a number of groups of African pastoral nomads. Intermediate frequencies (30-70%) were found in the population of Spain, Italy and Greece. The peoples of South Asia show high variability in this trait; it is possible that its appearance among the population of this region is due to migration. In the population of American blacks, the frequency of this trait is somewhat higher than in Africans.

What condition should be considered normal? In most human populations, after weaning children from the breast, they experience a decrease in lactase activity; this feature is common to two of the three great races (Negroes and Mongoloids). Preservation of lactase activity in the adult state is typical only for whites, and even in them this trait is not found in all populations. Therefore, for humans, as well as for other mammals, the loss of this specific activity is quite a "normal" phenomenon.

However, the scientists who conducted these studies considered lactose tolerance to be the norm, since this particular trait is common in European populations. This conclusion had certain economic consequences. It is known that in order to improve the protein nutrition of children from African and Asian countries, a large amount of milk powder was supplied to these regions; the initiators of this action proceeded from the logical hypothesis that what is good for European children should also be good for children in developing countries. In light of our current knowledge of the population distributions of lactose tolerance, these programs appear to require revision. Of course, it is unwise to completely ban the consumption of lactose-containing foods in populations consisting of lactose intolerant individuals, since otherwise they will suffer from protein malnutrition.

Enzyme induction or genetic variation? There are two possible biochemical explanations for lactose malabsorption.

1. Lactose malabsorption may be due to low lactose intake in most individuals after breastfeeding is stopped. We know that the activity of many enzymes can be increased by the addition of a substrate (substrate-specific induction). This hypothesis was initially widely accepted, but its subsequent testing in animals and humans gave negative results.

2. Family studies testified to the genetic conditionality of this trait, or rather, to the autosomal recessive type of inheritance of lactose malabsorption.

Autosomal recessive inheritance of lactose malabsorption has been demonstrated in a large-scale study of matched marriage types in Finland. This result was confirmed in the study of many other populations. Lactose "absorbers" are either homozygous or heterozygous for the lactose absorption gene, while individuals with malabsorption do not have this gene.

Multiple allelism? The decrease in lactase activity to a certain level (recessive trait) in different populations occurs at different ages. In Thailand and the Bantu, all children over 4 years of age show no rise in blood glucose after a lactose load. The proportion of children of American blacks who are unable to digest lactose out of the total number of peers increases with their age up to 14 years, and in Finland the full expression of the corresponding genes is delayed and occurs between 15 and 20 years. Such phenotypic variability may be due to multiple alleles or differences in the quantity and properties of milk consumed during childhood, and requires further study.

genetic mechanism. We have already said that residual lactase activity is also present in adults who are unable to digest lactose. It is still unknown whether there are differences in the structure of lactase in persons with impaired absorption and in "absorbers". The switch from high to low activity is somewhat reminiscent of the transition from hemoglobin γ-chain production to β-chain production, followed by a transition from HbF to HbA production; the maintenance of lactase activity in adults can be compared to the maintenance of fetal hemoglobin (section 4.3).

Natural selection. The persistence of individuals capable of absorbing lactose in most human populations, the presence of this feature in other mammals indicates that the gene responsible for maintaining lactase activity arose from time to time in the course of human evolution as a result of a mutation and that the high frequencies of this gene in some populations are due to its selective advantage. What is the nature of this advantage? Two main hypotheses have been put forward in this regard.

1. Cultural-historical hypothesis.

2. Hypothesis according to which lactose promotes better absorption of calcium.

According to the first hypothesis, the domestication of dairy cattle during the Neolithic period (about 9,000 years ago) resulted in a selective advantage for individuals who could meet most of their dietary protein requirements from milk. Indeed, there are a number of populations made up of milk consumers; for example, the pastoral tribes mentioned above. This hypothesis is quite applicable to them. However, the assertion of its universal significance raises certain doubts. For example, noteworthy is the lack of parallelism between the habit of drinking milk and the predominance of persons capable of absorbing lactose. Large populations in Africa and Asia are made up of milk consumers, but have very low rates of lactose digestion. Nevertheless, in any population there are always several individuals who are able to digest lactose; therefore, this gene was present before and could experience a favorable effect of selection. In Europe, the highest frequency of the lactose absorption gene was found in the south of Scandinavia (0.7-0.75), where dairy cattle breeding began to develop relatively recently. Before people learned how to artificially cool milk or get it in a dry form, people who were unable to digest lactose easily found that they digested sour milk much better than fresh milk. All of the above convinces us that the alternative assumption about the specific advantage of dairy nutrition in the natural conditions of Northern Europe deserves attention.

It is known that vitamin D deficiency in the northern regions is due to reduced levels of UV radiation. It is currently hypothesized that lactose may replace vitamin D, improving calcium absorption. For this hypothesis, the key issue is the question of the mechanism of the possible antirachitic effect of high levels of lactose absorption. Is there a phenomenon of a specific increase in calcium absorption associated with lactose hydrolysis? Animal experiments cannot give a definitive answer because adult animals are unable to absorb lactose. Recent human studies have shown that lactose absorption does enhance calcium absorption.

Regardless of whether the calcium hypothesis is confirmed or refuted, it can be stated that it has a number of features characteristic of heuristic hypotheses. It is specific, suggests a mechanism of action, and provides an idea for experiments by which it can be tested.

Vitamin D and serum genetic markers (GC system). Genetic polymorphism of the β 2 protein fraction of human blood serum has been detected by immunological methods and has been known since 1959: many alleles of this system are currently described, but most populations are polymorphic in only two of them, namely GC 1 and GC 2; Australian Aborigines have a third allele, GC Ab0, and Chippewa Indians have a fourth, GC Chip. The first data on the frequencies of these genes showed that the GC 2 allele is rare in very dry areas. This result became clear when the function of GC proteins, which turned out to carry vitamin D, was established.

More recently, data have emerged that indicate a relationship between the intensity of sunlight and polymorphism of GC alleles; in most populations living for a long time in areas of low intensity sunlight, high frequencies of GC 2 are detected.

This geographical distribution is indicative of the selective advantage of GC 2 . This may be due to the fact that this allele provides more efficient transport of vitamin D (which is especially important when the supply of this vitamin is limited). This, in turn, can lead to a decrease in the frequency of rickets either in individuals heterozygous for the GC 2 allele, or in individuals homozygous for it, or both. The precise selection mechanism operating in this case, remains to be seen.

Possible selective mechanisms in case of other racial characteristics. Apart from the examples given in the preceding paragraphs and used in the chapter on population genetics, very little is known about the selective advantage or disadvantage of racial traits.

It can be assumed that the small stature and dense physique of the Eskimos, as well as the relatively thick layer of subcutaneous fat characteristic of them, provide certain advantages in cold climates, and the wide chest of the South American Indians living high in the Andes is associated with respiratory adaptation to life in high altitude conditions.

Representatives of different racial groups in the US and other developed countries show differences in susceptibility to multifactorial diseases. For example, American blacks are more likely to suffer from hypertension than whites. It has also been shown that some groups of Indians, such as those living in Trinidad, have a higher proportion of diabetic patients than other population groups. Undoubtedly, the reason for such differences will become clear when researchers with medical education become interested in population genetics, good knowledge specific diseases.

Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain the current incidence of diabetes and atherosclerosis, such as the concept of "parsimonious genotype" and rapid lipid mobilization. It is assumed that under conditions of starvation, the diabetic genotype provides more efficient mobilization of carbohydrates, and genes predisposed to atherosclerosis contribute to more rapid mobilization of fats.

It is believed that such selective mechanisms, which operated in the past, when for many generations starvation was a common human condition, explain the high incidence of diabetes and atherosclerosis at the present time. Unfortunately, none of these hypotheses is consistent with current pathophysiological concepts of carbohydrate and lipid metabolism.

Are there genetic differences between races and peoples? Yes, and this is a fact long established by science. Thanks to genetic mutations, in some parts of the world they are poisoned by milk and do not tolerate alcohol at all, while in others, beans threaten people with sudden death. But the same genetic diversity allows science to look into the distant past of mankind and provides important clues to medicine.

Data of ethnogenomics and ethnogeography. They make it possible to visualize by what branches and migration flows humanity settled from its African ancestral home. For some stages in the history of homo sapiens, ethnogenomics data can be supplemented with data from paleoanthropology, archeology, and linguistics. Thus, the sciences, complementing each other, draw a more detailed picture of the history of mankind.

In the 80s of the last century, the world was seized by a wave of panic associated with the discovery of the AIDS virus. Humanity has felt completely unprotected in the face of a deadly disease that can occur as a result of infection with the immunodeficiency virus. The slogans of “free love” of the previous era were forgotten: now people were talking about “safe sex” more and more often, dangerous razors disappeared from hairdressers, and in medicine everything was relied on disposable.

Later it turned out, however, an interesting thing: there are people who are resistant to HIV infection. In these people, the mutation turned off the gene for the chemokine receptor, which encodes a protein that is a kind of "landing pad" for the virus. No site, no infection. Most of these people are in Northern Europe, but even there they are no more than 2-4%. And the “landing site” for the virus discovered by scientists has become the target of developed therapeutic drugs and vaccines against HIV.

Anti-AIDS - no AIDS

The most striking thing in this story is not even that, for some reason, it was in Northern Europe that a certain number of people were found who were not afraid of the "plague of the 20th century." Another thing is more interesting: the mutation, and practically with the modern frequency, was present in the genome of the Northern Europeans even ... 3000 years ago. How could this happen? After all, according to the data of modern science, the AIDS virus mutated and "moved" from African monkeys to humans no earlier than the 20s of the last century. In the form of HIV, he is not even hundreds of years old!

Peoples and genes

A population is a biological concept, and it can be studied by biological methods. The people is not necessarily a genetic unity, but is a cultural and linguistic community.
Nevertheless, it is possible to isolate populations comparable to individual ethnic groups and identify genetic differences between them. It is only necessary to understand that the differences between people within the same ethnic group will always be greater than the differences between the groups themselves: only 15 percent of the total number of differences will fall on interpopulation differences. Moreover, these differences can be harmful, neutral, and only in a certain case useful, adaptive.
If we take genetic differences over large areas, then they will line up in some geographical patterns associated, for example, with climate or the intensity of UV radiation. An interesting question is the change in skin color. In the conditions of the African ancestral home of mankind with its scorching rays of the sun, all mutations that create fair skin invariably were rejected by selection. When people left Africa, and got into geographical areas with large quantity on cloudy days and low intensity of UV radiation (for example, to the north of Europe), on the contrary, selection supported such mutations, since dark skin under such conditions prevents the production of vitamin D, which is necessary for calcium metabolism. Some peoples of the Far North, however, retained relatively dark skin, since they replenish the lack of vitamin D from venison and the liver of marine animals. In areas with varying UV intensity, another genetic mutation made it possible for the skin to develop a temporary tan.
Africa is the cradle of mankind, and the genetic differences between Africans from each other are much greater than Europeans from Asians. If you take the genetic diversity of Africa for 1000, then the rest of the world accounts for 50 of this thousand.

Obviously, the mutation of the chemokine receptor gene that once arose was fixed by selection in the northern European region, as it gave the advantage of survival against the background of the spread of some other viral infection. Its penetration into the human body occurred using a molecular mechanism similar to AIDS. What kind of infection it was is now not known exactly, but it is more or less obvious that the selection that gave an advantage to the owners of the mutation went on for thousands of years and was recorded already in the historical era. How did you manage to install it?

As already mentioned, as early as 3000 years ago, among the inhabitants of the region, the “anti-AIDS” mutation already had an almost modern frequency. But exactly the same frequency is found among Ashkenazi Jews who first settled in Germany and then migrated to neighboring areas of Central and Eastern Europe. Jews began to settle massively in Europe 2000 years ago after the defeat of the anti-Roman uprising in the 1st century AD. and the fall of Jerusalem. In addition to the Ashkenazi (Germanic) branch, there was also a southern, "Sephardic" branch, with localization mainly in Spain.

In the homeland of the Jews, in Western Asia, a mutation of the chemokine receptor gene also occurred, but with a frequency of no more than 1–2%. It remained so among the Jews who lived for generations in Asia (Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Yemen), in North Africa, as well as among the Sephardim. And only Jews living in a region close to Northern Europe acquired a locally high mutation rate. Another example is the gypsies who came from India to Europe about 1000 years ago. In their homeland, the mutation rate was no more than 1%, but now among European Gypsies it is 15%.

Of course, both in the case of Jews and in the case of gypsies, there was an influx of genes from outside due to mixed marriages. But the estimates existing in science do not allow attributing such an increase in frequency to this factor alone. Natural selection is clearly at work here.

Humanity clock

It is known that mutations in the human genome occur constantly, they work as a kind of biological clock, according to which it is possible to establish how the distant ancestors of mankind migrated: first they settled in Africa, and then, leaving their native continent, to the rest of the world, except for Antarctica. In these studies, mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down the female line, and male Y chromosomes, which are passed down the male line, are of the greatest help. Neither the gene information of mitochondria, nor the part of the genome stored in the Y-chromosome, practically participate in the recombination of genes that occurs in the sexual process, and therefore go back to the genetic texts of the foremother of mankind - "mitochondrial Eve" - ​​or some African "Adam", Y- whose chromosomes were inherited by all men on Earth. Although mtDNA and Y chromosomes did not recombine, this does not mean that they came from the ancestors unchanged. It is precisely the accumulation of mutations in these two repositories of genetic information that most reliably demonstrates the genealogy of mankind with its endless branching and settlements.

Innate Vulnerability

Obviously, there are regional populations on earth, or even an entire ethnic group, in the genome of whose representatives mutations have developed that make these people more vulnerable.
And not only when drinking alcohol, but also in the face of certain diseases. From this, the idea may arise of the possibility of creating a genetic weapon that would strike people of one race or one ethnic group, and leave representatives of others unharmed. To the question of whether this can be done in practice, modern science answers “no”. True, one can jokingly talk about milk as an ethnic weapon.
Considering that about 70% of the Chinese population suffers from a genetically predetermined lactase deficiency, and digestion is disturbed by drinking milk in most Chinese adults, it is possible to disable the PRC army by sending it to latrines, if, of course, you can find a way to give it milk to drink - More serious an example is legume intolerance among residents of a number of Mediterranean countries, which is described in the article. However, even the pollen of leguminous plants will not allow to incapacitate, say, only all Italians in a multinational crowd, and in fact it is precisely this kind of selection that is meant when they talk about fantastic projects of ethnic weapons.

However, mutations that occur in the part of the genome subject to recombination, that is, in the X chromosomes, are much more significant for humans and humanity. In the study of adaptation, more attention is paid to mutations that have arisen in the part of the genome subject to recombination - that is, all chromosomes except the Y chromosome. Moreover, the age of these mutations can also be tracked. The fact is that next to the mutated part of the DNA there are other quite recognizable sections of the chromosome (possibly bearing traces of other, older mutations).

During recombinations, fragments of parental chromosomes are mixed, however, at the first stages, the environment of the mutation of interest to us will be preserved. Then new recombinations will gradually break it up and bring new "neighbors". This process can be estimated in time and get the approximate time of occurrence of the mutation of interest to us.

Ethnogenomics data make it possible, on the basis of the history of accumulation of mutations, to trace the history of the exodus of mankind from the African ancestral home and distribution across all inhabited continents. These data at certain time intervals can be supplemented with data from linguistics and archeology.

From the point of view of an individual organism or a community in which one or another frequency of mutations is observed, mutations can be neutral or negative, or they can carry an adaptive potential. It can manifest itself not in the place of origin of the mutation, but where its effect will be most in demand and will be supported by selection. And this is one of the important reasons for the genetic diversity of peoples on the ethnological map of the world.

And this applies not only to alcohol consumption, but also to certain diseases. From this, the idea may arise of the possibility of creating a genetic weapon that would strike people of one race or one ethnic group, and leave representatives of others unharmed. To the question of whether this can be done in practice, modern science answers “no”. True, one can jokingly talk about milk as an ethnic weapon.

Sobriety mutation

In the example already given, the mutation conferring resistance to AIDS is present at low frequencies in India, the Middle East, and Southern Europe. But only in the north of Europe did its frequency rise sharply. There is another similar example - a mutation leading to alcohol intolerance. In the 1970s, when studying liver biopsy preparations from the Chinese and Japanese, it was found that representatives of these Far Eastern peoples have a very active alcohol dehydrogenase enzyme produced by the liver, which converts alcohol into acetaldehyde, a toxic substance that does not give intoxication, but poisons the body.

In principle, the processing of ethanol into acetaldehyde is a normal stage in the body's struggle with ethanol, but this stage should be followed by the second stage - the oxidation of acetaldehyde by the enzyme aldehyde dehydrogenase and the production of harmless, easily excreted components. But this second enzyme was not developed at all in the examined Japanese and Chinese. The liver quickly turned alcohol into poison, which was not excreted from the body for a long time.

Hence, instead of a “high”, a person after the first glass received a tremor in his hands, reddening of the skin of the face, nausea and dizziness. It is very unlikely that such a person could become an alcoholic.

As it turned out, the mutation that gives rise to the rejection of alcohol arose around the beginning of agriculture somewhere in the Middle East (there is still about 30% of its frequency among Arabs and Asian Jews). Then, bypassing India (through the steppes of the Black Sea and Southern Siberia), she found herself on Far East, where it was supported by selection, covering 70% of the population. Moreover, in Southeast China, its own version of the “anti-alcohol” mutation appeared, and it also spread over a large territory up to the steppes of Kazakhstan.

All this means that in the Far East there was a high demand for such a mutation among local populations, that's just ... we must remember that this happened several thousand years ago, and alcohol was practically not present in human culture. Where did the anti-alcohol genes come from?

Obviously, at one time they also came to the court as a means of combating some kind of infection, and then - lo and behold! - it so happened that in the Far and Middle East there are now many people who genetically do not accept drunkenness. This whole story, as well as the story of the AIDS resistance gene, perfectly shows that this or that mutation could in the past be supported by selection not at all according to the trait on which it was discovered in our time.

But what about Russia? In Russia, the mutation responsible for the aversion to drinking has a frequency of 4%, that is, no more than 10% of the population are its carriers. Moreover, we are talking about both mutations - both in the Middle East and in the Chinese versions. But they didn’t take root with us together, so genes can’t help us in the fight against drunkenness.

Medicine or Achilles heel?

During the Korean War, American soldiers suffering from malaria were given a drug called primaquine. The pharmacological action of this drug was to destabilize the erythrocyte membrane. The fact is that the malarial plasmodium, penetrating into the blood, “captures” the erythrocyte and develops inside it. To make it more convenient to develop, plasmodium destabilizes the erythrocyte membrane.

It was then that the primachin appeared, who literally knocked out a wedge with a wedge. He additionally "softened" the membrane, weakened by plasmodium, and it burst. Further, the causative agent of malaria could not develop, the disease receded. And what happened to the rest of the erythrocytes that were not captured by plasmodia? But nothing. The action of the drug passed, the membrane stabilized again. But this was not the case for everyone.

A number of soldiers who took primaquine died from hemolysis - the complete destruction of red blood cells. When they began to investigate the issue, it turned out the following. First, all the deceased were deficient in the enzyme glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase, which is responsible for stabilizing erythrocyte membranes, and this deficiency was due to a genetic mutation. And secondly, the soldiers who died had either African-American or Mediterranean ancestry. The mutation, as it turned out, was found only in some peoples.

Today it is known that approximately 16-20% of Italian men (women do not have this effect) are at risk of death from hemolysis, and not only after taking primaquine (which weakens the already weak membranes of red blood cells and leads to their massive death).

These people are also contraindicated in beans and some other foods and medicines that contain strong oxidants. Even the smell of bean pollen can cause a fatal reaction. The strange character of this mutation ceases to be strange when one considers that it was supported by selection precisely in the places of distribution of malaria and was a kind of "natural" primaquine.

In addition to Italy, a relatively large number of carriers of the mutation was noted in Spain, and its frequency is about 2% in North Africa and Azerbaijan. AT Soviet time even a decision was made to ban the cultivation of legumes in the Azerbaijan USSR, so frequent were cases of favism, that is, the occurrence of hemolysis from contact with beans.

Winners are everything!

The science of ethnogenomics, which has been actively developing in recent years, studies the genetic characteristics of races and ethnic groups, as can be seen at least in the examples given, is a completely applied discipline. Closely related to it is pharmacogenomics, which studies the effect of drugs on people with different genetic characteristics, including those characteristic of certain ethnic and racial groups.

Indeed, for some of them, some drugs can be harmful (for example, primaquine), and some, on the contrary, are much more effective. In addition, ethnogenomics has been of great help in drawing up a picture based on scientific data, and not on myths, of the pre-literate history of mankind and its languages.

And one of the main conclusions that we can draw today from research on ethnogenomics is that, with all the diversity of mankind, there are no grounds to talk about genetically more or less developed peoples. All living generations are champions of life, because their ancestors managed to survive the harsh whims of nature, epidemics, long migrations and give a future to their offspring. And genetic diversity is just a memory of exactly what biological mechanisms different parts of humanity managed to adapt, survive and win.

S. Drobyshevsky: You understand everything correctly! There are no "Caucasoid" or "Negroid" haplogroups in nature at all. Races were distinguished by the external signs of modern people. Haplogroups are variants of genes that are found in different morphological races with different frequencies. It's just that some geneticists tend to either simplify the recording, or do not understand what they themselves write. When a haplogroup is FREQUENTLY found among Caucasians, geneticists call it "Caucasoid". When it is often found among some peoples, they can easily call it "Turkic", "Indo-European" or "Finno-Ugric". And this is completely nonsense, because linguistics is not directly related to races and genes at all. But this is convenient. In short, than to say: "a haplogroup that is most common among representatives of peoples who speak languages ​​of the Ugric linguistic family compared to representatives of other peoples." If a haplogroup is found in Central Africa, this means that it exists there and is just as "Negroid" as it is "Caucasoid". And here you can weave some kind of migration in both directions. And even more so nonsense - to attribute to the carriers of a certain haplogroup a certain specific skin color! Skin color is determined by the mass of genes that have their own history. Now in Africa, the carriers of this haplogroup are black, why then did the haplogroup have to be brought by white people? And if the pre-Holocene movement of haplogroup carriers is somehow proven, it’s stupid to talk about skin color, because we don’t really know what it was then. Before the Holocene, there were no Caucasoids at all in the modern version, this has been no secret for 50-60 years. With the same success, one can speak of the migrations of the Slavs in the Middle Paleolithic. Some people say though...

Letter to the Editor: Are black South Asians Australoids? Or are Australoids only Blacks, Melanesians and Australian Aborigines, and South Asians are closest to Caucasians?

S.D.: Are black South Asians Vietnamese with Javanese? Or Dayaks with Bajao? Or semangs with aets? It's not all the same. If the Vietnamese are with the Javanese, then they belong to the South Asian race of Mongoloids and are not much closer to the Caucasians than the same Melanesians; but then they themselves are not Australoids. If the Dayaks are from the Bajao, then they are classically classified as Veddoids, although I personally have great doubts in this regard, but in any case they will be representatives of the variant of the eastern equatorials with some admixture of the South Asian race; they will belong to Australoids in a broad sense (synonyms - Eastern Equatorians, Australo-Melanesoids), but not to Australoids in a narrow sense (these are only Australian Aborigines). If you meant the Semangs, Aeta and Andamans, then these are the Negritos you mentioned, which definitely belong to the Australoids in a broad sense. None of the aforementioned is any closer to Europeans. Closer to Caucasians are African Negroes, representatives of the Ural race and part of the Western Mongoloids mixed with Caucasians - people of the South Siberian race.

Mr_Bison (forum paleo.ru) : Is it possible to say that the mixing of races in the genetic plan does not have harmful consequences for the offspring and are there any exceptions (pygmies?)?

S.D.: We can absolutely say that there are no harmful effects. This has been tested and retested a hundred times, in terms of incidence of disease, mental disorders, fertility, children's performance in school, and so on. Moreover, the most diverse mestizos were studied: Negro-European of various spills, Polynesian-Japanese-European, Japanese-Negro, Bushman-European, Mongoloid-European, Australian-European, Russian-Buryat, Russian-Kazakh, and so on and so forth. Now, in general, a GOOD percentage of the world's population is mestizos of various options. More than half of the population of Central and South America, for example. Almost all Mexicans. But the pygmies are just very weakly miscegenated. It is from them that the flow of genes goes to blacks, and no one goes to live with pygmies. Mestizos of blacks and pygmies are quite normal, this is a considerable percentage of the population of Central Africa.

The fact is that races differ from each other very weakly, mainly by external signs, but not even at the level of subspecies. Actually, the difference between races and subspecies is that subspecies are usually well isolated from each other, and races are not isolated at all, there are always transitional options. And always, at all times, mixing went on. Therefore, there are no harmful effects. Not so long ago, races arose and were never separated by sharp barriers.

Svetlana Borinskaya: There may be various effects. I didn’t look at the article on interracial offspring - you can ask anthropologists, but fellow geneticists have data on interethnic marriages. Children from interethnic marriages in Moscow (it is necessary to look in more detail - these are the old works of Yu.P. Altukhov) at birth had, on average, lower health indicators. According to the distribution, for example, of weight, they more often fell not in the middle of the bell-shaped weight distribution curve (which is optimal), but at the edges. The descendants of Russians and Selkups, on average, had higher cholesterol levels than Russians or Selkups (works by M.I. Voevoda, it seems). Causes can be either genetic Parents are adapted to different environmental conditions, but to what will the child be adapted?), and social - in interethnic marriages in Moscow, at least one spouse was most likely a visitor, and visitors may have less favorable social conditions.

Mr_Bison: Could you name as an example some differences in the phenotype of races that are not adaptive, but are caused, say, by the bottleneck effect and / or random mutations? Do these maladaptive differences prevail over adaptive ones?

S.D.: Blonde hair in many groups is such an example. Light hair color does not seem to be adaptive or very weakly adaptive. A has arisen many times independently: in northern Europe, in the North Caucasus, among the Kabils in the Atlas Mountains, among the inhabitants of the Hindu Kush, among the Melanesians of the Solomon Islands, among the natives of Central and Northern Australia. Most likely, this lightening is due precisely to the bottleneck effect on the scale of small isolated populations.

The epicanthus probably also arose - the version that it protects the eye from dust, although widespread, does not stand up to criticism (a lot of groups live in dusty places without epicanthus - Bedouins, Arabs and Australians, for example - and the Mongoloids did not originate at all in dusty places).

The shape of the bridge of the nose is most likely also from this series, although it may be affected by sexual selection.

It's hard to say which prevails. On the one hand, we may not know the adaptive value, on the other hand, we generally represent a distinct adaptive value for a very small number of features. In addition, one does not interfere with the other: the value may be so weak that the statistical effects of changing gene frequencies may outweigh this value. In general, it is difficult to count the signs. Is hair color considered as one trait or several, given that even black is coded differently in the genome of different people? Such calculations will by definition be speculative.

S.B.: There are a lot of genetic neutral differences between races. For example, the same mtDNA haplogroups or Y - (for individual haplogroups, a connection with adaptive traits was assumed, but, it seems, has not been proven).

Mr_Bison: Is it possible to say that when mixing races, the health of the offspring should rather increase, ceteris paribus, rather than decrease, since the probability of the transition of harmful recessive genes characteristic of each race to a homozygous state and a heterozygous advantage (like the HbSHbS mutation protecting against malaria or CFTR protecting against cholera) has now almost lost its role while its harmful side effects in the homozygous state remained?

S.B.: It is forbidden. According to the signs of HbS, most of the representatives of the groups where malaria was rampant are heterozygous without additional efforts. At the population level, interracial or interethnic marriages are not essential to reduce the frequency of homozygotes (their 1%-2% is not essential for the survival of the population, although it is essential for a separate family in which a sick child can be born).

There are many such works. For example,

Genetic structure of human populations.

Rosenberg NA, Pritchard JK, Weber JL, Cann HM, Kidd KK, Zhivotovsky

Within-population differences among individuals account for 93 to 95%

of genetic variation; differences among major groups constitute only 3

Mr_Bison: I have seen many times on the Internet the statement that the genetic distance between large races does not exceed 0.03 according to Masatoshi Nei, but unfortunately I have not found a reliable source. Forum posts only. Is it true? And is, as a rule, the genetic distance between subspecies according to Ney 0.17-0.22?

S.B.: There are many such works. For example, Genetic structure of human populations. Rosenberg NA, Pritchard JK, Weber JL, Cann HM, Kidd KK, Zhivotovsky LA, Feldman MW. Science. 2002 Dec 20;298(5602):2381-5: Within-population differences among individuals account for 93 to 95%of genetic variation; differences among major groups constitute only 3 to 5%.

Mr_Bison: Do I understand correctly that it is still impossible to talk about the effect of heterosis (an increase in the viability of hybrids) when different races are mixed, since the races are too genetically close to each other?

S.B.: It is correct that the effect of heterosis in relation to interracial or interethnic marriages does not apply. Wrong description of reasons. What is important is not the label of race or nationality, but the fact that living in an environment to which a person is not adapted has harmful consequences for offspring. And it is usually adapted to the conditions in which its ancestors lived. Representatives of different races (or ethnic groups) were adapted to different environments. The consequences for the offspring depend on how different the living environment is from the one to which the ancestors who passed on the genes are adapted.

For example, in Europeans, the e4 allele of the apolipoprotein E gene is associated with increased level cholesterol and occurs with a frequency of 5% to 15%. In Africans (allele frequency up to 40%), the e4 allele does not increase cholesterol levels, while in African Americans, cholesterol is elevated, but less than in Europeans.

In fact, over the past 10,000 years, most people began to live in conditions that their ancestors were not adapted to - they ceased to be hunter-gatherers. Genetic changes have taken place, but environmental changes have not kept pace - the environment changes faster than genes. See the lean gene hypothesis in Genes and Diet Traditions. In interracial or interethnic marriages, a child may receive both the advantages of both parents and maladaptive traits. Therefore, from the point of view of genetics, the only question is that the habitat and lifestyle correspond to the genotype.

Vasily (letter to the Editor; style saved): AND COULD YOU ANSWER THE QUESTION. CRO-Magnons AND THEIR EASTERN CONTEMPORARY PEOPLE FROM PSHEDOMOSTI DISENT OR THEIR GENES ARE IN MODERN EUROPEANS AND WHAT PEOPLES ARE LIKE THEM. AND HOW THEY DIED IF PEOPLE LIVE NOW AS LIKE THEM ARE MORE PRIMITIVE IN THE STRUCTURE OF THE SKULL. AUSTRALIANS FOR EXAMPLE.

S.D.: The question of the succession of the Upper Paleolithic European Cro-Magnons and modern Europeans has two versions of the solution. Anthropology shows that the Cro-Magnons are quite suitable for the ancestors of the Mesolithic Europeans, and the latter - the Neolithic, and those - modern people. Moreover, many modern groups in Europe do not fundamentally differ from the Cro-Magnons and, apparently, are their more or less direct descendants - groups in Northern Europe, England, the Balkans, the Caucasus (taking into account all sorts of migrations and mixing, of course). But genetic data give two versions. According to one, about 95% of modern Europeans are the descendants of the Cro-Magnons, the remaining 5% are the descendants of the Neolithic settlers from the Middle East, who brought agriculture, which the "Cro-Magnons" mastered. Surprisingly, different calculations, other geneticists show that 95% of modern Europeans are the descendants of Neolithic settlers from the Middle East who brought agriculture, and the remaining 5% are the descendants of the Cro-Magnons, whom advanced migrants completely displaced. How to understand such a difference in calculations is a question for geneticists. It seems that the approach itself with the calculation of the percentage of local and migrants is erroneous. Migration was not one and did not occur simultaneously, some of the genes were originally common, some disappeared due to all sorts of gene drifts, some changed a lot. The problem is that geneticists analyze only modern DNA (and then - what samples do they have ??? did they look at everyone ???), and draw conclusions about the Paleolithic and Neolithic. And this is wrong.

The question - which peoples are similar to Cro-Magnons, does not make sense, because peoples are determined by social characteristics, and now no one hunts mammoths and does not sprinkle burials with ocher. Anthropologically similar are many groups (NOT PEOPLES!), mostly on the periphery of Europe, which is logical in a way. But a complete set of Cro-Magnon traits is not now found in Europe, except in an individual case. It is clear that in 20 thousand years everything has been mixed up and changed several times, it would be strange to look for Cro-Magnons, even if Europe were an isolated island like Tasmania.

Australians are not more primitive than Cro-Magnons in terms of skull structure. What exactly is primitiveness? In a smaller brain? Then the Europeans are more primitive than the Cro-Magnons. In a strong development of the brow? Among the Cro-Magnons, it was also not weak. Large teeth? The Cro-Magnons have no less. Primitiveness is generally determined by proximity to the ancestral state. The Australians are no closer to any Heidelbrians than the European Cro-Magnons. In general, the question of how the Cro-Magnons died out, if anyone is more primitive than them, seems strange. First, who said that the Cro-Magnons are extinct? Secondly, how could the population of Australia prevent or help some group in Europe become extinct? Globalization of the Stone Age? Tritons, coelacanths, all sorts of foraminifers live now, and now they do not die out because we are still on the planet. And here the level difference is much greater.

Question to Svetlana Borinskaya from the Editorial Board of the portal ANTROPOGENESIS.RU: On October 8, a film with the odious title "Genetics vs. Darwin" is released on the Russia-1 channel. In the announcement of the film, among several well-known surnames, your ...

It was I who once, in some corridor, when asked to comment on the considerations of some freak (that monkeys descended from humans), replied that this was complete nonsense.

I was not informed that my interview would be included in a film called "Genetics vs. Darwin". Naturally, I am not against Darwin. I am against scammers on TV.

The genetic basis of skin pigmentation also has a very important race-delimiting function. V. A. Spitsyn writes in this regard: “It is known that a thick layer of melanin in dark-skinned races, preventing ultraviolet rays from penetrating into the deeper layers of the skin, creates the basis for rickets. This explains the presence of a compensatory mechanism, which is expressed in the fact that people living in the tropics have abundant secretions of sebaceous glands, much larger than those of Europeans.

In Caucasians, the frequency of the gene (Gc) should not exceed 10%, while in blacks it exceeds 30%. It is the frequency of this gene that is associated with the characteristic Negro smell ...

The most important conclusion of V. A. Spitsyn is as follows: “There is no data on the relationship between climatic and geographical factors and the distribution of Gm factors.” This suggests that racial traits are non-adaptive in nature, the environment does not have any influence on them at all. The color of eyes, hair, skin, etc., is not the result of a person's adaptation to the appropriate environmental conditions, but rather genetic ornaments that nature distributed to different races, based on the natural principle "to each his own."

The latter conclusion is in excellent agreement with both direct observations (for more than 400 years of the history of African-American blacks, there are still no known cases of their whitening due to climate change; the white descendants of Dutch settlers, the Boers of South Africa, have not turned black either), and with the theory of lithospheric catastrophes , which is discussed below. It should also be noted that the average annual temperature and the number of sunny days per year change in the same way as you move away from the equator, regardless of whether the North or to South Pole, however, black individuals live mainly in Africa, and not at all wherever the sun shines and warms just as brightly and strongly. The Negroids did not form either in Central or South America, or in the overwhelming part of Asia, and, moreover, in parts of Europe equidistant from the equator. If we talk about the southern tip of Africa, originally also inhabited by blacks, then even more so on no continent of the northern hemisphere of the Earth, we will not find natural Negroids in the corresponding climatic zones. This allows us to reject once and for all the hypothesis of the "blackening" of the Negroid race due to exposure to sunlight as unscientific.

V. A. Spitsyn also emphasizes: “Each of the largest races has a characteristic gene complex of gammaglobulins and alkaline phosphatase of the placenta, peculiar only to it alone.”

In general, serology, that is, the science of blood groups, reliably presents us with a number of racial diagnostic markers: it has been proven, for example, that the polygenic hereditary factors of serum proteins are specifically distributed at the level of large races. Encyclopedia "Peoples of Russia" (M., 1994) fixes: "According to the systems of immunoglobulins that provide a protective reaction against various diseases and transferrins that ensure the normal circulation of iron ions in the blood stream, large human races are clearly distinguished."

So, people of different races and nationalities differ in protein structures, the biochemical composition of the immune system and the electromagnetic properties of blood. No less rigorous and reliable information about the race of a person is also provided by the biochemical composition of earwax.

In their joint work The Teaching of Human Heredity (1936), E. Baur, O. Fischer and F. Lenz stated: “Racial differences mainly depend on differences in internal secretion. The constitution of the body, intellectual and mental characteristics and other racial characteristics are determined by them. Today, without denying the significance of internal secretion for racial diagnosis, scientists prefer to talk about the correlation of markers. This thesis can be illustrated by a quote from the article by M. G. Abdushelishvili and V. P. Volkov-Dubrovin “On the correlation of racial and morphophysiological characteristics” (Problems of Anthropology. Issue 52, 1976): “There is a known relationship between skin color and some physiological characteristics. The fairest ones have slowed blood flow and the highest mineral saturation of bone tissue, while the darkest skinned ones have significantly lower skeletal mineralization and faster blood flow.

The development of the biochemical theme has already led us pages above to the data on the invariable difference between races presented by science. genetics interpreting the problem of heredity. It was in the field of this science (within the framework of the so-called "mitochondrial" theory) that an attempt was made at the end of the 20th - beginning of the 21st century to refute the obvious: racial differences between people. They tried to convince us that white, yellow, black - all people consist of one building material, and therefore they are a single whole. Simply, they tried to hide the forest behind the trees. These conjectures were immediately seized upon by supporters of the theory of monogenism, who tried to impose on the public consciousness the idea of ​​​​our common foremother - “black Eve”, from which (in the bowels of Central Africa), supposedly, all of humanity in general originated. After that, some of the descendants of this Eve migrated to the North, where everyone turned white without exception, and others - to the East, where they also turned yellow and numb.

As will be irrefutably seen from what follows, the results of conscientious genetic research lead to completely different conclusions.

The outstanding Soviet biologist I. I. Shmalgauzen, in his program book “Cybernetic Questions of Biology” (Moscow, 1968), brilliantly developed the postulates of racial theory directed against vulgar Lamarckism: “The hereditary code is protected by the nuclear membrane and the regulatory mechanisms of the cell and the whole organism as a whole from the direct influence of external factors. Inheritance of traits acquired during the life of an individual is virtually impossible, since this “acquisition” concerns only the transformation of information in a given individual and dies with it. The hereditary material was not affected by this transformation and remained unchanged. At the same time, it is emphasized that mutations, the role of which geneticists are so fond of discussing, are in fact of a random nature, in addition, there is no freedom of mutations, because they are possible only within certain boundaries set by hereditary racial traits ...

Thus, it turns out that it is not the removal of racial characteristics in the process of evolution that is an adaptive factor, but, on the contrary, their strengthening and consolidation. In the process of evolution, racial traits are a kind of adaptive toolkit, "evolutionary equipment", without which the biological development of a race is not possible. Racial traits are, both physically and mentally, the genetic “knots of strength” on which the entire structure of a person rests. Without them, degeneration and decay are inevitable.

The 1st international conference "Race: myth or reality?", held in Moscow from October 7 to 9, 1998 under the auspices of the Russian branch of the European Anthropological Association and with the support of numerous international and domestic specialized scientific institutions, provided a platform for geneticists .

In a collective study entitled "A new DNA marker as a racial diagnostic feature", the material for obtaining a new genetic marker CAcf685 on the 19th chromosome is analyzed, on the basis of which the value of the genetic distance Gst between Caucasoids and Mongoloids (in this case, the Chukchi) is estimated as sixfold. This marker is recognized as valuable in racial diagnostic terms.

The keynote speech of one of the best Russian geneticists Yu. G. Rychkov "Genetic foundations of the stability and variability of races" was devoted to the same topic. His report was a summary of many years of theoretical and practical research. In it, he said that despite the fact that human genetics has been at odds with anthropology for the past 35 years, nevertheless, molecular genetics is discovering more and more "so-called DNA markers that can be considered markers of racial differences."

The report of the well-known molecular biologist V. A. Spitsyn “The effectiveness of different categories of genetic markers in differentiating large anthropological communities” was devoted to the analysis of these new racial diagnostic markers.

S. A. Limborskaya, O. P. Balanovsky, S. D. Nurbaev in the collective work “Molecular genetic polymorphism in the study of population: the genogeography of Eastern Europe” speak of the great success achieved recently in deciphering the DNA of the human genome. “In the course of this work, a large number of highly polymorphic DNA markers suitable for population genetic studies were discovered. By studying living populations with the help of these markers, it is possible to obtain information about their genetic history and, in some cases, to date - with varying probability - important events related to the origin of man, his races, and human settlement on a global scale. The results of the analysis of the racially complex region of Eastern Europe indicate the high resolution of DNA markers in the analysis of the gene pool.”

Based on the results of the named conference, a program document “The Problem of Race in Russian Physical Anthropology” (M., 2002) was published, which may well be considered as the official position of Russian anthropological science. So, in particular, E. V. Balanovskaya pointed out in her report included in general edition, the following: "The objective classification of individual genotypes by DNA markers almost completely corresponds to racial classification." It was also supported by G. L. Hit, in turn, pointing out that each of the major racial groups of humanity has a unique combination of certain frequencies of key features inherent only to it. E. 3. Godina emphasized: "The main racial differences are largely formed already in the prenatal period."

The title of the book by A.F. Nazarova and S.M. Altukhov "Genetic portrait of the peoples of the world" (M., 1999) also speaks for itself, because it gives a detailed description of the frequencies of genes in all major and even many relict populations of mankind. And the leading domestic anthropologists A. A. Zubov and N. I. Khaldeeva in their joint article from the collection with the characteristic title “Race and racism. History and Modernity" (M., 1991) give the following conclusion: "It means "type", i.e., the characteristic sum of genetic and morphophysiological features that mark certain groups within a species, is a very real phenomenon, and therefore, deserving of research."

Not only Russian geneticists stand on the positions of racial distinction: it is the famous “Table of Genetic and Linguistic Distances between Nations” by the American geneticist L. Cavalli-Sforza that finally illustrates the objectivity of differences between biotypes. And his colleague J. Neal states that at present any individual can be attributed to one or another well-studied large ethnic community with an accuracy of 87%.

In a word, under the influence of new discoveries, as well as as a result of strict scientific criticism of the so-called. "mitochondrial" genetic theory, half a century of confrontation between "population geneticists" on the one hand and anthropologists and racologists on the other ends today. The existence of the great primordial races is no longer seriously disputed. After 130 years, in the course of intense research work of hundreds of scientists and fierce discussions of supporters and opponents of racology, the scientific community has finally matured, fully armed with arguments, to a simple conclusion made by I. I. Mechnikov back in 1878: “The differences between large human groups, peoples and races are so large and obvious that I even consider it superfluous to dwell on it.

Patterns on the skin are visible, but invisible to the naked eye when meeting a person. It takes effort to see them. As for the genes and blood molecules or earwax, they cannot be seen at all without an electron microscope. But in the human body there are signs that are easily noticeable to anyone: the shape of the head and body, facial features, the color of the skin, eyes, hair, etc. They testify, first of all, to the race of a person. And, of course, they have been studied since the earliest days of racial science.

Skull, brain, face and more

IMPORTANCE of turtle science data - craniology- is absolutely indisputable. Another of the most recognized authorities of the Italian anthropological school, Giuseppe Sergi, in the monograph “Types and Varieties of the Human Race” (1900) wrote: “The skull is most important for classification. One skull can distinguish between ethnic elements that make up mixed groups. Primary classification is possible even according to one stable feature. The most stable brain and facial parts of the skull. From the most ancient times to our time, no new forms of skulls have appeared.

The classical school of anthropology by J. F. Blumenbach (1752–1840) found that it is the development of the brain that determines the formation of the human skull, but not vice versa. Its representative S. T. Sommering (1755-1830) wrote: "It must be assumed that nature forms the cranial bones so that they can adapt to the brain, but not vice versa." Much later, the famous Soviet geneticist N. P. Dubinin in the book “What is a person?” (M., 1983) outlined a similar set of ideas: “The human brain has genetically determined properties. For the normal development of the brain, a normal genetic program is needed. It has been proven that 5/6 of the human brain is formed after birth. Anthropological collection "Problems of the evolutionary morphology of man and his races" (M., 1986) does not leave any ambiguity in this matter: V.P. : "In the pair" brain - cranium "the brain was the leader". Therefore, it is so important to know and correctly interpret the racial differences of the skull in the dynamics of their age development.

Let's dwell on the most noticeable and relevant of them, and these are, first of all, the cranial sutures. Due to the extreme importance of the specificity of the overgrowing of the skull sutures in representatives of different races, as well as the clarity and indisputability of this racial diagnostic feature in the study of sociocultural processes, Professor V.N. Zvyagin even suggested using a special name - suturology- the science of the study of patterns of cranial sutures.

And that's what this science reveals.

Russian craniologist D. N. Anuchin (the Institute of Anthropology of the Russian Academy of Sciences bears his name) in his work “On some anomalies of the human skull and mainly on their distribution by race” (M., 1880) dwelled in detail on pterion- a small area of ​​​​the surface of the skull, on each of the sides of which, in the temporal fossa, four bones converge: frontal, parietal, temporal and main. This area is a good racial diagnostic marker, because different types of its anomalies in terms of frequency in large human races have a difference of 4–8 times. A prominent German anthropologist of the same time, Georg Buschan, confirmed all the conclusions of D. N. Anuchin regarding the racial delimiting function of the pterion site. He pointed out: “Pterion is a zone of connection of the temporal, frontal, parietal and sphenoid (basic) bones. Usually upper edge the large wing of the main bone reaches the anterior-lower edge of the parietal bone, separating the temporal bone from the frontal; the seams present here then form a figure in the genus of the letter "H". But occasionally it happens that a process extends forward from the anterior edge of the temporal bone, connecting with a suture to the frontal bone. In higher races, this process is very rare. Among Europeans in 1.6%, among Mongols and Malays in 3.7%, among lower races, on the contrary, it is relatively frequent, so among the black race up to 13%, among Australians up to 15.6%, among Papuans up to 8.6% . This attitude suggests that the connection of the temporal bone with the frontal by means of a process should be considered as a lower (pithecoid) formation, and this is all the more so since we meet it constantly in the gorilla, chimpanzee and most other monkeys.

Eugen Fischer also wrote: “Sometimes there is a connective bone between these four bones that form the region of the pterion. In the lower races, the frontal bone and the temporal bone come into contact much more frequently than in the higher races. We observe this, for example, in Europeans - 1.5% of cases, in Mongols - in 3.8%, in Australians - in 9%, in blacks - in 11.8%, in gibbons - in 13.7%, in orangutans - 33.6%, chimpanzees - 77%, gorillas - 100%. Undoubtedly, the presence of the frontotemporal suture depends to a large extent on the relative size of the brain. The more the brain expands the skull, the more the frontal and temporal bones will diverge, the less often they will be able to connect into a seam.

The next, even more important marker, according to Anuchin, is metopism(a seam formed at the junction of the two halves of the frontal bone). Avdeev states the importance of this indicator as follows: “This frontal suture overgrows in most newborn babies, but in some individuals it persists for life. It is precisely this anomaly of the skull that is an excellent racial diagnostic and, as a result, sociocultural marker. It is the frontal lobes of the brain, which are responsible for the highest manifestations of the human psyche and intellect, that in some individuals during the initial phase of growth exert increased pressure on the corresponding sections of the frontal bone, pushing them apart, which, in turn, causes the appearance of a frontal suture called metopism. According to Anuchin's observations, metopic, that is, with a frontal suture, skulls have a capacity of 3-5% more than ordinary ones.

Further, analyzing the frequency of occurrence of metopism in different races and peoples, he draws the following conclusion: “The table of observational results shows that the frontal suture is much more common among Europeans than among other races. While for the various series of European skulls the percentage of metopism is found to vary from 16 to 5, the series of skulls of the lower races in most cases only 3.5-0.6 percent. A certain correlation seems to exist between the inclination towards metopism and the intelligence of a race. We see, for example, that in many races the more intelligent tribes represent a greater percentage of metopic sutures. Among the highest representatives of the Mongolian and white races, it is expressed in a figure at least 8-9 times greater than among the Australians and Negroes.

Subsequently, on the basis of statistical data, a generalization was made, according to which individuals with a preserved frontal suture have larger brain mass, and this increase is not only absolute, but also relative, that is, not associated with an increase in body size. Preservation of the frontal suture, in turn, affected the higher level of mental and intellectual abilities of these individuals.

Of particular importance for the development of the question of metopism works of Russian scientists. An article by V. V. Maslovsky, published in the Russian Anthropological Journal for 1926, volume 15, no. 1-2, bears the special title "On Metopism". In it, the author, developing the ideas of Anuchin, writes: “Thus, the phenomenon of preserving the frontal suture in a person can be viewed as a phenomenon associated with the improvement of his organization. Such a dissection of the skull into paired frontal bones is a favorable factor both for the contents of the skull and for itself. The growth of the latter in various directions occurs due to the presence of sutures "... Finally, such a luminary of anthropology as V.V. Bunak in the article "On the crests on the skull of primates" (Russian Anthropological Journal, volume 12: book 3-4, 1922) wrote: " An abnormal frontal suture in humans is observed more often in cultural races, which is associated with an increase in the brain and its increasing pressure on the frontal bone "...

Among foreign scientists involved in the anomalies of the skull in the context of racial systematics, it is necessary to highlight the following names: Georges Papillot (1863-?), Georg Bouchand (1863-1942), Marciano Limson (1893-?), Wenzel Leopold Gruber (1814-1890), Johann Ranke ( 1836-1916), Hermann Welker (1822-1897), Josef Girtl (1811-1894), Paolo Mantegazza (1831-1910). The famous Swedish anthropologist and anatomist, Professor of Stockholm University Wilhelm Lehe in his book “Man, His Origin and Evolutionary Development” (M., 1913), summing up numerous studies in different countries in the field of anomalies of the sutures of the skull, gave such a clear and detailed summary: “ ... That the preservation of the frontal suture is indeed usually a criterion of mental superiority must follow from the fact that skulls with this feature are more common among civilized peoples than among savages. In this regard, I want to mention that so far no great ape skull has been described with a preserved frontal suture. George Bushan in his famous book The Science of Man (Moscow, 1911) emphasized: “Metopism is the property of the higher races. Metopic skulls have a greater weight, a more complex structure of the sutures, and a longer non-overgrowth of the sutures. The lower races give a smaller percentage of such skulls than the higher, the so-called cultured peoples.

Another master of classical German anthropology, who specialized precisely in the field of comparative morphology, Eugen Fischer, in his fundamental textbook Anthropology (1923) pointed out: “Racial differences in the frequency of metopism are associated with different brain capacities. We meet it, for example, among the Germans - 12.5% ​​of cases, on the skulls found in Pompeii - in 10.5%, among the ancient Egyptians - in 7%, among Negroes - in 1% of cases.

The Spanish scientist Juan Comas, in his dissertation “On the study of metopism” (1942), testified in exactly the same spirit: “Anuchin was one of the first to put forward a hypothesis about a direct connection between metopism and intelligence, that is, the trait is more common in higher races and, therefore, its can be considered a feature of progressive evolution, indicating the tendency of an organism to modify its usual type of skull.

The well-known German anthropologist Karl Vogt, in his book Man and His Place in Nature (St. Petersburg, 1866), summarizing the data of contemporary science, stated: the anterior sutures, frontal and coronal, like in a monkey, fuse very early, much earlier than the posterior ones, while in the white man the order of fusion of the sutures is completely reversed. If so, then there is no particular boldness in suggesting that in the brain of a Negro there may be the same simian course of development that is proved in his skull.

Another well-known German anthropologist Robert Wiedersheim later confirmed this point of view, emphasizing in his book “The structure of man from a comparative anatomical point of view” (M., 1900): “Graziola showed that the seams in higher races disappear in a different sequence than in lower . In the latter, like in monkeys, the process always begins in front, from the frontal region of the skull, that is, on the border of the frontal and parietal bones, and from here it goes back. Needless to say, this is reflected in the early formation of the anterior lobes of the brain, which in the higher (white) races, where the fronto-parietal suture is obliterated after the occipital-parietal suture, can develop even further. This must be put in connection with the mental difference of the tribes.

Complete the topic of cranial sutures- the subject of suturology - we can quote from the monograph “A New Theory of the Origin of Man and His Degeneration” (Warsaw, 1907) by the largest Russian racologist V.A. capable of learning and as intelligent as a white man. But as soon as the fatal period of manhood sets in, then, together with the fusion of the cranial sutures and protrusion of the jaws, the same process is observed in them as in monkeys: the individual becomes incapable of development. The critical period, when the brain begins to decline, occurs much earlier in the Negro than in the white, and this is evidenced by the earlier fusion of the sutures of the skull in the Negro.

But the story about cranial sutures will be incomplete if we do not once again emphasize the importance of this parameter as a racial diagnostic feature. The book by A. G. Kozintsev “Ethnic cranioscopy. Racial variability of the sutures of the skull of modern man” (Leningrad, 1988). Unlike liberal biased anthropologists, who are only busy with “erasing” and “removing” racial features, A. G. Kozintsev sees the goal of his work in the exact opposite: “The polymorphism of some features allows you to change the traditional course of research, rebuilding, and even creating morphological schemes with a special calculation for increasing the effectiveness of race differentiation and, in some cases, for reducing the role of other factors, in particular age.

Analyzing the results of practical research, the author of the monograph states that the frequency of the race-delimiting feature in the bones occipital-mastoid suture for Caucasians it averages 6.4%, and for Mongoloids - 16.6%. Based on morphologically close occipital index (OI) racial differences are even more pronounced. So, for Caucasoids, the frequency of this feature is 8.4%, and for Mongoloids - 48.5%. The occipital index of the second order (ZI II) also effectively helps to distinguish between races: 2.8% for Caucasians and 13.4% for Mongoloids. “When considering the values ​​of the occipital index (SI) and (SI II), one gets the impression that the trait “works” only at the level of large races. No regularities in the distribution of frequencies within the Caucasoid and Mongoloid complexes can be identified.”

A. G. Kozintsev writes further: “We have analyzed about 30 signs related to the sutures of the skull, and identified six main, most valuable. Caucasoid and Mongoloid races, as we remember, differ in all the main features. For a total quantitative assessment of these differences, the author of the book introduces a special Mongoloid-Caucasoid index (MEI). In Caucasoid populations, it ranges from 13 to 39, and in Mongoloids from 54 to 82.5.

Representatives of the Nordic race are also easily distinguished from other Caucasians with the help of North European Index (NEI). "The value of both indicators (MEI) and (SEI) in northern Europeans is higher than in southern ones." The clear and reasoned conclusion given by A. G. Kozintsev in the book leaves no room for misunderstandings and speculations. “Racial indexes are a simple but effective means of analysis. Five features - the occipital index, the sphenomaxillary suture, the posterior zygomatic suture, the complexity index of the infraorbital pattern, and the index of the transverse palatal suture - serve primarily to distinguish between Caucasoids and Mongoloids. Combinations of features have greater delimiting power than individual features. The Mongoloid-Caucasoid Index (MEI) and the First Principal Component (GC I) are extremely effective in separating Mongoloids and Caucasoids. Differentiation within the Caucasoid race can be traced with the help of the Northern European Index (NEI) and the second main component (II GC).

Beyond the seams, in the structure of the human skull is noticeable many other racial diagnostic markers with a good discriminant effect. The prominent German anthropologist Robert Wiedersheim wrote in this regard: The nasal bones, which usually remain separate, sometimes fuse into one bone., and this is much more common in the lower races than in the higher ones. Since such fusion is normal for monkeys, we probably have one of the atavistic phenomena in it in humans. In chimpanzees, it occurs already in the second year of life.

Let us briefly point out other parameters of the skull that are essential for the differentiation and diagnosis of races.

Infraorbital Pattern Complexity Index (ISPU) possesses the greatest separation power. For Caucasoids, it is 38.0, and for Mongoloids - 57.9. And this is natural, because the eyes of different races have different mounting equipment. This feature also "works" at the level of large races. Peoples, nations, ethnic groups and tribes are indeed the result of a later historical process, but the gigantic abyss of irreducible racial differences testifies in favor of the prehistoric, namely, the biological nature of their origin.

A.P. Pestryakov in the article “Differentiation of the large Mongoloid race according to the data of the generalized total dimensions of the cranium” (in: Historical dynamics of racial and ethnic differentiation of the population of Asia. - M., 1987) wittily notes that the size of the brain is a “biological birthmark on the body of a race." Further, the author develops his idea: “It is necessary to stipulate the well-known scientific fact that there is a so-called "brain rubicon", i.e., the minimum, but sufficiently large, necessary volume of the brain, starting from which its carrier - a person - can function as a social being. The average group size of the cranium can be an important parameter in the study of the racial history of mankind ”... A.P. Pestryakov, on the basis of material completely different from that of other authors, comes to the same conclusion that according to the size of the cranial capsule Caucasoids vary least of all and Mongoloids are most polymorphic, which indicates their "possible racial heterogeneity." The scatter of signs in the latter is 2–2.5 times greater than in Caucasians, while in Negroids and American Indians it is 1.5–2 times greater than in the Caucasian race. From which we can make a legitimate conclusion that of all the large races - Caucasians - the most homogeneous. "We are studying generalized quantitative characteristics of the cranium are more stable over time than most descriptive racial-morphological characters. From this statement of the author of the article follows the conclusion that racial characteristics, especially as important as the size of the brain, are indeed a "birthmark" that cannot be washed off in the process. historical development, as the charlatans from science want. “The proposed parameters can serve as good anthropological markers in the study of ethnogenetic processes. An analysis of the values ​​of generalized parameters in craniological series allows us to distinguish racial filiation, as well as inclusions that are foreign from a craniological point of view.”

In this regard, any racial parameters of the skull in general, of which there are many, are of particular interest.

For example, in an article on racial craniology: "World distribution occipito-parietal index» Yu. D. Benevolenskaya compares the average value of this indicator for the main races:

Caucasians - 91.6

Mongoloids - 96.6

Caucasians - 0.738

Mongoloids - 0.581

Negroids have 0.706.

There is a common, unsupported opinion that Caucasoids are anthropologically closer to Mongoloids than to Negroids, but this indicator clearly shows the depth of the difference between the first and second - 27%.

"The Caucasoid series show less dispersion than the Mongoloid series and a closer intergroup relationship with the vertical-longitudinal index." In general, this suggests that Mongoloids are less racially homogeneous than Caucasians.

In the collection "Historical dynamics of racial and ethnic differentiation of the population of Asia" (M., 1987) Yu. D. Benevolenskaya in the article "Racial differentiation in Asia (according to the structure of the frontal skull)" based on a study fronto-sagittal index(LSI) also speaks of "the greatest consolidation of Caucasians compared to other races."

Finally, in the collection “Problems of the evolutionary morphology of man and his races” (M., 1986), the same Benevolenskaya in the article “Racial variations in the signs of the cranial vault” in addition to this writes: “Since the races are not similar, they are of different quality in the type and scale of intra-racial race-forming processes, racial diagnostics according to LSI looks peculiar in each case. Thus, Caucasoids are the most consolidated race, and this is probably why (LSI) the fronto-sagittal index does not give clear racial distinctions within Caucasoids. The LSI reveals the greatest differences within the Mongoloid race.

Among the more modern collective works, the collection “The Unity and Diversity of the Human Race” (M., 1997) should be noted. In it, Yu. D. Benevolenskaya, one of the recognized leading experts in the field of craniology, develops to the logical limit the original concept of the original existence of two extreme variants of facial morphology in mankind. “The results of the analysis lead to the conclusion that there are two main racial components. Caucasoid type reveals features trapezoidal morphotype, eastern - rectangular. The idea of ​​the existence of these morphotypes finds a biological justification for one of the factors of polymorphism in human populations. Moreover, both of these morphotypes reflect the evolutionary stages in the development of races. Turning to the structure of morphotypes, we see that the rectangular morphotype is most characteristic of the features of the initial phase of growth, the trapezoid - the final phase.

This concept of morphotypes is easily linked with the theory of the non-adaptive size of the brain by V.P. Alekseev and, depending on the size of the cranium, set by the brain in the process of “growth phases”, it makes it possible to speak scientifically of “higher” and “lower” races. Moreover, the idea of ​​these morphotypes "finds a biological justification" in that one of them belongs to the initial, that is, the lower phase of growth, and the other to the final, that is, the higher phase.

Benevolenskaya continues: “These “building elements”, that is, two morphotypes as the fundamental basis of diversity, do not dissipate without a trace in the new phase of human differentiation at the level of formed races, but are traced in their basis.” This means that the higher have always been and will be higher, and the lower - lower: "The hypothesis of dimorphism can be formulated as a phenomenon of parallelism of races." That is, according to the author, the difference in types indicates the mutual independence of their origin.

Another author of the collection "Problems of the evolutionary morphology of man and his races" Yu. K. Chistov in the article "Racial differences in median-sagittal contour human skull" on the basis of another morphological parameter draws a similar conclusion: "The Caucasoid series differ the least in terms of the sum of the linear characteristics of the contour of the skull, and the equatorial groups most of all." He, in the monograph “Differentiation of human races according to the structure of the median-sagittal contour of the skull” (M., 1983) indicates: “The results of the studies obtained allow us to speak with sufficient confidence about the presence of certain differences in the shape of the sagittal contour of the human cranium in the “northern” and “ southern" populations of modern man. The intraracial values ​​of this indicator differ significantly from the interracial ones, i.e., representatives of contrasting racial types differ from each other both in terms of the sum of degree and linear characteristics of the median-sagittal contour. One of the most interesting conclusions is the statement of the fact that modern craniological series differ just as much in the magnitudes of the degree and linear characteristics of the frontal part of the contour, as in the pattern of the occipital region.

It was everything taken together that science knows today about the human skull that allowed T. V. Tomashevich on the 1st international conference"Race: Myth or Reality?" name your report “It is better to consider the differences of races as real”.

In fact, we have nothing to add to this extremely delicate and politically correct statement.

Meanwhile, the skull is important for a person not in itself, but insofar as it is the receptacle and repository of the highest organ of spiritual activity - the brain. And here it is appropriate to talk about those differences in the structure and functions of this organ, due to all the above differences in the structure of the skull.

In the most general form, these differences are expressed in the data neurophysiology and psychiatry.

In the works of such scientists as F. Tiedemann (1781–1861), P. Graziole (1815–1865), K. Vogt (1817–1895), W. Waldeyer (1836–1921), G. Retzius (1842–1919) , J. G. F. Kolbrugge (1865-?), C. Giacomini (1840–1898), A. Ecker (1818–1887), A. Weisbach (1836–1914), G. Schwalbe (1844–1916), D. N. Zernov (1843–1917), a conscious and purposeful study of the specifics and forms of the structure of the brain of various human races begins, unshakably establishing their initial deep difference.

Founder phrenology F. J. Gall (1758–1828) identified 27 main zones - organs (as he called them) of localization of higher mental functions, the degree of development of which determines the main mental and cultural differences between individuals, tribes and entire races. He wrote: “It is also known that peoples with large brains rise above peoples with small brains to such an extent that they conquer and oppress them as they like. The Indian brain is much smaller than the European brain, and everyone knows how a few thousand Europeans conquered and now keep millions of Hindus in bondage. In the same way, the brain of the American native is smaller than the brain of the European, and the same thing happened to America as it happened to India.”

Relentlessly testing his hypotheses in practice, Gall calculated that the capacity of the skull in the white race is from 75 to 109 cubic inches, while in the Mongoloid race it extends from 69 to 93 inches. According to the volume, the weight of the brain of different races also changes. In the future, similar observations were covered by all major races and peoples. Volume and weight of the brain have become a recognized racial marker.

In addition to significant differences in the weight of the brain and its parts in representatives of large human races and even individual nationalities, differences in convolution organization.

One of the first to study racial differences in the structure of the brain was the well-known Russian anthropologist D. N. Zernov. His work with the characteristic title "Convolutions of the brain, as a tribal trait" was published as early as 1873, and in 1877 he already published a fundamental monograph "Individual types of cerebral convolutions in humans."

Another Russian scientist A. S. Arkin in his article “On racial features in the structure of the human cerebral hemispheres” (Journal of neuropathology and psychiatry named after S. S. Korsakov, book 3-4, 1909) derived such new racial signs: “Middle frontal the sulcus is a sulcus, which, to a greater extent than other sulci of the brain, is subject to changes and has different outlines in representatives of different races. In addition, based on a huge foreign material, Arkin throughout the article talks about "brains rich in convolutions, which, as you know, are considered to be more perfectly arranged." The conclusion in Arkin's work is simple and convincing: "Racial differences in the structure of the brain have favorite furrows and convolutions, where they appear more often and in relief."

Arkin's fundamental discovery can be considered the conclusion that "the most characteristic racial differences are noted in the area association centers". These centers have a relatively later development compared to other parts of the brain. They also easily read the external morphological differences in the structure of the brain in representatives of the "higher" and "lower" races.

His contemporary and compatriot R. L. Veinberg in the article "On the Teaching of the Shape of the Human Brain" (Russian Anthropological Journal, 1902, N4) revealed racial differences in the structure of the Roland and Sylvius furrows. The eminent German anthropologist Karl Vogt also wrote in this connection: "The Sylvian fissure of the Negro has a more vertical direction, and so does the Roland fissure."

The greatest French anthropologist Paul Topinard in his fundamental book Anthropology (1879) emphasized: “The convolutions are thicker, wider and less complex in the lower races. The nerves of the Negroes, and especially the nerves of the base of the brain, are thicker; the substance of their brain is not as white as that of Europeans.

Possessing a thicker bone of the skull, as the ancient Greek historian Herodotus wrote about, representatives of the Negroid race therefore naturally have a lower threshold of pain sensitivity. Karl Vogt was the first to discover that impact strength of brain substance in blacks exceeds this figure in white Caucasians. "The substance of the brain of a Negro is incomparably denser and harder than that of a white man," Vogt declared. This neurophysiological fact was pointed out as early as the second half of the 19th century by boxing associations, refusing to compete with black athletes on the grounds that they were less sensitive to pain than whites.

Jean-Joseph Virey developed in the same direction our ideas about the specificity of the Negro brain: “In Negroes, the gray matter of the brain has a darker color. But the main thing is that blacks have much more than Europeans, developed peripheral nervous system, and the central one, on the contrary, is smaller. It seems that the brain of the Negroes has partially gone into the nerves, as if animal life developed at the expense of mental life.

What is summary result all the differences described above in the structure of the skull and the brain located in it? It manifests itself in objective figures obtained by neurophysiology, psychiatry and psychology.

If Caucasians have an average IQ (intelligence indicator) of 100, then Negroids have no more than 70, and Mongoloids (but not all: Chinese, Japanese) have 102. These are the same differences in reaction speed. Canadian professor J. Philip Rushton writes in this connection, in the sensational study Evolution and Behavior of Races: “Larger heads (containing more developed brains) are in direct correlation with intelligence. Large heads tend to shine with their intellect. This correlation is also true for different racial groups. At the age of seven, African children are 16% larger than European children, but their brain perimeter is 8% smaller ... Blacks have an average of 480 million fewer neurons in their heads than whites. With a small brain in a large body, they are less intellectually gifted, because most of the Negro brain is occupied with vital functions, and not with conscious thoughts.

It is truly no secret that there is a direct and significant connection not only between the structure of the skull and the brain (where the brain, we recall, is the main shaping agent), but also the brain, skull and face. And in the face, thus, the main psychological features of its carrier, the properties of his mind and character are imprinted. On this basis such science builds its conclusions as physiognomy, founded by the Swiss thinker I.-K. Lavater.

Here again we are dealing with racial differences. Professor I. A. Sikorsky in his monograph “General Psychology with Physiognomy” (Kyiv, 1904) stated in this connection: “The black race belongs to the least gifted on the globe. In the structure of the body of its representatives, there are noticeably more points of contact with the class of monkeys than in other races. The capacity of the skull and the weight of the brain of blacks is less than in other races, and, accordingly, spiritual abilities are less developed. The Negroes never constituted a large state and did not play a leading or prominent role in history, although they were in remote times much more widespread numerically and territorially than later. Most weak side of the black individual and the black race is the mind: one can always see in portraits weak contraction of the superior orbital muscle, and even this muscle in Negroes is anatomically much less developed than in whites, meanwhile it is the true difference between man and animals, constituting a special human muscle.

Modern studies of the human face and its individual components (eyes, ears, teeth, etc.) have greatly contributed to the establishment of reliable racial diagnostic markers. The famous Soviet anthropologist M. I. Uryson in his work “The relationship of the main morphological features of the human skull in the process of anthropogenesis” (M., 1964) wrote: “Based on the consideration of the skull as a total skeletal structure, it can be assumed that the progressive development of the brain exerted its influence not only on the formation of the brain box, but also through its change to the restructuring of the facial section. We are talking, therefore, about the mutual influence of the braincase and the facial part of the skull, as well as the factors that cause their change in the process of evolution of the skull.

Today, in the arsenal of modern science there is such an accurate and impartial method of racial diagnostics as anthropological photography. The work of N. N. Tsvetkova “Anthropological photography as a source for research on ethnic photography” (M., 1976) serves as a clear and convincing illustration of this. In it, she writes: “As a result of the analysis of photometric features, it was revealed that almost all angular dimensions of the face have good group delimiting properties. They have an intergroup range of more than two standards.” This means that the value of objective racial differences in the structure of the face among representatives of different races consistently exceeds the measurement error.

In general, the racial geometry of the face is as follows. Caucasoids, according to photometry, have the most direct profile along the upper facial angle, and the latter (83–87°) is always greater than the midfacial angle (81°), a relatively small angle of protrusion of the nose to the horizontal (57–63°), a very strong protrusion of the nose to the line profile (21–27°) and a straight upper lip (85–91°).

Mongoloids are distinguished by a tendency to mesognathism in the upper facial angle and the angle of protrusion of the upper lip (72–82°). Their upper facial angle (82–87°) is always less than the mid-facial angle (83–88°). The angle of protrusion of the nose to the horizontal is the largest (65–72°) among all the studied groups.

Negroids are prognathous (that is, they have a sharply protruding lower jaw) along the upper (73–77 °) and midfacial (76–80 °) angles and the angle of protrusion of the upper lip.

This again means that the racial and ethnic type is an objective reality and can be accurately measured not only in general, but also in individual parts of the portrait.

In the modern collection of works "Problems of the evolutionary morphology of man and his races" (Moscow, 1986), the topic under discussion is taken to a qualitatively new level. So in the article "Prospects for the use of near stereophotogrammetry in anthropology", created by a team of authors: L. P. Vinnikov, I. G. Indichenko, I. M. Zolotareva, A. A. Zubov, G. V. Lebedinskaya - it is said that that high-quality color photography allows you to identify all the nuances of pigmentation of the eyes, skin, hair, as well as determine the interpupillary distances and protrusion of the eyeball. In this connection, the authors of this development believe that the method they propose: "... opens up broad prospects for an extremely detailed study of the surface of a person's face and can be used with great success in ethnic anthropology."

So, it is quite obvious that the racial proportions of the "features" and the whole head as a whole, perceived in the process of anthropo-aesthetic evaluation, are real fact.

One of the classics of the German anthropological school, Baron Egon von Eickstedt, in his basic monograph "Racology and the Racial History of Humanity" (1937-1943) linked the features of the morphology of the face of various races with the evolution of their development:

“In relation to the comparative morphology of the soft parts, two main phenomena should be mentioned that are of evolutionary significance. This is, firstly, the presence of Jacobson's organ, a short rudimentary passage with a blind end in the anterior lower part of the nasal septum, which performs a special functional task in lower species. Further, the lateral parts of the posterior cartilage are of interest, which in progressive Caucasoids branch towards the end, and in primitive races, like the Melanesians, form a continuous wide plate. This is an intermediate form leading to the great apes.

The square muscle in primitive, especially dark-skinned races is also much more compact than in Caucasians, in which individual parts of the fibers have developed so much that French anatomists generally consider them to be separate muscles. Small transverse tissues of the nasal muscle in this case usually strongly correlate with general character skin covering of soft parts. Therefore, their thickness usually also corresponds to a stronger descent and more fleshiness of the wings of the nose, sometimes even, as is often found in Jews and pseudo-Jewish types in New Guinea, a greater thickness of the folds of the eyelids and lower lip. In Negroes and Paleo-Mongoloids, few tissues can be completely lost in spongy connective tissue. This massiveness gives rise to deep grooves at the wings of the nose, which on flat faces run in an almost continuous line from the corner of the eye through the wing of the nose to the lower jaw.

If we draw a general evolutionary picture of what the muscles of the nasal region show, then the same is even more clearly expressed here as in the region of the orbits: the higher the forms, the greater the differentiation of the muscles. Lips are a characteristic feature of both an individual and a racial face, they say a lot about the mental type of a person. The region of the mouth is the most expressive and indicative in terms of racial physiognomy.

If we also take into account the areas of the orbits, nose and cheeks, then the general direction of the evolutionary development of the muscles of the human face becomes clear. In all cases, the higher the evolutionary stage, the higher the possibilities of muscle mass differentiation. There are only different forms of expression of one basic tendency. Thus, we can see and unravel the secrets and relationships of the origin of species and its constructive paths using a specific example.

We can judge the intermediate stages of human evolution by the atavistic modern forms of primitive races. In them, the entire muscular mass of the middle part of the face is thicker and less differentiated. In general, non-differentiation should be considered a sign of primitiveness. Massive and repeatedly intertwined muscular connections are still characteristic of the Mongoloids.

Although thickening of the lips is especially characteristic of Negroids, it is more or less common in other races, for example, among the Eastern Veddoids. Very thick lips in the southern Chinese, relatively narrow in the primitive Austroloids, very narrow in the North American Indians. A disproportionately thick lower lip may be a hereditary trait of an entire people, as, for example, among the Jews.

A childish mouth with indistinct contours, like that of European children, is found in infantile primitive races. The contour of the upper lip and crescent-shaped mouth opening is typical of Western Veddoids, especially women.

On the Nordic profile, the lips do not protrude, while in the southern races they protrude. The latter phenomenon is often associated with a subsidence of the contour of the profile, a concave snout typical of Negroes.

An unsurpassed storehouse of information on questions of racial physiognomy is also the book "The Language of the Human Face" (1938) by a prominent German anatomist and physician F. Lange, not to mention the aforementioned Lavater.

We will not dwell on the most obvious differences in the racial appearance of the various inhabitants of the Earth. Parts of the face- skin color, hair, shape and color of eyes, nose, hair, lips, ears, teeth, facial contours are the most significant in the ethno-racial characteristics of the perceived appearance. According to these indicators, even a five-year-old child at first glance will distinguish a Negroid from a Mongoloid and a Caucasoid.

Let us quote only briefly two specialists in regard to the racial structure of the eyes and hair.

J.-J. Virey: “Some animals have a third eyelid. In humans, it is rudimentary, but in Europeans it is much less pronounced than in Negroes, who in this respect are close to orangutans. The distance between the European and the Negro is small compared to the abyss that separates man from the great apes. However, the physical forms of the Negroes are to some extent intermediate between European and ape.

N. A. Dubova: “If among representatives of the Mongoloid race, epicanthus, one of its most characteristic features, occurs in 20-100% of cases, then among Caucasians this figure varies from 0 to 10% of cases. Straight hair is common among both Mongoloids, American Indians, and Caucasians, but they never occur among classical Negroids. Australoids, including Veddoids, are characterized by broad and narrow wavy hair. What distinguishes Mongoloids and American Indians from Caucasians is the considerable stiffness of straight hair (a trait that almost never occurs in Caucasians).

The human skeleton, especially in the pelvis in women(because it is the female pelvis that forms the hereditary shape of the skull of each race) also makes it possible to detect permanent racial differences. Well-known Western anthropologists P. Broca, P. Topinar and S. T. Sommering compared the pelvis of the "lower" races with the pelvis of monkeys. Franz Pruner-Bey, due to the clarity and accuracy of the feature, generally proposed abandoning the classification of races according to the structure of the skull and switching to a classification of races according to the shape of the pelvis. The branch of anthropology concerned with the study of racial differences in the pelvis is called pelvimetry. Racial differences are quantified using Turner input pointer.

Of the Russian classical works on this topic, one can name the works of M. I. Lutokhin “Historical Review of the Literature on Racial Differences in the Pelvis” (M., 1899) or V. A. Moshkov “The New Theory of the Origin of Man and His Degeneration” (Warsaw, 1907) . The well-known Russian ethnographer and anthropologist O. V. Milchevsky in his essay “The Foundations of the Science of Anthropoethnology” (M., 1868) emphasized in the same connection: “The forms of the pelvis in relation to various tribes were studied quite thoroughly by Weber. With a more elongated shape, more vertical and higher iliac bones, a narrower and higher sacrum, the pelvis of the Hottentot, or booty, closely approaches the pelvis of animals ... Professor Weber even divides people into 4 classes, looking at the different shapes of their pelvises, oval (Europeans), round (Indians), quadrangular (Mongols), wedge-shaped (among black races).

This section of physical anthropology later received a thorough scientific development. Racial pelvimetry reached its highest peak in the works of Egon von Eickstedt, as he pointed out in particular: “Racial differences in the size of the pelvis are significant and are not explained only by the size of the body, but are due to racial variations in heredity. So the basins of the Veddoids, Negritos and Paleo-Mongoloids (in Japan), both absolutely and relatively, are smaller than those of Europeans. The Negro pelvises are distinguished by their small size, narrowness and height, while in Europeans the lateral and anterior edges of the ilium diverge widely. The transverse-oval shape prevails in Caucasians, round in Negroids. The Chinese have different shapes, but in the southern brachycephals, the transverse oval shape predominates. Among the racial differences is the tilt of the pelvis. The Japanese have a small one.

Quite a few other fragments of the skeleton (for example, tibia, etc.) also have persistent racial differences both in form and, as domestic science has found out, in content (biochemical). So, in the collection under the characteristic title "Ethnography, anthropology and related disciplines: correlation of subject and method" (M., 1989) we will find a bright and convincing article by M. V. Kozlovskaya "Experience in studying the epoch-making dynamics of variability of some physiological characteristics", in on the basis of biochemical processes, an unambiguous confirmation of the hypothesis of the initial existence of two morphotypes and the parallelism of races is given. The author of the article analyzes such an important biochemical factor for human anthropology as mineralization of bone tissues of the skeleton, which is also a racial trait, rigidly genetically determined. M. V. Kozlovskaya confirms: “A high level of mineralization is not functionally necessary, but is reproduced by genetically determined mechanisms. The concentration of microelements in bone tissue is a complex of various indicative features.

There are also other signs racial differences, no less vivid and unchanged, although not always visible to the naked eye. Today, despite ideological and political slingshots, they are recognized and taken into account not only by fundamental science (racology, anthropology), but also by applied sciences directly related to the life of the human masses, for example, medicine. Thus, the title of AI Kozlov's report "Accounting for racial characteristics in preventive cardiology" speaks for itself, because it indicates a deep understanding of the practical daily significance of racial differences. Patients of different races are arranged differently, they suffer from the same disease in different ways, they need to be treated differently: to understand this means saving many lives.

It would be possible to delve into all the subtleties and nuances of racial differences again and again, but it seems that what has been said is more than enough to repeat, following the modern Russian researcher G. A. Aksyanova: “The polymorphism of those physical features of modern humanity that are called racial, exists regardless of the positive or negative attitude to the term "race" itself. The historical intertwining of this scientific term from the field of biological systematics with negative social manifestations does not change its biological essence when applied to a person. Racial differentiation in human morphology is an objective reality.

Notes:

Back in 1922, the Russian scientist V. G. Shtefko in the article “Biological reactions and their significance in the systematics of monkeys and humans” (Russian Anthropological Journal, volume 12, book 1–2, 1922) made a significant conclusion: “Considerations expressed on based on experimental data, lead us to an extremely important and highly interesting conclusion. The cultural races of mankind, such as the Europeans, have a more complex structure of the protein molecule than the lower races. Thus, from a biological, or rather, biochemical point of view, they are more complexly organized than the latter.

Avdeev V. B. Decree. Op., p. 289–290.

The report by N. A. Dubova (in the collection “The Problem of Race in Russian Physical Anthropology” - M., 2002) emphasizes: “Until now, there is not a single (!) Fact when very dark skin pigmentation, characteristic of equatorial groups, was would be noted for individuals whose ancestors were not born on the African, Australian or South Asian continents. Likewise, no light-skinned, light-eyed population has appeared in Africa or South Asia without an influx of migrants who had such signs.

As A. de Benois put it, population geneticists, creating their virtual, artificial populations, fell into an "optical illusion", denying the reality of racial differences visible to the naked eye. In Russian, this is called not to see the forest for the trees.