rainz555 said:
the theories follow something like homo-sapiens breed with other human race and produce offspring which has a different genetic make-up. Im going to emphasize how this isnt saying one type is superior or not, but is it interesting how we are taught how everyone is exactly the same and the melanin is the only difference. as far as i can tell, there are genetic differences. but should that mean we should make exceptions?
Ask your local biologist.
There are three Major methods of defining species:
-Different physical characteristics.
-Can interbreed and produce fertile offspring in the wild.
-Genetically different.
There are strengths to all of them:
-Very easy to ascertain.
-Fits the most popular delineations of species pretty well.
-Causes the other two.
There are also some significant weaknesses to all of them:
-Miscategorization of species is rampant.
-Creatures that won't bone in the wild can still produce fertile offspring.
-The cutoff of the
amount of genetic difference is completely arbitrary, and may or may not produce the other two.
The problem with your post is that you don't define "Africans" because genetically speaking there are actually 4 different groups of humans. 3 of which stayed in Africa, and the last group which spread throughout the rest of the world. That means that some Africans are as genetically different (and sometimes MUCH more so) than Europeans and South Americans.
The other problem is that you don't make it clear what your speciation threshold is. African lineages certainly can and do interbreed with non-African lineages. The appearances of all humans fall to within more than acceptable variations for other documented species - basically there's some differences in coloration and extremely minor differences in other areas; about what you'd expect for a species that went through a bottlenecking event and then quickly dispersed.
Genetic difference is what your post seems to be pointing towards, and you should probably know that 99.9% of human genomes are the same. The minor differences in coloration and other characteristics compose a pitifully small portion of our DNA, and now that technology has brought populations more in contact with each other, there's not going to be a chance for speciation until we either willfully separate each other or a group isolates themselves (like living on Mars for a few millenia).
Any of the ways you want to go about it, African-born humans are just as human as any other group. So, 'No' - Africans are not a separate species. Genetically speaking, they're much more diverse than most humans, but that diversity is extremely limited to begin with.