race advantages

[planthelper]

olympic game's are up again.

and i know, since mark spitz till now, that there are not many african decenting, athlet swimmers!!

same on the bike. but, african people run faster, and longer and, play better basketball.

i say, koori children could beat the torpedo!!!

apart from aquaphobia,

why aren't there, any african/or native australien swimmers??

[ 06. April 2004, 15:42: Message edited by: planthelper ]

[Rev]

some say its a money/culture thing

to be a runner, basket ball, footy or a soccer player you need shoes and a ball for the last 3

other things are improvised. Fitness and fanatic practice will take you a long way, so they are perfect sports for poor kids to play at any available moment

you cant improvise an olympic sized swimming pool, a tennis racquet and court, a Polo horse or 18 hole golf course. Youve got to have the contacts and the money to be involved in these sports, as a result youll see few non european players. These sports also rely on quite intensive coaching.

Maybe you could have a koori 'thorpoid' anomaly

at some point in time im sure there was or will be. Whether it goes unnoticed will depend on a whole lot of other factors.

But at the end of the day the thorpoid body plan is freakish and no doubt has its own set of weaknesses that might make it a bad evolutonary choice. Sport is becoming so high pressure and so selective that we are squeezing freakish extremes of the human form into selective and eliminatory moulding programs designed to enhance the freakish qualities.

You only have to look at pedigree mutants in dogs to see just how undesirable it is to deviate from the regional mongrel plan in body shape

Of course there are other factors in why africans run well some of it to do with traditions of running in North east africa (Kenya, somalia, ethiopia,sudan)

the story is complex but its hard to escape the financial divide in sports

[ 06. April 2004, 19:09: Message edited by: reville ]

[nabraxas]

i agree the swimming thing is probably cultural, just like tennis.

Of course there are other factors in why africans run well some of it to do with traditions of running in North east africa (Kenya, somalia, ethiopia,sudan) there's some truth in that too, but the main factor is that people ov african extraction have developed a different ratio of muscle groupings to europeans.

"Uh oh. Here we go again," sigh those familiar with the historical misuse of genetics and eugenics to justify racist ideologies. But most scientists are quick to point out that this is not an issue of "black" and "white," but the consequence of thousands of years of evolution in varying terrains. "Evolution has shaped body types and in part athletic possibilities," agrees Joseph Graves, Jr., an evolutionary biologist and author of The Emperor's New Clothes: Theories of Race at the Millennium. "Don’t expect an Eskimo to show up on an NBA court or a Watusi to win the world weightlifting championship. Genes play a major role," adds Graves, who is African American.

In other words, notions that lump all blacks or whites or Asians together into monolithic racial groups are ignorant of both history and genetics. Genetically, and as a result physically, populations from East and West Africa are very different. Although they’re all "black," they may in fact show more genetic variation than any two randomly selected whites.

Because Africa is the ancestral home of modern humans, black Africans have more genetic variation than any other population in any other geographic region. "It’s logical that to the degree that running fast has a genetic component, in any African population you’d expect to find more fast runners, more slowpokes and fewer ordinary runners in between than in the rest of the world," says Yale University geneticist Kenneth Kidd.

Distance running requires a relatively specific body type, which is not very common in whites and is nearly non-existent in those with roots in West Africa, where most Africans enslaved in America came from. Many black Americans do tend to have exceptional biomechanical packaging for sprinting — small and efficient lungs, muscular "mesomorphic" bodies and a high proportion of fast-twitch muscle fibers, which contribute to explosive speed. But those qualities make for lousy distance runners. In other words, all the hard work in the world cannot turn 100-meter champ Maurice Greene into a first-rate marathoner — or marathon world record holder Catherine Ndereba of Kenya into a world-class sprinter.

Many East and North Africans, who share a genetic and evolutionary history, have slim, short ectomorphic bodies with large capacity lungs and an abundance of slow-twitch muscle fibers — an ideal profile for endurance sports. But East Africans are also among the world’s slowest sprinters. So, while Kenyans and other East Africans hold more than 60 percent of the world’s top distance times, the best Kenyan 100 meter run is 10.28 seconds, a lowly 5,000 on the all-time list. In contrast, in sprinting, blacks of West African ancestry, including African Americans, hold the top 220 times in the 100 meters and 494 of the top 500 times.

"Differences among athletes of elite caliber are so small," notes Robert Malina, Michigan State anthropologist and editor of the American Journal of Human Biology, “that physique or the ability to fire muscle fibers more efficiently, [characteristics] that might be genetically based…it might be very, very significant. The fraction of a second is the difference between the gold medal and fourth place."

Many so-called experts, unversed in basic science, scoff at the idea that genetics play such an influential role. They offer the usual clichés to explain why East Africans excel where native distance runners do not: "Americans are soft," or "They can't match the grueling training regimens of East African runners." Considering the renowned work ethic of Americans in so many sports, particularly African Americans, who have come to dominate sprinting, such judgments seem flip at best. Science does not support the popular notion that Kenyans prevail because they train harder or run more as kids, myths peddled by the media. For every Kenyan athlete who runs 100 miles a week, there are other successful runners who get along on 30 and did not regularly run extraordinary distances as children. "I lived right next door to school," laughs Kenyan-born Wilson Kipketer, world 800-meter record holder. "I walked, nice and slow."

Though individual success is indeed largely about opportunity and "fire in the belly," when it comes to physiology, genetics proscribes possibility. While a driven Kenyan could potentially transform himself into a decent sprinter in spite of not having the ideal genetically-endowed body type of a distance runner, thousands of years of evolution have left a distinct footprint on the world's athletic map.

"Kenyans and other East Africans are born with a high number of slow-twitch fibers," notes Saltin, who outlined his widely-embraced findings in a cover story, "Muscles and Genes," in Scientific American last year. "They have 70 to 75 percent of their muscle fibers being slow [which provide endurance energy]."

Runners from the highlands that snake along the western edge of the Great Rift Valley have clocked more than 60 percent of the best times ever run in distance races. Kenyans alone win 40 percent of top international events. The Nandi district of 500,000 people boasts an unfathomable 20 percent of the best distance times, marking the greatest concentration of raw athletic talent in sports history.

Highly heritable characteristics such as skeletal structure, muscle fiber types, reflex capabilities, metabolic efficiency and lung capacity are not evenly distributed among populations and therefore performance differences cannot be explained by known environmental factors alone. For example, tests show that populations of East Asians tend to have the quickest reaction times and best dexterity, which contributes to their prominence in diving, skating, racquet sports and martial arts. East Asians shine in sports requiring body flexibility — hence the term "Chinese splits" in gymnastics. And though they generally are not very competitive at jumping and sprinting because of squatter bodies and more slow-twitch fibers, East Asians are very competitive at the longest distance races, including the marathon, in part because of higher levels of body fat.

Whites of Eurasian ancestry, who are the most likely among the world’s populations to have strong upper bodies, dominate in weight lifting, wrestling and field events such as the shot put and hammer throw. The few competitive white male distance runners, almost exclusively from southern Portugal, Spain and Italy, share many of the characteristics — and the genetic makeup — of North and East Africans. As a result of migrations these are "fuzzy" population groups, challenging long-held notions of well-defined "racial" groups. But the body type trends in these relatively insular populations are unassailable and go a long way to explain why the reservoir of distance runners is so much deeper among those with ancestral roots in East and North Africa rather than in West Africa or Europe.

Could a black American of West African descent set a world record in distance running? It’s possible, for genes only circumscribe possibility (or innate capacity) and every sports event offers a spin of the roulette wheel of the human spirit. Moreover, there is considerable body type variability within every population. But evolutionary forces have ensured that elite distance runners are far more likely to come from North and East Africa. Although there are some physiological similarities shared by all Africans, the continent is incredibly diverse.

"Populations with roots in equatorial Africa are more likely to have lower natural fat levels," notes Prof. Graves. "That is likely a factor in running success in the sprints and at distance. It’s an adaptive mutation based on climate and geography. But that’s a long way from reconstructing racial science. In fact, the differences between local populations in East and West Africa in physique, muscle type and metabolic efficiency undermine simplistic categories of ‘black’ and ‘white.’ Body stature does not fit classic 19th century theories of race."

History has taught us that caution is necessary when "race" is the issue. White fascination with black physicality is part of a dark historical undercurrent. As a consequence, athletic success has long posed a double-edged sword for blacks. A loss or a poor performance encouraged the historical prejudice that blacks were inferior. And every victory risked being devalued as simply a product of ancestry.

"Race" is soaked in much folkloric nonsense. In the nineteenth century, racial and ethnic groups were ranked according to all kinds of pseudo-scientific measurements, such as skull size. As a result, "whiteness" came to symbolize wealth, rationality and civilized culture, whereas "blackness" equated hyper-sexuality, musicality, laziness, intellectual deficiency, cultural pathology — and athleticism.

While such pseudo-scientific ideas have been in disrepute for decades, many fear that accepting the notion that genetics confers limited innate differences on specific populations reinforces racial stereotypes and leads us down a slippery social Darwinist slope. After all, although racial labels are occasionally helpful, such as in studying shared genes that contribute to diseases, they can leave misconceptions. Virtually all complex phenomena, such as intelligence, do not fall into neat racial categories.

So, why now talk about such a potentially divisive issue? Simply because the science of genetics has advanced to the point where such discussion can destroy, rather than reinforce, the most harmful stereotypes. Knowledge of human biodiversity is a powerful weapon against simplistic racialized thinking and a potentially life-saving tool for bio-medicine.

Going forward, we might ask ourselves: Why do we so readily accept that evolution has turned out blacks with a genetic proclivity to acquire sickle cell anemia, Jews of European heritage who fall victim to Tay-Sachs, Asians who are genetically more reactive to alcohol and whites with a vulnerability for cystic fibrosis, yet find it racist to acknowledge that East African distance runners, white power lifters and sprinters of West African ancestry are aided, in large part, by genetics?

While united in a single human family, people from different populations are slightly different, and society pays a price for not discussing this subject openly, if carefully. Events such as the New York marathon provide an opportunity to broaden our understanding of the genetic revolution now unfolding. That’s a true celebration of our diversity, both genetic and cultural.

First published: November 6, 2001

About the Author

Jon Entine is author of Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate Sports and Why We're Afraid to Talk About It (Public Affairs, 2001). He can be reached via http://www.jonentine.com, or at [email protected]

http://www.africana.com/articles/daily/ind...ex_20011106.asp

[MrBumpy]

Are aboriginals really all that good at sport? or are you just grouping them with people of african decent because they are "black"?

How many really prominent aboriginal sportspeople are there...?

Not too sure if there is even one professional aboriginal basketball player at the moment.

-bumpy

[Rev]

There have been many aboriginal sportspeople of note. While i dont know enough about muscle fibre groupings amongst the different lineages i have noticed just how different Aboriginal people look from different parts of Australia in the facial features and body.

They also inhabited vastly different environmnets and probably came from diffrent migrations (eg Tasmania)

There are definite sprinter types - like Cathy freeman

Though i suspect that the desert peoples would be like hot desert people the world over, thin, tall and built for the trek

For example walking from Channel country to Lake eyre with your stash of Pitjery and back again

how they diferred from the people on the coast i dont know but early reports did describe them as very fit and athletically built. Changes in diet and activity brought a lot of changes

anyway yes Aboriginal people have excelled in sport since early on. Cricket and footy in the early days, other stuff later on.

Of course they also took to the saddle pretty damn well in the north too...Theres been some oustanding riders and cattle men.

[Thelema]

Maybe, so as not to be racist, sports could all calculate indivual handicaps for all performers based on the advantages their genetic make-up gives them.

This would level the field and make it somewhat fairer fo the piss-weak amongst us.

[strangebrew]

As far as black people not being good swimmers goes, I always thought it was because they have a heavier/denser bone structure and less body fat hence less buoyancy. It's about the only physical advantage whitey has.

Koori's are definately over-represented in the AFL. They're 2% of the population and there's 7% (I think) in the major league.

[occidentalis]

reville:

i have noticed just how different Aboriginal people look from different parts of Australia in the facial features and body.

They also inhabited vastly different environmnets and probably came from diffrent migrations (eg Tasmania)

From what I've read there were two main waves of migration - firstly the shorter, stockier people who inhabit the south of the continent eg Nyungars and later the tall desert/tropics dwellers (I think that order is correct?). Of course there were probably many mini-migrations, movement within the continent, and small local adaptations that created the diversity visible today in body shapes and facial features amongst indienous Australian humans.