<p>My arguement all along is that the very idea of species is artificial. If I feel that way about the concept of species it is safe to assume I feel doubly so about race or subspecies. But just because the distinctions we make are artificial does not mean they are useless. We arbitrarily divide a stick into ten or twelve equal parts and the next thing you know we are predicting the solstice and sending men to distant planets.</p>
<p>This threrad was supposed to be about where modern man evolved. That question cannot be discussed rationally on this board because it inevitably brings up all the social baggage America has been toting since the first African slave was deposited at Jamestown. Polygenisis is to be condemned not just because the mitcondrial DNA evidence doesn’t seem to support it but because it is pernicious in its own right - as if the universe is constructed with its own moral value system.</p>
<p>The fact is I don’t know where modern man evolved. The evidence seems to lean towards someplace in Africa but it is not that hard to construct an alternative hypothesis or to poke holes in the current theory, but doing so is guaranteed to bring the rath of the politically correct down on your head.</p>
<p>As for futher speciation in Homo sapiens I believe it is bound to occur and sooner rather than later and that modern science and medicine will be the midwives. We are already crossing humans with other species in the lab.</p>