Here's a safe prediction: all of the athletes who line up at the final of the men's 100-meter sprint in Sydney trace their ancestry to West Africa. It's also unlikely than any sprinter other than one with West African roots will ever again hold the unofficial title of "world's fastest human." Even more startlingly, athletes who trace their ancestry to Africa, home to roughly 1 in 8 of the world population, or 800 million people, dominate elite sprinting and road racing: an athlete of African origin holds every major world running record.
The controversial question is why?
(my comment: sociologists = liberals) To many sociologists, the answer is 'racism'. "What really is being said in a kind of underhanded way," comments Harry Edwards of University of California/Berkeley, "is that blacks are closer to beasts and animals in terms of their genetic and physical and anatomical make up than they are to the rest of humanity. And that's where the indignity comes in."
Most hard scientists take a different view. "If you can believe that individuals of recent African ancestry are not genetically advantaged over those of European and Asian ancestry in certain athletic endeavors," says biological anthropologist Vincent Sarich, also of Berkeley, "then you could probably be led to believe just about anything."
{My comment: this is exactly the liberal vs. science debate I'm talking about.}
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Now science can definitively state that the post WWII anthropological orthodoxy - what is referred to as environmental determinism - is clearly wrong. The genetics revolution now sweeping the world has decisively overturned this belief that all humans are created with equal potential, a tabula rasa for experience to write upon. Evidence spilling forth from the Human Genome Project shows that some functional characteristics do differentiate population clusters - most clearly in the proclivity to certain diseases and in athletic ability - although the classic racial trichotomy of sub-Saharan black/European white/Asian is indeed fuzzy around the edges and potentially misleading.
How have racial differences evolved?
Although the move out of Africa by modern humans to Europe and Asia occurred rather recently in evolutionary time, scientists now know that in relatively few generations, even small, chance mutations can trigger a chain reaction with cascading consequences resulting in significant racial differences or possibly even the creation of new species. Economic ravages, natural disasters, genocidal pogroms, and geographical isolation caused by mountains, oceans, and deserts, have deepened these differences over time. This is the endless loop of genetics and culture, nature and nurture.
Genetically linked, highly heritable characteristics such as skeletal structure, the distribution of muscle fiber types, reflex capabilities, metabolic efficiency, lung capacity, and the ability to use energy more efficiently are not evenly distributed among populations and cannot be explained by known environmental factors. Scientists are just beginning to isolate the genetic links to biologically-based differences, most notably in isolating the causes of population specific diseases such as Tay-Sachs, which afflicts Jews, and sickle cell, which targets blacks.
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Popular thinking still lags this genetic revolution. "Differences among athletes of elite caliber are so small," notes Robert Malina, a Michigan State University physical anthropologist and editor of the Journal of Human Genetics, "that if you have a physique or the ability to fire muscle fibers more efficiently 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."
Although scientists are just beginning to isolate the genetic links to those biologically-based differences, it is indisputable that they exist. Each sport demands a slightly different mix of biomechanical, anaerobic, and aerobic abilities. Athletes from each region of the world tend to excel in specific events as a result of evolutionary adaptations to extremely different environments that became encoded in the genes.
Whites of Eurasian ancestry, who have, on average, more natural upper-body strength, predictably dominate weightlifting, wrestling and all field events, such as the shot-put and hammer (whites hold 46 of the top 50 throws). Evolutionary forces in this northern clime have shaped a population with a mesomorphic body type - large and muscular, particularly in the upper body, with relatively short arms and legs and thick torsos. These proportions tend to be an advantage, particularly in sports in which strength rather than speed is at a premium
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While Africa is the mother-lode of the running world, talent is not evenly distributed across the continent but is concentrated in three areas: a swath of western African coastal states, notably Senegal, Nigeria, and Cameroon, extending south to Namibia; the northern African countries of Algeria and Morocco; and a long stretch of eastern African states from Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Kenya to mountainous South Africa. However, there are a range of structural traits shared by genetically-diverse African athletes: low body fat, longer legs in comparison to the rest of their bodies, and narrow hips.
Although sub-Saharan Africans share many characteristics, different environments also have left distinctive evolutionary footprints. Athletes who trace their ancestry to western Africa, which has been geographically, and genetically, somewhat isolated from the north (by the harsh desert climate) and the east (by the Great Rift Valley) - are the world's premier speedsters and jumpers. Studies have shown that athletes of West African origin hit a biomechanical wall after about 45 seconds of intense, anaerobic activity (distances longer than 400-meters in sprinting and all measurable distances in swimming, in which Africans are believed to be genetically disadvantage on average) when aerobic skills come into play.
Such absolute domination is even more remarkable considering that African athletes have clearly had less access to the latest in sports medicine, technology, coaching, and opportunity. Yet it is indisputable that the highest level of athleticism among males athletes is disproportionately linked to Africa. For all practical reality, men's world championship events might as well post a sign declaring, "whites need not apply."
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All of the thirty-two finalists in the last four Olympic men's 100-meter races are of West African descent. The likelihood of that based on population numbers alone-blacks with ancestral roots in that region represent 8 percent of the world's population - is 0.0000000000000000000000000000000001 percent.
There have been a small handful of non-West African 200- and 400-meter runners over the years. In 1979 Italy's Pietro Mennea shattered the 200-meter record running 19.72 seconds, still the best time by a non-African. Although he ran in Mexico City's 7,300 foot altitude and was aided by a tailwind of 90 percent of the allowable limit, Mennea's moment-in-the-sun is invoked as "proof" that whites can run as fast as blacks. Mennea's record held for seventeen years before being pulverized in 1996 by Michael Johnson in a stunning 19.32, an improvement of more than 2 percent, an unheard of breakthrough in sprinting. Intriguingly, Mennea traces part of his own ancestry to Africa. Many southern Europeans, who are disproportionately stand-outs in running, trace a significant percentage of their genes to Africa as a result of interbreeding.
Whether or not genes confer a competitive advantage on blacks when it comes to stealing bases, running with the football, shooting hoops, or jumping hurdles remains the $64,000 question. Since the first known study of differences between blacks and white athletes in 1928, the data have been remarkably consistent: in most sports, African-descended athletes have the capacity to do better with their raw skills than whites. Blacks with a West African ancestry generally have:
â¢relatively less subcutaneous fat on arms and legs and proportionately more lean body and muscle mass, broader shoulders, larger quadriceps, and bigger, more developed musculature in general;
â¢denser, shallower chests;
â¢higher center of gravity, generally shorter sitting height, narrower hips, and lighter calves;
â¢longer arm span and "distal elongation of segments" - the hand is relatively longer than the forearm, which in turn is relatively longer than the upper arm; the foot is relatively longer than the tibia (leg), which is relatively longer than the thigh;
â¢faster patellar tendon reflex;
â¢greater body density, which is likely due to higher bone mineral density and heavier bone mass at all stages in life, including infancy (despite evidence of lower calcium intake and a higher prevalence of lactose intolerance, which prevents consumption of dairy products);
â¢modestly, but significantly, higher levels of plasma testosterone (3-19 percent), which is anabolic, theoretically contributing to greater muscle mass, lower fat, and the ability to perform at a higher level of intensity with quicker recovery;
â¢a higher percentage of fast-twitch muscles and more anaerobic enzymes, which can translate into more explosive energy.
