A quietly intriguing column. This week: QI goes tribal
A quietly intriguing column. This week: QI goes tribal
As the ocean “waves”, the universe “peoples”.
Alan Watts (1915-1973)
The word tribe comes from the Latin tribus - meaning “three peoples” - and refers to the three ethnic/political divisions of the early Roman state. Most “tribal” people prefer to call themselves “indigenous” or “first” peoples. There are about 7,000 indigenous societies containing as many as 700 million people.
As with diversity among plants and animals, so with humans: warmer climates mean more abundant food and therefore more diverse populations. There are five times more languages spoken on Papua New Guinea than in all Europe.
No such thing as race
In genetic terms, the most diverse people on the planet are Australian aborigines and the Mbuti pygmies of Zaire, despite them both being hunter-gatherers with similar skin colour and body shapes. They have been genetically separated for 60,000 years: almost 2/3 of the entire history of modern humans. Genetically, Europeans are about half-way between the two.
Genes responsible for our physical appearance are those that have reacted to climate. Hot climates tend to select for dark skin colour, a smaller build and wider nostrils. In general, the genes that control our physical appearance, the major component of “racial difference”, make up less than 0.01 per cent of the whole.
“Race” is a social concept, not a biological one.
There are an estimated 6,912 languages but more than half of these will disappear before the end of the century and of those that survive, 90 per cent will be “endangered”. In January, the last speaker of Eyak, a southern Alaskan language, died, aged 89. Marie Smith Jones did not teach her children Eyak because of the social stigma attached to it, although she did work with a linguist to produce a written grammar and dictionary before she died.
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