Systems of racial categorization, first developed in the eighteenth century, have divided people into three, nine, twenty-six, and as many as three hundred races. Scientists reject such thinking as myth. They say that geographic patterns of sets of genes show that people have been migrating and merging from the start; race may be heavily tied to culture and how people see one another, but it is something we have created.

首先在18世纪发展起来的种族分类体系，将人分为3支、9支、26支，甚至多达300个支系种族。科学家斥之为神话。他们认为，各地域基因组合的规律显示，人类从一开始 就在迁栖、在结合；种族可能与文化及人们怎样相互看待有紧密的联系，但这些不过是我们自行建构出来的产物而已。

(短文节选,本篇始于：性命“忧”关 )