| Cline |
Website Links For Cline |
Information AboutCline |
|
A Ring Species is a special kind of cline where the geographical distribution in question is circular in shape, so that the two ends of the cline overlap with one another, giving two adjacent populations that rarely interbreed due to the cumulative effect of the many changes in phenotype along the cline. The populations elsewhere along the cline interbreed with their geographically adjacent populations as in a standard cline. A "cultural cline" is a gradual change of a cultural characteristic or feature over a geographical area. Source of definition unknown. In Linguistics , the term cline refers to a list of words dealing with the same concept, arranged in order of intensity. For example a list could be made with words like "freezing", "cold", "cool", "tepid", "warm", "hot", and "scorching". REJECTION OF "RACE" FOR CLINE Because the term Race has often been used synonymously with Subspecies , some people incorrectly use cline instead of "race" to describe what they see as distinct groups of humanity ( Caucasoid , Mongoloid , Negroid , Australoid , Capoid , and so forth). This substitution of "cline" for "race" or "subspecies" is technically incorrect because the word "cline" refers only to the geographic density gradient of a single feature, while the words "race," "subspecies," etc., assume replicable clusters of features. Also, since all humans belong to one subspecies (race), human "races" are seen by many anthropologists as a useless classification scheme. See the main article Race for details on this point. |
|
|