Status Updates From The Ethnic Phenomenon

"Race" as a primary marker of common descent is relatively uncommon and recent, because it does the job of discriminating accurately only after much rapid long-distance migration has taken place and then typically only for a few generations before interbreeding blurs again phenotypical dis tinctions

the fiction that the Emperor of Japan is the head of the most senior lineage descended from the common ancestor of all Japanese might convince the Japanese peasant that the Em peror is an exalted cousin of his, but the myth lacks credibility in Korea or Taiwan.