freedom1 said:Here's some data and quotes from researchers:
Bone density and fat percentage:
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/71/6/1392
http://www.aafp.org/afp/20041001/1293.html
Trunk to length ratio (this article quotes numerous researchers who have found differences)
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,947918-5,00 .html
Testosterone differences, see J. Phillippe Rushton's, Race Evolution and Behavior
Here's a section from an article called, Peering under the Hood of African Runners by Constance Holden from that was printed in Science Magazine:
The differences don't stop with body shape; there is also evidence
of a difference in the types of muscle fibers that predominate.
Scientists have divided skeletal muscles into two basic groups
depending on their contractile speed: type I, or slow-twitch
muscles, and type II, fast-twitch muscles. There are two kinds of
the latter: type IIa, intermediate between fast and slow; and type
IIb, which are superfast-twitch. Endurance runners tend to have
mostly type I fibers, which have denser capillary networks and are
packed with more mitochondria. Sprinters, on the other hand, have
mostly type II fibers, which hold lots of sugar as well as enzymes
that burn fuel in the absence of oxygen. In the 1980s, Claude
Bouchard's team at Quebec's Laval University took needle biopsies
from the thigh muscles of white French Canadian and black West
African students. They found that the Africans averaged
significantly more fast-twitch muscle fibers--67.5%--than the French
Canadians, who averaged 59%. Endurance runners have up to 90% or
more slow-twitch fibers, Saltin reports.
Bouchard, now at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, says his
team looked at two enzymes that are markers for oxidative metabolism
and found higher activity of both in the West Africans, meaning they
could generate more ATP, the energy currency of the cell, in the
absence of oxygen. The study suggests that in West Africa there may
be a larger pool of people "with elevated levels of what it takes to
perform anaerobically at very high power output," says Bouchard.
Although training can transform superfast-twitch type IIb fibers
into the hybrid type IIa, it is unlikely to cause slow- and
fast-twitch fibers to exchange identities. Myburgh says there is
evidence that, with extremely intensive long-distance training, fast
IIa fibers can change to slow type I fibers. So far, however, there
is no evidence that slow-twitch fibers can be turned into
fast-twitch ones. As an athlete puts on muscle mass through
training, new fibers are not created, but existing fibers become
bigger.
I checked your sources. This is Jon Entine's arguement which bascally amounts to a research of literature that treats every little rinky-dink research article that supports his view as credible evidence. What does a study on old women and bone density have to do with athleticism? How bout the ONLY evidence of black superior fast-twitch muscle coming from samples of a whole 12 people. Yes, 12 people! (that's the one you quote). How bout trunk to leg length ratios? Can't find anything on simple straight out arm span w/o involving the trunk? Neither can I. The time magazine source is so ridiculous that it even states on page one how black athletes are discriminated against in football because there not enough black centers, kickers, and QB.
There are racial differences, but we should be skeptical of any research that looks like it is trying to verify black athletic superiority. In most cases the evidence just isn't there.
Whites have been shown to have advantages in overall size; height, chest capacity, lung capacity, shoudler width, waist width, and trunk length. Maybe that's why we are dominating HWT boxing. No MSM sources are beating those drums though are they?