real life wrote:Why do the variations between the races exist if one did not evolve from another?
And why did the variations spread thru the population of the race if these variations did not confer survival advantages?
This was a rather dull-witted series of questions, which demonstrates how much you don't know. Peole in hot, sunny climates produced more melanin and more melanin bodies in the skin. The melanin absorbs radiation, and the melanin bodies give off heat. The body only produces these in response to the climatic conditions.
But all humans have melanin and melanin bodies in their skin. People who live in cold climates don't produce melanin in anything like the amount that those in hot climates do--to fail to absorb radiation and to give off heat would be a liability in such situations. But that doesn't make them different "races," there is no such thing. All humans will adapt in the same way. So, for example, almost all Europeans (and possibly all Europeans--there simply had not been a complete "European" genome study done to be certain) are descended at least in part from "Aryan" people who migrated into Europe in pre-historic times--the evidence is in language and cultural artifacts, and is unassailable from a scientific standpoint.
But Aryans also migrated south into the Indian subcontinent. So, for example, i found the image below by simply searching for "Indo-Aryan" with a Google image search:
Those children have dark brown eyes, black hair, and "dusky" skin. That is an adaptation to the climate of the Indian subcontinent.
With that same search, i got this result:
Aryan tribes who migrated south benefited from the increase in melanin in the skin, and, over time, the increase in the melanin bodies. Aryan tribes who migrated west and north benefited from a lack of melanin in the skin, and, over time, a decrease in melanin bodies in the skin.
The most extreme examples of this can produce people whose skin is as dark as that of Africans:
(The search criterion which yielded that result was "Hindu," and the image is entitled "Hindu holy men.")
The term "race" has no scientific basis, and has nothing to do with evolution, other than that "racial" appearances result from evolutionary circumstances which apply to us all, such as the presence of melanin and melanin bodies in the skin. Race is only an ethnological term, and in fact is an increasingly discredited term even in the field of ethnology. The most striking evidence found to date that "racial" typing is superficial and false, comes in the case of the Lemba of South Africa. This tribe of Bantu speaking people have long had a tradition that they descended from Jews who fled Israel at the time of the Assyrian invasion, more than 2700 years ago. They have semitic-sounding clan names, practice infant circumcision, and "kosher-like" butchering rituals with cattle, and have long claimed to follow a religion similar to Jawist Jewish tradition. Dr. David Goldstein, of the Oxford Univesity, conducted studies on the genetic material from these people, and makes the comment:
"The first striking thing about the Y chromosomes of the Lemba is that you find this particular chromosomal type (Cohen modal haplotype) that is characteristic of the Jewish priesthood in a frequency that is similar to what you see in major Jewish populations. Something just under one out of every 10 Lemba that we looked at had this particular Y chromosomal type that appears to be a signature of Jewish ancestry. Perhaps even more striking is the fact that this Cohen genetic signature is strongly associated with a particular clan in the Lemba. Most of the Cohen modal haplotypes that we observe are carried by individuals of the Buba clan which, in Lemba oral tradition, had a leadership role in bringing the Lemba out of Israel."
When the Lemba and Jews met, they certainly did not seem, superficially, to be descended from the same ancestors:
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I am never surprised, though, to see conservative christians embracing racist beliefs.
