Are those with ginger hair more recently evolved?

[Silk One]

On another message board I belong to, someone made the racist claim that blacks are more closely related to "ape men" because the first humans that evolved from them were black. Someone then made the claim that ginger hair people are more recently evolved. Are any of these claims actually true?

[Indistinguishable]

What would it mean for one person to be more recently evolved than another contemporaneous person? And once you've picked a meaning, what are the implications of such a claim?

[Silk One]

Originally Posted by Indistinguishable

What would it mean for one person to be more recently evolved than another contemporaneous person?

I'm not sure what you're asking. It seems as though you're asking me what "more recently" means, but I doubt you'd be asking a question with such an obvious answer.

Originally Posted by Indistinguishable

And once you've picked a meaning, what are the implications of such a claim?

Why do I have to know what the implications are? I'm asking for a factual answer to a factual question.

[Indistinguishable]

Or, to put it another way, the claims you're up against are a bit like saying Modern Greek is a more primitive language than Modern French.


(ETA: Ah, I forgot this was General Questions, and have responded more GDishly, rather than with a straight-up factual response. Sorry, feel free to ignore me.)

[Chronos]

One could possibly say that ginger-colored hair arose relatively recently as a trait. Mind, I don't know whether that's actually true or not, but it's something that could, in principle, be factually determined.

But that's not the most recent trait to have arisen. I have a small mole on the left side of my nose, which is shared by a few of my uncles, and seems to have originated with my grandfather. So clearly, I'm further evolved than anyone without any traits that appeared since 1912. Bow down before me, all you inferior masses!

[Indistinguishable]

Hey, man, I've got traits not even my parents have. Bow down before me!

[Indistinguishable]

In response to the question, even if the first men had dark skin, it wouldn't say anything about modern blacks being "less evolved"; they may have maintained that particular trait of dark skin (which presumably remained advantageous to them because of their environment, while not remaining so advantageous to those who moved to different environments) while changing in many, many other ways.

[Grey area]

Originally Posted by Chronos

One could possibly say that ginger-colored hair arose relatively recently as a trait. Mind, I don't know whether that's actually true or not, but it's something that could, in principle, be factually determined.

But that's not the most recent trait to have arisen. I have a small mole on the left side of my nose, which is shared by a few of my uncles, and seems to have originated with my grandfather. So clearly, I'm further evolved than anyone without any traits that appeared since 1912. Bow down before me, all you inferior masses!

Oh shit, I knew this day would come. *BOWS*


...Anyway, it may be true (I actually don't know) that Africans share more phenotypical traits with our ancestors but that doesn't mean they're "less evolved" in any sense. Evolution doesn't have a set goal (like greater intelligence or morality or whatever) but just adapts the animal to its environment, so nothing's "more evolved" than anything. Like Indistinguishable said, in Africa it was advantageous to have more pigmentation on their skin, so it would make sense to retain that trait. In Northern Europe it wasn't. So that trait was lost, but that says nothing about any other traits.
I'm sure someone who knows more can chime in and make me look stupid, but this should do for now.

[elfkin477]

Silk One, there's a theory that the exact opposite is true: some scientists think that those of us who have red hair got it from neanderthals. And, of course, many others disagree. But it's not surprising given it's not the only pair of paradoxical claims made about redheads, given there are studies that "prove" we have the highest pain tolerance and also need the most pain medication since we feel pain more accutely.

[Indistinguishable]

But of course! The reason you've got such a high pain tolerance is because you're so used to feeling it so acutely.

[Contrapuntal]

Originally Posted by Chronos

But that's not the most recent trait to have arisen. I have a small mole on the left side of my nose, which is shared by a few of my uncles, and seems to have originated with my grandfather. So clearly, I'm further evolved than anyone without any traits that appeared since 1912. Bow down before me, all you inferior masses!

That is one old mole! I have a Jack Russell Terrier bitch who will get rid of it for you, no charge. It only hurts if you flinch.

[aruvqan]

Originally Posted by elfkin477

But it's not surprising given it's not the only pair of paradoxical claims made about redheads, given there are studies that "prove" we have the highest pain tolerance and also need the most pain medication since we feel pain more accutely.

Apples and oranges. If someone sticks you with a pin it hurts and you youch and flinch, but you can stick yourself with a pin and not youch and flinch. The tolerance part comes from the ability to function during pain, not not* feeling the pain. I can tolerate a lot of pain, I have PCOS and migraines as well as joint and back damage. I function under more pain than I care to think of, but I have to do it or I wouldn't get out of bed in the morning. *Thatt* is high pain tolerance. If I could tolerate the fuzzyheadedness of oxy, I would take it regularly just to stop the pain, but I prefer being awake and alert, so I use lesser meds and tolerate the pain.

[TimeWinder]

Originally Posted by Silk One

I'm not sure what you're asking. It seems as though you're asking me what "more recently" means, but I doubt you'd be asking a question with such an obvious answer.

You didn't ask whether "ginger hair" is more recently evolved (it's a trait, and can be). You asked whether a group of PEOPLE were more recently evolved, which is more nonsensical -- every creature on the earth is exactly as evolved as any other (assuming a single primordial "life form" that's everyone's descendant). We like to talk about species being more recently evolved than others, but that's a convenience--as others have pointed out here; there are often traits that arise later than the species (and for humans, we consider everyone to be the same species, anyway).

I realize you were using it as a shorthand for "were there black people before there were white people", but we get irritated about these things because the idea of later-evolved species being "better" (i.e. more directed to a pre-selected end "goal") is a nearly universal Creationist straw man of evolution. Evolution doesn't have a goal; species continually adapt to the conditions of the moment--not toward becoming beings of pure energy ala Star Trek or something.

[pool]

I've read that when our ancestors lost their dense hair they had white skin the same way dogs have white skin underneath their fur and then later adapted the dark pigmentation. Did our first ancestors identifiable as human have white or black skin? Just curious.

[PastAllReason]

I certainly do not claim to be an expert in this area, but have become interested in it following reading Jared Diamond's The Third Chimpanzee.

I think the OP might find Bryan Sykes books to be illuminating. Currently I am in the middle of reading Saxons, Vikings and Celts an examination of the genetic history of the British Isles. The book was originally published in the UK as Blood of the Isles with a publication date within the last year. It is an analysis of the mitochrondrial and Y chromosome DNA for Ireland, Scotland and Wales from 10,000 DNA samples. Sykes is a geneticist at Oxford who several years ago wrote a book called the Seven Daughters of Eve, a mitochondrial analysis of Europe, including the timing of the arrival into Europe of these " seven daughters of Eve" to whom the ancestry of more than 90 per cent of today's Europe could be traced.

In response to elfkin477's comments, from my reading of these and other books including Nicholas Wade's Before the Dawn, it does not appear that experts consider that Neanderthal DNA has any significant presence in today's population. Before the Dawn also continues the assertion that behaviourly modern humans migrated out of eastern Africa in what is modern-day Ethiopia and spread outward across the globe from the small location. There also seems to be some speculation based on the physical traits of apes who are pale skinned that as modern humans may have first been pale skinned and evolved to darker skin tones in enviroments where it was more advantageous.

The next book I'm planning to pick up is Spencer Wells Inside the Genograhic Project.

[1010011010]

Also the idea that the "first humans" had dark skin was grown out of the racist idea that black folks are "less evolved". There's not much basis for assuming anything about the skin color of early humans.

If we were going to do some armchair biogeography...
The lack of pigmentation of the modern descendants of out-of-Africa migrant populations of early humans (e.g. Europeans, Asians, et al.) would indicate to me that those early humans probably had paler skin that modern "black" Africans.
Look for biogeographical maps of blood types for a similar concept.

For a snappy comeback, though... Under all that dark hair, most chimps have pale skin.

[Exapno Mapcase]

Originally Posted by 1010011010

If we were going to do some armchair biogeography...
The lack of pigmentation of the modern descendants of out-of-Africa migrant populations of early humans (e.g. Europeans, Asians, et al.) would indicate to me that those early humans probably had paler skin that modern "black" Africans.
Look for biogeographical maps of blood types for a similar concept.

This is almost certainly wrong. I can't even follow the logic.

FWIW, most anthropologists believe that the earliest humans were dark-skinned. European and Asian skin pigmentations are much more recent than darker skins. White skinned Europeans are extremely recent, possibly within the last 10-15,000 years. And today's blood types may be said to be the second most recent known widespread mutation in humans. Only lactose tolerance is newer and more widespread.

[Grey area]

Originally Posted by Exapno Mapcase

And today's blood types may be said to be the second most recent known widespread mutation in humans. Only lactose tolerance is newer and more widespread.

I was under the impression that lactose tolerance was only common in Europeans and the majority of the world is still lactose intolerant. I may be wrong, so please feel to correct me.

[Wendell Wagner]

Silk One, what does the term "ginger hair" mean for you? I can't find a consistent definition for it in any dictionary I've checked. Does it mean just red hair, or is it more specific and thus mean reddish blond or reddish brown? Incidentally, where do you live? I'm under the distinct impression that "ginger" as a term for a color of hair is not as common in the U.S. as elsewhere in the English-speaking world.

The answers given to the OP have assumed that it meant something related to light-colored hair, but if the word means "reddish brown," then these answers are irrelevant to the question. I believe that having a reddish tint to one's hair is not particularly a European (or European-descended) thing. I believe that having a little bit of a reddish tint in one's hair can occur throughout most of the genetic stocks in the world.

[Exapno Mapcase]

Originally Posted by r4nd0mNumb3rs

I was under the impression that lactose tolerance was only common in Europeans and the majority of the world is still lactose intolerant. I may be wrong, so please feel to correct me.

About 30% of the world is lactose tolerant. That's not a majority (yet: it's a dominant gene) but it's amazing for something that happened in the last 5000 or so years. And studies have found it in every population of every ethnicity or country of origin tested. That's widespread.

[ShibbOleth]

Originally Posted by Chronos

But that's not the most recent trait to have arisen. I have a small mole on the left side of my nose, which is shared by a few of my uncles, and seems to have originated with my grandfather. So clearly, I'm further evolved than anyone without any traits that appeared since 1912. Bow down before me, all you inferior masses!

I knew the Molemen would eventually win out. I, for one, welcome our new subterranean underlords.

[Zsofia]

Originally Posted by pool

I've read that when our ancestors lost their dense hair they had white skin the same way dogs have white skin underneath their fur and then later adapted the dark pigmentation. Did our first ancestors identifiable as human have white or black skin? Just curious.

My dog is black and pale splotches under his fur. My dog is more highly evolved than you.

[Grey area]

Originally Posted by Exapno Mapcase

About 30% of the world is lactose tolerant. That's not a majority (yet: it's a dominant gene) but it's amazing for something that happened in the last 5000 or so years. And studies have found it in every population of every ethnicity or country of origin tested. That's widespread.

But is that more widespread than today's blood types? Not trying to nitpick, just trying to clarify.

[engineer_comp_geek]

Originally Posted by Silk One

On another message board I belong to, someone made the racist claim that blacks are more closely related to "ape men" because the first humans that evolved from them were black. Someone then made the claim that ginger hair people are more recently evolved. Are any of these claims actually true?

There's a gene that controls the production of melanin in the skin. This gene is common in animals as well as humans. The interesting thing is that in white people, this gene contains a defect which stops it from properly copying proteins and forming melanin in the skin (my knowledge of biology is a bit iffy but that's the basic idea).

So, it's not correct to say that white people are more evolved than black people. Instead, it's more correct to say that white people are really just defective black people.

[Indistinguishable]

Originally Posted by engineer_comp_geek

There's a gene that controls the production of melanin in the skin. This gene is common in animals as well as humans. The interesting thing is that in white people, this gene contains a defect which stops it from properly copying proteins and forming melanin in the skin (my knowledge of biology is a bit iffy but that's the basic idea).

So, it's not correct to say that white people are more evolved than black people. Instead, it's more correct to say that white people are really just defective black people.

I don't think that's fair. On what grounds do you say that this gene "contains a defect", as opposed to merely being different (in a way which almost certainly was advantageous for living in the environment in which it came to dominate)?

[kimera]

Originally Posted by PastAllReason

There also seems to be some speculation based on the physical traits of apes who are pale skinned that as modern humans may have first been pale skinned and evolved to darker skin tones in enviroments where it was more advantageous.

This is true. Look a pictures of baby chimps to see how pale chimp skin is originally.

[kimera]

Originally Posted by Indistinguishable

I don't think that's fair. On what grounds do you say that this gene "contains a defect", as opposed to merely being different (in a way which almost certainly was advantageous for living in the environment in which it came to dominate)?

I think he is using the term "contains a defect" to describe how the gene exists and should be acting properly except for one little part. Different, to me, implies that a whole separate system was set up. A gene with a defect can be very advantageous to a population, it's not a judgment call.

[John Mace]

Originally Posted by 1010011010

If we were going to do some armchair biogeography...
The lack of pigmentation of the modern descendants of out-of-Africa migrant populations of early humans (e.g. Europeans, Asians, et al.) would indicate to me that those early humans probably had paler skin that modern "black" Africans.
Look for biogeographical maps of blood types for a similar concept.

OK, at this point we have to be precise about what me mean by "human". Do we mean H.sapiens exclusively, or do we mean any member of the genus Homo? It's certainly possible that our earliest Homo ancestors had pale(r) skin more likes chimps, and that darker skin evolved as our skin became more and more exposed.

So, did we first evolve with black skin, and then only later develop lighter variations as our species radiated out of Africa some 60k years ago? Maybe, but maybe not quite. If we look at the Bushmen (The Khoi San or Khoi Khoi) of souther Africa, they seem to have some of the oldest genetic lines still in existence today, and they do not have black skin as is more common in sub-Sahara Africa-- rather, they have a medium brown pigmentation. Of course the African pygmies also have very old genetic lines, and they do have the darker (black) skin color seen in the larger population.

Bottom line, we really don't know and a case can be made either way.

[David Simmons]

Originally Posted by Silk One

On another message board I belong to, someone made the racist claim that blacks are more closely related to "ape men" because the first humans that evolved from them were black.

So the sylogism is:

Ape men were black. (A dubious claim at best)
Black people are black.
Therefore black people are ape men.

This is some sort of fallacy, composition I think.

It's equivalent to saying:

Crows are black.
Blackbirds are black.
Therefore blackbirds are crows.

Someone then made the claim that ginger hair people are more recently evolved. Are any of these claims actually true?

They are only "more recently evolved" by virtue of being born to an earlier generation. That's also true of their contemporaries who are blond, have black hair, or are completely bald.

[John Mace]

BTW, don't confuse "more recently evolved" (whatever that means) with smarter, which is probably what the OP encountered. In the same sense, we might say that dogs are "more recently evolved' than wolves, but one of the things they evolved was a smaller brain, and are generally considered less intelligent (overall) than their wild cousins. But even that is a gross oversimplification because dogs appear to have evolved some intellectual capacities that their wild relatives lack, even if they lost some of the intellectual capacities that those relatives still retain.

At any rate, the whole concept of "more recently evolved" is nonsensical, as others have already pointed out.

[wevets]

Originally Posted by engineer_comp_geek

There's a gene that controls the production of melanin in the skin. This gene is common in animals as well as humans. The interesting thing is that in white people, this gene contains a defect which stops it from properly copying proteins and forming melanin in the skin (my knowledge of biology is a bit iffy but that's the basic idea).

Multiple genes, actually. This site says three genes, but I've also read as many as five, and a textbook I checked says three or four. (Purves, Orians, and Heller. Life: The Science of Biology, 4th ed. pg. 235-236.) Pale skin is just one end of a continuum of potential human skin coloration. Simple mutations in one gene can cause albinism, but that's a completely different issue.

Also interesting is the development of skin pigementation in humans, which I'm not really an expert on, but I'm under the impression that most anthropologists believe dark skin to be the ancestral state (please note that this does not mean 'unevolved' or 'primitive.') Africa is the apparent continent of origin, and dark-skinned humans show the greatest genetic variation there. The potential benefits of dark skin include greatest advantage in the tropics for protection from UV, which leads to the notion that dark skin probably developed at least at the same time as significant hairlessness. This article seems to bear that out, although I've only read the abstract and not the full text.


The OP has encountered someone very stupid or gullible indeed to be convinced that some humans are more closely related to non-humans than to other humans. Where do these people come from?

[Keeve]

No one has responded yet, so I'll repeat the question which I would have asked if it had not already been asked by someone else:

Originally Posted by Wendell Wagner

Silk One, what does the term "ginger hair" mean for you? I can't find a consistent definition for it in any dictionary I've checked. Does it mean just red hair, or is it more specific and thus mean reddish blond or reddish brown? Incidentally, where do you live? I'm under the distinct impression that "ginger" as a term for a color of hair is not as common in the U.S. as elsewhere in the English-speaking world.

The main difference between Wendell Wagner and me seems to be that I've never heard any native English speaker use the word "ginger" to describe a hair color. It can be a spice, or a soda flavor, or even a Gilligan's Island castaway, but not a hair color.

[Exapno Mapcase]

Ginger is an extremely common term for red hair in the UK.

http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/g.htm

ginger Noun. 1. Homosexual. Rhyming slang, from Ginger beer - 'queer'.
2. A ginger or red haired person. Pronounced with hard g's as in goggles.
3. Carbonated drink, such as cola. [Scottish use]

Obviously the second usage is the one we're talking about here.

Or Google "Ron Weasley" and ginger and see how hits come up about actor Rupert Grint. Or just Google "ginger hair" in quotes and look at the 114,000 hits.

Your location is in the US, but there are other English-speaking parts of the world.

[John Mace]

Originally Posted by PastAllReason

In response to elfkin477's comments, from my reading of these and other books including Nicholas Wade's Before the Dawn, it does not appear that experts consider that Neanderthal DNA has any significant presence in today's population. Before the Dawn also continues the assertion that behaviourly modern humans migrated out of eastern Africa in what is modern-day Ethiopia and spread outward across the globe from the small location. There also seems to be some speculation based on the physical traits of apes who are pale skinned that as modern humans may have first been pale skinned and evolved to darker skin tones in enviroments where it was more advantageous.

The next book I'm planning to pick up is Spencer Wells Inside the Genograhic Project.

Both good books, but the latter is a bit thin. You can get a lot from the web site (just google "genographic"). I actually participated in that study by sending in a DNA sample. I had my maternal line analyzed. Not that it came out any different than I would have figured, but it was still kind of neat to know (I'm part of the most common lineage that is thought to have originated in NW Europe, which is where my known maternal ancestors come from).

[Colibri]

Originally Posted by Silk One

On another message board I belong to, someone made the racist claim that blacks are more closely related to "ape men" because the first humans that evolved from them were black. Someone then made the claim that ginger hair people are more recently evolved. Are any of these claims actually true?

Back in the nineteenth century, European anthropologists made a hobby of ranking human populations by how much they had advanced evolutionarily from the apes. Of course, since it was white people doing this, very conveniently they discovered that white people were "most evolved," while other races had evolved less.

To do this they would use African traits such as black skin (which, as has been pointed out, is irrelevant since chimps have pale skin under their hair, and some "Caucasian" populations have very dark skin as well) and prognathous jaws to make this link, while ignoring the fact that other African traits such as "woolly" hair or everted lips were decidedly un-apelike. Europeans have hair much more like that of apes than Africans do, and as one of the hairiest races are decidedly more "apelike" than East Asians.

Black hair or dark hair, being the most widespread trait, probably is the ancestral condition in humans. Pale hair is more recent. However, it is quite likely that "ginger-haired" people may have some other traits that are closer to the ancestral condition than those of Africans, and so are "less evolved." If you wanted to pick the population of the most recent origin one might go with Polynesians or maybe Eskimo/Inuit. But such questions really make little sense.

[1010011010]

Originally Posted by Indistinguishable

I don't think that's fair. On what grounds do you say that this gene "contains a defect", as opposed to merely being different (in a way which almost certainly was advantageous for living in the environment in which it came to dominate)?

In that the gene is a duplication of an existing gene for melanin, but fails to produce melanin or any other useful protein due to a subsequent mutation. This defective mutant gene is highly adaptive in higher latitudes if pale skined northerners are any indication. (Emphasized in the hope that it will make a creationist's head 'splode.)

[Ray Patterson]

I remember a chart which attempted to classify the variation of mitochondrial DNA worldwide. Conform to the out of Africa theory, the variation outside of Africa was negligible: Europeans, Asians, Native Americans were all together just a subgroup of a subgroup of a subgroup, nearly identical, while there were whole diverting trees of subgroups of Africans.

So according to that chart, if you have to divide humanity into less than 10 races, 9 of them would be black, and 1 would be part black and part all other colors. Not really an answer to the original question but food for thought.

[John Mace]

Originally Posted by Ray Patterson

I remember a chart which attempted to classify the variation of mitochondrial DNA worldwide. Conform to the out of Africa theory, the variation outside of Africa was negligible: Europeans, Asians, Native Americans were all together just a subgroup of a subgroup of a subgroup, nearly identical, while there were whole diverting trees of subgroups of Africans.

Pretty much. If we look at the subgroups from mtDNA "Eve", there are 3 main branches, labeled L1, L2, and L3. L1 and L2 are found only in Africa, while L3 is found both in Africa and outside Africa. You see a very similar patter if you look at the Y chromosome branches, with 3 main branches, only one of which occurs both inside and outside Africa. You might be stretching it a bit to say all the non-African groups are "nearly identical" as compared to the Africa groups, but there is less variation seen outside African than inside.