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?
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?
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.
Why do I have to know what the implications are? I’m asking for a factual answer to a factual question.
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.)
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!
Hey, man, I’ve got traits not even my parents have. Bow down before me!
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.
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.
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. 
But of course! The reason you’ve got such a high pain tolerance is because you’re so used to feeling it so acutely. 
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.