Are those with ginger hair more recently evolved?

[ShibbOleth]

@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]

@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]

@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]

@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]

@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]

@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]

@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]

@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]

@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]

@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:

@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.

British Slang beginning with 'G' | A Dictionary of Slang.

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]

@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]

@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]

@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]

@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.