In this thread in GQRacer1 asks When did what is now popularily called “races” evolve. I was going to ask “which came first” in that GQ thread, but I really don’t know if there is a definitive answer. Also, this type of question usually ends up here (Or sometimes in the Pit).
I’m convinced that our species originated in Africa–the timing of the migrations, the number of waves, whether one wave turned into something new and different before the next one came-- these things do not change the fact that humans started somewhere and all evidence points to Africa. So I assumed that those people were black, just like the people who live there now.
But then I read the articleHemlock linked to in that thread which had this quote:
Well now, that assumption is just as valid as mine. Moreso since Nina Jablonski is an anthropologist and I am most definitely am not.
Still I wonder: what basis do I have for either assumption? Just because the people in Africa are black now doesn’t mean that their ancestors were (white people’s ancestors are also “out of Africa” why should I assume the white people changed?) and primates may be our closest biological relative, but we did not evolve from them. We share a common ancestor also-- whose to say whether that guy was fair or dark?
I think it is impossible to say for sure. It really depends on when our ancestors lost most of their body hair and where they were living when they did. I read somewhere that intense sunlight destroys lowers folate levels in humans (and presumeably in our most recent hairless ancestors). That is why people living near the equator are dark skinned. Folate is a critical nutrient for pregnant mothers, so there is obviously a strong selective pressure to protect against this loss.
Naked pre-humans who lived in equatorial regions would likely have had to of been dark skinned. If those populations gave rise to modern humans, then likely the first humans were dark skinned. If they didn’t live in equatorial regions, then perhaps they were light skinned.
We know many human ancestors lived in central Africa 2-5 million years ago. The also lived in south Africa. Homo erectus was all over the world around a million years ago. We really don’t know which populations gave rise to modern humans.
But I suspect that they would have been getting darker as they got less furry. They most liekly weren’t nearly as dark as West Africans today, nor as light as Northern Europeans, assuming we are talking about the time just before migrations.
But of cours,e people living there today aren’t really completely black. They are somewhere between the West African chocolate skin and Middle Eastern Arab tones. But that could be just opulation movements and so forth. After all, most all the West Africans come from a small Bantu populace that expanded from one small forest region.
Being a fair-skinned person, I can’t imagine any evolutionary benefit to having fair skin in a place like the region of Africa where it is supposed that man came from.
Unless a bunch of us fair-skinned folk appeared on the scene, started getting all sunburnt and hot and bothered, and said “let’s get the hell out of here!!” and headed north.
IIRC, most biologists and anthropologists think this species arose in Africa, and so we were originally dark skinned. As populations migrated, they evolved to survive in a new climate. The populations that moved to what is now N. Europe lost a lot of pigmentation because they needed to be able to absorb as much of the limited sunlight as they could to produce adequate vitamin D. The colder climate selected for longer, narrower noses to provide a more effective air-warming chamber and prevent loss of body heat. Other populations adapted in other ways to fit other environments and eventually those populations became the different races. So it’s actually pretty widely accepted in most scientific circles that all the other races are descended from blacks.
The other thing to remember is that the skin color of our early ancestors has nothing to do with the skin colors of current populations. There are plenty of very dark skinned populations out there that aren’t African.
The term “black” has a lot of connotations that might mislead people, and given the racial/genetic discussions we’ve had here we can see that some people are pretty confused already. If we simply use the term “dark skinned” instead of black things will remain clearer. Just because our earliest ancestors were probably dark skinned doesn’t mean that they resembled modern African populations in other ways.
I had recently seen something on Television show regarding the Migration of Homo Sapiens into Europe and the encroachment into stomping grounds of their distant cousin the Neanderthals. In it the ancent hunter gatherers were played by Black actors while the Neanderthals were played by white actors.
Essentailly the story ended with Neanderthals being squeezed out of existence by the new Squaters. Who would eventually become the Europeans
The strange thought I had was that these Former Africans would return millions of years later to the old stomping grounds and colonize and enslave the population that had not migrated.
All the evidence that I’ve seen points to Africa as Mitochondrial Eve’s home. The evidence also points to Adam coming from Africa also. But, as I said, the location of our hypothetical first ancestors doesn’t say as much about their skin color as I had always assumed.
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Not so widely accepted that chairman of the anthropology department at the California Acadamy of Sciences believes it. This assumption is based on an even more iffy assumption. That our earliest ancestors had the same skin color as Africas current inhabitants. What is the proof of this? What is the proof that they were fair-skinned like chimpanzees? What is the proof that chimpanzees where always fair-skinned?
I guess not only am I looking for some sort of genetic marker that could prove what our ancestors were, but also looking for why people believe any one of these assumptions are true.
I think the assumptions are based on a bias. Chimps are “less advanced” than us, therefore all of the ways they differ from us must be the primitive condition (i.e. the condition that our common ancestor had). This is really a flawed way of thinking. Potentially, chimps could be as different from our common ancestor as we are. To determine which traits are primitive and which are adapted we need more information, like fossil evidence. Or looking at other closely related species. Like gorillas. We are almost as closely related to them as we are to chimps and gorillas are dark skinned.
But there it is again BeatenMan. The assumption. Because X, therefore A.
I could just as easily assume that since African’s DNA has more mutations, they have changed the most. Therefore it would be *less]/i] likely that dark-skinned people came first.
From my understanding, we evolved from chimp-like ancestors however long ago.
Shaved chimps have pale skin.
Maybe the proto-humans that stayed in Africa developed darker skin to cope with the sun (since for some reason, proto-humans did not grow hair as thick?), while the ones that migrated out did not (at least not to the same extent)?
The abstract for the article where she mentions early hominid pigmentation is linked in the curriculum vitae above. Sadly I’m not willing to shell out $35 for the whole thing :).
I think BeatenMan raises a valid point. There’s more genetic variety among African peoples than there is among people from anywhere else in the world, so it’s logical that blacks would predate whites. After all, if you consider the genetic variations among Caucasian peoples, while certainly obvious, there are more striking differences among African peoples. Arabs are physically quite different than Swedes, for example, but you’ll find a greater difference between Ethiopians and Nigerians.
This would indicate, then, that Africa had longer for its populations to grow apart. More time for the peoples to grow apart indicates that they’ve been around longer. Think about it: you’ll find less in common (where physical traits are concerned) among Africans than you will among white Eurasians or east Asians. Why?
If black populations evolved out of a white population, then the parent white population would have to have spent an awful lot of time in one place before spreading out, which is inconsistent. Why would blacks spread out while whites stay put? That makes no sense.
As Dr. Lao pointed out, our closest cousin is the chimpanzee, yes, and they do indeed have white skin. But since a couple of chimpanzees didn’t start giving birth to homo sapiens one day, it’s logical to assume that our ancestors’ varying incarnations went through several stages of balding (kind of like I am right now, but that’s another story.) I would figure that as our ancestral simian populations grew less hirsute, darker skin would be necessary, since those populations were evolving in Africa.
This is how I understand evolution to work. I don’t have any studies to cite, but I’d say this makes sense.
But hwen we are talking about “African” peoles, are we actually talking about ONE people who’s DNA has mutated and hence been aorund longer, or many peoples whose DNA has mutated like the rest of us?
Higher levels of melanin are more prevalent than lower levels, even as we trace the successive waves of migration. There is only one region where melanin levels fall to the point where some people are pale. In addition, in the other areas where melanin levels are lower the levels are sufficiently different to produce different “colors,” while there is a certain point at which sufficiently high melanin produces the same basic “color.” To me this would indicate that the default from the source was more melanin production.
Following the guesses of earlier posters, I would think that as proto-humans lost hair, they developed high levels of melanin. When they migrated out of Africa, some who moved to temperate zones lost melanin (although there are people in the temperate and arctic zones with elevated melanin levels), with only one group receding to the chimp level (perhaps when an ancient development series not completely lost from the cousins-to-chimp-ancestors was reactivated).
(Conversely, as also noted above, perhaps the chimps lost the melanin production after the hominid/pongoid split, just as Europeans did.)
Why are people so convinced that chimpanzees have fair skin? This famous chimp, Freud (of Jane Goodall’s F Troop) certainly doesn’t. Check out his relatives; they, too, don’t have fair skin. Also, aren’t we closer genetically to the bonobo? They can have dark skin, too.
All the pictures of fair-skinned chimps that I found whilst Googling seemed to be of young chimps. This page says that pink skin in chimps is a juvenile characteristic that doesn’t last into adulthood.
This is exactly where I get stuck on this here arguement. Just because humans originated in Africa it doesn’t just follow that they original homo sapian sapians were dark-skinned. This is the jump in the assumption that keeps getting me. The same is true for the reasoning for the “light-skinned” hypothesis.
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Just because our closest relatives have pale skin now, it does not automatically follow that we had pale skin then. It doesn’t even automatically follow that the chimps had pale skin a million years ago.
Ah! Now I’m leaning toward my previous assumptions. Does the lower levels of melanin follow (roughly) the migration patterns out of Africa. That would be a very good indication to me. Or perhaps our DNA has a sort of color “prototype” and the lighter skin is a variation of this prototype?
Tamerlane, I won’t get to read that until I’m home from work. But if you could ask and get some info, I wouldn’t mind one tiny little bit.
Punoqllads, whyja have to go and muddy the waters like that? So our primate cousins actually change from light-skinned to dark? Well, since I’ve been saying all along that skin color now was not neccesarily the skin color then, this just takes it one step further. The skin color now is not neccesarily the skin color now!
I did not preveiw this post because I lost the last 2 I previewed. So if there are coding, spelling or whatever errors-- too stinking bad!
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