[LanaTurnerOverdrive]

I am reluctant to post this question, as I am still smarting from a well deserved beat-down of epic proportions that I incurred only two days ago, but I will go against better judgement and do so at my own peril.

This question may be familiar to some of you who are more educated than I, which would be a lot of you, but I have not heard it addressed yet in this crowd, nor elsewhere.

If all human life descended from Adam and Eve, what, is the explanation for the multitude of distinct human races? Anglos distinctively pale, Africans distinctively dark, Asians and others with profoundly unique facial features, etc.

Would this not suggest that groups of humans have changed since the Dawn of Man, that they have become different than the Original Pair, and would this not be classified as "evoloving?"

LanaTurnerOverdrive signed up on 2002-07-02

[LanaTurnerOverdrive]

Good grief....make that "evolving" thank you.

[Hunble]

If all human life descended from Adam and Eve, what, is the explanation for the multitude of distinct human races? Anglos distinctively pale, Africans distinctively dark, Asians and others with profoundly unique facial features, etc.

Actually, I do have a simple answer to your question.

Today, we have some outstanding breeds of dogs. Take a few minutes and look at those same breeds from around 1850. Finding those old images is not easy, but possible.

If you are able to find those pictures, you will realize how rapidly a 'race' can be created.

[AntiGuv]

Yes. This is evolution. As you can see from looking at the various human races, it doesn't even take very much time in the grand scheme of things for genetic variations to emerge and become pervasive within even a relatively isolated group of the same species. With sufficient time, you would have enough genetic drift that subgroups would be unable to reproduce with one another. As a matter of fact, the Aborigines and the rest of humanity were already quite close to this threshold when the British colonized Australia. Indeed, the number of live births that would result from interbreeding between those two groups would probably be almost nonexistent without modern medicine.

[DWPittelli]

Although I do not believe that all humans descended from Adam and Eve, the existence of different races or skin colors doesn't actually refute the possibility. (However, the wide variety of different genetic alleles does rule it out, unless either Adam and Eve lived over a million years ago, or there was at some time in the past, a much higher level of mutations, yet paradoxically these did not lead to higher levels of deformities, which would require constant genetic interference from God.)

A population will get darker just by moving to a place like Africa, as paler people get more skin cancer, sunburns keep them from feeling horny, etc. And a population will get lighter in a cloudy place as lack of Vitamin D (which sunlight allows lighter people to make) causes higher death rates among the dark. This is of course Darwinian evolution. And indeed, the Finns were a relatively dark Middle Eastern people 1,000 years ago, when they first migrated to Finland.