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Why Did People Become White?
Live Science ^ | 9/2/2009 | Heather Whipps

Posted on 09/02/2009 12:47:20 PM PDT by SeekAndFind

Humans come in a rainbow of hues, from dark chocolate browns to nearly translucent whites.

This full kaleidoscope of skin colors was a relatively recent evolutionary development, according to biologists, occuring alongside the migration of modern humans out of Africa between 100,000 and 50,000 years ago.

The consensus among scientists has always been that lower levels of vitamin D at higher latitudes — where the sun is less intense — caused the lightening effect when modern humans, who began darker-skinned, first migrated north.

But other factors might be at work, a new study suggests. From the varying effects of frostbite to the sexual preferences of early men, a host of theories have been reviewed.

Vitamin D plays an important role in bone growth and the body's natural protection against certain diseases, and the inability to absorb enough in areas of less-powerful sunlight would have decreased life expectancies in our African ancestors. The further north they trekked, the more vitamin D they needed and the lighter they got over the generations, due to natural selection.

This explanation accounts for the world's gradients of skin color traveling south to north, the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency among African immigrants to higher latitudes, as well as the relatively darker skin of Canada's Inuit peoples, who have good levels of vitamin D despite living in the Arctic, due to their diet rich in oily fish.

(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...


TOPICS: Science; Society
KEYWORDS: agriculture; animalhusbandry; color; godsgravesglyphs; health; helixmakemineadouble; huntergatherers; race; vitamind
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To: Nosterrex
Dark pigmentation is, first of all, not a strict dominance/recessive trait and not controlled by a single gene. So you are completely off base right off the bat. A dark skinned and light skinned person do not have a child as dark as the dark skinned parent; the colors blend.

Moreover you have no idea how dominance/recessive traits work, even if it WAS applicable, which it is not.

All it would take for a black population to become a white population due to vitamin D deficiency from living in a northern climate is a slight reproductive advantage towards being even slightly lighter skinned for a couple thousand years.

A lighter skinned individual in northern climates where vitamin D could be a problem DO have a reproductive advantage over those darker skinned individual who would develop rickets from vitamin D deficiency.

61 posted on 09/02/2009 1:27:28 PM PDT by allmendream (Income is EARNED not distributed, so how could it be redistributed?)
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To: dog breath

All this time I thought white people are the creation of Yakkub, the devil.


62 posted on 09/02/2009 1:27:45 PM PDT by IDFbunny
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To: skully

According to Elijah Muhammad and his followers, an evil scientist named Yakub created the first white people. I forget if Jeremiah Wright’s explanation is the same or a bit different.


63 posted on 09/02/2009 1:28:23 PM PDT by Verginius Rufus
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To: Jewbacca

I’ve got a whole bunch of mystery lines, genealogically speaking, on both maternal and paternal sides, that I can only find record of to the early 1500’s in modern-day France, German speaking and near the Rhine though, in Alsace, with a few in Canton Basel, Switzerland, and a few on the other side of the Rhine. All their surnames could be considered Jewish, but they were Moravian. Had a penchant for Hebrew placenames in PA and NC. Bethlehem, Bethabara, Bethania, Salem. I’ve often wondered who they really were, and where they came from. Spain? The era is about right, for them to just pop up like they seem to have.


64 posted on 09/02/2009 1:31:58 PM PDT by RegulatorCountry
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To: SeekAndFind

why do they ASSUME it BECAME white?

is this one of those PC leftwing pseudo science mags?


65 posted on 09/02/2009 1:32:58 PM PDT by longtermmemmory (VOTE! http://www.senate.gov and http://www.house.gov)
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To: dragonblustar

[That’s too funny. I was thinking of Jackson when I read the title. LOL]

Only in America could a poor black boy grow up to be a rich white woman.

Or so the joke goes.


66 posted on 09/02/2009 1:34:46 PM PDT by FastCoyote (I am intolerant of the intolerable.)
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To: cvq3842
Because they wanted to play golf.

No cvq, white people play golf so they can dress like black people.

67 posted on 09/02/2009 1:36:36 PM PDT by Kenny Bunk (Congratulations Obama Voters! You are not prejudiced. Unpatriotic, maybe. Dumb definitely.)
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To: Nosterrex
I don't place any importance on the idea that ‘dm denotes that Adam had a ruddy complexion.

Well, if we take the Bible seriously, it says that the Tigris and Euphrates flows through the garden of Eden. Which would mean that Adam and Eve originally lived in what we now call --- IRAQ.

Has any anthropologist ever considered this angle ?
68 posted on 09/02/2009 1:40:22 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: Clemenza
Please don't get my Cuban wife started. Before we met all I knew was that Spanish chicks = hot.

Apparently there is a hierarchy of "hispanics" that I was unaware of-and that there is much disagreement about. I'll leave it there.

69 posted on 09/02/2009 1:43:10 PM PDT by MattinNJ (DeMint/Palin 2012)
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To: SeekAndFind

It was the devil. He wanted HIS own race. So they could do bad things to EVERYBODY else for all of time. Oh, and to take over EVERYTHING also. And to be mean to other races. -Without exception.


70 posted on 09/02/2009 1:43:21 PM PDT by J40000
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To: dog breath

Ahhsooo! /bows


71 posted on 09/02/2009 1:44:23 PM PDT by CougarGA7 (My tagline is an honor student at Free Republic Elementary School.)
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To: longtermmemmory
why do they ASSUME it BECAME white?

I believe they're thinking of the mitochondrial Eve from Africa.

"EVE" of course, is the name given by researchers to the woman who is defined as the matrilineal most recent common ancestor (MRCA) for all currently living humans. Passed down from mother to offspring, derivatives of her mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) are now found in all living humans: all mtDNA in every living person is derived from hers. Mitochondrial Eve is the female counterpart of Y-chromosomal Adam, the patrilineal most recent common ancestor, although they lived at different times.

Mitochondrial Eve is believed to have lived about 194,300 ± 32,500 years BP, probably in East Africa, in the region of Tanzania and areas to the immediate south and west.
72 posted on 09/02/2009 1:44:31 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: longtermmemmory

See the abstract of the study here :

http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/24/3/757


73 posted on 09/02/2009 1:45:45 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: allmendream

Perhaps Adam was white and Eve was black and their descendants ran the gamut of varieties of hue.


74 posted on 09/02/2009 1:45:53 PM PDT by brwnsuga (Proud, BLACK, Beautiful, Conservative!!!)
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To: SeekAndFind

Deep Thoughts:

I think I’m white because I was born that way. I think I was born that way because there was no sun in my mother’s womb.


75 posted on 09/02/2009 1:49:29 PM PDT by keats5 (Not all of us are hypnotized.)
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To: allmendream

I though a mad scientist named Yakub accidently created us whites.


76 posted on 09/02/2009 1:51:13 PM PDT by Niuhuru (The internet is the digital AIDS; adapting and successfully destroying the MSM host.)
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To: keats5

People became white so they could take MASSIVE DOSES OF VITAMIN D......THAN BECOME BLACK and write a bestselling book like JOHN HOWARD GRIFFIN!

http://www.amazon.com/Black-Like-John-Howard-Griffin/dp/0451192036


77 posted on 09/02/2009 1:54:22 PM PDT by outhousepatrol
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To: SIDENET

>>>Why Did People Become White?<<<

Same reason as aspirin...because they work.


78 posted on 09/02/2009 1:56:29 PM PDT by highnoon (Government....fixing broken things until they are completely FUBAR!)
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To: SeekAndFind
...caused the lightening effect when modern humans, who began darker-skinned, first migrated north.

Ah this is somewhat incorrect and is in fact the reverse of whats looks to be true...

First ...All people of any color have some "white" skin...

Look at the palm of the hand and soles of the feet of the darkest person

The skin there is "white"...

Is there any befits to that area being "white" on all people of any color?

Or is "white" just the default

The palm of the hand and soles of the feet are areas that do not need protection from the sun...so no need for the body to wast the effort doing the unnecessary of darkening the skin

Conversely light skin people do darker when needed

Coloring the skin look to be an extra cost option not order when not needed, white skin looks to be the lower cost economy model

79 posted on 09/02/2009 1:57:11 PM PDT by tophat9000 (Obama plans to fix America like he fixed his dog)
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Comment #80 Removed by Moderator


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