Why Did People Become White?

Live Science ^ | 9/2/2009 | Heather Whipps

[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.

[delacoert]

Vitamin D, frostbite... how does it work? Nobody knows.

[dog breath]

There are cultural connections or parallels between India and proto-Celtic societies besides the DNA evidence. The similarities between the division of class are striking. The functions of the druids and the Brahmans were remarkably close. I have wondered if the rigidness of the British class system before the twentieth system was not a weak reflection of what gave rise to the caste system in India. In India lighter skin was reflective of higher caste from what I understood, which makes sense if the Indo- European invaders were white. Incidentally, I should of said my anthropology professor from India, and not the Indian anthropology professor.

[Jewbacca]

OK, how about this one: a random mutation arose that caused white skin.

Tribal people thought the whites looked like freaky ghost people (and they couldn’t dance), so they drove them to the fringe of society, where they hooked up and had more white kids.

Later, the freaks invented everything useful we use today, including Polka and country music (which was designed for non-dancing people) and took over the world, which showed those first guys, good.

[mad_as_he$$]

Watch the Nat Geo show “Human Family Tree”. It answers about all the questions. Christians beware genetics do not support many “interpretations” of the Bible - right or wrong.

[OldSpice]

Searching for the Welsh-Hindi link


 

Ms Mathur noticed the similarities after moving to BBC Radio Wales

A BBC journalist is urging helpful linguists to come forward to help solve a mystery - why the Hindi accent has so much in common with Welsh.

Sonia Mathur, a native Hindi speaker, had her interest sparked when she moved from India to work for the BBC in Wales - and found that two accents from countries 5,000 miles apart seemed to have something in common.

It has long been known that the two languages stem from Indo-European, the "mother of all languages" - but the peculiar similarities between the two accents when spoken in English are striking.

Remarkably, no-one has yet done a direct proper comparative study between the two languages to found out why this is so, says Ms Mathur.

"What I'm hoping is that if amateurs like myself - who have indulged in doing a little bit of research here and there - come forward, we can actually do proper research with professional linguists," she told BBC World Service's Everywoman programme.

No coincidence

Ms Mathur explained that when she moved to Wales, everyone instantly assumed she was Welsh from her accent.

"I would just answer the phone, and they would say 'oh hello, which part of Wales are you from?'," she said.

We tend to pronounce everything - all the consonants, all the vowels   Sonia Mathur

"I would explain that I'm not from Wales at all - I'm from India.

"It was just hilarious each time this conversation happened."

Her interest aroused, Ms Mathur spoke to a number of other people whose first language is Hindi.

One Hindi doctor in north Wales told her that when he answered the phone, people hearing his accent would begin talking to him in Welsh.

"I thought maybe it isn't a coincidence, and if I dig deeper I might find something more," Ms Mathur said.

Particular similarities between the accents are the way that both place emphasis on the last part of word, and an elongated way of speaking that pronounces all the letters of a word.

"We tend to pronounce everything - all the consonants, all the vowels," Ms Mathur said.

"For example, if you were to pronounce 'predominantly', it would sound really similar in both because the 'r' is rolled, there is an emphasis on the 'd', and all the letters that are used to make the word can be heard.

"It's just fascinating that these things happen between people who come from such varied backgrounds."

The similarities have sometimes proved particularly tricky for actors - Pete Postlethwaite, playing an Asian criminal in the 1995 film The Usual Suspects, had his accent described by Empire magazine as "Apu from the Simpsons holidaying in Swansea".

Proto-European language

But not only the two languages' accents share notable common features - their vocabularies do too.

'Apu from the Simpsons holidaying in Swansea' or Pete Postlethwaite?

Ms Mathur's own research on basic words, such as the numbers one to 10, found that many were similar - "seven", for example, is "saith" in Welsh, "saat" in Hindi.

"These kind of things really struck me," she said.

"When I reached number nine they were exactly the same - it's 'naw' - and I thought there had to be more to it than sheer coincidence."

She later spoke to professor Colin Williams of Cardiff University's School Of Welsh, who specialises in comparative languages.

He suggested that the similarities are because they come from the same mother language - the proto-European language.

"It was basically the mother language to Celtic, Latin, and Sanskrit," Ms Mathur added.

"So basically that's where this link originates from."
 

EXCERPTED. Read more at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4328733.stm

 

 

[fanfan]

Only if you consider the absence of something the “default” setting.

The absence of color is black.

So why are the souls and palms of black people, white?

[allmendream]

The palms of a black person are lighter, but they are not “white” and certainly not albino.

Skin color is determined by melanin content. A black persons skin contains more melanin than a brown person who has more melanin in the skin than a white person. The skin color black is the abundance of melanin not the absence of color.

The fully functioning genetic system puts melanin in the skin (although not exactly evenly, a point you seem fixated upon for some unknown reason). People who do not have this fully functioning system have lighter skin.

Thus white skin is the result of mutations within the genetic system that would otherwise cause dark skin.

If your view is that at the beginning the human genome was as God intended and every change after ‘the Fall’ was degenerative; then black people are what God intended and white skin is a ‘fallen state’.

[Oztrich Boy]

Well, if you believe in evolution, then it occurs to me that the earliest humans had white skin at the very beginning simply for the reason that animals with fur tend to have light skin as there is no need for such a high melanin content.

Your theory is being considered

[Jewbacca]

“The absence of color is black.”

No, the absence of color is white.

(The absence of light is black. Indeed, something truely black absorbs all colors. Whatever color something is is the color it does not absorb, but rather reflects.)

[Nosterrex]

I'm not an anthropologist, but I doubt that any anthropology department uses the Bible. If anything, they would most likely teach that the Bible was the creation of a bronze age people.

The fact is that “new” findings are found almost every year, and they don't really know from where man originated. It is all theory. They don't even know for certain how old the human race is. It's all guess work. Many of the theories are so ridiculous that they are difficult to take seriously, and many are totally antithetical to one another.

At one time people believed that Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons were related; however, DNA evidence has totally disproved this. Now we are to believe that Cromagnons ate the Neanderthals, and that is why they are extent. Whatever the current theory is today, it will change in a very short time.

[dfwgator]

“I heard my first Mantovani record.”

[mikrofon]

Why Did People Become White?

To get to the other side .. of the tracks.

[fanfan]

I WAS thinking about the absence of light. I wish I were more articulate.
*sigh*
I was wondering why all humans, and primates have light colored palms and soles.

[RegulatorCountry]

Having been employed in “color,” the graphic arts, all my professional life, it depends upon whether you’re talking about luminance or reflectance, as far as which one is the absence of color, with the other being the totality. White is the totality with luminance. Think of red, green and blue pixels on a computer monitor. Black is the totality with reflectance. Think of printed matter.

[RegulatorCountry]

What a very unfortunate misspelling.

[fanfan]

The palms of a black person are lighter, but they are not “white” and certainly not albino.

My palms are not white or albino either.

I apologize for asking stupid questions, but I'd like to learn more about the history of humans. The history of history, as it were.

Skin color is determined by melanin content.

Yes.

The skin color black is the abundance of melanin not the absence of color.

Right, See my last post, above.

People who do not have this fully functioning system have lighter skin.

I disagree with this premise.

If your view is....

I haven't formed a view yet, as I don't have all the facts.

[fanfan]

Yes it was, thank you.

Souls = Soles.

I apologize for not catching that mistake.

[Former Proud Canadian]

mark

[Reeses]

This is an obvious problem for evolutionary theory. They are talking about a phylogenetic change in 10-50 Kya of a physical characteristic that obviously plays only a minor role in survivability and reproducibility.

The problem is that humans didn't evolve by natural selection, but by tribal warfare, which is a very unusual high-speed form of evolution that modern academia is loathe to admit. Most human traits, such as having free lubricated arms to wield weapons with, religion, intelligence, communication, culture, morals, altruism, bravery, can all be traced to their advantage in war. And shockingly, most cosmetic preferences were made by mothers, favoring for example babies with blond hair and blue eyes over siblings without. It's hard for us to understand in modern times but mothers had more mouths to feed and significantly less reliable food sources, so often had to choose which children lived. Some cosmetic traits were chosen by men, such as big boobs and blond/blue surviving into adulthood, but the original blond hair/blue trait was cultivated by mothers.