New Twist On Out-Of-Africa Theory

Now the question is, does some avant-garde female Somali musician say the same about English men? :)

There was a Somali girl on Ted Nugent's reality show who was that way hehehe. I think Ted was almost sad to see her go.

While there are identifiable genes for, say, broad noses or pale skin or curly hair, race is not based on those morphological traits alone.

Excellent, well-stated point. There's a lot more to race than morphology. The "Hispanic race" includes people with blonde hair and blue eyes as well as 100% indigenous Americans. As far as I can tell, pretty much anyone can be Hispanic if they want to be.

...I like going to Ethiopian restaurants for many reasons, not all of them food-related!

Me, too! Halle Berry would be just another Plain Jane if she lived in Ethiopia.
Ethiopian supermodel Liya Kebede.

"As far as I can tell, pretty much anyone can be Hispanic if they want to be."

There was a thread about this a few months ago. The US census defines Hispanic basically as people from Spain and its former colonies, including ethnic Chinese in the Philippines and ethnic Germans in Argentina. It's not considered a "race" by the Census, which is why you see demographic data for "white, non-hispanic" and "black, non-hispanic." Popularly, however, the term seems to refer more and more to people from Central and Southern America of mixed European and Indian ancestry.

The history of the racial classification of Mexicans in the US is fascinating.

"Halle Berry would be just another Plain Jane if she lived in Ethiopia."

Wait a minute. Halle and all other Lorain/Cuyahoga County women are the most beautiful in the world, (my biased) hands down.

http://www.discover.com/issues/nov-94/features/racewithoutcolor444/

I can't find the text online, but here is a summary and the opportunity to buy the article.

I was suprised to learn it was written by Jared Diamond. Suprised, but hardly shocked.

mark to read later looks good

That's because skin color breeds true.

What does that mean ?

I have known so-called "black" families which had children with characteristics of skin, eye, and hair clolor ranging form blue-eyed, fair skinned blondes to brown-eyed, dark-skinned black-haired children. Same mother and father.

Eye color doesn't.

Eyes are light or dark.

My children's eyes changed from bright blue to green-hazel as they got older.

Hair color can change with age as well.

I was a platinum blonde toddler, then went to brown.

Now that's changing too !

Not really...evolutionary theory says that "throw backs" are always a possibility.And while there is some vague sense to why Northern whites' noses would have modified/slimmer nostrils,because of the cold,etc.,they have never managed to explain why some Asians,though not all,would have a different eye-fold,non-Caucasoid nostrils,even though they live in cold climes,etc.

YEC - read later

It was tempting to stay with my Nigerian boyfriend when he in all seriousness informed me that the woman being overweight there is considered very good, desireable, and not at all unattractive...it showed that the husband was taking proper care of her and was sucessful!!

"We really have to abandon the idea of race. It actually does not reflect the genetic differences we can now measure in an objective fashion... We do see differences in different regions of the world but the best indicator of those differences is simply geographical distance and not things like skin colour." Templeton said his data was inconclusive on whether interbreeding also occurred with Neanderthals. But he said there was fossil evidence that this probably occurred, which would imply a bit of Neanderthal could live on in us all.

Genetic "studies", particularly mtDNA "studies", are prime examples of the conclusion always fitting the original assumptions. Humans are able to mate with humans with other roots, because wherever and whenever humans originated, they come from some kind of common ancestors (at least two, for obvious reasons). All the oldest primates are known from fossils found in Asia. And there are other things from the genetic "studies" which are studiously ignored:

The Scars of Evolution
by Elaine Morgan
"The most remarkable aspect of Todaro's discovery emerged when he examined Homo Sapiens for the 'baboon marker'. It was not there... Todaro drew one firm conclusion. 'The ancestors of man did not develop in a geographical area where they would have been in contact with the baboon. I would argue that the data we are presenting imply a non-African origin of man millions of years ago.'"
Fathers can be influential too
by Eleanor Lawrence
Biologists have warned for some years that paternal mitochondria do penetrate the human egg and survive for several hours... Erika Hagelberg from the University of Cambridge, UK, and colleagues... were carrying out a study of mitochondrial DNAs from hundreds of people from Papua-New Guinea and the Melanesian islands in order to study the history of human migration into this region of the western Pacific... People from all three mitochondrial groups live on Nguna. And, in all three groups, Hagelberg's group found the same mutation, a mutation previously seen only in an individual from northern Europe, and nowhere else in Melanesia, or for that matter anywhere else in the world... Adam Eyre-Walker, Noel Smith and John Maynard Smith from the University of Sussex, Brighton, UK confirm this view with a mathematical analysis of the occurrence of the so-called 'homoplasies' that appear in human mitochondrial DNA... reanalysis of a selection of European and African mitochondrial DNA sequences by the Sussex researchers suggests that recombination is a far more likely cause of the homoplasies, as they find no evidence that these sites are particularly variable over all lineages.
Is Eve older than we thought?
by Sanjida O'Connell 15th April 1999
"Two studies prove that the estimation of both when and where humanity first arose could be seriously flawed... The ruler scientists have been using is based on genetic changes in mitochondria, simple bacteria that live inside us and control the energy requirements of our cells. Mitochondria are passed from mother to daughter and their genes mutate at a set rate which can be estimated - so many mutations per 1,000 years... However, these calculations are based upon a major assumption which, according to Prof John Maynard Smith, from Sussex University, is 'simply wrong'. The idea that underpins this dating technique is that mitochondria, like some kinds of bacteria, do not have sex... Two groups of researchers, Prof Maynard Smith and colleagues Adam Eyre-Walker and Noel Smith, also from Sussex, and Dr Erika Hagelberg and colleagues from the University of Otago, New Zealand, have found that mitochondria do indeed have sex - which means that genes from both males and females is mixed and the DNA in their offspring is very different... Prof Maynard Smith and his colleagues stumbled over mitochondria having sex in the process of tracking the spread of bacterial resistance to meningitis... For the 'out-of-Africa' theory to hold water, the first population would have to have been very small. Sexually rampant mitochondria may put paid to this idea. Maynard Smith thinks that the origin of humanity is much older - may be twice as old - which, according to Eyre-Walker, means we are likely to have evolved in many different areas of the world and did not descend from Eve in Africa."
Neanderthals and Modern Humans in Western Asia
by Scott J. Brown
Western Asia... has yielded some of the earliest remains of anatomically modern humans ever found -- as early, or maybe even earlier, than those found in sub-Saharan Africa. The puzzle over the relationship between Neanderthals and early modern humans in Western Asia begins with a skull from the Zuttiyeh site in Israel, from a period known as the Middle Paleolithic. The Zuttiyeh skull was associated with an early Middle Paleolithic industry, the Acheulo-Yabrudian. This industry at Zuttiyeh has been dated to as late as 148,000 years before the present, but other estimates place the Zuttiyeh skull as early as 200,000 to 250,000 B.P. The Acheulo-Yabrudian existed in the eastern Mediterranean, or Levant, before the appearance of the Mousterian -- another Middle Paleolithic industry associated with both early modern humans and a contemporaneous population with more archaic traits, whom most scholars identify as Neanderthals... These dates indicate that the Neanderthal and possibly modern remains from layer C, and also the Tabun C1 Neanderthal, are as old as, or perhaps even older than, early modern humans from other sites in Israel and from sub-Saharan Africa, dated to 80-120,000 B.P. If Neanderthal and modern types were both at Tabun before 100,000 B.P., this could back the idea that the Neanderthals and early modern humans of the Levant comprised a single indigenous population evolving toward a fully modern form.
The Neandertal Enigma
by James Shreeve
Frayer's own reading of the record reveals a number of overlooked traits that clearly and specifically link the Neandertals to the Cro-Magnons. One such trait is the shape of the opening of the nerve canal in the lower jaw, a spot where dentists often give a pain-blocking injection. In many Neandertal, the upper portion of the opening is covered by a broad bony ridge, a curious feature also carried by a significant number of Cro-Magnons. But none of the alleged 'ancestors of us all' fossils from Africa have it, and it is extremely rare in modern people outside Europe." [pp 126-127]

"Allan Wilson had always been described to me in superlatives, such as 'one of the real geniuses in science,' or 'the most arrogant guy I know...' [H]e apologized for putting me off so long and bluntly explained that the reason he had done so was that he did not trust me... 'The anthropological perspective on evolution is no longer valid; it has been overthrown. And yet the science writers who insist on talking to me come drenched in an anthropological perspective, and there is really no point in talking to them... It is paralytic. It prevents you from asking certain questions, and it forces you to ask others. The whole discipline invites you not to investigate.'

...A few months before my visit, Wilson had announced at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science... that the Neandertals were replaced because they could not speak... suggesting that a particular gene for language might have been carried in the mitochondria themselves. Since invading males would have been more likely to mate with resident females than the other way around, the offspring of sexual contact between the two groups would be 'linguistically deaf-mute,' like their Neandertal mothers. Thus disadvantaged, these 'village idiots' would face the same fate as the mothers: extinction. Only the language-endowed African lineage would continue. The language gene idea, and especially the unfortunate term 'village idiots,' elicited hoots of derision from the anti-Eve camp, and gave no joy to Wilson's colleagues." [pp 119-121]

That kind of pejorative talk is characteristic of the proponents of Replacement, which is steeped in bigotry and racism -- and always has been. Shreeve himself turns out to be an advocate of Replacement, which can be seen in semantic spin found throughout the book. Besides Replacement, the much-maligned "social Darwinism", like Darwinism itself, is likewise the product of an elitist society. Thomas Henry Huxley, "Darwin's Bulldog", while criticizing the idea that "Aryans" were a superior racial form, said:

"Physical, mental, and moral peculiarities go with blood and not with language. In the United States the negroes have spoken English for generations; but no one on that ground would call them Englishmen, or expect them to differ physically, mentally, or morally from other negroes." [Erik Trinkaus, Pat Shipman, The Neandertals pp 46-47]

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Well, my eyes are mostly bloodshot. Where did I get that trait???

From Jack Daniels.

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