RE: Origins of the pale skin color in Europeans
September 21, 2012 at 1:22 pm
(This post was last modified: September 21, 2012 at 1:23 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(September 21, 2012 at 1:14 pm)Minimalist Wrote: I'm still holding out for these "racial distinctions" ( remember, skin color is only one of them.... there are skeletal differences, too ) to have developed when we were all just Homo Erectus. That is at least a one million year period of evolution. Now that they have done the HNS genome project we really need a major effort to find a sample of HE dna.
There may have been "racial distinctions" within Homo Erectus, but I take the view the racial distinction between Homo Sapiens is largely an independent and very recent, on going and very fluid development. Take a population now, and take their direct ancesters from 10,000 years ago, in many cases people would classify them as distinctly different races, so much have the population changed physically.
20,000 years ago, you can't find anyone you would call Mongoloid today, a few chisel shaped incisors on the Peiking man 450,000 years ago not withstanding.
