How did the different races (black, white,asian) evolve to look they way they do?

Question

How did the different races (black, white,asian) evolve to look they way they do?

Answer 1

Get a more modern book. Ethnic differences do not a "race" make!

Answer 2

evolution is influenced by two factors : Dietry& Cultural

Answer 3

Well race as society recognizes it is not valid for most aspects of anthropology.  In forensic anthropology, we tend to use the term ancestry which is an acceptable designation.  That being said, there are reasons why people look so physically different and it has to do with environment.  

People living in different environments eventually adapted so that they could live more efficiently.  For instance people living in hot, dry environments displayed features that enabled them to live comfortably and were vastly different than those features favored in cold environments.  Because there are environments around the world that are similar, people who have descended from those environments will tend to look similar, but that doesn't mean they are the same "race" or ancestry.  

There are no clear cut boundaries in the way people look around the world, simply a gradual continuum of features that are suited to the environment those people live in.

Answer 4

Everyone seems to be afraid to answer your question, at the risk of being politically incorrect...

HERE'S THE ANSWER!

San-Bushmen, who are a light-skinned brownish color, and have high cheekbones, represent the genetic root of all modern humans. They have the oldest traceable H.sapiens DNA...

Darker-skinned blacks, such as as those who live in Ethiopia & Western Africa migrated away from forests, to regions which are characterized by either desert or coastal areas, where the sun is less forgiving...

40,000 years ago, one migration, which made it to modern-day Kazakhstan, near the Caspian Sea, had another genetic split. The tribes that headed east, became Asian Mongoloids, and those who went west, to the Caucassus Mountains, and eventually to Europe, became White/Caucasian/Cro-magnon...

Isolation, & a gradual process of selecting minute successful mutations within populations, over time, accounts for any extreme external differences that we may perceive in one another today...

THAT'S IT, IN A NUTSHELL!

Answer 5

Well, I believe the original people would have been black, or a little paler. Some people think that the Kalahari bushmen of africa are the closest thing we have to these original people/parent race. It's most likely that the different skin colours evolved because varying levels of sunlight. The Caucasian race harks from just a small are of the world, frigid northern Europe. Here white skin was advantageous because it is more efficient at manufacturing vitamin D from sunlight. In sunnier, southern regions, darker skin was preferable because the melanin protected people from skin cancer. I would say all the skin colours are a result of this effect or later interbreeding between people.

Answer 6

In my opinion, there are numerous factors that determine how we look.  Two obvious factors are temperature and sunshine in the environment.  Since humans are spread out thousands of imiles and sometimes across nearly impenetrable barriers, variations were favored in certain environments.  In Africa, with its intense heat and sun, very dark skin and lean skinny bodies were favored.  In Europe, stockier lighter skinned people were favored.  In Asia, where some lived in the high Himalaya, features that protected against both cold and sun were favored, (i.e black hair and an extra fat layer on the eyes).  These features sometimes spread as certain tribes migrated and raided.  For example, mongolian features are still seen in some people in Central Europe from Ghengis Khan.  There is an interbreeding of various populations over time, but it hasn't been enough to eliminate the environmental factors.  In this way, we are all the same species, all closely related, and yet some obvious racial differences are stil present in various parts of the world.

Answer 7

I am an anthropology grad student and an instructor and preach this from the rooftops in EVERY class:

RACE IS NOT A VALID BIOLOGICAL CONCEPT.

Race is a CULTURAL creation! It is really the collection of a bunch of continuous and amorphous phenotypic traits (like skin color, nose shape, hair color and texture, eye shape, etc.) that people focused on in the past (for varied reasons) and chose to make into discrete categories (for varied purposes). It is a CULTURAL way of organizing the immense diversity present in human populations.

If we had chosen different phenotypic traits, "races" would be comprised completely differently. For example, what if "race" was "assigned" based on fingerprint patterns (whorls, arches, spirals, and straight patterns), ability to digest milk products in adulthood, eye color, or genetic predisposition to or defense against certain diseases? Human cultures chose the traits and created the categories.

So, to answer your question, THAT'S how different "races" got to look the way they do: we chose to and still choose to see them that way.

Answer 8

Most of the answers posted are what has been traditionally been taught. However I remember reading an alternative theory that suggest the physical differences in humans has less to do with environmental conditions and more to do with cultural norms of attractiveness. So that dark skinned people evovled that way becasue those cultures find dark skin more attractive etc...

This article (or book I can't remember which) pointed out a lot of inconsistencies with the traditional explanation. For example why should forest dwelling africans develop dark skin when  they hardly see the sun, whereas the indigenous people of the Amazon, along the same latitude as Africa evolve paler skin. wish i could remember the author

Answer 9

Well firstly our common ancestors are believed to be from kALAHRI DESSERT IN aFRICA.

oNCE PEOPLE BEGAN TO MIGRATE TO OTHER PLACES IN THE WORLD DIFFERENT PHYSICAL TRAITS BEGAN TO EMERGE..

for example white skin evolved in norhern europe through

1)lack of sunlight

2) insuffiicient vitamin D and lack of melanin causes skin to loose its dark complexion

3) selection as lighter skin was prefered in europe for reasons asides from sexual attraction, predominant reason being that your off spring had a better chance at survival in cold temparatures

It is thought that blonde hair and blue/green/grey eyes evolve in the ice ages, same reasons as white skin developed..evolved due to environment..

different body types is probably a combination of diet and environment, for example south east asians are still very petite because of diet and tropical cinditions where it is an advantage to carry less fat

stocky bigger boned scandinavians are this way for the oppsite reason, needed mmore body fat to surviive cold conditions..

asians have different shaped eyes...apparently because all east asians have ancestry from mongolians, mongolians originally devloped, as did inuits and native americans who were descendants of mongolians, their eyes are lie that because of harsh weather conditions caused their eyes to evolve with extra fat on the eyelid and a less open eye to protect their eyes, same reason for their wide prominent cheek bones, a protective evolvment for weather conditions..

well nose shape is unknown for why it developed into different shapes

there are the basics

Answer 10

.the colors of our skin and the physical characteristics all have to do with were we originate from. Blacks have dark skin because Africa is close to the equator where there is a lot of sun and they needed darker skin so they would not get burned so easily. and as humans move further and further away from the equator the darker skin became less needed and people began having lighter skin.