How were races born?

Question

How did races such as the Chinese, African Americans, African Americans, Hispanics, etc. come to be?

When humanity was born wasn't there only 1 race (the homosapiens)? How did races develop?

How did racism develop?

Links would be appreciated.

Answer 1

There still is only one race.  It's the skin coloring (only) that has changed.  An apple is an apple no matter what the skin coloring.  Check out this news article.  

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con...

Answer 2

Race, or the morphological differences between humans, occurs allopatrically--that is separate, non-overlapping geographic areas.  As a result, subtle differences between humans begin to emerge since human cultures and/or societies may favor particular characteristics over others.  Over time, it is possible for this allopatry to produce an entirely new species.

Answer 3

The reasons for the phenotypical differences between us are a combination of environmental adaptation (i.e. White skin absorbs vitamin d better than darker skin so it was an adaptive trait among those who lived in a darker rainier northern europe) and cultural selection, different cultures find some physical traits to be more attractive and so people with those traits tend to have more kids... Anyhow after homo-sapien-sapiens dispersal from Africa took place around 50k years ago, it took about another 20-30k years for the mongoloid/european split to occur, and from there different populations continue to select fro different physical dispositions.  But even still today we are ALL still Classified as Homo-Sapien-Sapiens. Homo-Sapiens refers to a brief subspecies which existed around 100k years ago.

I cannot provide a link but read "History and Geography of Human Genes" by Cavalli-Sforza

Answer 4

That's a long story.

For a start, there are at least four DNA studies that show the 'out of Africa' theory (and it is only a theory) to be impossible.

http://mathilda37.wordpress.com/2008/03/...

There are modern human remains in China over 100,000 years old, so it wasn't a recent exit from Africa either.

http://mathilda37.wordpress.com/2008/03/...

The best theory is that we include a little archaic homo Erectus and Neanderthal DNA, they were never really seperate species. Don't let the 'we didn't find any Neanderthal mitochondrial DNA' fool you, as it's actually very easy to lose a Mt DNA lineage. Some ancient modern human bones don't contain DNA descended from mitochondrial Eve, and Cro MAgnon bones have now rare Mt DNA as very common, so it's easy for lineages to be lost.

http://mathilda37.wordpress.com/2008/03/...

After the wave of modern humans moved out of Africa they mostly displaced and partially absorbed the archaic humans, putting variation into the non African gene pool. Then there was a very big supervolcano eruption about 74,000 years ago, mount Toba in Indonesia. This wiped out everyone in the vicinty, and caused a big 'gap' between the East and West human population, as everyone from Indonesia to Iran died.

http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/stanle...

This supervolcano caused a 'nuclear winter' that lasted for six years, and this really took the human population down again, to a bottle neck of about 15,000 people, most of the survivors would have been in the tropical areas of Afica.

Humans seemed to have bounced back faster than the Homo erectus, and we replaced them in Asia, but it took another 50,000 years to overtake the Neanderthals.

Anyway, these groups of survivors spread out out become the modern races, Sub- Saharan Africans, Europeans, Asian and Australoids, due to a combination of founder effect and archaic genes causing differences between the populations.

Racism is probably a natural dislikie of  'other-ness' people not being of your family or tribe. Even chimps will attack strange chimps, it's an expression of genetic selfishness.

Answer 5

The American Anthropological Association does not acknowledge "race" because there is no distinction for race within a strand of DNA.  It is basically an "eye test." However, the idea of race devoloped due to the geographic isolation of peoples before the world was widely populated.  This geographic isolation led to interbreeding within small groups and it affected the gene pool.  Generation after generation, more and more people within the group began to look alike.  Skin color, body build, hair texture, etc. were determined by environment and these traits were passed on to following generations.  

A study that involved a group of chimpanzees who were separated into two different groups and placed on either side of a river, showed that once the separation occured, the chimps began to become hostile with members of the opposite group.  They even became somewhat violent by throwing sticks across the river at one another.  This suggests that humans may have a predisposition for prejudice against members of another group.  Since differences in appearance were present once population increased and more contact was made between groups, it is likely that the predisposition for prejudice evolved into racism.

Answer 6

it was created, not born.

http://uncpress.unc.edu/interviews/m_smi...

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe...