I have a question about evolution, please. How do scientists/evolutionists explain the many?

Question

diverse human races? Our different skin colors, hair textures, facial features (noses, brows, eye slants, etc). If it's true that humans evolved from apes, do you say the different races evolved from different ape species?

Humans have always mixed and have children from two racial backgrounds. Do/did apes/monkeys intermix? I am curious and would appreciate any insight you can give me. Thank you!

Answer 1

The writer above explained the idea that races developed according to needs for climates.  (The theory further says that humans and apes had the same ancestors, not that humans came from apes.) That holds true for not only humans, but animals.  In order for groups to mix they have to have the same or very nearly same gentic materials to work with.  We have many varieties of dogs and all can intermix, although it is true that some offspring do not survive if the wrong mix is made it is not because of the genetic make-up, but how the genes are expressed.

Answer 2

I think we spend to much time and energy worrying about where we came from. I am always amazed how people get so angry when debating this question. I think we just need to worry about what kind of person we are, and where we are going.

Nothing we can do about the past. Serves no purpose to spend much time there.

Answer 3

ra has got it DOWN

so we might imagine a generation or two or ten, of really smart monkeys, who started living together and created a safe domain, where everyone's intelligence and ideas were employed, instead of a rigid "pecking order".

remember evolution happens DARNED FAST - maybe 3-10 generations, a whole new species.  This is not the old Darwin idea.  this has been observed -- species that differentiate and adapt in as few as 3 generations.

Answer 4

scientists do not support the idea of human races at all.  we are all the same race and species.  there are general features among certain groups of people which we sometimes focus our attention on a lot; periodontal flaps on the eyes of Asian people, broad or narrow noses, different skin tones, for example.  but these features are, quite literally, skin deep, and there are very few of them in relation to the human genome overall.  as a whole, humans are a very uniform species.  in fact, with only 200,000 chimpanzees in the world, (compared to 6,000,000,000 humans) there is actually 100 X more genetic variation between individual chimps than there is between human beings.  in fact, now that scientists are realizing this, many of them are asking why we human beings are so similar to each other, why we have so littel genetic variation among us, and some nervous scientists think there may not even be enough genetic material to make us a viable species for very long before we all start to get too inbred.

apes and monkeys often have complex social interactions, and it is society which plays a dominant role in mating slection amongst the great apes (chimps, gorillas, and humans).  different species of monkeys cannot interbreed with each other any more than you can interbreed with your dog; to reproduce, individuals must have a compatible genetic make-up.  so a chimp can't mate with a gorilla.  and some social groups within a single species also have no chance of mating with each other because of social conditions (Romeo and Juliet, members of different castes in India, someone living in Iceland who will never meet someone living in Lesotho, for example).  

humans all evolved from the same origin, in Africa, and we arose as a species about 120,000 years ago.  genetic tracing, which looks at gene markers through broad populations, tells us that there were several waves of migration out of Africa.  the first one was about 40,000 yeasrs ago, and they migrated through South-East Asia to Australia, making the Aborigines there the oldest population of humans outside of Africa.  30,000 years ago there was another wave of migration which went to China, and some of them eventually ended up in the New World as the native populations of the Americas.  Then 20,000 years ago there was another wave of migration out of Africa which went to Central Asia, and 10,000 years ago a segment of that population migrated to Europe.  To this day, within African populations, all of the genetic diversity of human beings is alive and well, and there are no genetic features possessed by any group of humans which does not exist in African populations as well.  We essentially have not changed at all in the last 120,000 years, with the exception of a few minor adaptations in some surface features.  The form our species took back then was a good one, sufficient for allowing us to walk all over the world and to adapt ourselves to every part of the landscape of our planet, and we are all still closely related enough to be able to reproduce with each other.

I hope this gives you a little bit of insight and helps to answer your question.

Answer 5

No such thing as evolution. Sorry dudes who believe in it.

I wonder why, if things get more suprior and less suprior creatures die out, why not all animals have died out already. Why apes still exist if we are superior to apes and why have they have not died out.

Answer 6

Humans are completely different from monkeys, because we didn't come from them. I am not a monkey, you are not a monkey, and our ancestors were not monkeys. Honestly, evolution comes up with the most absurd explanations that make absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Answer 7

All humans are variants of the same species.  The minor differences are completely outweighed by the huge amount of common traits we share.

All the traits in different "races" are just derived from genetic diversity and the climate in which people live/lived in.  

For example ~

Skin colour has been effected by the amount of sunlight a group of people would have had to live with.  Those living closer to the equator would need darker skin to survive outside for prolonged periods of time without developing cancer or simply burning too quickly while those that lived in cooler northern climates and wore more clothing to keep warm required less skin pigment to protect them as their clothes did the job and so would have lighter skin.

Does this mean that those with darker skin are better or worse?  No, it simply means they have different history to those of lighter skin.

If that doesn't help - think of it like this:

All domestic dogs are the same species but different breeds look completely different.  This is genetic diversity - family traits selected and breed.  They are all descended from the same species and can all interbreed.  This is the same as mankind.  While you may not like being compared to a dog, our lineage shares similarity.

Answer 8

wow. i thought about that to myself and came up with the conclusion of: thats a really good question.

i cant believe you thought that up. YOU GO GIRL.

i dont think ra is right because that sounds like Lamarck and he was wrong about his theory of evolution. Maybe go with something a little more Darwin. Look him up on google.

Answer 9

Hair color and shape is believed to be an adaptation to different environments. Modern human hair is said to have started out very dark and very curly to protect the scalp from the tropical sun. It got straighter because people were living in a dense forest where curly hair might get them stuck. Lighter hair developed in higher latitudes and colder climates where it was important to get more light to the skin. Similarly, flatter noses are believed to be an adaptation to colder climate -- a flatter nose has less surface area, so it loses heat slower.

Some people believe modern humans mixed with one or two other species of humans and others believe there was never any mixing between modern humans and any other species.

All modern human groups evolved from Africans within the last 80,000 years. We know how this happened because there is more genetic diversity in Africa than in the rest of the world combined.