If the first humans were black, does that mean cavemen were black too?

Question

If the first humans were black, does that mean cavemen were black too?

Answer 1

The first humans were dust. That doesn't mean we're all dust bunnies.

Answer 2

DeeDee, I don't know how old you are, you've written a very thoughtful post in many ways, BUT....

no sunlight in Europe prior to medieval times?? No horses?Covered in snow?

   In Britain (where I live) people came and settled after the Ice Age passed, some time around 14,000 years ago. (They were white btw and came from around the Basque country--their dna is still prevalent in this country.) Some lived in caves,some were nomadic

    Around 3000 BC a new farming people came. The sun and moon were sacred to them, and they built huge stone temples such as Stonehenge to mark phases of the calendars. The midsummer & midwinter sun would enter their temples and certain tombs on one special day only--of course they had to have sunny weather to do this! In fact, the climate of the neolithic in Britain was actually WARMER  & sunnier than it  is today; though it deteriorated around 1000 BC & hence temples like Stonehenge were abandoned (it then became a similar climate to the Britain of today--unpredictable.)

   Horses were known from at least the bronze Age and greatly prized,even worshipped in Celtic times. They pulled chariots of celts and Romans alike.

Answer 3

Yes

If the first humans were blue, then everyone is blue in ancestry and color is irrelevant. Which should more evidence that we all come from the same place and are all human.

Answer 4

That maybe the case. It depends on where the caves were located. Humans adapted in order to survive in their enviornments. The black skin may have helped with the heat in Africa, but when they ventured out to places like Europe, they changed for the cooler climate.

Answer 5

are we not all th e sons and daughters of abraham., or was that spiral sliced ham

Answer 6

Yes, the first cavemen in Africa were Black, but if you're asking about the first "traditional" European Cro-Magnon cavemen & women, who entered Europe 40,000+ years ago, then, they had already begun to lighten in color, as they are the ancestors of modern Caucasian Europeans!

Answer 7

I'm with Dee Dee on this one.

I am well learned in the history of Africa and all continents. It is true, all other continents have shiefted considerably away from Africa, while Africa itself has remained stationary.

As for cavemen, they did not live or exist in Africa. That was in Europe and outside of Africa. The African people, in paleolithic times, had begun constructing buildings ---some of which were grass huts but most of which were made of limestone, baked clay bricks, and grass. Grass served as a source of insulation.  Indigenous African people have eumelanin rich complexions, but the further away from Africa that the emigrants went---the more melanin was lost.  

These emigrants were not from Ethiopian or any part of East Africa. The people who populated the majority of the world were from Central and West Africa, this is proven because 1/3 of all the world's population have the haplotype L1. East Africans (Ethiopians, Somalis, Eritreans, Sudanese) all are  haplogroup L3, this group remained in Africa and are the people who closest resemble the earliest modern humans.

There were many emigrations from West Africa, the voluntary emigrations took place over 65,000 years ago with Homo sapiens (modern humans). They were small scale migrations, but the largest migration from West Africa took place during the years of the TransAtlantic Slave Trade. This of course was not of the free will of the West Africans, and they were grossly exploited and mistreated.

The irony is, that the very people who enslaved the peoples of West Africa (Togo, Benin, and Nigeria, the Ivory Coast, etc.)  shared the same ancestry as their slaves, they were descended from the L2 haplogroup. Modern day Europeans are descendants of West Africans.

Modern day Asians (Chinese, Japanese, Indians, etc.) are all descended from another haplogroup in Africa, most likely L4, L5, and L6.

The numbers after the L's do not mean one group is later than the other. It is only grouping, seeing as how  Filippinos, Chinese, Japanese, and Indian are very ancient groups, predating the Europeans. East Africans are the earliest group, and West  (Central) Africans are a few millenia younger. The youngest of the groups are Europeans, this is because Europe was covered in ice, and living conditions were too harsh to grow anything or really sustain life.  (And by Europe I mean Northern and Western Europe-not Greece, Italy or Turkey.

I hope this answers your cavemen question.

Answer 8

As far as I know, no human skin that old has ever been found.

There has been skin found from the bronze age that was...bronze.

Answer 9

Define "cavemen". There are people who live as cavemen even today (Uncontacted tribes in Papua Guinea for example) and there are people who have been urban as for the last 7000 years...

But if by "cavemen" you mean the early humans that lived in Africa then yes, they were indeed of black color. However, this soon changed as they moved into colder enviroments, and remember, the distribution of enviromental diffrences looked somewhat diffrent "back then" as it does today.

Answer 10

Not in Europe, they were Asian beige before the mutation for pale skin arose in Northern Europe about. Not as some people think, black prior to the pink mutation. The Asian light tan colour is VERY old, and predates the move into Europe.

The first people out of Africa would have been black/dark brown though. They probably looked like a cross betweeen Melanesians and Caucasians.

Answer 11

The location of the earliest and latter fossils doesn't mean that any particular species was only from that location. It certainly isn't rational to conclude that ancient men evolved in the Afar region simply because that is where most of the fossil bearing regions are located considering how other locations also have ancient fossils.  Hominids expanded out of Africa at least 1.7 million years ago.  It is possible that modern humans may have largely descended from a population that lived in Africa 100,000 years ago but the people living there were not Negroes.  The native population likely had more melanin when they lived in places where the intensity of the sun was the greatest.  They may have been darker skinned like many modern Africans, and others, but they are equally related to all modern people.  Hominids that lived farther from the equator would likely have lighter skin.  Caves and overhangs are places where hominids would likely shelter.  They preserve and concentrate fossils but it shouldn't be inferred that they necessarily spent a large percentage of time there and that includes Neanderthals in Europe.

Answer 12

The first human ancestors did evolve in Africa, and if we are talking about species without considerable body hair, they would have had very dark skin. Homo sapiens (modern humans) began leaving Africa roughly 150,000 years ago and migrated into Asia, the Middle East and Europe (and eventually to every corner of the planet). The farther away from the equator you get, the less adaptive having dark skin is, so lighter skin would have evolved in those places (as we see today).

Various human populations (and human-like species) did (and in some cases still do) utilize caves and natural rock-shelters. Their "blackness" however, is related to geographic distribution, so to answer your question about "cavemen", we really need to know what exactly you mean by "cavemen".

Answer 13

Everyone were cavemen

Answer 14

Perhaps the first humans were from what is now the northern regions and they were white and when they migrated to the African continent they changed to black cavemen! Or another possibility is that the poles were in a different position from where they are currently placed. Meaning that the equator was at a higher latitude and the colder regions were where the equator now resides. This would present a need for white skinned caveman in the colder areas in the African continent!  For Dee Dee NY and Canada are the center points of the previous singular continental land mass. They are the most stable points on this planet! Even Africa has moved considerably!

Answer 15

The first human beings were Africans. They lived in the region of modern day Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan, Kenya and Somalia. I do not beleive they lived in caves but in houses made of clay, grass, and wood. There may have been some people who lived in caves, but probably very few. The Horn of AFrica is so beautiful, hot, and sunny. Who would want to stay hemmed up in a dark -damp cave all day when you could be out in the sun.

I definitely think the earliest humans had to be black ( having skin with eumelanin---in various shades of brown) because melanin turns the sun's vitamin D into nutrients for the body. Melanin is also an antioxidant and traps bacteria, viruses, etc. that are native to tropical and hot areas. There is no way that anyone without brown-black pigmentation could have survived in Africa. Because the sun there is scorching! They would have died of heat stroke, suffered painful sunburns, etc.

But the first humans were black.

Pink and white skin tones occurred when people migrated into Northern Europe.  Light eyes prevented snow blindness, the lack of melanin (color) in the skin made vitamin D absorption very fast because there was hardly any sunlight in Europe prior to  Medieval Times, so Euro (and non African) skin tones had to make the most of the  little bit sunlight that they got. The hair also got bone straight and lighter to allow quicker sun absorption and penetration. ( This change took place with Europeans because they had to adapt to get all their vitamin D from the sun, the Inuit on the other hand were able to maintain their dark skin-hair-and eyes, because they had diets rich in lard, red meat, etc. in North American).

I am pretty sure since Europe was all covered in snow, and there weren't any trees, clay, or plants there to build huts with---that Europeans did find shelter in caves. As for food, I don't know what was available in Europe?

I know they did not eat horses because horses are from the Middle East and Asia. The big boned, fuzzy cold blooded horses came around after Medieval Times. No other herbivorous animals could survive in Europe (at that time) because it was too cold and nothing can grow in abundant snow----except algae.

When people left African, everyone changed. Think of it this way, African is the only continent in the world that has stayed in place, while other continents have broken off and separated ( because of tectonic plate action). Africa is the oldest, largest, and most stable land mass in the world.

Antartica is huge too, but it is covered in ice----and  to our knowledge is not able to be inhabited.