If the world was connected at some point..?

Question

then why are the Mediterraneans white colored, and not black, if the Mediterranean was connected to Africa? And why are the Australians white, and not Asian or Black? The Australians don't even have Asian eyes.

Answer 1

Because Pangaea (When all land masses were connected), was 300-400 MILLION years ago, even before most dinosaurs roamed the earth...

Hominins didn't arrive on the scene, until about 2+ Million years ago...

Just do the Math!

Answer 2

I don't know about the Mediterraneans, but until about 3 to 4 hundred years ago, Australia was primarily populated by black skinned Aborigine peoples.  Australia was colonized by Great Britain and used primarily as a Penal Colony.  This colony became a way for the British Government/Society to rid itself of their "undesired" poor and diseased citizens.  Ultimately, the 'Penalized" population began to intermingle and procreate, creating families of their own.  Eventually, the Australians fought and gained their independence from Britain and established their own Parliamentary Government, hence the Australia that we know and love today.

Then there is the fabulous U S of A.  Originally peopled by our own indigenous North American Indian peoples, the 'red' skinned people.  This was prior to the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, before the Roanoke village, before Juan Ponce de Leon, Hernando Cortez, Christopher Columbus and countless other 'Explorers' who supposedly discovered and attempted to conquer the continent.  Which was ultimately done by the white skinned Europeans with the assistance of their black skinned slaves.  Initially, the american colonies were under the rule of, once again, Great Britain.  Then, in the 1700s, the 13  colonies declared, fought for and gained independence from British rule.

But this is only a brief overview of continental history as pertaining to it's peoples.  When you speak of the world being connected at some point, you are actually speaking of the single continental mass of pre-historic times known as Pangea.  Due to millions of years of geographic evolution, shifting tectonic plates, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, etc.  The continents began to drift apart.  I believe this drift has been theoretically measured at 1/2" per year, or something like that.

Find a large wall map of the world, cut out each continent individually, leaving approximately 1/2" space along the edges.  For island chains like the Aleutians, the Phillipines, etc. cut these out in a strip.  Then place these cutouts on a flat surface and move them closer to each other by their corellating coastlines.  For example, South America would be separated from Central America, which would also be separated from North America.  Then you would try to move these three continents around to fit close to each other.  Bear in mind, your never going to perfectly match coastlines because of millions of years of erosion, evolution, rising sea levels, and so on.  But, you will begin to see similarities.

Now, I hope that I have sufficiently bored with my senseless prattle.

Answer 3

Most people equate "race" with skin color. In truth that's a very minor difference and there is one one "race" the human. We humans did start out in Africa, and we were all black.

The out of Africa migration was done during the first half of the Pleistrocence period. It was a time of ice ages, when sea levels dropped significantly and there was increased rainfall in many regions. At the same time Homo erectus was making stone tools and was able to use fire. The question of his being able to create fire has not yet been answered. Given the favorable climate and the increased skills to control his environment, Homo erectus spread out of Africa.

As for skin color:

"In their analysis of human evolutionary history, Jablonski and Chaplin concluded that modern humans most likely evolved in the tropics, where they were exposed to high UV levels. But as they moved into regions away from the equator, where UV levels are lower, humans became fairer so as to allow enough UV radiation to penetrate their skin and produce vitamin D, the "sunshine vitamin," also obtained from eating fish and marine mammals. Vitamin D is essential for maintaining healthy blood levels of calcium and phosphorous, and thus promoting bone growth.

Skin color, according to Jablonski and Chaplin, basically becomes a balancing act between the evolutionary demands of photo-protection and the need to create vitamin D in the skin.

One of the important implications of Jablonski and Chaplin's work is that it underlines the concept of race as purely a social construct, with no scientific grounds. DNA research has shown that genetically all humans, regardless of skin color and other surface distinctions, are basically the same. In an April 2001 article titled, "The Genetic Archaeology of Race," published in the Atlantic Monthly, Steve Olson writes "the genetic variants affecting skin color and facial features are essentially meaningless —they probably involve a few hundred of the billions of nucleotides in a person's DNA. Yet societies have built elaborate systems of privilege and control on these insignificant genetic differences."

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/02...

"Before the mass global migrations of people during the last 500 years, dark skin color was mostly concentrated in the southern hemisphere near the equator and light color progressively increased further away, as illustrated in the map below. In fact, the majority of dark pigmented people lived within 20° of the equator. Most of the lighter pigmented people lived in the northern hemisphere north of 20° latitude."

http://anthro.palomar.edu/adapt/adapt_4....

Answer 4

North America separated from Europe roughly 70 million years ago.  Travel may have been possible over ice sheets as recent as 20 million years ago.  The very first hominids appeared not more than 7.5 million years ago.  However the people you are questioning aren't more than 2 million years old, and most likely closer to 500,000 years old.

So the answer to your question is, the world was connect much further back in time.  At the time skin color was affected by UV levels in a given region, roughly 35,000 to 25,000 years ago, the world was not connected so no large migrations were possible.

Answer 5

1) why are the Mediterraneans white colored, and not black, if the Mediterranean was connected to Africa?

People native to the Mediterrannean area look very much like people from North Africa, who are much lighter than people from more Southern parts of Africa

2) why are the Australians white

The white people in Australia aren't originally from there.  Many of them have British ancestry, and came to Australia in the last few hundred years.  If you look at the aboriginal people from Australia, they do look somewhat similar to people from India and Africa.  But even they migrated there loooooong after the continents were in their current places.