So White People Are Mutants?

[DJOSD]

3 main races, black, white and yellow...

no theres five distinguishable races. Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, White.
Black - African
Brown - Indian
Red - Native American
Yellow - Indochina
White - European

each are different from the others.

[Ferrets54]

no theres five distinguishable races. Black, Brown, Red, Yellow, White.
Black - African
Brown - Indian
Red - Native American
Yellow - Indochina
White - European

each are different from the others.

You forgot hobbits.

[Last Roman]

3 main races, black, white and yellow...

19th century bull blop

if you really want to know about races, visit here

[Helm]

You also have Native Americans and Australian Aborigines as well so that makes 5 human races in total. Even if two of them barely count. Brown is just a variation on white btw.

[Manco]

Anyone using skin colour as the deciding characteristic of race needs to go back to school and retake biology.

[Last Roman]

Anyone using skin colour as the deciding characteristic of race needs to go back to school and retake biology.

it is a characteristic, but I agree, it is certainly not the deciding one.

[Simetrical]

Environment determines the success of all viable offspring.

Only in the broadest possible sense of the term, so broad as to encompass everything that happens to the organism for any reason. Including genetics. It makes the term fairly meaningless.

The cause of variation is irrelevant to the principle of Evolution by Natural Selection.

I never said anything to the contrary.

Even then they could survive.

Just at a slightly (but significantly) lower rate.

There is no evidence to suggest that the first humans had black skin. No skin samples have ever been recovered.

The second sentence is true. It does not imply the first. There are many possible lines of evidence other than literally recovering skin samples.

The fact we are all still the same species and can produce fertile offspring would render any "racial" classification irrelevant from a purely biological taxonomic perspective.

That's not true. There's such a thing as a subspecies in taxonomy. Moreover, taxonomy is hardly the end of biological classification. There are tremendously interesting classifications to be made below even subspecies boundaries, distinguishing subpopulations from one another and studying them separately.

If I get it correctly so you are saying if for example all Africans were white, after a period of time they would become black because somehow the scorching heat would affect their pigmentation overtime? :hmmm:

If a population living in sub-Saharan Africa (in premodern times) were light-skinned, there would still be some variation in skin tone. The lighter-skinned ones would die at a higher rate due to the amount of UV radiation their lighter skin absorbed. Natural selection would therefore cause the overall skin tone to become progressively darker from generation to generation.

were persians and Indian indians white or yellow:hmmm:
Atleat the arabs are white and the chinese/mongols yellow.

Persians and Indians would both be considered Caucasians (white) in the three-race system. Of course, this is not a system that's considered scientific anymore.

Erm... wouldnt that mean that eskimos should be black black blackest black - to absorb the suns heat?

No. The selection pressure is not about whether you can absorb the Sun's heat. Dark pigmentation prevents damage from ultraviolet radiation, so there's pressure for skin to darken in sunnier areas. Light pigmentation increases vitamin D production (which requires exposure to sunlight in humans), so there's pressure for skin to lighten in less sunny areas. Eskimos should therefore have very pale skin, like Russians. But in fact they don't, because they get enough vitamin D from their diet.

[Ferrets54]

Just at a slightly (but significantly) lower rate.

That is what I am saying.

[Chlodwig I.]

Both have equal merit thank you and I will keep my mind and eyes open.

Fair comment, I meant single cell microorganisms, not bacteria which came later. Thanks for pointing that out to me.


Erm... what about dogs? Mongrels?


Fair comment, but science is theory first, sometimes accidents. Theories are always guesses, more or less.

We are all mutations of the source organism if Evolution theory is applied, however there is Creation theory, which I hope we can throw right out now, and there is Intervention theory. Now thats an interesting theory!

esotheric books have no scientific value.
but later more

Dogs
all the diffrent breeds of dogs are the same species.
i.e. there is only 1 Dog Species. Dog "Races" have been invented by Human through breed selection/control

Back to science

(nature)science doesn't start with a theory.

In easy words, (sadly my english is not the best)
Scientists start with an Idea,
then they develop an (work)Hypothesis, which will be tested/examined.
if a hypothesis can't be falsified by these tests/examinations it will become a scientific Theory.

Esoteric/Creationism/ Theories
are only Ideas or believes.
Creationist or ID people like to call it "Theory"
but just because you call something "Theory", it doesn't become a scientific Theory.
I can call e.g. Arnold Schwarzenegger a "sissy girl" but that doesn't change his gender.

Science Theory = often tested Hypothesis that hasn't been falsified.
Creationism/ID "Theory" = Idea, thought, believe of how something woks/happend, myth etc.

[Event Horizon]

Only in the broadest possible sense of the term, so broad as to encompass everything that happens to the organism for any reason. Including genetics. It makes the term fairly meaningless.

I never said anything to the contrary.

You seem to think that environment is not the fundamental and absolute principle of selection of variation for some reason. You seem to think that writing off principles as vaguarities is both the refutation of an arguement and the maintenance of accuracy.

Not only is the success of variation determined by environment but variation its self is determined by environment. Environment is absolutely and in every case the prime, fundamental and absolute deterministic principle of Evolution, irrespective of how "vague" you think the concept is. There is no form or process within biology that does not fundamentally reduce to environmental factors and to deny the fundamental determinance of environment in all aspects of evolution is to show ignorance, not intelligence or education.

[jankren]

Exposure to sunlight does increase an individual's level of pigmentation, yes. This is called tanning. However, it does not actually cause a change in an individual's genetics.

If a random mutation in a child caused him or her to have darker pigmentation than normal, and lived in a hot climate, then he or her would be at an advantage compared to lighter skinned contemporaries, as would any offspirng that inheirited the trait.

Understand?

Thats my original understanding. But it seemed Simmetrical suggested environmental determinism instead.

By the way, what kinda mutation makes a person have dark skin? I mean I know about the opposite such albinism but the other way around? :hmmm:

If a population living in sub-Saharan Africa (in premodern times) were light-skinned, there would still be some variation in skin tone. The lighter-skinned ones would die at a higher rate due to the amount of UV radiation their lighter skin absorbed. Natural selection would therefore cause the overall skin tone to become progressively darker from generation to generation.

Ah, now I understand your position better.

[Adar]

Thats my original understanding. But it seemed Simmetrical suggested environmental determinism instead.

By the way, what kinda mutation makes a person have dark skin? I mean I know about the opposite such albinism but the other way around? :hmmm:

All non albino people have melanin in our skin. The concentration of melanin is what gives us the different shades of brown (almost white-dark brown). The system that regulates the amount of melanin in our skin is not fully understood yet. But there is as we can see a major inherited component in the regulation of this system. It also seems like only a few mutations are necessary to go from brown to white and vice versa. This mean that determining relationships between people by their skin colour is a bad idea (Indians are for example more closely related to Europeans than to Masais despite the fact that both Indians and Masais are dark brown in skin colour).

The scientific answer (that I do not fully understand)
Abstract:
Skin pigmentation is accomplished by production of melanin in specialized membrane-bound organelles termed melanosomes and by transfer of these organelles from melanocytes to surrounding keratinocytes. The mechanism by which these cells transfer melanin is yet unknown. A central role has been established for the protease-activated receptor-2 of the keratinocyte which effectuates melanin transfer via phagocytosis. What exactly is being phagocytosed - naked melanin, melanosomes or melanocytic cell parts - remains to be defined. Analogy of melanocytes to neuronal cells and cells of the haemopoietic lineage suggests exocytosis of melanosomes and subsequent phagocytosis of naked melanin. Otherwise, microscopy studies demonstrate cytophagocytosis of melanocytic dendrites. Other plausible mechanisms are transfer via melanosome-containing vesicles shed by the melanocyte or transfer via fusion of keratinocyte and melanocyte plasma membranes with formation of tunnelling nanotubes. Molecules involved in transfer are being identified. Transfer is influenced by the interactions of lectins and glycoproteins and, probably, by the action of E-cadherin, SNAREs, Rab and Rho GTPases. Further clues as to what mechanism and molecular machinery will arise with the identification of the function of specific genes which are mutated in diseases that affect transfer.

[Simetrical]

Thats my original understanding. But it seemed Simmetrical suggested environmental determinism instead.

I didn't, at least not in the Lamarckian sense.

By the way, what kinda mutation makes a person have dark skin? I mean I know about the opposite such albinism but the other way around? :hmmm:

Roughly: there are some genes with multiple variants, where one variant codes for more melanin, and one variant codes for less. The more of the more-melanin variants you have, the darker your skin will be. These changes mostly aren't going to arise by the development of new gene variants, they're going to arise because a larger percentage of the population will have an already-existing variant. The people who were already darker-skinned will reproduce at a higher rate, so that the whole population will become darker. (Or lighter, as the case may be.) So mutations are neither here nor there.

[Ferrets54]

Thats my original understanding. But it seemed Simmetrical suggested environmental determinism instead.

By the way, what kinda mutation makes a person have dark skin? I mean I know about the opposite such albinism but the other way around? :hmmm:

No. Albinism is a disorder when skin pigmentation is compeletely absent. In black and white people it is not absent - the only difference between them determining skin colour is the density of the pigmentation.

[Event Horizon]

If I get it correctly so you are saying if for example all Africans were white, after a period of time they would become black because somehow the scorching heat would affect their pigmentation overtime?

You have the process backwards. Scorching heat does not produce black skin. Black skin is better suited to surviving and reproducing in scorching heat. Any number of factors could have produced black skin, but it is environment that determines the success of organisms with black skin at surviving and reproducing. This is what Evolution by Natural Selection means. Successful traits outlive and outbreed unsuccessful traits.

Thats my original understanding. But it seemed Simmetrical suggested environmental determinism instead.

The origin of all traits and of all selective pressures are the environment. All biologicaly determined traits and biological selective pressures are the result of environmental determinism. Evolution is fundamentally and profoundly an environmentaly determined process.

Look at for example the birthrates of Africa compared to Europe. Look at the distribution of HIV and the single child laws of China. Look at the rates of child mortality, education and Per Capita Income across the globe. Even in our Global Human Information Society environment remains the fundamental deterministic principle of evolution.

Environment will remain so untill both the environment and the genome is completely mastered.

[jankren]

Okay, back to the height genes. So what makes a person tall is hereditary genes or nutrition? I mean if your parents and grandparents are very short, can you be tall if you grow up very well-nourished?

[Simetrical]

Okay, back to the height genes. So what makes a person tall is hereditary genes or nutrition? I mean if your parents and grandparents are very short, can you be tall if you grow up very well-nourished?

Height, like most traits, is neither wholly genetic nor wholly environmental. Both genes and environment (nutrition, etc.) have strong influences. Two genetically identical people (e.g., identical twins) can be of entirely different heights if they had a different diet growing up, or for other environmental reasons.

[The Devil's Sergeant]

All of the modern racial groups are descendents and mutations of a primordial east African stock. This goes for modern East Africans just as much as modern Nordics. What colour skin did the common ancestor have? I don't think anyone knows, although brown is a good guess.

If you shave a monkey or a gorilla you see white skin. I don't know what that means, but it might mean something.

[Copperknickers II]

If you shave a monkey or a gorilla you see white skin. I don't know what that means, but it might mean something.

It means nothing, humans don't have hair and we split off from apes a very long time ago as far as recent mutations such as skin colour are concerned.

[Copperknickers II]

Okay, back to the height genes. So what makes a person tall is hereditary genes or nutrition? I mean if your parents and grandparents are very short, can you be tall if you grow up very well-nourished?

Nourishment is part of it. But remember, genes are not simply piled on top of each other. For example, an African/Asian person may have had 100 generations of ancestors with black hair, and still turn out with blonde hair, it is just very unlikely.