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Re: How close are Caucasians and Mongoloids related?
Kathy41144 (kathy41144@aol.com)
6 Mar 1995 01:47:03 -0500
If you believe in the "Out of Africa" hypothesis, I feel that Europeans
are more closely related to negroids than to mongoloids, and I am not
defining these as "races" per say but just trying to answer your question.
Phynotypes (outward appearance) can change very rapidly under different
environmental stiumuli. As people moved slowly out of Africa and spread
into Europe, dark skin with its ability to screen out the sun's rays would
no longer have been selected for. People with lighter skin, and thus able
to absorb more quickly the sun's rays during the winter in Norhtern
latitudes, would probably have lived longer (been able to absorb vitamin
D) and had better reproductive success. It would not have taken many
generations for these traits to be selected for. Just as dark children in
hot, equatorial climates would have been favored, so light skinned, pick
cheeked children in Northern latitutues would have been favored, if not
outright, then covertly by being provided better nutrition. For more on
this, please read the works of Marvin Harris, a very famous anthropologist
and E. O Wilson a Zoologist who has written many books on sociobiology and
human cultures.
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