What does science
tell us about how the "white race" came to be? It's a pertinent
question in this era of white supremacist revival.
DNA doesn’t lie, and next
generation sequencing is giving us a fascinating look into the genetics of
recent human evolution. A seminal Nature article describing the sequencing of
ancient European DNAs appeared about a year ago. It's an excellent read
for subject matter experts.
A very
accessible description of its results and those of additional studies
appeared in the New York Times.
In short, it’s well established
that "Adam and Eve" were African. More precisely, a number of hominid
species originated in Africa, eventually selecting Homo sapiens, the species
that went on to populate the world. This means all modern humans, including
whites, are of African ancestry. As recently as 8,000 years ago, which in
evolutionary terms is a heartbeat, Europeans were dark-skinned. The loss of
pigmentation that produced the “white” phenotype actually came from Anatolia
(Turkey) and Russia, and it was selected as an evolutionary adaptation to
eating a plant-based diet along with several other genes that allowed early
Europeans to digest milk (persistent expression of intestinal lactase) and
vegetables (which are poor in vitamin D, and therefore require a lighter skin
(the skin produces vitamin D in response to sunlight). Along with these came
genes that predispose to autoimmune disorders.
Humanity has always been a genetic melting
pot, and has benefited from being one.
If a larger fraction of the public were scientifically literate enough to
comprehend the scientific evidence on human evolution, nonsensical ideas
like racism and creationism would be harder to spread.
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