Tate Lee,
Mission Viejo, CA
Specific mutations can be specifically beneficial for an environment. In a cold climate, shorter and thicker arms would prove to keep someone warmer, while longer and thinner ones would expend more energy to keep blood circulating. We can see from history that physiological changes occur when individuals live their lives in specific environments.
If modern man had not adapted, I would not be writing this. If we look back in time, Europe 18,000 years ago would have 2 km thick of ice covering much of the continent. Humans that migrated from Africa 60,000 years ago could not yet explore this continent. We could say that the planet and civilization had not yet undergone enough acclimatization to one another to allow it. It was not until 48,000 years later that much of the ice retreated and had optimal conditions to sustain life. Humans would have had to isolate for a substantial amount of time, resulting in naturally occurring mutations arising in the populations. Four thousand years later, people from Africa who migrated to the middle east created new agricultural technology and began moving back into Europe, making this the last migration of humans in Europe.
As the Earth began warming, skin pigmentation and body shape adapted to the new parameters. Melanin acted as a natural sunscreen for those closer to the equator, but populations in different latitudes also needed to adapt; this was lighter skin pigmentation to absorb more vitamin D in less UVB rich environments. Sunlight dictates what pigmentation adaptions to undergo. More melanin is a response to the sun’s UV rays and radiation.
Humans need vitamin D to prevent diseases like Ricketts and to regulate neurotransmitters in the brain. Without vitamin D, risks for depression significantly increase. More simply, if the brain is lacking serotonin or dopamine, humans experience depression. I would not be surprised if rates of depression in darker pigmented countries are significantly lower than their light pigmented counterparts. Some could argue that depression is an adaptation of white people to let them know when they are low in vitamin D.
Humans, for the last 400 years, have been inherently racist. Linnaeus was one of the first anthropologists who classified species according to their Commonalities, physical and environmental. The Bible dictates humans should be at the top of the hierarchy and because so many people Viewed religion as the main factor in human life. Were unable to see past their oversight. Ethnocentrism throughout history has deluded white men to characterized as the epitome of God’s creation and African as the inferior less developed form. Blumenbach Divided humans into five based on anatomy alone, he proposed that a skull from the Caucasus mountains was the perfect European form and the other four races deteriorated from this group. Now how racist and offensive is that? In the 19th century, the development of different anthropology schools took a monogenic position as are polygenic origins of man. American Samuel George Morton, a physician from Philadelphia, measured cranial capacity to determine Differential worth. He ranked humans from Caucasians first, to Ethiopians last. These views were still only skin deep.
If Einstein had not donated his remains to science and had not found that his brain size was smaller than average, people would still be making the argument the brain size dictates intelligence. Franz Boas, The German physicist, was the first question the standard in science that races were superior or inferior. He was most likely the first anthropologist to involve himself with the people he studied, and he did not believe them to be inferior culturally or otherwise.
If only Millenials were as tolerant as they think they are.
