# Will my kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids' kids be blacker than I am?



## Pergamum (Oct 18, 2008)

I am studying the migration of humans in pre-history and the current theories of races and racial dissemination across the planet. 

The standard theory is that tropical sun + time = darker peoples.

If my kids' kids' kids's....x50........kids stay in the tropics, will my clan become brown over time even if they marry non-blacks (who, for the sake of argument are also staying in the tropics for 100 generations)...


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## py3ak (Oct 18, 2008)

I think it's more likely that they'll evolve to be completely hairless.


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## Theognome (Oct 18, 2008)

I think it's based on what the Lord decides to do, since human evolution is a crock of nonsense.

Theognome


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## Pergamum (Oct 18, 2008)

I am evolving now (mostly one spot on top of my head)..


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## Simply_Nikki (Oct 18, 2008)

I think the tone of skin may be made more tan or olive in terms of how often the "individual" is exposed to the sun. However I'm not sure of the theory that physical location of a people brought about the different variations (races) of human beings. I don't think the traits for "white skin"changes unless, intermarriage occurs where someone has a dominate trait for darker skin. I'd say you don't have to "worry" about your progeny "turning black", unless they decide to mix with people who have darker skin traits. I just don't think it follows that two people are exposed to the sun and as a consequence develop a permanent tan means their child comes out of the womb as tan or tanner than the parents, and so on and so forth, unless there is actual trait mixing between dominant and recessive genes for skin color. 

But then again my knowledge of how traits work does not extend past a high school AP Biology class.


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## Pergamum (Oct 18, 2008)

Theognome said:


> I think it's based on what the Lord decides to do, since human evolution is a crock of nonsense.
> 
> Theognome



WHy does the Lord decide to match skin tone to UV light patterns? Human variation over several thousand years does not need to admit evolutionary theory.


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## TimV (Oct 18, 2008)

In a scenario without modern medicine and technology in general, yes they would, since lighter skinned people get things like skin cancer more readily than darker skinned people. It would take lots of time, though, and you can't rule out inbreeding with dark skinned people.

I thought of this when I lived in the Northern Cape. Not only did very white people get cancer, but blue and green eyed people got red spots on their eyes that had to be lasered away in Cape Town hospitals.

And the reverse, rickets in dark skinned people is much more sever (without technology like vitamins) in North Europe, so over centuries of higher risk groups dying sooner and leaving less children behind a population can change without having to rely on million year evolutionary theory.


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## Theognome (Oct 18, 2008)

Pergamum said:


> Theognome said:
> 
> 
> > I think it's based on what the Lord decides to do, since human evolution is a crock of nonsense.
> ...



'Cause He's a WHOLE lot smarter than we are, and He had this all figured out before we ever knew there was an issue.

Theognome


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## Pergamum (Oct 18, 2008)

Australians, a white group migrating recently to the tropics have some of the highest rates of skin cancer - so yes.


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## Zenas (Oct 18, 2008)

I think your kids' kids x100 will be flying dinosaurs and so does Charlie Darwin and Ricky Dawkins.


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## Pergamum (Oct 18, 2008)

ha, funny - but consider my claims seriously.


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## Grymir (Oct 18, 2008)

Well, Pergamum, I guess it depends on who they marry. Skin color is genetic, and as people spread out over the earth after the flood, the ones that could live best in certian environments survived best. That's why there is 'apparent' skin color/living place combinations. So, it depends on who they marry.


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## Abd_Yesua_alMasih (Oct 18, 2008)

From my understanding (and I am no scientist) the only reason we end up with different skin colors in different parts is because different colors are better suited to different climates. For example dark skin keeps the body cooler while white skin keeps it warm (blood further back from surface). Naturally you would then have specific advantages then depending on where you live. It is not that your children's children x100 will have gained a darker skin (with given assumptions), but that those with dark skin around them, all things being equal, will survive better in the tropics. With modern technology and wealth however there are 100 ways around this.


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## py3ak (Oct 18, 2008)

TimV made the point that it depends on "natural selection" --not so much that your kids will change, but that the ones who have darker skin will be more likely to survive in that climate.


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## Abd_Yesua_alMasih (Oct 18, 2008)

py3ak said:


> TimV made the point that it depends on "natural selection" --not so much that your kids will change, but that the ones who have darker skin will be more likely to survive in that climate.


Oh right, missed it. Couldn't have said it better.


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## SolaScriptura (Oct 18, 2008)

I think it is interesting that "black" people whose ancestors have been in the States many generations are almost always lighter than "black" people fresh from Africa.


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## Simply_Nikki (Oct 18, 2008)

SolaScriptura said:


> I think it is interesting that "black" people whose ancestors have been in the States many generations are almost always lighter than "black" people fresh from Africa.



I've seen many Africans who are way lighter in color than I am, so that's not an accurate generalization. And I've seen very very dark skin shades of African Americans. The biggest things I noticed between the African diaspora in American, and Africans are feature related. There are some black people that I can tell just don't look African American by their features. The same of white people, sometimes I can tell the difference between white Americans and white Europeans, just based on the structure of their features.


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## py3ak (Oct 18, 2008)

What you say is true, Nikki. In Mexico it was always easy to spot even physical differences between American and European tourists.


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## kvanlaan (Oct 18, 2008)

Some of my kids' kids' will. But that's because we adopted Ethiopian boys. 



> but consider my claims seriously.



Oh yeah, sorry.


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## SolaScriptura (Oct 18, 2008)

Simply_Nikki said:


> SolaScriptura said:
> 
> 
> > I think it is interesting that "black" people whose ancestors have been in the States many generations are almost always lighter than "black" people fresh from Africa.
> ...



Nikki - I've been in many contexts in which I've seen lots of black people - including in Africa itself. I've NEVER encountered - not even in Africa - a "black" African who is as light as you.

But of course, one's experiences don't determine reality, do they? 

But what you say about features is very true. After having lived for 7 years in Europe, I know what you mean... I can almost always tell a European by their "features" (or maybe it is their expression).


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## Backwoods Presbyterian (Oct 18, 2008)

Probably also by their teeth Ben...


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## kvanlaan (Oct 18, 2008)

It's funny, but after several years in China, it was oddly easy to differentiate between Koreans, Chinese, and Japanese. Mostly mannerisms, but there are certain features of build as well. I remember our friend Ewenatu in Addis Abeba pointing out and telling me that a particularly tall woman was not from around there, and likely had some Somali blood in her, as ethnic Ethiopians are smaller-boned.


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## HokieAirman (Oct 18, 2008)

Afrikaans in South Africa are still pretty pasty. They've been there for a while. I think we're treading solidly in 'theory'land. Enjoy the speculation!


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## Pergamum (Oct 18, 2008)

This all is accepted theory by evolutionists....


And even with or without evolution, UV liht patterns coincide pretty closely to skin shade...unless there is a recent history of migration.

As far as white Aussies and pasty Afrikaaners, I would assume that there skin cancer rates are much higher (I know it is for Aussies, not sure about those pasty dutchmen)...


So, would modern medicine "fix" skin shades whereas in times past the pasties died out and only the more dark people survived? Or is this the "error" of Lamark?


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## TimV (Oct 19, 2008)

> Nikki - I've been in many contexts in which I've seen lots of black people - including in Africa itself. I've NEVER encountered - not even in Africa - a "black" African who is as light as you.
> 
> But of course, one's experiences don't determine reality, do they?



Depends on the experience. I was born and raised in Southern California, and spent a decade in Africa, and you couldn't be more wrong. Black Africans run the gamut from what they themselves call yellow to very black.


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## kalawine (Oct 19, 2008)

I'm certainly no scientist but I believe that the "genetic theory" is more accurate than the idea that people are darker near the equator. Explain how Eskimos are so dark yet they stay bundled up in heavy clothes. Also, there are many more differences among the races than color. Assuming that all dog breeds came from two dogs (or wolves or whatever) fresh off the ark why can't the same thing be true of humans without the climate or location making any difference?


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## TimV (Oct 19, 2008)

> Afrikaans in South Africa are still pretty pasty. They've been there for a while. I think we're treading solidly in 'theory'land. Enjoy the speculation!



You've never spent any time among Afrikaners. At all. They have lots of Southern French ancestors, as well as Portuguese and non White, like Malay, Indonesian, Bushmen and Bantu in their ancestry. In addition the pasty white types tended to die earlier then the darker ones.

During the second Boer War the nickname Afrikaners used for Britons was redneck, since they didn't handle the sun as well as Afrikaners. My kids were the lightest in their school, and they are mostly descendant from the British Isles and Germany.

That's one of the ways you can tell Afrikaners from other White South Africans, that they generally are darker than those of more recent British ancestry.


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## Pergamum (Oct 19, 2008)

So why are Eskimos a bit dark? But Scandanavians light?


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## DMcFadden (Oct 19, 2008)

In the U.S., I think that you can count on your kids', kids', kids being darker than you for a simpler reason. In the U.S. intermarriage is rapidly dissolving racial differentiation and identity. In our congregation, for example, we have several dozen mixed race couples. Their kids are a mix of just about everything! In the future, it will likely be much more difficult to separate peoples by the older racial demarcations.


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## biggandyy (Oct 19, 2008)

The answer to the question originally posited is NO, they won't. Being exposed to the sun and the consequence darkening of the skin is not an inheritable trait. The darkening is a response to the radiation and nothing to do with melatonin production. The ideas you are reading about is Lamarkianism and not Natural Selection.

Natural Selection long ago removed the genes for darker skin from the Caucasian population just as the Negroid population has had the genes for lighter skin removed from theirs. That is the source of the changes, the removal of the genetic traits not the exposure to radiation.

The only way for those genes to be re-introduced to a population is from interbreeding between the populations involved. We don't "re-evolve" genes based upon external physical conditions. The external physical conditions helped REMOVE the genetic material but it can't put it back, that is the essence of Natural Selection.


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## kalawine (Oct 19, 2008)

Pergamum said:


> So why are Eskimos a bit dark? But Scandanavians light?



 I'm waiting for someone to answer your questions...


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## biggandyy (Oct 19, 2008)

Inuits are thought in some circles to be derived from Polynesian descent.


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## Pergamum (Oct 19, 2008)

_The original Homo sapiens who first left Africa 100,000 years ago were probably just looking for better Although they could not have known it at the time, they set out to conquer the world. They were all black.

The modern human races (Negrids, Europids, Australoids, Mongolids, etc) are of fairly recent origin; as they look today they are less than 15,000 years old. However, to call the first modern humans to migrate out of Africa "Negrids" would be pointless since Negrids are a modern human race and did not (like all the other modern races) acquire their present detailed characteristics until 15,000 years or so ago. We do not know whether the earliest human migrants looked more like the Khoisan or like Negrids of modern Africa, or different from either. A lot can happen to one's looks in 100,000 years! What we do know is that the first migrants must have been black.

There are occasional genetic "fall-backs" of dark-skinned babies born to light-skinned parents. The opposite never happens (apart from albinos which are a different thing altogether) because black people have never been white while whites have all been black tens of thousands of years ago. The dark skinned genetic memory is still there and may occasionally be switched on to shock the snow-white parents. Pity the poor mother and baby in light-skinned societies berfore the advent of modern genetics! Not many were allowed to live then. There are also rare cases of genetic fall-backs going back even further: human babies are sometimes born with tails. Not many parents are told today when this happens and doctors are said to cut off the superfluous appendage quickly and say nothing to prevent distress to the parents.







The flux of UV light from the sun almost perfectly matches the skin colour of the people who have lived in their present area for many thousands of years (maps from Jablonsky/Chaplin).




Here we will look in more detail at only one racial characteristic, but that the most troublesome in all human history: skin colour.

Dark coloured skin is the result of melanin deposited in the skin. All humans produce melanin and the amount in the skin can be increased by tanning. The genetic constitution merely determines the range of skin colour variation among individuals of a given population. Lots of melanin (i.e. dark skin) offers the best protection against the ultraviolet light of the sun and in populations living for hundreds of generations in an area bathed in strong UV-light, dark skin was the required genetic standard. The "white" skin in turn was a much later adaptation of originally black populations that had gradually moved so far north that they needed as much exposure to the little UV light around to help generate vitamin D and thus avoid rickets.

Skin colour is among the most easily and rapidly changeable genetic physical traits in humans (along with hair colour, eye folds, lip and nose forms). The form of hair (as opposed to its colour), of the teeth, of bone parts and of the skull are rather slower and less predictable to change. Let a modern black group live in northern Siberia for as little as 500 generations (ca. 10'000 years) and you will have light-skinned people, do the opposite and you will get dark-skinned groups. In evolutionary terms this is practically overnight._



Some highly speculative stuff. Are these the best answers that science can come to?

34. What does related mean?

Human babies with monkey tails?


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## Timothy William (Oct 19, 2008)

kalawine said:


> Pergamum said:
> 
> 
> > So why are Eskimos a bit dark? But Scandanavians light?
> ...





Long term migration patterns. Eskimos came across from Siberia, and are closely related to East Asians (and possibly Polynesians). Interestingly enough, so are Australian aboriginals. As for Scandinavians, you're thinking of the wrong Scandinavians. The Sami peoples of Lapland are the ones to compare to the Eskimos, not the southern Scandinavians that we think of as Finns, Swedes, Norwegians etc. And yes, they do look like Eskimos.

Dark skin is not a gene that you have or don't have; it is a continuum of pigmentation, and you could move from white to black by natural selection over enough generations. But modern clothing, medicine and nutrition has pretty much eliminated such effects. I doubt that Pergy's descendants will look much different to him, even if they all stay in his current location.

I've also noticed that African-Americans, and Afro-Caribbean Britons, are lighter than West Africans. But I think that is mostly due to interbreeding, as the Caribbean and American South would not have been much less hot and sunny than West Africa, and the timeframe isn't long enough for much change. I can usually tell Africans from different parts of the continent (West/Central , East, North/Arab, Southern) but no way I could tell Somali and Ethiopian apart. I can sometimes tell Chinese, Japanese and Korean apart, though Korean are a bit between the other two; I wouldn't normally mistake Japanese for Chinese. Once I was in a car with a Chinese woman, at night, and driving past a woman on the sidewalk she said "See that Japanese woman?" we had only seen her from behind, and seen her clothes and hair from but no skin (I could tell she was Asian from the clothes/hair/build) and I asked "How can you tell she's Japanese?" "Oh" she said "they stand differently, and dress differently, and have different mannerisms." (The woman was wearing normal clothes, not traditional Japanese or anything). We stopped and she spoke briefly to the woman on the sidewalk, who was indeed Japanese. I was very impressed.


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## Anton Bruckner (Oct 19, 2008)

py3ak said:


> What you say is true, Nikki. In Mexico it was always easy to spot even physical differences between American and European tourists.


its the food, beer and football. that's what do Americans in. You can even smell Americans when you are in another country. This is why I think other countries are stupid to not find American CIA agents.


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## Abd_Yesua_alMasih (Oct 19, 2008)

I could be waaayyyyyy out here but you know how after you have been around snow and ice for a long time your skin gets darker and darker because it burns from the sun reflecting off your surroundings (compare Tibetans living in the mountains of Tibet to those living in the valleys of central China). 

How much do you think this has effected Eskimos? Are they still dark skinned a generation after leaving the snow and ice?


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## Abd_Yesua_alMasih (Oct 19, 2008)

Anton Bruckner said:


> This is why I think other countries are stupid to not find American CIA agents.


Assuming frontline US agents/informers are actually American.


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## Grymir (Oct 19, 2008)

We're all gonna be a shade of grey before too long anyway. The way we can transverse the globe and visit and intermarry people from other countries. So you won't have to worry. Grey.


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## TimV (Oct 19, 2008)

> How much do you think this has effected Eskimos? Are they still dark skinned a generation after leaving the snow and ice?



There's a place under your arm anthropologists measure to account for sun exposure, and it's accurate enough for government work, so to speak.


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## Abd_Yesua_alMasih (Oct 19, 2008)

TimV said:


> > How much do you think this has effected Eskimos? Are they still dark skinned a generation after leaving the snow and ice?
> 
> 
> 
> There's a place under your arm anthropologists measure to account for sun exposure, and it's accurate enough for government work, so to speak.



And the conclussion?  Has anyone gone and looked under an Eskimos arm?


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## kalawine (Oct 20, 2008)

Timothy William said:


> kalawine said:
> 
> 
> > Pergamum said:
> ...



Very good answer Timothy! I'm impressed and I believe I have had my education expanded on this issue.


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