The History of “Race” in Humans.
The first thing to realize about any scientific study of human evolution, and race is that there is no such thing as race. Scientifically, we have different levels of melanin in our skin based upon the amount of sunlight where our ancestors evolved. We may have other features that dependent on climate, but the most important to our current discussion is skin pigmentation.We are all members of 1 human race. Period.
About 200,000 years ago, the first homo sapiens began to move out of Africa. Because Africa is equatorial and receives a lot of sunlight year round, those first humans were darkly pigmented.
The pigment melanin does a few important things for humans. One, of course, is a natural sunscreen to protect the skin from sun damage by UV rays. A lesser known benefit is to prevent folate from breaking down. Folate is required for DNA replication. DNA is replicated most rapidly at two times in human life; the early embryonic state, and in the production of sperm. So, peoples who have a limited source of folate (green leafy vegetables) in their diet, must somehow conserve it in order to reproduce successfully
As these earliest homo sapiens moved into Europe, they generally traveled near coast lines, staying close to the food supply. Two large groups split off from these dark-skinned coastal dwellers. One moved west and North into Europe, one moved East and North into Eurasia. There was a large overlap in territory between many of these people, but little to no contact with sub-Saharan African. The peoples who moved into Europe were the Neanderthals, and the people who moved East and North were the Denisovans.
As both those groups moved North, they gradually lost much of the pigment in their skin. The reason for this, is that dark skin requires much more time in the sun to initiate vitamin D production. Vitamin D is as necessary to life as folate, so natural selection is presented a problem. The humans were now living where they had to have foods high in vitamin D (seafood and sea mammals) or they needed less pigment in the skin as they moved to regions where there was less sunlight.
So, over millennia, people of Northern Europe became the Neanderthals (homo sapiens neanderthalis). These people had light color hair, often red, pale skin and green eyes. They were burly people, with small foreheads that slanted backwards. Their eyes were large to see better in low light, and their noses were large and prominent to warm air as they breathed. They lived during the last glacial period, and were pushed south by huge ice sheets into areas like Germany, Britain and Iberia. Many people with Celtic or Germanic ancestry have very high percentages of Neanderthal DNA. Those with African have nearly none.
About 35 thousand years ago a new group of humans began to migrate out of Africa, and again, these were dark skinned people. The big difference is that these newer homo sapiens(homo sapiens sapiens), lived in much larger groups and formed communities, which the Neanderthals did not. These people invaded Neanderthal lands, and interbred with Neanderthals. Again, natural selection favored less pigment in the skin in those Northern climes, so gradually, these people became light skinned, with bodies adapted to colder weather. This time, there was no ice sheet to keep these new people contained, and so they spread west across Europe, and Western Asia as far as the Caucasus Mountains.
Meanwhile, these new people met other ancient peoples like the Denisovans and others, and bred with them as well. Their skin pigment developed or faded depending on how much sunlight was in their environments. By about 10,000 years ago, the Earth was inhabited by a rainbow of differently pigmented people. One interesting thing to note, is that Inuit peoples have retained the pigment in their skin to ward off sunlight reflected off snow. Their diet must be high in vitamin D, which they get from eating sea mammals, as they cannot manufacture it for themselves.
Skip ahead a few thousand years to early recorded history One thing that marked human endeavors all over Asia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East during our early history was slavery. Indigenous peoples in the Americas kept slaves as well, so the notion was pretty universal. In early civilizations, like the Greek, Egyptian and Persian, it came to pass that a highly desired group of slaves who became famed for their beauty, were from near the Caucasus mountains. This is where the name Caucasian for white people derives.
So, we hop ahead another thousand years, and we come to the rise of the Christian Church in Europe. Slavery is still very much in practice, and the Moors in Spain (black Islamic people) were among the prime traders. In addition, another group migrated from The Holy Land, to the areas around Western Germany and France along the Rhine. These Ashkenazim brought their Judaic religion with them, and co-existed fairly well with Christians who lived in the area. That is, until they didn’t. Also, the Ottoman Empire spread Islam far and wide, and began to encroach upon Christian lands.
There had already been some severe schisms in the Christian Church by the Middle Ages, one having been the split between Roman and Greek Christians that split the Church in two, between the one centered in Rome, and the other centered in Constantinople. Now, Roman Church leaders see another threat to their power, and they are having none of it. If people could be any old religion they wanted to, the Church had no authority, no land, and no wealth.
Enter the Spanish Inquisition, a vehicle to root out all non-Christians from Europe, of any kind. But, in their marketing savvy, they knew they couldn’t really attack other religions, especially the Muslims, because Islam was powerful enough to knock Christianity down once and for all. So, what they came up with is the idea of “race.” That is, they separated people into good, or less good, by certain physical characteristics. For the Jews, it was their large noses, dark hair and sometimes dark skin. For the Muslims, it was the obvious…their skin color. So, the white race became the good one, the clean one, the smart one and the richest and most powerful. We know what happened to the Jews and black people, don’t we?
Courtesy of Ye Olde Christian Church.