An Interesting NE Asian Phenotype

Repost from the old site.

White Nationalists like to go on and on and on about the glorious color of their skin: white. For some odd reason, this white skin is superior to darker-colored skins of folks who evolved in hotter zones. Truth is, darker skin color is a perfectly rational evolutionary response to high rates of UV radiation in areas where it is very hot.

And in some areas of the globe, people can have fairly light skins if they stay out of the sun, but they get dark quite easily if they go out in the sun. Italians and Greeks come to mind. Here are photos of Italians, Greeks and Spaniards who have stayed out of sun, and then the same folks after they got tanned.

The same page also shows identical phenotypes commonly seen as European-only, like Nordics, Mediterraneans and Alpines, in both their European and extra-European forms from Arabia, North Africa and Central Asia. Often the darker skin you see in a lot of Southern Europeans is nothing but a tan.

On the other hand, Northern Europeans, and possibly other Northern types, don’t tan very well (they often burn) and even when they do, they don’t get all that dark. The very dark skin of Blacks, Papuans, Melanesians, some Aborigines and some South Indians is simply a result of evolving in those parts of the Earth where the sun shines brightest of all.

But Whites ought to give up the fantasy of about their white skin being best of all – because other races have some very white skin too. See the Korean woman in the photo below for example.

A Korean woman. She has a shade of White on her skin that is lacking in almost all Caucasians – it is probably only seen in Ireland and Scotland and it’s probably even lacking in Sweden and Norway. But this very White phenotype seen in some Koreans and Northern Chinese differs from that of European Whites in that it is more glossy. European White skin looks more chalky or powdery.

This phenotype also has skin that looks more like porcelain and is reflective of light. The very light European skin tends to be less light-reflective.

Here’s a pretty cool chart showing degrees of skin lightness versus darkness around the world.

UV radiation chart along with zones of skin color. Zone 1 has the darkest skin of all . Zone 2, which includes Italians and Spaniards, has skin that tans easily. Zone 3 contains light skin that enables residents to absorb as much Vitamin D as possible from the sun due to lack of sunlight at higher latitudes.

Note that there is also pretty high UV radiation in parts of South America (Peru), in the heart of Mexico, in Southwest Arabia (especially Yemen), in Southern India and Sri Lanka and in Indonesia, Malaysia, Southern Philippines and New Guinea. Indonesians and Malaysians are known for being darker than many other SE Asian groups.

According to this chart, the darkest people of all are Blacks from Mozambique and Cameroon in Africa and Aborigines from Darwin in North Australia. A look at the same chart, much expanded, in the original paper, shows that the next darkest are Blacks, the Okavango in Namibia and the Sara in Chad (Table 6, p. 19). The chart shows that the lightest people are in Netherlands, followed by Germany and then the northern parts of the UK.

Note on the map that Tibet and parts of the Amazon should have some very dark-skinned people, but those who live there are lighter than you would expect based on UV. The paper suggests that the Tibetans are lighter because it is so cold there that most of their body is covered up all the time and only the face is uncovered.

The face is lighter to collect what Vitamin D it can as so much of the body cannot collect Vitamin D due to clothing. The Amazonian Indians are known to be shade-seeking and the paper suggests that this may account for their lighter skin.

Most Whites don’t really have White skin anyway. I am looking at my own skin here as I type, and it looks more pink than White.

References

Jablonski, N. and Chaplin, G. (2000) The Evolution of Human Skin Coloration. Journal of Human Evolution. Available on this blog here.

Great New Study of Ancient African Genes

Repost from the old site.

A new study of African genes shines some new light on the Out of Africa Hypothesis, which is now the dominant view. Most of the Multiregionalists are now isolated into racial or ethnic chauvinists, each of whom wants to believe that they came from a different kind of monkey. This includes European, Indonesian, Japanese and Chinese chauvinists. It’s all nonsense, and Out of Africa reigns.

Previously, the oldest human lineages were in the Khoisan or Bushmen, where they go back from 90,000-150,000 years. During this period, six separate extant lineages existed in parallel in the proto-Khoisan.

However, recent data has shown that the oldest human genes of all are in East Africans from Kenya and Tanzania.

When humans left Africa 60-70,000 years before present (YBP) from East Africa via the Gulf of Aden to Yemen, and from there along the Indian Ocean to India, SE Asia and Australia and New Guinea, there were at least 40 separate lineages going in Africa, each of which has continued to this day.

Finally, 40,000 YBP, newer, more modern lineages entered the Khoisan pool. The evolution of humans in Africa involves many lineages that were isolated from one another and were evolving separately.

A very early split in modern humans of two separate lines is suggested. This occurred from 140-210,000 years ago in Africa, and may have occurred near Lake Victoria, but we do not really know for sure. One line went to South Africa and the other line went to East Africa – Ethiopia, etc.

About 144,000 years ago, a South African line entered the gene pool in Ethiopia. This line then creates a joint East-South African line that later traverses westward from Ethiopia to the Sahara, West and North Africa. Although there has long been debate about whether the cradle of human development in Africa was in South or East Africa, as they were both contenders, the debate now appears to be settled. Humans arose about 180,000 years ago from a Southwest African site around Namibia.

Genes in Africa have been found in the Khoisan dating back 132,000 years, and they have not been found in any other groups of humans anywhere else. That proves Out of Africa right there.

However, we should note that the ancient South African humans did not look like either modern day Khoisan or Bantus.

Of the 40 separate lineages going in Africa 40,000 YBP, only two went on to become all modern non-Africans. Pygmies go back to a split with other Africans 70,000 YBP. The earliest male line among humans appears in the Khoisan in large numbers, but hardly exists outside of Africa anymore, as it has probably been drowned out by newer lines. Two great graphics are here.

The modern-day ancestors of the Africans who left Africa to populate the world are found in the Sudanese, Ethiopians and also the Bushmen. Note that the Bushmen once extended all over East Africa, and a few isolated groups like the Sandawe are still extant in Kenya.

In my opinion, it was Blacks in this part of Africa, the ancestors of the Tutsi and Masai, who left Africa 45,000 years ago, probably via the Horn once again, moved into Iran and the Caucasus, and went on to birth the Caucasian race after they received proto-Asian inputs from China.