Where do 'White People' come from? MN Historians, Researchers, Anthropologists, please come in.

[CantStayAsleep]

Forgive me, this may be a simple question. It's 4am, can't sleep and a million things have already raced through my mind. I need an answer to this and Google is flooding me with tons of information/articles that aren't getting down to the bottom line. Atleast I can't find the bottom line myself. So over to you MNers. Help me when you're up and can be arsed. Thanks

If Black people = African descent (as many forms state and a lot of people have said), I take this to mean Black people have African ancestry, regardless if it's dating 1 generation or 400 generations ago. So what is white descent? Where have White people descended from?

@kendodd - what I was thinking of was that different cultures associate smiles with different things. In some parts of Russia it's considered rather rule to break into a broad grin at someone you don't know; Brits sometimes think Russians are very dour because they don't smile so much in public, but it's not a lack of humour or warmth, just a different idea of how you express it and when.

*rude, not rule.

Oh, interesting!

[quote SarahAndQuack]@7days, oh, I see what you mean, sorry.

Would the driver not simply be that it feels good? Animals will do things like scratch against a post, not because they actually need to exfoliate their skin but because it feels good. So maybe same-sex sex is like that?

I assume the endorphins would be generally helpful as well - stress and pain shorten your life span so maybe having something that removes those, even temporarily, is just worth it in itself?[/quote]
I wonder how far back endorphins go? Had never even thought of that but yeah it makes sense, I'd love to hear more

Oh, you're right, maybe they're more recent! I'd never thought of that.

We need an evolutionary biologist or something here. (Though typing this I am now thinking someone on the thread already is probably going to point out they are one and I've just not noticed!).

Physiologically we’re pretty much the same as we were when we came out of Africa. There’s some evidence that our brains are a bit smaller and we’re shorter in height than the cro magnon hunter gatherer specimens. But otherwise we seem to be pretty much the same.

Neanderthal brains are a good bit bigger than ours and a more elongated shape. Their bodies are more robust, stronger than ours.

This thread has been a fascinating read.

It's amazing to think how diverse the human race is but how closely we are all linked.

Also learnt a lot such as epicanthic fold. I wonder if it was advantageous in potentially "dusty" or exposed areas such as Mongolian plains / steppes?

@JohnMcCainsDeathStare

Another argument against design - if I was designing a body I would'nt put the anus so close to the vagina - that is a pretty dumb design.

The anus should be on the back of your ankle. Close to the ground, easy to clean, far away from your nose.

I have sat and read this entire thread. Thanks everyone.

But, doesn't the anus seed a baby in good bacteria on the way out? Apparently the baby should come out facing backward and get a good face full of anus juice. I thing medics have started wiping swab from the mothers back passage over the baby's face if born by CS.

Its vaginal seeding it seems.
I heard some boffin on the radio ages ago saying baby should get a good nose full of the back passage on the way out to seed good bacteria and aid babys health.
www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02348-3

@Kendodd

But, doesn't the anus seed a baby in good bacteria on the way out? Apparently the baby should come out facing backward and get a good face full of anus juice. I thing medics have started wiping swab from the mothers back passage over the baby's face if born by CS.

Oh, no, that's super grim!

(I don't know why I am surprised; all of human reproduction is grim.)

I do remember reading about the vaginal bacteria.

But then again, it's not infallible. My daughter was born by EMC after her head had been wedged in the birth canal for quite some time, and both she and her mother got sepsis as a result. I would think in births before modern medicine, you'd be awfully keen not to increase the bacterial load on a newborn because it could contain untold nasties.

@JohnMcCainsDeathStare

Another argument against design - if I was designing a body I would'nt put the anus so close to the vagina - that is a pretty dumb design.

It’s not a dumb design at all, @JohnMcCainsDeathStare - it means that most babies (those born facing towards the perineum) get a dose of bacteria during vaginal birth, which seeds their microbiome.

D’oh! I’ve been beaten to it.

@beelzeboob

All humans are descended from Africa Skin tone lightened according to where we migrated to to compensate for vitamin D

This. Which also explains why I can’t understand racism.

I wish I had read this earlier, just went through 8 pages dying to jump in.
The interesting thing about human evolution is how much we're discovering all of the time. Many of the common debates when I did my undergraduate 30yrs ago have now been put to bed.
One thing I am a little disappointed none of you lovely people really went into is the contribution of genetic drift and the founder effect. As mentioned diversity is great in Africa but a relatively small group would have left and interbred as an isolated population. If just one or two of those founders have uncommon genes or mutations then they would become disproportionately overrepresented in the new population.

Genes do not have to confer an evolutionary advantage to persist, they just have to be not too detrimental to avoid being strongly selected out. A gene or allele might be linked to another gene that is actively selected for, it might be recessive and so not expressed often, it might be detrimental in a way that doesn't affect fitness (ability to reproduce) or a mutation might be reoccurring in a particularly glitchy sequence of DNA.

The biological species concept is the term for a species being defined by being able to breed and produce fertile offspring. It really has no place past GCSE. No. That's me being a snob. It does have a role, but there is so much more to speciation.

Speciation is soooo interesting. I'd really recommend "frogs, flies and dandelions" if you want to have a fun think about what makes a species.

Similar to the smiling - I'm sure I read once that nearly every language in the world, even those that have developed independently to each other, the word for mother begins with a 'm' sound.

@SonicStars, can you say more about speciation? I was confused reading this thread as I thought sometimes supposedly 'sterile' crosses do prove to be fertile? Am I wrong there, or is it just very rare? And aside from that, how do you define species? Or do you just say it's not a helpful concept?

@coldemortreturns - Indo-European seems to have a 'm' sound, but I think a lot of African languages have a 'y' sound at the start?

I didn’t think the ‘out of Africa’ theory was true, at least insofar as how people describe it.... that humans originated in Africa only and spread from there worldwide.

I thought it was that there were several ‘humanoid’ races worldwide, and the humanoids that came from Africa were the ‘successful’ species, in that they successfully mated with all the other ‘races’ (don’t think this is the right word? Humanoid types anyway).
I think the Neanderthals were another ‘type’ of humanoid, which is why Europeans have Neanderthal blood, and Africans do not - because the original OG African humanoid mates with the Neanderthals, and all the others, so we all have the OG humanoid blood, but don’t all have the Neanderthal and other types of blood.

I hope that makes sense, that’s how I’ve always understood it, happy to be corrected if that’s wrong.

[quote SarahAndQuack]@SonicStars, can you say more about speciation? I was confused reading this thread as I thought sometimes supposedly 'sterile' crosses do prove to be fertile? Am I wrong there, or is it just very rare? And aside from that, how do you define species? Or do you just say it's not a helpful concept?

@coldemortreturns - Indo-European seems to have a 'm' sound, but I think a lot of African languages have a 'y' sound at the start?[/quote]
It seems the 'm' is pretty universal due to it being the easiest sound for babies to make -
www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/10/words-mom-dad-similar-languages/409810/

No, that article is quite strongly European in bias, isn't it? Which is what I said. It's talking mostly about Indo-European and excluding Africa. When it does cite African languages, it's Swahili, which is Arabic-influenced.

Writing out Africa isn't 'universal'.

@SarahAndQuack

Oh yes, offspring of different species (hybrids) get it on successfully all the time, which makes it unhelpful to consider the biological species concept a rule. Gulls are a good example as they are a ring species: they change a little as they go round the globe but interbreed all the way round however in the UK the two ends meet and herring gulls and black back gulls don't interbreed. You also get some very wide crosses in plants that are definitely different species but make v successful hybrids.

Other ways to define species include morphological - how similar they look, recognition - the species are choosing to mate within the species, evolutionary - shared evolutionary history, genetic - similar genomes. They all have different flaws.

Is species an unhelpful idea overall? No. I don't think so. Us humans love grouping things and we all have a feel of what a species is, even if the nitty gritty is problematic. We know that we are different to horses even if we can't put our finger exactly on why.

I thought da was easier to make. That was how I made myself feel better when my baby said dada first despite me being with her all bloody day and night!
Nope. She just loved him more.
Sad face.