- Anything Else -
Is 'invisible' a colour?
Posted by: Floyd ( Darwin Fan Club, 'merika, dammit! ) on August 22, 1999 at 13:24:29:
In Reply to: Adam and Eve: What color? posted by Deep Dad Nine on August 21, 1999 at 10:23:23:
: A friend of mine wants me to pose a question to the creationists and christians on this site: What race were Adam and Eve? Were they black, white, asian, jewish, mixed? : --
: McSpotlight: At a rough guess, they were either black or Middle Eastern... According to Wilson's work on mtDNA (c.f. Cann,
Stoneking and Wilson 1987 in Cell) and later work done by Relethford (1995)and others, the greatest diversity in
genetic material exists in sub-Saharan African populations. Assuming a regular (not environmentally dependent) rate of
mutation, the authors argue that the oldest continuous human occupations must be located where the greatest genetic diversity
persists (since "founder effect" works by limiting the subset of genes present in a colonising deme, thus limiting the genetic
diversity of descendents of that deme). Therefore the oldest continuous occupations are in sub-Saharan Africa, where the
greatest genetic diversity was found. Thus our most recent common ancestors must have been from sub-Saharan Africa. The
major problem with placing this data in terms of biblical stories is that the Wilson group estimates (based on the known, roughly
constant, rate of mtDNA mutation) that the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) of all modern humans lived in sub-Saharan
Africa at some time between 120,000 and 200,000 years ago, and not the roughly 6000 years ago that was estimated by
Ussher and Lightfoot from the geneologies written in Genesis. In fact, long before 6000 years ago, the whole world was more
or less populated (the islands in the remote Pacific being the major exceptions) by anatomically modern humans. Also, FYI,
modern "racial" classifications all date from within the last 35,000 years, at most. However, the authors of the bible were
semetic, and their world included what we now consider the Middle East and parts of northern Africa, only. Therefore, the
people with whom the authors of Genesis were familiar probably looked very much like contemporary middle-eastern people.
No doubt the authors of the bible had "olive" skin, brown eyes and curly to wavy, dark hair in mind when they thought about
"people." Even today, many ethnically homogeneous religious congregations depict religious figures as posessing the same
ethnic characteristics of the majority of the congregation (this was even more pronounced in the "middle-ages," by the way).
Since Adam and Eve are meant as symbolic representations of our MRCA, their ethnic identity must depend (using symbolic
logic) on how we define "Our" ancestry, and so, ultimately, on how we define "us." Since "self" is always defined in terms of
"other," the racial characteristics depicted on Adam and Eve are dependent entirely on the breadth of ones own conception of
who constitutes "us" and who is "them." It's tricky, I know, which is why I tend to stick with the scientific approach to human
origins, since the meanings of the terms don't depend on who is reading them, but on innate properties of the terms themselves.
The concept of "race" is itself problematic, for instance, as it is an attempt to essentialize a variable and diverse phenomenon.
Scientists, at least biologists and most anthropologists no longer even use the term "race" at all. Humans are a very diverse
species, but not significantly more so, from a genetic perspective, than any other complex mammal. We notice the differences
more because we encounter humans more and pay more attention to them, that's all. In fact, "color" is only one of a variety of
traits that go into determining "race," and probably not the most important of those traits at that. Culture and behavior have a
much greater impact on our determinations of "race" than the size of the melanin crystals in the skin. But now I'm ranting about
one of my pet topics, so I'll stop here to avoid needless repetition. -Floyd --
McSpotlight: reposted due to a DR foulup...
Follow Ups:
- Good point Nikhil Jaikumar Democratic Socialists of America MA, USA August 22 1999
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