I did fail to mention the FIDDYs that are seen from Buelltoberfest and Marchbadness photos. Those races formed from unknown redneck factions of shine drinking Rebels hunkering in the hills of North Georgia who seem to be waiting for the South to rise again. To be clear.....these are the 50cc races.
In one of the many experiments done over the years, the "pink monkey" experiment is one of the saddest.
Take a monkey from a group, paint him pink, put him back in. He gets killed. The reaction of the primate is "see the stranger, fear the stranger, hate the stranger, kill the stranger" ( imagine with increasing volume culminating in a scream of rage )
Intelligence can and does temper that natural reaction, or we'd still be tribes scattered around with a population density exactly equal to what the smartest guys in our tribe can provide food for. We'd have no clue what the guys 2 valleys over were doing with fire to kill parasites in the big mammals they eat, and still be doing bugs, roots and berries.
It's on a curve. There are adventurous people that seek out the new, and spread ideas, genes, and disease.
Many of the people on the planet never get more than 15 miles from home their whole lives. That was the norm here only a century ago, and I'd bet that a vast majority of Americans have never seen more than a few states, much less left the continent.
As far as the "races" are concerned, its a concentration of traits on the bell curve.
Simple, "survival of the fittest" evolution.
Cloudy lands reward pale people so vitamin D can be produced with minimal sunshine. Bright sunny lands rewarded dark skin to reduce the UV exposure. Malarial lands rewarded people with a blood disorder that gave them partial immunity. ( sickle cell anemia )
Mongols have ear wax that is not sticky. It captures less sand in a desert dwelling people. I'm guessing the eye folds that are typical of asians comes from the same cause, spread by invasion and conquest.
That doesn't give me a clue where the medium necked Giraffes are, but I'm an evolutionary catastrophist, and don't think we know everything yet.
Great read, albeit a little dense at times. Explores the origination of various ethnicities and races. Highly recommended, as well as the author's other works.
Read an article earlier this year in the NY Times that discussed the role of Vitamin D in the development of different "races". Too tired to look for it now.
Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power by Victor Hanson
Doesn't address ethnicity, but the rise of western civ. Hanson has a different take than Diamond, and I think wrote this one as a rebuttal, in part. Both are good reads, though Hanson's is less dense and more factual, IMO. It's also far less sweeping in it's scope.
Of course, the Mormons believed that the Negro race bore the "mark of Cain", and therefore, while they could be members of the Mormon church, they could not be clergy. At least until public pressure got to be too much and the head of the church had "a vision" (in 1978) and was told it was Ok for blacks to be Morman clergy. Oh, and the Cain curse survived the flood on account of the wife of Ham (Noah's son) was of Cain's descent (she was a Canaanite, supposedly).
Genesis 4:15 (God confronts Cain after Cain slew his brother Able and curses him): "And the LORD said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the LORD set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him."
Another Mormon theory comes from the book of Mormon itself, which alleges that a group of people rebelled against God (the Lamenites). God put a mark of black skin upon them so that the righteous would know them. See Book of Mormon, Nephi-5:21
Just as the legend has it that in 1895 there were 2 cars in Ohio, and they crashed. Car racing started when the first one was made, and kids ran along side, daring the driver to go faster. Note that Motorcycles were in the first gasoline car race in the linked article.
The other races? Black, white, ( or more properly, range of good tan people, range of transparent blue to light tan people ) etc, all are an artifact of 2 factors. The 19th century science of putting things in categories based on what they looked like, and the ploy of evil men who wanted slaves to not be people, so they could profit.
Today, much of the categories that plants etc. were sorted into is being revised, since we now can count genes and not just lobes on a leaf. There's a lot of changes going on as things thought closely related turn out not to be and vice versa.
The second goes way back. ( think Chin )
Non racial slavery is probably even older and alas, still ongoing. I leave it to you if you want to count the sex slaves worldwide. ( Roman slaves were based on capture, the justice system, and heredity, depending on era. Nubians were just other folk. If they spoke latin and were well behaved, no one cared.)
The native african stolen from his home in raids and war, sold by neighboring tribes to the arab slavers, then sold by Arabs to Europeans, isn't even the latest in racial slavery, and is still ongoing, though Europeans are no longer the major buyer. Though the sellers of flesh are the same...and are still racist. ( old meaning, not the current American one of racism = disagreeing with one political party )
