If all the lands were once one (Africa) before they broke off into into seperate countries, why are there different races?
LOL But how comes the races are so physically unique? My take on it is that the lands 'broke off' and isolated groups of Homo erectus genes. They then inter bred and created the races we see today. This then leads to another mind fuck... what comes next after Homo erectus?
Its funny how people say we "descended" from monkeys. Makes it sound like we fell lower and lower through evolution, rather than attaining higher status. Perhaps theres more to this whole monkey theory than id previously thought... Love-Maxi.Xx
according to the continental drift theory africa didn't exist as such when all the land was one continent. rather it was included in the larger land mass called pangea. but it took millions of millions of years for the continents to break apart and spread out, and it will be a very long time again until we see any noticible change. the land mass of pangea existed just before dinosaurs came onto the scene, and it has little to do with practical discussion of human evolution except for a very, very distant past. remember, the dinosaurs came before MAMMALS were even around, and pangea before the dinosaurs. however, the earliest known modern human remains (as well as other species of human than Homo sapiens) have all been found in africa as far as i know. over the course of many, many thousands of years of travel to distant lands and isolation from other groups of people, people tend to take on certain characteristics to help deal with their environment. not consciously, and not in a manner which is apparent from generation to generation. remember, the best we can do is guess and try to find evidence as to whether our guess is right or wrong, we as a species have existed for far, far, far more years than we have known how to write. we really don't know exactly where we came from or how different "races" got to different locations geographically, and cannot account for the physical diversity among one particular species found everywhere in the world except antarctica. at any rate, what we observed in the past few hundred years of europeans laying waste to the indigenous cultures of other continents is that people have a tendency to fear that which they don't know or understand, and it works both ways. group identity is so engrained in the human mind that we often close ourselves off from the rest of the world, mingling only with "our kind." inbreeding, endogamy, natural selection and other factors such as diet and lifestyle are most likely the culprits when trying to determine why different "races" exist when there is little difference other than appearance among our species. did we come from monkeys? probably not. do we share a common ancestor with monkeys and apes? probably. we share the same body structures, very similar genetics, and similar levels of intelligence compared to other examples of animal life (chimps and gorillas may not be quite as smart as us, but they're a hell of a lot closer than turtles or mayflies are....i'd like to see a turtle learn sign language) we have seen that natural selection takes place all the time, and while its rare it HAS been shown even from one generation to the next; such is the case with many species inhabiting the galapagos islands, where darwin was first inspired to elaborate on this very controversial subject in a scientific manner. no, it can't be proved, but there are some very good arguements to support the idea that we share a common ancestor with most other primates. the idea that we actually came from monkeys themselves, however, is a bastardized idea of what evolution really is all about. no evolutionist in his right mind would make such a claim, and to my knowledge no one ever has. its a misinterpretation perpetuated almost entirely by the media and popular notions.
assuming we can trace our lineage to earlier, more primitive primates, i'd say "descent" would be a good analogy for our "evolution." after all, other animals on the whole are content to live in balance with nature in the fashion in which they were intended; humans on the whole try to conquer and change nature and view the earth as their plaything. pretty soon we may be without a home. and why? overpopulation, pollution, massive wars, stress, oil, garbage, etc. the list goes on and on. are we really any better or smarter or wiser than animals? perhaps more clever, cunning, or intellectual than most animals. but that certainly doesnt count for much if we're destroying ourselves and all other animals in the process.
I've always kinda wondered... i mean, most people say that humans originated in Africa, but what if we didn;t? What if Africa just happened to have teh only environmental conditions that preserved skeletal remains, everywhere else is either inaccessable or has been destroyed...
its entirely possible. it's widely believed, for example, that humanity originated in africa and spread north and east, and that early man crossed the now vanished land bridge between northeast asia and what is now alaska. however some people have found evidence to suggest that it occurred the other way around and really early man spread from the americas outward. i doubt this is the case. however, we really don't know much about our past. for example, this olmec stone carving of a human head, found in central america, bears far more resemblance to stereotypically african facial features than to south, central, or north american ethnicities. also worth noting, while there is no scientific evidence of the historic existence of atlantis, there are some hints that maybe they did. the olmec head would be one such clue, indicating some kind of contact between extremely early pre-columbian american cultures and africans, which would be virtually impossible without a significant land mass somwhere in the atlantic to use as a valuable "rest area" to resupply with food, assist in providing easy sailing conditions, and a place to perform repairs to water crafts. also the coexistance of very similar pyramids with religious functions in the americas and egypt. then there are the bearded white people said to have been in central america long before the european invaders. we've all heard of quetzalcoatl, the aztec god/king who was supposed to return from the east and reclaim his power. cortes, a white conquistador, was mistaken for him by the natives. but this is a mythic figure dating far before cortes, and he had different names with different tribes. but the myth is very similar long before the aztecs then there's the great sphinx in egypt. the head is disproportionate to the body of the lion, very atypical of egyptian art. furthermore the sides of it show very clear signs of weathering caused by massive amounts of rain, as indicated by the vertical lines in it but the lush, rainy jungles of prehistoric egypt were long gone by the time the first known egyptian civilizations arose. who built it and why, and what was it before the egyptians carved a new face on it? how can rain induced weathering occur to such an extreme degree, even over several thousand years, in such a notoriously dry region? some of the best preserved bodies of ancient egypt are not found mummified in tombs, but left among the hot, dry sands. this is not a humid place, and this type of weathering simply shouldnt occur if the sphinx was built within the time frame which it is ordinarily accredited. all of this just really goes to show how little we know about ourselves and our history, our origins and our future. everything is a blank book.
actually, I've heard a bunch of people hypothesize that the sphinx's head was recarved at some point in history, due to weathering or possibly vandalism that made it so damaged they had to recarve it. Or else they recarved it because the pharoah who originally had it built was stricken from all records (they did this pretty often, scratched out old pharoah's names). Not saying it's the right theory, but it does make a certain amount of sense.
Homo sapien ^ l l l Homo erectus ^ l l l Neanderthalus And Neanderthalus did evolve from a species of primate.
No... actually I think it's either: 1. a cross between an old kinda pig and an ape 2. a virus that fucked up apes 3. aliens
