• Question: how did different races come about?

    Asked by lucysmith to Rachael, Damien, Simon, Suzi, Tim on 16 Jun 2011. This question was also asked by baybeejaay, oliviabu007.
    • Photo: Tim Fosker

      Tim Fosker answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Hi @lucysmith and @baybeejaay

      Not everyone was suited to long distance running so different races were created with different lengths (100 metres and up) 🙂

      Sorry – I assume your question is about human races (people that share common ancestry). When you work on language you can’t help but joke about all the words that have many different meanings 🙂

      I don’t really know anything about the idea of race from a scientific perspective. We are all part of the same species but race is often used to identify common genetic characteristics that people share because they have ancestors in common. So I guess different races resulted from ‘natural selection’ in isolated populations.

      It may be worth running a Google search – and one of the other scientists may know more.

    • Photo: Simon Bennett

      Simon Bennett answered on 15 Jun 2011:

      Hello,

      There are many controversial theories about this, but one that is sure is that when organisms are separated from an initial colony there will be some variation from the original due to inbreeding within the group and mutations.

      Thanks.

    • Photo: Suzi Gage

      Suzi Gage answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      Hi @luncysmith and @baybeejaay
      I went to a talk once by Dr Alice Roberts (from Time Team) who works at the same University as me (Bristol!). She was talking about how you can look at people’s DNA to work out how recently they were part of the same population of people. She’s showed a map of the world with different paths that groups took as they left Africa (where it’s thought the human race first appeared). Some people went North, some headed out through what is now the Middle East.

      As groups of humans went different ways, differences in populations happened within each group, different to the other groups, depending on what variations suited their new environment. People who stayed in Africa kept their dark skin to protect them from the sun, people who went North developed the ability to digest dairy products, all sorts of little differences happened over time which eventually led to the different races we see today.

      I found a copy of the map online, and here’s the link

      http://hispanic7.com/carbon_dating_indicates_clovis_people_arrived_more_recently_than_thought.htm

      Hope this answers your question 🙂

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