Evolution

Phelan's theory of how we are currently evolving is quite interesting. I was impressed at the amont of scientific evidence that he had to support his idea, all the examples of ancient DNA and how through comparing skeletons from different regions of the Earth one could get a sense of where and when a genetic mutation occurred, if it was a successful mutation and how and where it spread. I've always had the impression that evolution took place over such a long period of time that it would be close to impossible to actually find DNA that was missing some of the traits that humans have today. I distinctly recall my biology teachers repeating that evolution, if mentioned at all given its religious implications, took place over hundreds of thousands of years and that it took all that time to develop even the smallest of changes. In this article it is shown that the evolution of certain traits occurs much faster than I originally thought. Which is pretty cool...=P

"It makes sense that some alleles present in Europe, Asia, and the rest of the world wouldn’t appear in Sub-Saharan Africa, and vice versa; population flow has not yet had time to spread all alleles to all parts of the world. However, it’s hard for many of us not to hear in Lahn’s musings on brain genes the ugly implication that Africans are inferior. But such was not Lahn’s intention, nor was that his finding. It was not even what he was investigating."

This is the part of the article that interested me the most. Because now that Phelan has shown that Lahn's theory has merit scientifically, he now discusses its implications on the morals of our current culture. All through human history there are stories of different peoples and cultures fighting each other to gain equal status. Clearly this value of equality is incredibly important to us, so now to possibly have scientific proof that some races are truly not equal to others because they have yet to receive a certain gene is worrying to me. In reality, these genetic differences are mostly too small to really cause a noticeable difference in how civilized certain races are compared to others, but the fact that they exist gives people the excuse to discriminate. And from humanity's rather dirty history of discrimination, it's fairly safe to say that an unfortunately large amount of people will use any excuse to make themselves seem better than others. So the introduction of scientific proof that these acts of discrimination may actually be based on fact could be disastrous. Perhaps I'm a pessimist but I get this vision of all the progress we've made to try to accept racial differences being undone and because the cause would be scientific people would be more willing to believe it and it would be much harder to get back to a level of acceptance.

But when you take the time to think about this idea that some populations have evolved past others you realize that it's not quite so simple as saying that one population is better than another. Mutations occur in all human races, so while the Europeans might possess a gene that allows them to drink milk into adulthood that Asians don't have completely, I bet you could easily find another gene that the Asians possess that the Europeans don't have yet. Take Africans for example, probably one of the worst cases of physical discrimination in human history, dating back hundreds of years. Because Africans have dark skin they were considered inferior by all the lighter skinned races when in reality their dark skin gives them a huge advantage over any "white" person. "Black" skin was developed through generations of exposure to the African sun, and defensive evolution against the harm that the suns rays can cause to human skin. Melanin is a chemical in the skin that when exposed to a certain amount of sunlight is basically released to protect the body against said amount of sunlight. Basically melanin is what allows humans to tan. You can think of Africans' melanin as being permanent, they don't have to go through the whole tanning process. They have evolved to have permanent sun protection. They don't have to use sun-screen, they don't get sun burns, and they have much less chance of developing skin cancer than any light-skinned person. Isn't it ironic that the reason "Whites" discriminated against "Black" is also what makes them, in a way, "better" than their discriminators?

I guess what I'm trying to say is that while, yes, there will be certain traits that a certain race will have that others will not; but it goes both ways, the other races will have traits that that certain race does not. So while it might be scientifically proven that certain populations have evolved beyond others in certain ways, this inequality would be canceled out when you take into consideration that while race A does not possess a certain trait that race B does, race A probably has a different trait that race B doesn't have.