migration and racial differentiation

There is little doubt that those of our ancestors who migrated out of Africa developed very different physical features from those who remained.

Those with special physical features fared better in some environments than those who did not possess these features, resulting in the eventual dominance of the former over the latter by the process of Darwin's theory of natural selection.

Lamarck theorized that we adapted to different environments by developing the characteristics we needed - e.g. we developed long legs to run faster just like giraffes developed long necks to reach the choicest food at the top of trees. Most controversially, Lamarck maintained that these adaptations were passed on to our progeny. If this were true then we would have no need of plastic surgeons to enhance our attributes!

Once out of Equatorial Africa, the features that natural selection had once favored no longer necessarily applied. Those who moved south and evolved to become the modern day Bushmen, speaking the extraordinary click language, did not change much in stature from the pygmies but those who moved north - particularly northeast - grew remarkably in stature.

The extraordinarily tall Massai tribes of eastern Africa could have evolved from migrants who were able to run fast enough to escape wild animals, or catch them for food - resulting in the natural selection of long legs - but the difference in evolution could just as easily be explained by a different diet, one higher in protein.

Interestingly, the features that natural selection favored were not always those with dominant genes - such as brown eyes, black hair and black skin. The millions of years it took for our ancestors to make a new home for themselves in ice-bound Europe eventually caused the natural selection of recessive genes - such as blue eyes, fair hair and fair skin - because such features were better suited to such an environment.

Either that, or the tribe that settled in Europe had a higher percentage of albino than anywhere else. How else can one explain how black Africans turned into white Europeans?

Another physical feature that evolved during migration out of Africa was the oriental eyelid. This, too, probably resulted from natural selection during the Ice Age, when they were trekking across ice-bound Europe towards far-eastern lands and beyond to present day Alaska and North America.

Anyone with occidental eyelids who has spent long periods in the snow knows that it is impossible to focus without squinting. It seems reasonable to assume that those of our ancestors who had small eyes, easy to squint, did not go blind and die young as must have been the fate of those with larger eyes.

The oriental eyelid remains a feature of modern Laplanders and Eskimos - who remain living in the ice-bound far north lands of Europe and North America respectively - but why it should persist in people who are now living in lands so far from the snow as to make it a redundant feature would appear to be an interesting quirk of nature - or vanity.