First Britons were black

Despite their dark skin, I believe Cheddar man had blue eyes,

Anyway, as the current dominant human species, homo sapiens, evolved in Africa and everyone in the world is descended from that Homo Sapiens genetic group and every group from Chinese, to Indians, Australian indigenous people have evolved from the same group. It is not really surprising that some of the earliest homo sapiens in this country were dark skinned.

why all this black and white . we are ONE RACE the human race ..?

One of my favourite topics - fascinating!
Moggie57 I don't feel it's divisive at all but black, white, etc, etc, we're all unique.
Growstuff thanks for book tip. Hoping I haven't read that one ?

I thought it common knowledge that we ALL evolved from the African rift valley?
Ditto with Cheddar man.
Race or the colour of ones skin only matters now.
To the Roman's the important thing was adhering to their Gods and their way of life. Look at the different nationalities and skin colours that rose to the top.
Protestant and Catholics were torturing and killing each other.
Hutus and tutsi tribes were fighting until it resulted in a near genocide.

I think people will always look for reasons to fight each other.

If GN is anything to go by, I dont hold out much hope for any of us.

I'm sure everyone knows that we are all descended from the people that originally walked out of Africa.

The point about Cheddar Man is that he had always been depicted as fair skinned because that's how everyone thought when they imagined a northern European. But recent advances in DNA analysis suggest that 10,000 years ago people who lived in what is now England were people of colour (to use a modern phrase). And their descendants are still here. So Jean and her bizarre ideas about Englishness haven't got a leg to stand on.

According to an ancestral DNA test dh and I had done years ago (Oxford Ancestors) I share a direct maternal ancestor with Cheddar Gorge Man - along with about 11% of native Europeans.
I believe it’s now known that he had blue eyes.
Dh’s maternal ancestor isn’t nearly so ‘select’ ? - he shares his with 25% or so.

Since we are all descended from the same East African stock and our skin colour mutated from a dark colour to a paler colour. I sit really of anythig other than academic interest exactly when that happened, given it happened a long time ago.

At the end of the day the world's population is mainly genus homo sapiens and everyone of us is the result of genetic mutations over at least 100,000 years, and there is no reason to think that the many different ethnic groups indigenous to Africa are any closer to the first homo sapiens genetically than we are. We are only talking appearance and colouring.

We share 98.8% of our DNA with bonobos and chimpanzees. If you look at modern bonobos they are not particularly dark skinned. They are of course covered in fur and underneath are a bit on the pale side. So, logically speaking we probably developed darker skin when we were in Africa and had become a naked ape and then became paler when we moved out of Africa and didn't benefit from being pale. I don't think anyone(apart from some very religious types who refuse to accept evolution) would disagree that it happened. We are finding out more and more about our early ancestors, but I don't think this is news.
I assume people have read The descent of Woman by Elaine Morgan? If not I urge you to do so! An excellent book.

I’ve often thought that if you could go back far enough, in a direct line from your mother to her mother etc. in an unbroken line for countless millions of generations, you’d eventually find a fish.
That’s one seriously interesting thing I shall never be able to do!

Re Neanderthal genes, I read somewhere that everyone, except native born Africans, have about 3% Neanderthal DNA.

That is because after leaving Africa, our remote ancestors interbred with that species before they were wiped out.

Loislovesstewie

We share 98.8% of our DNA with bonobos and chimpanzees. If you look at modern bonobos they are not particularly dark skinned. They are of course covered in fur and underneath are a bit on the pale side. So, logically speaking we probably developed darker skin when we were in Africa and had become a naked ape and then became paler when we moved out of Africa and didn't benefit from being pale. I don't think anyone(apart from some very religious types who refuse to accept evolution) would disagree that it happened. We are finding out more and more about our early ancestors, but I don't think this is news.
I assume people have read The descent of Woman by Elaine Morgan? If not I urge you to do so! An excellent book.

Being pale offers an evolutionary advantage in regions where there isn't much sunlight. There's also a theory that farmers were less exposed to the sun that hunter gatherers.

There is a theory that the original dark skinned people didn't become pale, but were replaced by people with paler skins, who had the evolutionary advantage. Nobody is absolutely sure where exactly any of these people came from.

There was human habitation in Northern Europe tens of thousands of years before the Ice Age, but those people didn't survive or moved to warmer places.

I think it is interesting to consider how we became modern humans. I'm also wondering how fast we are still evolving? If we could see ourselves in 100,000 years time what would we look like?
I realize that in all probability darker skinned people died out is some parts of the world in favour of newcomers whose pale skin had an advantage in cooler climes, but I also wonder what the other early hominids (Denisovans, Neanderthals) looked like, how they lived etc.

There is evidence that some type of people lived in North America before the last Ice Age but I'm not sure this has disproved the theory that darker skinned people moved into Northern Europe and Britain and gradually evolved to become lighter-skinned.

The DNA evidence of dark-skinned Cheddar Man and his present- day descendants would prove that.

Evolution happens because random mutations sometime confer an advantage. Think about what advantages some people have which make them better suited to the environment in which they live. Modern medicine and science slow down evolution because they can remedy some comparative disadvantages and keep people alive who would otherwise have died before producing offspring.

Sorry Callistemon you've lost me. Do you think the people in North America were light or dark skinned?

growstuff

Sorry Callistemon you've lost me. Do you think the people in North America were light or dark skinned?

There was human habitation in Northern Europe tens of thousands of years before the Ice Age, but those people didn't survive or moved to warmer places.

Do you think the people in Northern Europe were light or dark skinned?

I realize that in all probability darker skinned people died out is some parts of the world in favour of newcomers whose pale skin had an advantage in cooler climes,

As I understand it the dark skinned people didn't die out, but the people who had lighter skin as a result of a random mutation did better in northern climes because they were better at absorbing Vitamin D. So over time the people with lighter skin had children whose even lighter skin was an advantage...etc etc.

Random thought....how do people who don't believe in evolution rationalise the fact that the virus is mutating to make it more "fit" to survive? Evolution in action.

OK, back to Cheddar Man

Why does it matter if Cheddar man was black, white green or yellow? The colour of someone's skin is totally irrelevant, as is the colour of their eyes, the colour of their hair or it's texture. I could stand out in the sun and become darker or stay indoors and go lighter but it doesn't make me less intelligent or more or less deserving of being treated fairly and equally. It doesn't make me more entitled to call myself English or any other nationality. Discussions like this won't change the mind of people who are racist, they might take the view that natural selection of "white" people in Europe means we are superior in some way, which is absolute rubbish. FWIW, Skin colour is irrelevant, we are the same race and we are all equal regardless of how man populated the earth. TBH I think many of the comments on this thread are patronising to anyone who is not white

Callistemon

growstuff

Sorry Callistemon you've lost me. Do you think the people in North America were light or dark skinned?

There was human habitation in Northern Europe tens of thousands of years before the Ice Age, but those people didn't survive or moved to warmer places.

Do you think the people in Northern Europe were light or dark skinned?

I haven't a clue I'm afraid. There are very few human remains and I don't know whether they'd be in a condition to do that kind of testing. Maybe the book I'm reading will tell me when I've finished it.

Alegrias1

^I realize that in all probability darker skinned people died out is some parts of the world in favour of newcomers whose pale skin had an advantage in cooler climes,^

As I understand it the dark skinned people didn't die out, but the people who had lighter skin as a result of a random mutation did better in northern climes because they were better at absorbing Vitamin D. So over time the people with lighter skin had children whose even lighter skin was an advantage...etc etc.

Exactly! That's how Darwinism works rather than Lamarckism, with which it's sometimes confused.

The alternative could be that an entirely different tribe invaded which was more able to adapt to the environment, maybe through skin colour or by farming techniques.

Alegrias1

Random thought....how do people who don't believe in evolution rationalise the fact that the virus is mutating to make it more "fit" to survive? Evolution in action.

OK, back to Cheddar Man

Pah! Maybe they don't believe in a virus anyway. It's a sickness injected into people by Bill Gates by remote 5G technology.

foxie No, it shouldn't matter, although if you've read some of the comments on another thread, it obviously does to some people who phone radio programmes.

I think it's interesting from an academic point of view. I also think that anybody who claims any legitimacy for ethnic Englishness needs to have a rethink.

PS. I'm not going to repeat some of the comments I made on that thread, especially as this thread is in Chat.

There are very few human remains and I don't know whether they'd be in a condition to do that kind of testing. Maybe the book I'm reading will tell me when I've finished it.

It is very interesting. I wasn't aware there were human remains which could be tested. Were these people homo sapiens or another species?

Would they have been able to travel across eg an ice bridge to North America? Were they the same people who settled in Northern Europe?

Why does it matter if Cheddar man was black, white green or yellow?
It does matter if you are interested in human evolution.