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Human races

From CreationWiki, the encyclopedia of creation science

(Redirected from Races)

Clockwise from top left: "Afro-Caribean" (sic), "Caucasian", "East Asian", "West Asian".

The term human races refers to how humanity comes in a number of varieties, distinguished by features such as skin colour, facial appearance, shape of skull, type of hair and height. Races have generally been defined by some easily distinguished external feature.

1 Racial origins
- 1.1 Evolutionary accounts
- 1.2 Biblical account
2 Related References
3 See Also

Racial origins

There have been various different accounts of racial origins. Some have led to racist attitudes, by which people attempt to characterise other races than their own as inferior.

Evolutionary accounts

The differences between races are assumed to arise in the same way as other variations in all kinds of animals. They will potentially lead to divergence that would eventually lead to the evolution of separate species. This is speciation if the line is drawn properly.

When evolution was first propounded as a theory of origins, it was almost universally assumed that different races were the product of evolution. Evolutionists applied the myth of progressive development and concluded that the white race was the pinnacle of evolutionary development and that other human races were less-evolved precursors of it. This was perhaps fed by a desire to justify their racist attitudes to coloured people, particularly since racism was used to justify slavery.

Modern evolutionists deny that evolution supports racism, but this is more because racist ideas have become politically incorrect than because they cannot be derived from evolutionary theory.

Biblical account

All people now alive are descended from the three sons of Noah and their wives, and ultimately from the first humans, Adam and Eve, who were directly created by God. The sons of Noah were alive around 4,500 years ago, and all human races have been derived from them. The Bible relates how their children founded various nations, which have spread out into various regions of the world.

After the flood of Noah, people stayed in one area until God confused their languages at the Tower of Babel. This event induced the human population to separate into distinct groups, which dispersed across the world. In general, the descendants of Japheth spread North and West from Babel, into Europe; the descendants of Ham spread South and East, into Africa and Asia; and the descendants of Shem remained around the Middle East. (Ref needed)

Skin hue of native populations.

Subsequent to the migration of the various language groups into different parts of the world, natural selection of the separated gene pools induced rapid genetic drift. The disjunct populations quickly became distinguished by particular characteristics that were regionally favorable. For example, people with a significant tendency to produce melanin in their skins prospered better in the equatorial regions of the world, where the trait gave them protection against UV radiation. These same groups were also naturally selected to have smaller body sizes and longer extremities to aid in heat dissipation. Likewise the groups who traveled a significant distance from the equator have less melanin, and increased production of vitamin D in the weaker sunlight. In addition, humans living in cooler climates were selected to have larger body sizes and smaller extremities to prevent a loss of body heat. In this way, the various races came into being in a very short time. The speed at which these distinguishing characteristics developed adequately illustrates that any claims of superiority based on these differences are quite unfounded.