Did Darwin explain how different races came about?

Answer 1

Although Darwin opposed slavery, he firmly believed that the evolutionary process had created superior and inferior races. He maintained in Descent of Man that human intellectual development was the product of natural selection and that natural selection had produced significant differences in the mental faculties of "men of distinct races." [See Darwin, Descent (1871), vol. I, pp.109-110, 160, 201, 216.] In the same book, Darwin disparaged blacks and observed that the break in evolutionary history between apes and humans fell "between the ***** or Australian and the gorilla," indicating that he considered blacks the humans that were the most ape-like. [Darwin, Descent (1871), vol. I, p. 201] Darwin also predicted that "[a]t some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races." [Darwin, Descent (1871), vol. I, p. 201.] The racist cast of Darwin's thought is difficult to deny.

Answer 2

I don't think Darwin explained how that different races came about. But he did conclude in his book "Descent of Man" that all the races of man are part of the same species.

Darwin was a long-time abolitionist who had been horrified by slavery when he first came into contact with it in Brazil while touring the world on the Beagle voyage many years before, and considered the "race question" one of the most important of his day. Darwin took a radical view for his time—that all human beings were of the same species, and that races, if they were useful markers at all, were simply "sub-species" or "variants." This view (known as "monogenism") was in stark contrast with the majority view in anthropology at the time, that the different human races were distinct species ("polygenism") and were likely separately "created".

In any case, it is well understood today that the human race began in southern east Africa (and they had very dark skin...so we are all descended from African blacks), and they migrated throughout the world over long periods of time in different waves. The skin color of people who settled in the different parts of the world changed over time to reflect the amount of sunlight is received. This is an established scientific fact that human skin color can change and be incorporate into our genes. It takes about 20,000 years.

Answer 3

Darwin did not, but science today can. When humans still lived in Africa, near the equator where the sun is most direct, the dark skin was needed to block out UV rays, but because the sun was so direct, the skin could still absorb vitamin D from the sun. As we moved north out of Africa, the sun became less direct, and the dark skin could no longer absorb the necessary vitamin D. The UV threat was no longer as great, so we lost our pigmentation so we could absorb the vitamin D from the sun. We are actually freaks that have lost the pigmentation from our skin! This is also why we tend to tan in the sun during the summer. The sun is more direct and we can still absorb vitamin D but need UV protection.

Answer 4

Yes, in a way. It is all explained by evolution. Though we have not, until recently, discovered what really cases it on a mechanical level it was Darwin that laid the groundwork.

Answer 5

Darwin changed his mind before he died. Does his theory still stand?

Answer 6

That is a biology question and does not belong in the physics section. Physics says nothing at all about evolution.