Is physiological adaptation connected to evolution?

Question

I have seen people in Y! Answers present the fact that there are different 'races' of humans as being somehow at odds with evolution theory. The conclusions have usually been quite vague, and I hope those of you who have made this connection to clarify it a little more.

I actually see these different characteristics as strengthening the evolution argument; in that they would suggest that human bodies have physically adapted to better suit their environments.

For instance, native people in Africa, Australia (i.e desert cultures) have extremely dark skin which does not burn where fair skin would. East Asian Siberian/Native North American people (a natural land bridge once connected Russia and Alaska), have narrow eyes where intense light reflecting off snowy expanses would cause others to squint. In northern europe people have fair skin where sunburn is not a threat, and long straight hair which is warmer than the short curly hair Africans and Australians have which is cooler.

We find coastal East Asian peoples of short stature in regions where people would have had restricted diets of rice and fish, where people of larger stature are found in regions of varied diets. The earliest civilisations we can find originate in North Africa/Middle East where people would have had darker skin. As humans spread out across the globe, is it not reasonable to suggest that our own species has had genetic adaptations occur? And if so, is it truly impossible to believe that a large enough group could genetically migrate enough from the rest to be declared a new sub-species, species, genus, family, order, kingdom, etc…?

Also, if land animals could not have evolved from water species, would all data on the Paleozoic/Cambrian eras (in which the entire surface of the earth was underwater, before the polar ice caps were formed), have to be wrong?

I am not propping these things up as evidence, but rather I am curious to know how Creationists reconcile these observations?

http://mpec.sc.mahidol.ac.th/radok/australia/analysis.htm

Answer 1

Genetically it's pretty had to. Africa is NOT a desert country but a RAIN FORREST. It is the Middle East that is a desert country and those people are brown, like Mexicans or Moors. The Spaniards, the Hindus, the Near Easterners, the Sicilians.

There are aspects of human traits that traditional genetics can't truly explain.

DARK dominates.

Fact one, only Northern Europeans have blonde and red hair, blue, green and gray eyes.

Ok we can CONCEIVABLY say dark hair got sun bleached over time and then developed naturally, but this would not fully explain blue eyes coming from brown which is ALMOST and impossiblity under the rules of genetics as we know it.

Brown could develope from Blue and Gray and Green as an eveutality and then evolve to the point where it's only brown.

But it's HARD to understand how BLUE, GRAY and GREEN evolves out of BROWN indepedently and only the Nothern Europens.

So, if your going to take this view, then NORTHERN European WHITE MAN evolved into brown and black but travelling down the deserts and the rainforrests and living there for eons and getting darker due to sun pignmentations which eventually became evolutioinized into permanent coloration and this perment BROWN and DARK BROWN may have then influenced the eyes to the point where blue and gray were no longer seen.

It's HARD to justify the opposite.

The OTHER concept if that the various races evolved out of different Apes, if you will. Some from Chimps, some from ORgantuangs, some from Gorrilas.

This, could, then account for red hair, albinos, black or very dark brown skin, more yellowish skin and the eye colors. The Orgnutangs, generating the Norther Europeans, with their color pigments might have been able to genearte more eye colors while the other apes didn't have that tendency.

The fact remains that ALL chinese, ALL Far and Near Easterners, ALL middle Easterners and ALL Afrikanis have BROWN EYES, exclusively. The same generally holds true from some if not all Native Americans (South and to a degree North).

It is only the northern Europens the, if you will Arians, the Nordics, the Ataantic sea coastal, extreme Northernists that genearte the shades of brown, blonde, red with freckles, blue eyes, green eyes and gray eyes.

As pointed out by one person here and echoed by Darwin Evolutionist Dr. Curry in England, with the inter racial breeding going on the skin shade will probably be brownish in the future and we may no longer see blue, green or gray eyes to the degree we see them today, if at all, in say, 10,000 years.

The heavy predominace of dark will overcome and could irradicate, through evolution, the lighter side of things.

How far, no one can say.

Now, both the Biblical and Scientific views of the Evolution of Man seem to indicate that the Middle Eastern or Upper African continent through lower Europe was the point of suspected orgin of man. If that's the case, then we have a hard time explained light skin Norther Europeans, unless we view the world is coming from a White, light skined origin that moved Norther and South or stayed in that region and the Nothern ones got lighter, kept their lightness and the ones staying in the sun and the rain forrests got darker and bred those lighter traints out.

But, to be frank, it's hard to fathom. There HAS to be some remants. There HAS to be some Afrikani or Middle Easterners who come out with lighter eyes and lighter, straighter hair.

The whole thing makes no logical sense without going back to the different species of Ape, which is the thesis of the book Planet of the Apes as he certainly drew the same conclusions.

Then we get to the religious point of view and God can do anything. God messed up languages. God could have also gives us these different traits to alienate us or test us to see if we'd accept or reject or just to make for diversity.

We don't know for sure.

This is one of this big "missing link" holes in Religion and Science. These are missing parts of the puzzle and we can only conjecture how it all came about.

If we are from different apes then were are all cousins not brothers and sisters. IF we came from Adam and Eve and God just played with the mix or MAYBE those "son's of God" that were spoken of caused the different colorations to happen in some.

Those from Adam and Eve directly were one shade or had one set of genes.

Those from the Sons of God and the daughters of man became another shade or had other genes.

I don't truly know if there are any Genetics experts who can definately say things one way or the other about comparing Afrikani Genes, White European Genes, Chinese Genes and Middle East Genes and can document, conclusively, the mechanisms of, for example, eye or hair coloring.

Answer 2

While adaptation does not necessarily Prove evolution, it's a good support for it. Species change visibly, thus we know that one thing can change into something different. Domestic ducks for example. Wild ducks are brown. Through selection of genetic mutations, domestic ducks (well, some of them anyways) are white. And all domestic ducks other than the muscovy duck are ALL derived from the mallard. From the crested runner duck to the miniature call duck. So, we can see that life forms change from generation to generation. But, if this has anything to do with creationism... then I'd have to point out that there is no more proof that we all sprang from two individuals divinely placed. In fact, according to genetics, it would be a very odd species indeed that could inbreed from two individuals and produce a viable species. And THAT is quite well documented. Creating an entire line from two parents results in weak offspring with a high mortality rate and high incident of genetic deformation. Besides, you can't separate evolution and adaptation since both rely on genetic mutation over generations.