Where did race come from? I remember reading that everyone once came from Africa I believe is what I read. So the question is where and how did different races form? Was it that once everyone of us was black but then one kid got this disease which turned his skin white and later on when he had sex the child was also born white? < LOL. Me being born in Mexico should have some white, indian, eastern asian, and possibly even black (could explain somethings) so I'm a mixture of all. 

I've always pondered this so I decided to ask my fellow smart VGcharterz!

People branched out and adapted to their surroundings. Skin color and other physical attributes takes tens of thousands of years to form us into how different we are today. That's what I've heard at least.

There have been quite a number of threads on evolution the past few days, I'm assuming this is where you got the idea for this thread. Just wait until those more scientific ideas start pouring in, and I'm sure you'll have your answer.

As far as "race" is goes, I think it's absolutely silly. We are the human race, 'nuff said.

The skin color adjustment happened, because when humans headed north they came into zones with less intensive sunlight, but light is needed to produce Vitamin D (very essential - btw the only Vitamin humans produce themselves ). So the skin color slowly changed to adapt to those lighting conditions, because people with lighter skin were more likely to reproduce.

And, there are no human "races". Humans are far too similar to each other to call the local differences a "race".

The concept of race actually came out of a nationalist-minded interpretation of Darwin, especially his second book, the idea that natural selection branched between the races was refined to the point where natural selection branched between the ethnicities, and helped fuel the fires of nationalism in the late 19th century, because that meant there were real racial differences between a Serb and a Bulgarian, and those differences meant that one was destined to dominate the other.

Yeah I get it. But I still can't understand why Asians have those squinty eyes. Indians were probably formed because they were Asians who traveled from Asia to Northern and Southern American which explains there complexion and all. But yes we are all a human race. After all if everyone was the same, we wouldnt have such a wide variety of hot girls ;)

Genetic drift. When populations of a species are isolated from each other, superficial attributes like that will tend to change on their own with minimal evolutionary pressure.

It also helps to recognise your own tribe versus others. It is evolutionary favourable to support your own people because they are more likely to be related to you and hence carry your genes.

I recommend The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins. Classic and accessible text on evolutionary biology and what it does.

Of course there are human races. You don't think that 70,000 years of separation (when modern humans left Africa) between human populations have lead to any significant differentiation?  But for some reason the 300-400,000 years difference between Homo sapiens and Homo Erectus is so important that it not only entails a separate race but even a separate species.

Key word here: politically correct. (and yes that sadly includes renowned scientists)

There's oftentimes more differentiation within "races" than there are between them. According to how we view race in biological studies, the different human "races" don't fit.

We're all homo sapiens sapiens.

Uhmm.. just looking at the years won't tell you anything.

We don't have nearly enough fossils of erectus to tell when it began to differentiate into races which became the following human species, the oldest fossils of erectus are 1.9(some call it "homo ergaster" at this stage) or 1.5million years old, so the process might have lasted 1million or more years.

But we know, that homo sapiens went through a serious genetic bottleneck 70k years before now, when the supervulcano Lake Toba in Indonesia errupted, so the gene pool was very slim, very uniform at that time, hence diversification/differentiation into races was slowed, although locally separated groups were formed. And due to it's high mobility (even compared to homo erectus) homo sapiens probably never was thaaat separated anyways.