Why is modern man a Kaleidoscope and what are the consequences?

There are many factors that result in the disparities between cultures and ethnicity. Science says that modern man originated in Kenya. The African ancestry of the human race is now generally accepted as a fact. Dr. Eric Higgs, of Cambridge University has made a study of the migration of ancient men, and claims that the first man of Europe came to the continent from central and east Africa about 200,000 years ago. Professor Chester Chard, of the University of Wisconsin, has studied the routes of early men who left Africa to colonize the rest of the world, and he has concluded that there were four prehistoric migration routes from Africa to Europe. Other evidence suggests modern man evolved independently at several sites much earlier including Africa, China and Indonesia. Homo Sapiens, Modern Man, exists from 100,000 B.C. to present time, and many say he is well established in Europe, Africa, Asia, America and Australia at this time. Homo Sapiens appears to have emerged and spread throughout the world from two primary sources, South East Asia (Mongoloid) and Africa (Negroid) during the Pleistocene age (600,000 to 10,000 B.C.). Genetic research seems to support this two subspecies of modern man theory. The Y chromosome studies in men suggest modern Europeans migrated to Europe from central Asia and the Middle East in two major waves of migration.

By 12,000 years ago at the latest, human populations had spread into most of the habitable regions of the globe, including Australia and North and South America. With the aid of their flexible, rapidly evolving cultures, these groups, loosely organized, as small bands of "hunter-gatherers," were able to adapt to virtually all the climate zones and environmental niches on the planet, from the Arctic to temperate zones to the tropics. According to the publication “Agricultural Revolution”, Washington State University.

Human history's most important event since the last Ice Age was the first rise of agriculture in Southwest Asia's Fertile Crescent. The origin of agriculture triggered a long train of economic, political, and technological developments, which began there and spread outward. According to the publication –Location, Location, Location: The First Farmers, by Jared Diamond.

The first farmers spread agriculture across the globe; they also sowed seeds for most of today's languages, researchers from UCLA and the Australian National University conclude in the most up-to-date survey of research in the field. Because food production conferred enormous advantages on farmers compared to hunter-gatherers, it triggered outward dispersals of farming populations, bearing their languages and lifestyles," added co-author Peter Bellwood, an ANU professor of archaeology. "Over time, the farmers' languages tended to replace the languages of the hunter-gatherers whom they encountered."

In conclusion, the people who remained in Sub-Saharan Africa were not subjected to the same climate changes as those who left. They remained hunter-gatherers. Those who migrated had to adapt. Necessity is the mother of invention. Today's ethnic diversity and socio-economic disparities (and problems) are the result of the adaptation to different climates and resulting ethnic pigment differences.

But is the above conclusion totally true? In the last five thousand or so years, other major factors have contributed to the makeup of Mankind. Explosive population growth, the development of civilizations, war, conquest, slavery and colonization have all brought about changes in the original indigenous populations, that were established before Civilized Man came on the scene. While many aboriginal peoples have been reduced or eradicated, new ethnicities have evolved through the mixing and procreation of the vanquished and the conquerors. But in reality there are not different races, only the Human Race (Mankind). Genetically there is only one human species; modern humans are generally genetically the same.

According to Professor Stanley H. Ambrose, the last glacial period was preceded by 1000 years of the coldest temperatures of the Late Pleistocene, apparently caused by the eruption of the Mount Toba volcano. The six-year long volcanic winter and 1000-year-long instant Ice Age that followed Mount Toba's eruption may have decimated Modern Man's entire population. Genetic evidence suggests that Human population size fell to about 10,000 adults between 50 and 100 thousand years ago. The survivors from this global catastrophe would have found refuge in isolated tropical pockets, mainly in Equatorial Africa. Populations living in Europe and northern China would have been completely eliminated by the reduction of the summer temperatures by as much as 12 degrees centigrade.

Volcanic winter and instant Ice Age may help resolve the central but unstated paradox of the recent African origin of Humankind: if we are all so recently "Out of Africa", why do we not all look more African?

Because the volcanic winter and instant Ice Age would have reduced populations levels low enough for founder effects, genetic drift and local adaptations to produce rapid changes in the surviving populations, causing the peoples of the world to look so different today. In other words, Toba may have caused Modern Races to differentiate abruptly only 70,000 years ago, rather than gradually over one million years. (Extract from "Journal of Human Evolution" [1998] 34, 623-651), by Professor Stanley H. Ambrose of the Department of Anthropology, University Of Illinois, Urbana, US.

Since then, ice sheets (Ice Ages) have been advancing and retreating. The end of the last Ice Age (10.000 years ago) and resulting Global Warming ushered in the establishment of Mankind becoming the major player on Earth. Even though this planet is in a state of continual change, Man like no other current species of life (other than bacteria and viruses), appears to be a major contributor to the ecosystem of Earth. The earth is in a constant state of upheaval and cyclic change (so is our solar system and the Universe). So will Man help bring about Global Warming or another Ice Age? Only time will tell. But without a clean environment, Man in his present genetic composition, might not be able to continue to live on Planet Earth. Maybe with genetic engineering changes, Mankind could adapt to a harsh environment and not perish. But then Man would be again changing his appearance and socio-economic ramifications, to meet the climate and environmental challenges. Man may have to step out into space and onto other celestial bodies, to maintain his species. But then Man would have to adapt to new solar and environmental conditions (plus gravitational differences and different atmospheres) and over time, genetically evolve into different intelligent life forms (non-human alien races). Time and Change are the controllers of the Universe. And what or who controls Time and Change?