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ANTHROPOLOGY 100
Human Adaptation and Variation
RACE
● A Discredited Concept in Biology
● Refers to geographically isolated subdivision of
a species
○ Members of race or subspecies share
distinctive physical characteristics
based on common ancestry and
inheritance of same genes
● Scientists have approached the study of human
biological diversity into two main ways:
1. Racial classification
■ The attempt to assign humans
to discrete categories
(purportedly) based on common
ancestry.
2. Current explanatory approach which
focuses on understanding specific
differences
● Human populations have not been
isolated enough from one another to
develop into discrete races
● A race is supposed to reflect shared genetic
material (inherited from a common ancestor) but
early scholars instead used phenotypic traits
(usually skin color) for facial classification
● Human populations vary biologically, but
because of extensive gene flow and
interbreeding, there are no sharp breaks
between populations
○ Human biological variation distributed
gradually between populations along
clines (gradual genetic shifts)
● We have not been separated enough to develop
discrete races
● Races Are Not Biologically Distinct
○ Obvious problem with “color-based”
racial labels is that terms don’t
accurately describe skin color
○ Another problem with the tripartite
scheme is that many populations don’t
neatly fit into one of the three “great
races” (WHITE, BLACK, YELLOW
people).
○ Example: FILIPINOS
● People started to migrate during colonization
(from Europe)
● Explaining Skin Color
○ Natural selection
■ process by which nature
selects the forms most fit to
survive and reproduce in a
given environment
■ All of us came from Africa then
migrated. We’re supposedly
black but that changed; Melanin
○ Over generations, the less fit organisms
die out, and the favored types survive by
producing more offspring.
○ Skin color influenced by several genes
■ Melanin
● primary determinant of
human skin color
● chemical substance
manufactured in the
epidermis
■ The melanin cells of
darker-skinned people produce
more and larger granules of
melanin than those of
lighter-skinned people.
■ By screening out ultraviolet (UV)
radiation from the sun, melanin
offers protection against a lot
of maladies including sunburn
and skin cancer.
■ Prior to 16th century, darker
skinned populations are those
closer to the equator
○ The association between dark skin color
and tropical habitat existed throughout
the Old World (Africa), where humans
and their ancestors have lived for
millions of years.
○ The darkest populations of Africa
evolved not in shady equatorial forests
but in sunny open grassland country or
savanna
○ Darkest population evolved in savanna
○ Allegedly we originated from East Africa:
open grassland; thus, dark skin
○ Outside the tropics, skin color tends to
be lighter.

ANTHROPOLOGY 100
Human Adaptation and Variation
■ Moving North in Africa there is a
gradual transition from dark
brown to medium brown.
■ East Africa -> Middle East ->
Southern Europe -> Central ->
North
○ Average skin color continues to lighten
as one moves through the Middle East,
into Southern Europe, through Central
Europe and to the North.
○ In the Americas, by contrast, tropical
populations don’t have very dark skin.
○ The higher the location, the lighter the
people (ice age in Euro)
○ This is the case because the settlement
of the New World (North and South
America) by light skinned Asian
ancestors of Native Americans was
relatively recent, probably dating back
no more than 20 000 years.
○ In Americas, people are actually Asian
○ Russia -> Siberia -> bering Street ->
Alaska -> Downwards to America
○ Dark Skin Color
■ Melanin is natural sunscreen.
■ ADVANTAGES
1. Screen out UV radiation
2. Reduces susceptibility to folate
destruction and thus to neural
tube defects including spina
bifida
● is a birth defect that
occurs when the spine
and spinal cord don't
form properly.
● A type of neural tube
defect
3. Prevents sunburn and thus
enhances sweating and
thermoregulation
● Regulates body temp
well
4. Reduces disease susceptibility
5. Reduces risk of skin cancer
6. Reduces UV absorption
■ DISADVANTAGES
1. Outside Tropics: Reduces UV
absorption
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2. Increases susceptibility to
rickets (Vitamin D deficiency
marked by bone deformation)
and osteoporosis.
■ CULTURAL ALTERNATIVES
1. Food and diet
2. Vitamin D supplements
■ NATURAL SELECTION IN
ACTION TODAY
1. East Asians in Northern Europe
like UK
2. Inuit (Alaskan Indians) with a
modern diet.
○ Light Skin Color
■ No natural sunscreen
■ ADVANTAGES
1. Outside Tropic: Admits
Ultraviolet ray
2. Body manufactures vitamin D
naturally and thus prevents
rickets and osteoporosis
■ DISADVANTAGES
1. Increases susceptibility to folate
destruction and thus to neural
tube defects including spina
bifida
2. Impaired spermatogenesis
(baog)
3. Increases susceptibility to
sunburn and thus to impaired
sweating and poor
thermoregulation.
4. Increases disease susceptibility
5. Increases susceptibility to skin
cancer
■ Cultural Alternatives
1. Folic acid/folate supplements
2. Shelter, sunscreen, lotions etc.
HUMAN BIOLOGICAL ADAPTATION
● Alleles that were once maladaptive may lose
their disadvantage if the environment shifts
such as medical breakthroughs.
○ Traits that used to be maladaptive are
no longer maladaptive nowadays
because there are changes - esp.
medical breakthroughs and innovations

ANTHROPOLOGY 100
Human Adaptation and Variation
● Color blindness (disadvantageous for hunters
and forest dwellers) and a form of genetically
determined diabetes are examples.
● Today’s environment contains medical
techniques that allow people with such
conditions to live fairly normal lives.
● Genes and Disease
○ According to the World Health
Organization (WHO) about 1 billion
people worldwide are affected by one or
more neglected tropical diseases.
○ They are called neglected because
they persist exclusively in the poorest
and the most marginalized populations.
■ Malaria
● 216M people in 2011
■ Schistosomiasis (snail fever)
● a waterborne parasitic
disease affects more
than 200 million
■ Filariasis
● which causes
elephantiasis or
lymphatic obstruction
leading to the
enlargement of body
parts particularly the
legs and scrotum.
● 120 million people
○ After food production emerged around
ten thousand years ago, infectious
diseases posed a mounting risk and
eventually became the foremost cause
of human mortality.
○ Food production favors infection for
several reasons
■ Cultivation sustains larger,
denser populations and a more
sedentary lifestyle than does
hunting and gathering.
■ People live closer to each other
and their own wastes, making it
easier for microbes to survive
and to find hosts.
■ Since people live closely to
each other, madali yung hawaan
○ Domesticated animals also transmit
disease to people.
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○ Zoonosis: transfer of disease from
animal to human; one species to
another; ex: covid
○ Example is smallpox
■ The smallpox virus is a mutation
from one of the pox viruses that
plague such domesticated
animals such as cows, sheep,
goats, horses and pigs.
■ Appeared in human beings after
people and animals started
living together.
○ In diseases for which there are no
effective drugs, genetic resistance
maintains significant.
○ There is probably genetic variation in
susceptibility to HIV
○ AIDS could cause large shifts in human
gene frequencies
● Blood Type and Diseases
○ Our blood type sometimes makes us
susceptible or immune to certain
diseases
○ People with Type A or AB blood are
more susceptible to smallpox than are
people with Type B or Type O.
■ This is because a substance on
the smallpox virus mimics the
type A substance, permitting the
virus to slip by the defenses of
the type A individual.
○ By contrast, type B and type O
individuals produce antibodies against
smallpox because they recognize it very
fast as a foreign substance
○ The O allele is more common than A
and B combined.
○ Type A is most common in Europe;
Type B frequencies are highest in Asia;
Type O in Central and South America
○ Bubonic Plague
■ From fleas that rats ate and
their waste mixed with drinking
water which started the spread
of the disease
■ Type O people seem to be
susceptible to the bubonic
plague (the Black Death) that

ANTHROPOLOGY 100
Human Adaptation and Variation
killed a third of the population of
Medieval Europe.
○ Type O people are also most likely to
get cholera which has killed many
people in India as smallpox has.
■ Cholera causes diarrhea
■ Targets intestines
○ On the other hand, the type O
allele may protect against syphilis,
which originated in the New World.
○ Frequencies of type O blood are very
high among the natives of Central and
South America.
● Facial Features
○ Natural selection also affects facial
features
○ Long noses seem to be adaptive in
arid areas (because membranes and
blood vessels inside the nose moisten
the air) and cold environments (blood
vessels warms the air as it is breathed
in and the nose form distances the brain
which is sensitive to bitter cold from the
raw cold outer air.
○ Thomson’s Nose Rule
■ association between nose form
and temperature. It states that
average nose length increases
in cold areas.
■ Places that are hot and dry and
in cold environments, noses
tend to be longer because this is
a natural adaptation; tropical
areas tend to have small noses
● Size and Body Build
○ Bergmann’s rule
■ It's the relationship between
body weight and temperature
○ Average body size tends to increase in
cold areas and decrease in hot ones
○ Hot places = slimmer people; colder
places = bigger people
○ Natural adaptation: you have to be slim
so you won't be dead due to hotness; fat
people conserve heat
○ Allen’s rule
■ relative size of protruding body
parts—ears, tails, bills, fingers,
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toes, and limbs—increase with
temperature
■ size of body parts depend on
environment;
■ colder = shorter and fatter;
hotter = longer and slimmer
○ Protruding body parts are bigger in
warmer areas and smaller in colder
areas
○ Slender bodies are good to dissipate
heat while short limbs and stocky
bodies conserve heat.
● Lactose Tolerance
○ Phenotypical Adaptation
■ When adaptive changes occur
during an individual's lifetime.
■ Lactose in/tolerance: not dairy
society/not part of natural diet =
lactose intolerance; but when
you always drink milk, your body
will tolerate milk (biological
plasticity)
○ It is made possible by biological
plasticity
■ our ability to change in
response to the environments
we encounter as we grow.
○ One genetically determined
biochemical difference among human
groups involves the ability to digest
large amounts of milk
■ an adaptive advantage when
our food is scarce and milk is
available, as it is in dairying
societies.
○ All milk contains a complex sugar
called lactose
○ The digestion of milk depends on an
enzyme called lactase, which works in
small intestine.
○ Among all mammals except humans
and some of their pets, lactase
production ceases after weaning, so
that these animals no longer digest
milk.
○ Lactase production and the ability to
tolerate milk vary between populations.
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ANTHROPOLOGY 100
Human Adaptation and Variation

○ About 90% of Northern Europeans and

their descendants are lactose tolerant;
■ They can digest several glasses
of milk with no difficulty.
○ Similarly, about 80% of the Tutsi of
Rwanda and Burundi in East Africa
and the Fulani of Nigeria in West
Africa, produce lactase and digest milk
easily.
○ However, non-herders groups like the
Yoruba and Igbo of Nigeria, the
Baganda in Uganda, the Japanese
and other Asians like Filipinos, Inuit
(Eskimos), South American Indians
and many Israelis cannot digest
lactose.
● Adapting to Thin Air
○ Native of the Himalayas like the
Nepalese Sherpas adapt biologically to
their high altitude by breathing more
rapidly than people who live at sea
level.
○ In addition, their lungs synthesize larger
amounts of nitric oxide from the air
they breathe, which increases the
diameter of their blood vessels.
○ If you are used to/live in high altitude,
you can easily breathe in higher
places/mountains.
○ Already part of genes that has been
distributed through generations