Evolution and Race

Sharon Begley's Beyond Stones & Bones (Newsweek, March 19, 2007) makes me think that a notion I've had for several years may be plausible. Consider my black neighbor and me. I'm white. And I chose black as a descriptor here since the more popular modern term, African-American, is in fact what both my neighbor and I are. It is that idea that gave rise to the notion that I hold.

I'm where I am after a 50,000 year journey over widely varying environmental difficulties, facing violent weather with great extremes, strange predators, new diseases, and other challenges difficult to imagine. My neighbor arrived after a 300 year journey filled with unspeakable cruelty. It seems likely that our journeys produced different problem solving and adaptive behaviors skill sets.

Qualified researchers should undertake a study to determine the relationships, if any, among a number of variables. One I call the Migration Difficulty Index. A second is the Problem Solving/Adaptive Score of relatively isolated populations along the migration pathways. Perhaps we can learn something of what we are and mark out a clear path of what we can become.