The Origin of the "Races" (We Need to Quit Using that Term)

Recently a reader asked me a question about the origin of the different
nationalities.

Adam and Eve were formed with perfect DNA. But as a result of the fall (Genesis
3) imperfections entered the world. Their children probably had some mutations
in their DNA. Some of these mutations could have led to slightly different shades
of skin color or other slight differences. As the generations went by, these
mutations increased until, by the time of the Tower of Babel, there were many
different looking people.

After Babel, the people separated into different groups and settled different
parts of the world. (Genesis 11) They separated according to language but it
would be perfectly feasable that the different language groups God assigned
were aligned with similar looking peoples. More likely, though, the different races
today are a result of natural selection. For example, some of the people
(Desendants of Noah's son Ham) settled Africa. Since Africa is equatorial and
mostly desert or grassland, the sun shines there for most of the year. Dark skin
is a natural deterrent of many sun-related conditions such as skin cancers. So
the Hamites who happened to have darker skin are the ones which survived
better and produced more offspring. Eventually, the lighter skinned people died
out and the darker ones remained. Notice that this is NOT evolution as many
people think of it. These people all started human and are still human. The
so-called different races  of people in different parts of the world probably all
formed this way.

As far as nationalities go, it is only natural for a group of people, once settled, to
set up some form of government in order to keep the peace. This led to the rise
of cities. Eventually, cities bonded together to form states and nations, usually
based on language. That is a nation would have been a group of people who
lived in the same part of the world and spoke the same language. After all, if
they can't communicate, how would they know they want to band together?
Since then, many nations have risen, fallen, combined and broken apart.

I hope this answers your question.

One last thing about the different "colors" of people. As I tell my students,
everyone has the same chemical in his skin that causes color. How much you
have determines how dark you are. So actually, everyone in the world is the
same "color." We are all just different shades.


As a result of the above article I had some questions about Adam and
Eve asked to me.
The first was simply, "So what 'color' were Adam and Eve?"
Most likely they were a medium brown shade. Imagine what a person would look
like if he were an even mix of all of the "races." That's what Adam and Eve were.
The differences came later as their offspring (who were slightly different from
each other) split up and started different nations.

I also was finally asked the classic question "Did Adam and Eve have belly
buttons, since they were created directly and not born and had no umbilical
cords?" I have always wondered why this is so intriguing. Skeptics ask this as if
all of creation theory hinges on whether Adam and Eve had innies or outies or
were just blank.The answer is probably not, but why does it matter. What
matters is that Adam and Eve were real historical people who actually once lived
as the Bible describes and are the ancestors of every human on Earth today.