Evidence continues to accumulate showing that the black race is extremely ancient.

A reconstruction of the first anatomically modern humans from 195,000 years ago reveals a black looking man:

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A forensic reconstruction of early humans 120,000 years ago revealed a black woman:

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Mitochondrial Eve

A reconstruction of an African from 70,000 years ago revealed a black man:

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A reconstruction of the first humans to enter Europe revealed a black man in the process of becoming Caucasoid:

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A reconstruction of the first South Americans (before they were replaced by Mongoloid populations) revealed a black woman dubbed Lucia:

Walter Neves, an archaeologist from the University of Sao Paolo, has taken extensive skull measurements from dozens of skulls, including the oldest, a young woman who has been named Lucia.

“The measurements show that Lucia was anything but mongoloid,” he says.

The next step was to reconstruct a face from Lucia’s skull. First, a CAT scan of the skull was done, to allow an accurate working model to be made.

Then a forensic artist, Richard Neave from the University of Manchester, UK, created a face for Lucia. The result was surprising: “It has all the features of a negroid face,” says Dr Neave.

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And now the most shocking evidence yet:

The Andaman islanders have long puzzled scientists.  They look like African pygmies yet are located in the Bay of Bengal.  “How the hell did these people get out of Africa?” raged one European monarch.  Indeed they are so indistinguishable from Black Africans that they were long believed to be survivors of a slave ship.

Below is a fascinating documentary about these enigmatic people.

The most important part comes at the 8 minute mark when the narrator describes the research of a scientist:

She could see that the Andaman islanders not only looked like African pygmies, they were genetically very closely related to the Africans of today

What this suggests is that not only are all non-Africans descended from a migration out of Africa that occurred maybe 70,000 years ago, but that the Andaman islanders, because they lived in such isolation, are a relic of these original migrating Africans, and thus have preserved that African phenotype.  If this documentary correctly described the scientist’s research (and it may not have) it’s strong evidence that the black race is at least 70,000 years old.

There is however a problem with this theory.  As our very own anthropology expert Phil78 has noted, a 36,000 year-old skull found near Hofmeyr, South Africa resembled the earliest Europeans more than it resembled modern Africans.

But what is a modern African?

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Any definition must be broad enough to cover all these diverse forms of blackness yet narrow enough to exclude all Caucasoids and Mongoloids.

Scientist JP Rushton defined Negroid race in the following way:

A major division of mankind originating and predominating in sub-Saharan Africa.  Skin pigmentation is dense, hair wooly, nose broad, face generally short, lips thick, and ears squarish and lobeless.  Stature varies greatly, from pygmy to very tall.  The most divergent group are the Khoisan (Bushmen and Hottentot) peoples of southern Africa.

Of course no black person will have all these traits, but if one resembles this prototype more than any other race, one is arguably black.  Of course it’s possible that people like the Andaman Islanders evolved these traits independently (convergent evolution) instead of inheriting them from Africans.  If so, they’re not black no matter how black they look.