InJesusName said:
I felt the need to clarify my statement about why we were given "this" hair. It was not meant to be offensive at all.
Being the history lover that I am, I often wonder what type of adaptation causes the kinky hair texture. For instance, we are naturally blessed with darker skin tones as a result of more melanin in the skin. This was an adaptation of the skin as protection to the sun. Other races (Egyptians for instance) have skin of color and are in equally hot temperatures yet tend to have more 3 textured hair.
I read an article that talked about this (sorry I haven't found it or a link yet).
Some scientists think that original man had curly hair (and brown skin) but not kinky/nappy hair. The adaptation was due to people moving out of East Africa into other parts of the continent with different environments and also the changes in the environment, it was getting hotter and drier, Sahara was expanding, grasslands were drying up. (results of receding glaciers)
Nappy hair acts kinda like an umbrella to protect the scalp without holding in heat, an adaptation to extreme sun and heat in mainly dry areas. Our hair does not hug the scalp, it lifts upwards and spreads out densely so air gets to the scalp and heat isn't held down but most of the suns rays are blocked. This type of hair clusters differently than hair found in Europe and Asia, the actual hairs cluster in groups of 2 and 3, and tends to be much finer than other hair.
Many modern Egyptians are the result of many centuries of intermarrying between indigenous northern and eastern African, Mediterranean (a lot of Greek), and western Asian populations (Persian, 'Arab'). The original people of that region are thought to look
very different from people now.
There are still some communities where the people are darker and with kinkier hair than what we normally associate with Egyptians.
JCoily said:
But even before I went natural it always struck me that there has to be a distinct reason whether biological or divine that those of us that have a higher ratio of African blood have the type of hair that we do. There isn't another group that comes close to our hair type. I've heard the 'heat of the African sun' theory, (it was hot/African hair adapted) but then why do the indigenous peoples of other hot enviorns not have a similar hairtype?
I think 1) because it needs to be hot
and dry and 2) none of those populations are any where near as old or established in their environments as sub-Saharan Africans and therefore have not gone through as much adaptation and variance as indigenous Africans.