What Color Are You? 1967

um [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] people look different from one another so do animals one of the ways in which we all differ is color [Applause] [Music] huh [Music] imagine a world in which everything were the same color [Music] [Applause] rally dull isn't it [Music] but color is part of our world just as there are thousands of shades of birds so there are thousands of shades of people [Music] scientists usually divide people into three main groups based largely on skin color the negro or black race the [ __ ] or yellow race and the caucasian or flagrace actually the labels a member of the yellow race isn't really yellow any more than a member of the black race is really black and white is not really the color of a white boy [Applause] [Music] [Applause] here we go [Music] [Applause] right here [Applause] although people may look very different everyone's skimmer is made of the same few ingredients the cheap one is a brown pigment we look different because of the amount of pigment we each have in our skin eyes and hair imagine that these pennies are particles of brown skin pigment if you have a few of them and they are far apart your skin will light color if you have more your skin will look somewhat darker and if you have many particles of pigment arranged closely together your skin will have almost solidly brown [Applause] although our skin may not look alike we're all really colored from the same [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] what determines the color you are skin color is inherited when a baby is conceived he receives 23 chromosomes from each current the chromosomes which determine a person's physical traits are made up of thousands of tiny chemical structures called genes the genes largely determine what we will look like including the color of eyes and hair some genes also determine skin color the darkest negroes have the most active brown pigment genes the lightest whites have genes which produce the least grounding when parents are of different colors the children's skin generally tends to be somewhere in between and since most parents are not exactly the same color children all shades are constantly being created [Music] basically in the way our bodies are constructed we are all the same though superficially we may look quite different [Applause] compare an african oryx and a zebra they not only look different they are different they belong to different species and cannot mate even a drama berry and a bactrian camel though they look very similar can never be more to each other than neighbors in the zoo take a walrus and a seal they swim in the same water yet they are so basically different from each other that they cannot produce offspring but almost any pair of human beings anywhere in the world no matter how varied their color and appearance can produce children or we are all members of the same species regardless of where we live and what we look like we have all descended from our common ancestor if we all have the same ancestor you may wonder why we don't all look like today part of the answer may be seen here at the zoo [Applause] i don't [Applause] [Music] there he know [Applause] [Applause] the white wolf is the result of a mutation a change in heredity occasionally a change occurs in a gene causing a new trait to appear in this case a white wolf was born to gray wolf parents the silver fox is another mutation he turned up one day among the family of ring foxes just a chance mutation but sometimes changes that occur by chance turn out to serve a useful purpose take the bottlenose dolphin for instance scientists believe that a long time ago dolphins probably lived on land they are warm-blooded air-breathing mammals their intelligence is surpassed only by that of man today however they live only in water and a great deal like fish through chance mutations dolphins must have developed flippers where their front legs used to be the powerful tail better suited to getting around in water behind lakes [Music] unlike fish who have scales dolphins have skin which through millions of years has adapted to the water so in the case of dolphins chance mutations served a practical purpose and were retained [Music] [Applause] mutations must also occur over a long period of time the result was different races [Music] so based on all available evidence here's the way many scientists see the development of races the first recognizable men developed somewhere in africa between one and two million years ago since man lived in the tropics it was quite probably dark skinned and dark-haired the coloring that would have given him the most natural advantages it is from men very much like this that we are all descended from africa men's increasing populations spread throughout asia and europe in time mutations occurred and where advantageous they were retained probably a chance mutation produced the first light-skinned man in the north such turin was an advantage allowing the weak sun to penetrate his skin more easily to produce needed vitamin d therefore the white race became centered generally in the north in africa on the land dark skin gave natural protection against the burning sun here the negro race became concentrated meanwhile in eastern asia the manga white people developed perhaps the change in skin color from brown to yellow was a random mutation other racial changes however proved an advantage in the colder plants such as well-padded cheeks and your bodies to conserve body heat long ago a land bridge existed between asia and the americas the early mandalores crossed it and spread over the continents of the western hemisphere this explains how the eskimos the north american and the south american indians belong to the [ __ ] race so from a common ancestor in africa over a long period of time all the human races developed if people gradually changed once they found themselves in a new planet you may wonder if they are not still changing today for instance hasn't the american negro's skin turned lighter now that he is in a colder place than africa for one thing past changes took thousands of years and there hasn't been enough time for major new changes to be noticed but also as man has learned to control his environment he himself has had no need to change a million years ago if you could not tolerate the weather you might die today you can put on a raincoat go inside start it here or an air conditioner [Music] scientists reason that races will probably continue to be of different colors for a very long time scientists also know that these differences are only skin deep the brains muscles and bones of all races are pretty much the same people may look different but all over the world we share a common ancestor a common physical makeup common human experiences [Music] um [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Applause] you