Racial Diversity The word 'race' is tainted forever by the Nazi era and it is loosely applied to nations, religions

or color. Paradoxically, a white person can be accused of rac ism if they insult a dark-skinned person although they are the same Caucasoid ra ce. It still has a scientific meaning and, as children are quick to notice, peop le from different regions do look dramatically different from one another and th e subject does have to be tackled in order to discover our origins. Humanity used to be divided into five distinctive races with racially intermedia te, 'mongrel' or clinal populations. Currently, at least 60% of world population is predominantly 'Caucasoid'. They are distinguished by variable beard and body hair, normally well developed in males. Balding is prevalent as is premature gr ayness and skin color ranges from fair to almost black in Bengal. The other majo r race is 'Mongoloid' with skin color ranging from sallow white to reddish brown . Hair is black, straight, coarse and long, although beard and body hair are alm ost non-existent. Eyes are set forward in their sockets, protected by fat-padded lids with an internal fold which makes them appear slanted. The Caucasoid proportion of world population was comparatively small before the 'Aryan Invasions' of India and Africa during the seafaring Bronze Age. The extermination of seafaring Mongoloids took place in the last 500 years when the European invention of the gun-armed sailing ship enabled Europeans to carry soldiers overseas in search of gold. Some of these Europeans were the unconsciou s carriers of city-bred diseases such as typhus, smallpox and measles to which t he native populations possessed no immunity. The consequences were catastrophic. These ancient Mongoloid populations may hold the clue as to how the original Is land people looked like. Flores Whenever the Islanders settled on land long enough, they adapted fully to contra sting local environments, forming distinct races. Ancient races, such as the Nea nderthal are now extinct, and present races are a complex hybrid between the anc ient races and the Islanders. This makes pygmies interesting since they were pro tected from outside interference and are probably the only surviving examples of the original Islanders that have adapted to jungle conditions. During hundreds of thousands of years, the Islanders drifted up the rivers of We st Africa and sufficient numbers settled form breeding populations. Over time th ey adapted to forest life and although a full-sized person can only cut his way slowly through the forest, pygmies can glide through, leaping, swinging on liana s and running a along fallen trees. To do this they have to be exceptionally loo se-jointed - a trait which makes them exceptionally fine dancers. Indeed there i s written evidence that some 4,300 years ago, a Pharaoh, Phiops II of the 6th Dy nasty asked the 'Sea-people' to bring him back a Pygmy girl dancer for his court . On the island of Flores, east of Java, Indonesian palaeo-anthropologists have re cently discovered the skeletal remains of some extinct pygmies who may have live d there as recently as 18,000 years ago. The almost complete skeleton of a woman was accompanied by bone fragments and teeth from seven other individuals. There was also evidence of their having crafted stone tools and using fire for cookin g. They are reported to have been just over a metre tall, with skulls about a th ird of the average size of living races. The small size of the single skull foun d cannot be easily explained. Although intelligence is not directly associated w ith brain size no human race extinct or extant had such small brains and it has to be realised that these bones were not fossilised in the usual sense of the te

rm. The bones found in the rock shelter of Liang Bua. had been reduced to the con sistency of mashed potato and special techniques had to be used to preserve them. a single unfossilised specimen in that condition may not be reliable as an inde x of its original size. Bones consist of 60% mineral matter and in the the asept ic environment of alkaline volcanic ash and limestone caves, putrefaction is pre vented until the organic material becomes replaced by stone, so that fossil bones have actually become stone-casts in stone in their original size and shape.