HOW DO DIFFERENT ETHNICS ADAPT TO THEIR ENVIRONMENT

Humans have biological plasticity, or an ability to adapt biologically to our environment.

An adaptation is any variation that can increase one's biological fitness in a specific environment;
more simply it is the successful interaction of a population with its environment. Adaptations
may be biological or cultural in nature. Biological adaptations vary in their length of time,
anywhere from a few seconds for a reflex to a lifetime for developmental acclimatization or
genetics. The biological changes that occur within an individual's lifetime are also referred to
as functional adaptations. What type of adaptation is activated often depends on the severity and
duration of stressors in the environment. A stressor is anything that disrupts homeostasis, which
is a "condition of balance, or stability, within a biological system..." (Jermain et al 2013: 322).
Stressors can be abiotic, e.g., climate or high altitude, biotic, e.g., disease, or social, e.g., war and
psychological stress. Cultural adaptations can occur at any time and may be as simple as putting
on a coat when it is cold or as complicated as engineering, building, and installing a heating
system in a building.

The human body readily responds to changing environmental stresses in a variety of biological
and cultural ways. We can acclimatize to a wide range of temperature and humidity. When
traveling to high altitudes, our bodies adjust so that our cells still receive sufficient oxygen. We
also are constantly responding in physiological ways to internal and external stresses such as
bacterial and viral infections, air and water pollution, dietary imbalance, and overcrowding.

This ability to rapidly adapt to varying environmental conditions has made it possible for us to
survive in most regions of the world. We live successfully in humid tropical forests, harsh
deserts, arctic wastelands, and even densely populated cities with considerable amounts
of pollution. Most other animal and plant species are restricted to one or relatively few
environments by their more limited adaptability.

It is important to remember that humans do not only interact with their environments
biologically. We use culture as well. Over the last half million years at least, we invented
technological aids that allowed us to occupy new environments without having to first evolve
biological adaptations to them. Houses, clothing, and fire permitted us to live in temperate
and, ultimately, arctic regions despite the fact we still essentially have the bodies of tropical
animals.
This does not mean, however, that human-made technology eliminates the biological adaptive
advantages of particular individuals or groups. People who have thicker layers of fat insulation
under their skin still usually survive better in cold climates, while people who are slender do
better in hot ones.

In the next four sections of the tutorial, you will learn how our bodies respond to several
common kinds of environmental stresses.

Skin Color Adaptation

Human skin color is quite variable around the world. It ranges from a very dark brown among
some Africans, Australian Aborigines, and Melanesians to a near yellowish pink among
some Northern Europeans. There are no people who actually have true black, white, red, or
yellow skin. These are commonly used color terms that do not reflect biological reality.

Nature has selected for people with darker skin in tropical latitudes, especially in no forested
regions, where ultraviolet radiation from the sun is usually the most intense. Melanin acts as a
protective biological shield against ultraviolet radiation. By doing this, it helps to prevent
sunburn damage that could result in DNA changes and, subsequently, several kinds of malignant
skin cancers. Melanoma in particular is a serious threat to life. In the United States,
approximately 54,000 people get this aggressive type of skin cancer every year and nearly 8,000
of them die from it. Those at highest risk are European Americans. They have a 10 times higher
risk than African Americans.

Body size and shape

here are two ecological rules, known as Bergmann's rule and Allen's rule, that explain the
variation in size and shape of bodies and extremities using latitude and temperature.

Bergmann's rule: Warm-blooded animals tend to have increased body size with increasing
latitude (toward the poles) and decreasing average temperatures.
Allen's rule: A corollary of Bergmann's rule that applies to appendages. Warm-blooded animals
tend to have shorter limbs with increasing latitude and decreasing average temperatures.

When organisms are more compact, they tend to conserve heat (due to a high mass: surface area
ratio). When organisms are more linear, they tend to lose more heat (due to a low mass: surface
area ratio).

This has been applied to humans. The idea is that populations toward the pole tend to be shorter
and have shorter limbs than do people on the equator.

For example, the Inuit people of Canada (pictured above) tend to be shorter than the Maasai
people of Kenya

AGRICULTURE

Agriculture requires a water source, and getting water to the crop fields was one of the main
challenges early humans needed to overcome to successfully farm. Civilizations that grew next
to freshwater sources, such as rivers, lakes, and ponds, had a relatively easy time irrigating fields
by digging trenches to divert the water from its source toward a field. This caused a civilization
trend to emerge, where large-scale settlements grew up around areas that had an abundance of
water, such as the Fertile Crescent, a region known for its agricultural success located between
the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers.

Maasai adaptation to climate change

By driving their cattle into seldom used regions during periods of drought, the Maasai were able
to sustain themselves. Because many of these unused lands were of low nutritive value or
ravaged by disease, some cattle died and the Maasai changed their diet to include the meat of the
dead cattle

Adaptation of zero grazing among the luos in Siaya county

The Luo people were getting more integrated into the money
economy and cash crop production. Their ceremonies were changing as well as their
opinion about graded cows. Now, most farmers have adopted the ZG concept, because they
were able to adapt it to their needs and opportunities.

Some farmers in Siaya adopted ZG with the aim of commercializing milk production. As a result
of the project, they set up the Yala Dairy Co-operative Society for marketing their milk. The
society also advances credit to its members to expand dairy farming. These farmers see ZG as an
alternative to coffee, sugar and cotton that are now less successful in the area. ZG provides them
another way to generate money for household requirements and to pay for their children’s
education. Others adopted ZG in the first place to obtain manure for crop production. By buying
nutrients as feed (Napier grass, concentrates or other sources of protein) from outside the farm,
the losses of nutrients due to soil erosion and export of products to the market, can be
compensated. ZG makes it possible to still keep cattle where land is scarce. These farmers see
ZG as a way of re-establishing the balance between livestock and crop production, which was
largely lost due to reduction in the numbers of African Zebu cattle.

BANTU

Though Bantu people were originally hunter gatherers, they later adopted a sedentary lifestyle by
becoming mainly agriculturalists who successfully grew various crops such as millet, sorghum,
dry rice, beans, oil palms, melons, taro, banana, yams and others. However, their agriculture was
for their own subsistence since they grew only sufficient crops to meet their own needs.
Moreover, the origin of their iron-smelting technology remains a mystery since it not known
whether they developed it locally and independently or it was introduced by the Phoenicians who
are believed to have been in contact with them or the Egyptians or (still much closer) the
Kushites

Bantu people spoke related varieties of Bantu languages that are said to come from a common
ancestor language called ‘Proto-Bantu’. The iron tools they acquired by mastering the iron-
smelting technology improved their agricultural crops which allowed their populations to grow
thus creating shortage of vital space. Their iron weapons made them redoubtable military
opponents. From hunting they also learned to domesticate and herd animal such as goats, sheep,
and cattle to name only a few. They also became crafted potters, and weavers as well as thriving
traders, exchanging such goods as salt, copper and iron articles as well as ore/minerals for things
that they needed. Politically, their groups became bigger and stronger because of their hospitable
spirit and they later prospered, forming impressive regional kingdoms (e.g., the Kingdom of
Buganda, the Luba Kingdom, the Lunda Kingdom, the Kongo Kingdom, the Zulu Kingdom and
many more) by mixing with other groups by intermarriage and by integrating smaller groups
thereby granting them protection against attacks by other groups and sometimes against slavery.