Human Variation And Race

Environmental Stress of the Cold

The environmental stress of cold climates negatively impact the survival of humans by disturbing homeostasis. When the winter season strikes humans go though the stages of increase in metabolic rate, shivering, and vasoconstriction. If these stages do not occur  humans will experience hypothermia or even lead to death with all the sicknesses that may occur in the cold temperatures.


Adaptations
Short-term adaptation:
 Shivering is a short-term adaptation that humans use in cold environments. Shivering generates body heat and muscle heat in a short period of time. When the temperature of your body is dropping your body starts to shake uncontrollably to heat it back up. When it comes to muscle heat, muscles start to spasm to generate some sort of heat in a short period of time.




Facultative adaptation: 
Vasoconstriction is a facultative adaptation which humans also use in cold climates. Vasocontriction is the narrowing of blood vessels, as by the action of a nerve. When blood vessels narrow down the flow of blood is restricted which retain body heat.
Developmental adaptations:

A developmental adaptation that humans develop is large compact bodies which have fat insulation around all vital organs.  By having fat around their vital organs it keeps body warmth and also gives energy. By having fat organs work ten times harder which causes the energy to turn into body warmth which, in the cold climates is very helpful. If there is no fat insulation in the body it is harder to keep warm especially when you have no fat insulation. 

Cultural adaptations:

A cultural adaptation is insulated clothing. People who live in colder climates like in the picture (Eskimos) wear insulated heavy jackets, pants, gloves, hoodies or hats, scarves, and boots. There clothing must be insulated to compact the heat in and keep the cold out. 

Benefits of Studying Human Variation

The benefit of studying human variation from this perspective across environmental 

clines is to know how humans have the ability to adapt to a certain climate and how certain people who live in different climates can adapt to one climate better than others. For example, people who live in Alaska or even the North Pole , can adapt to colder temperatures rather then us Californians and vise versa. Information from explorations like this can be useful for use humans when we move or decide to go on a little vacation to these different climate weathers. For example if was to take a litte trip from Los Angeles  to Salt Lake City, Utah in the winter I better be ready for low temperatures meaning a lot of insulated clothing to keep me from having hypothermia, pneumonia, or even frostbite. 

Race

In my opinion I don't think race has much to do with adaptation of humans. But if I was to use race in some sort of way to have a better understanding of the variation of adaptation I would use the short-term adaptation and cultural adaptations because, it gives a better understanding on how the people for example in the Sahara desert adapt to their climate compared to the people of Alaska adapt to their climate.  The study of environmental influences on adaptations is a better way to understand human variation rather then by the use of race because, race really doesn't really matter to the adaptation of climate. For example, If I was to move from California to Iceland i would just need to adapt to cooler climates by using the four adaptations human use for their stress environment weather if its short-term,  facultative, developmental, or cultural adaptation it helps to adapt to that environment.