While early humans’ migration led to changes in our skin tones, what affected the distinctive face characteristics of each race?
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The huge variation in human facial features is thought to have arisen so that individuals are more easily recognizable within the group.
As for the specific facial features we recognize as racial differences, that becomes more difficult to answer. First, it’s important to understand that the racial lines we draw and the facial features we associate with each group are not separated by hard lines. So having specific facial features are not necessarily characteristic of the groupings we tend to refer to as race. For example, not every person we would group as ‘asian’ would have the characteristic asian monolid.
There are some race associated facial features that may have functional evolutionary cause. Back to the monolid example, it’s thought that the monolid helped provide protection in the cold, windy climate of Mongolia. While the epicanthic fold found in African people may provide some protection against high UV light in desert climates. These are rather tentative theories though not remotely agreed upon in the scientific community.
For many facial features there are little to no functional associations and so we attribute these differences to sexual selection. So some features for some populations were just more attractive than others so it proliferated. Blue eyes and green eyes both are caused my low melanin, but there is no real functional difference that would advantage blue eyes over green eyes or vice versa.
So while some race associated facial features may have some functional evolutionary cause, most facial features likely evolved due to sexual selection within those isolated populations.
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