Hilda Fish and Azizi - I'm glad you'r both here. I actually think we probably agree about this but I'm not sure you realize I was replying to a post that seemed racist. I agree that racism exists (I just don't want to be a part of it). I do not agree that there are separate races. Maybe this will help explain what I was trying to say:

Some nuclear DNA sequences (including Y-chromosome data) and mtDNA indicate that modern humans originated and migrated relatively recently from a subset of the African population, putting Africa as the home of modern humanity. A study of human Y-chromosome variation in a worldwide sample of over 1,000 men determined that Africans and non-African males shared a common ancestor 59,000 years ago and that the non-African branch of humanity left Africa about 44,000 years ago. Such time estimates are based on the molecular clock hypothesis . Y-chromosome studies tend to misinterpret demographic events related to the origin and spread of populations, underestimating the age of those events. Mike Hammer (1995) at the University of Arizona, sequenced 2,400 bases in the same Y chromosome region from 16 ethnically diverse humans and four chimpanzees, and dated the common ancestral human Y chromosome at 188,000 years with a 95 percent confidence interval from 51,000 to 411,000 years. Other data shows that Africans and non-Africans split about 156,000 years ago (Underhill, et al, 2000), (Ingman, 2000). Within Africa the oldest modern human fossil is just less than 160,000 years old and represented by Homo sapiens idaltu. (http://www.ecotao.com/holism/hu_mod.htm)

Thanks to Freda Underhill (on another thread) for adding this to our forum.