[muawiyah]

Can't tell you the reference at the moment but a couple of months ago I ran across a discussion of the "race" of the people who did the cave paintings in France. Turned out that you could estimate their height, and the relative proportions of their long bones to their torsos by making measurements of the distance from their handprints on the ceiling to the floor.

They still had tropical proportions but were roughly as tall as modern Negro people in Africa ~ and were clearly NOT white folk!

Remember, during the period of maximum glaciation in an ice age you have recurring periods of warmer weather where the ice may well melt allowing plants and animals to return.

Our early European ancestors supposedly walked into Europe about 35,000 years ago, just about when many of those cave paintings were being made. It is entirely possible that other people had gotten to Europe earlier, while the descendants of the San people in Africa (guys with the straight hair) simply arrived later.

[hellbender]

The cave paintings I have seen pictures of are superb mostly realistic art. Nothing remotely comparable to them is being made by San or Andamanese hunter-gatherers.

[Rookie Cookie]

The ancestors of todays White Europeans didn't just walk into Europe straight from Africa. A branch of proto-IndoEuropean descendants went to Europe possibly from Central Asia over Asia minor only a few thousand years ago. They wiped out the original dark skinned native inhabitant of Europe who were probably closely related to Africans. Their ancestors were the ones who made those cave paintings.