Why do black people have big lips?

+85 votes
asked Apr 30, 2018 in Culture & Society by KeenanCarlto (360 points)
edited May 19, 2018
First of all, I am not a racist. I think this is just a plain fact that black people tend to have larger lips. And I just want to know why. Officious hypocrites, please stay away from this post.

2 Answers

+17 votes
answered Sep 12, 2018 by OttoEmma3392 (390 points)
edited Feb 14, 2019
Yes, many black people have larger lips than those of, say, Caucasians, but not all of them. And I don’t know if you have noticed that black people having large lips also tend to have larger nose, or to be more precise, larger nostrils.

The hypothesis is: because black people mostly reside, at least originally, at relatively warm places, the anatomy of their bodies is more inclined towards the facilitation of heat dispersion. The larger lips and nostrils are more efficient in helping the body cooling down in hot climates: while larger nostrils will of course make an increase in the rate of ventilation easier, larger lips creates larger surface area for heat dispersion. If you consider the fact that people are more likely to breathe through the mouth when exposed to extreme heat, the extra surface area those larger lips create could be crucial.

It is also for this reason that people from tropical areas that are not black also tend to have larger lips and nostrils. If you have ever been to South India, you should notice that those people also have relatively larger lips, even though ethnically they are not black.
+9 votes
answered May 27, 2019 by SamuelBradwa (340 points)
edited Aug 7, 2019
Why do black people have big lips? I think environmental factors are definitely there. But I also think that this could have something to do with their gene pools as well. You see, African people, especially those who still live in tribes, have very a strong concept of ethnicity and always marry with people inside their tribe or clan. This would result in extremely concentrated gene pools, which have already manifested themselves in various genetic studies conducted around East Africa.

In such a scenario, characteristics that have already become marked would only stand out even more through the concentration of the specific genes. I believe this explains why people in East Africa have extraordinarily large lips even compared with other black people living near the equator.
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