Your face reflects your genome

[Token]

I'm tired of reading people spreading idiocies like 'african genes are more dominant so they will show more phenotypically' or 'Southern European genes are dominant over Northern European ones'. This can be true if we talk about pigmentation alone, but even so it is not totally accurate as multiple alleles are involved in the definition of skin, hair and eyes color and they will almost always corresponds to the overall ancestry of a individual. The truth is that your facial morphology always reflects your genome so, for example, someone that is 80% Italian and 20% Austrian will morphologically certainly shows deviations from the Italian standard towards Austrians correponding with his total ancestry. Multiple recent studies were done to test if metric and non-metric traits, including tooth morphology, can be used to deduce the genetic make-up of individuals using techniques like multidimensional scaling and fixating distances and guess what: their conclusions and admixture estimates were always in agreement with results from published genetic analyses. According to Algee-Helwitt: 'population inference methods that allow for the model-bound estimation of admixture and ancestry proportions from craniometric data not only enable parallel-skeletal and genetic-analyses but they are also shown to be more informative than those methods that perform hard classifications using externally-imposed categories or seek to explain gross variation by low-dimensional projections'.

Algee also used craniometry to detect admixture between different populations of the new world and could easily find a substantial temporal increase in European admixture in self-identified Black individuals: 'Findings reveal a progressive increase in White-European population admixture for the self-identified Black individuals, a recent demographic shift toward the increased representation of Hispanic individuals carrying greater Native American ancestry, and reduction in admixture for White individuals that suggest a loss of diversity over time. Changes in admixture produce tractable differences in morphological expression. Both sexes exhibit similar admixture proportions and self-identification patterns. Observed diachronic trends are corroborated by information on recent U.S. demographic change. The findings reported here for contemporary American craniometrics are in agreement with the expected patterns of intergroup relationships, geographic origins and results from published genetic analyses.'

Hughes compared cranial morphological variation of Mexican populations with genetic studies and came to the same conclusion: 'The results demonstrate that the cranial morphological sample data cluster similarly to the regional groupings inferred from the genetic data'.

However, some populations are phenetically more stable than others, and this explains why some standards of being 'passable' in a certain places can be higher according to the genetic homogeneity of the respective population. This is the case of some Northern Europeans, where entire countries remained basically unaltered since the pre-history so any phenotypic deviation not found there would already put someone aside from the 'average'. In comparison, Southern Europeans are more variable due to ancient and recent intermingling between them and migrants.

[Lucas]

....

Interesting, post link to those papers.

[Lucas]

There is PCA with Ugrofinns using MDLP K23b spreadsheet



And this PCA is based on 8 morphological descriptive traits (like facial flatness, eyefold, etc.)




There are practically the same.

[Token]

There is PCA with Ugrofinns using MDLP K23b spreadsheet

And this PCA is based on 8 morphological descriptive traits (like facial flatness, eyefold, etc.)

There are practically the same.

Very interesting lukas, it should be a common conception that metric and meristic traits are polygenic and genetically stable. This also lead us to doubt some old typologic concepts, for me it's pretty obvious that a European Mediterranean, for example, is not simply a phylogenetically unaltered Neolithic invader. Actually the anthropometric borders between modern Europeans are pretty fluid.

Interesting, post link to those papers.

The full texts are avaiable in the American Journal of P. Anthropology but here are the abstracts, they sum it up pretty well:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28636089
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23754454
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26892285
All of them are very recent and it is revitalizing to see how much Physical Anthropology matured from the 1900s until today.

[alnortedelsur]

I absolutely agree with the thread title. Very good thread

Subscribed

[de Burgh II]

Very interesting!

Especially true in forensic anthropology and biopharmaceuticals where there are peculiar, facial characteristics for each population group and medicinal remedies specifically manufactured for each population's hereditary diseases/illnesses, etc. Nevertheless, great find!

[RN97]

Apparently people love to deny it when it comes to me, that includes you. However the thing is that what you've said is not entirely true. Certain traits are more dominant; curly hair, broad lips, dark eye color, dark hair color and so on. You need not find the genes exactly for those traits, you can just infer dominance or recessiveness by looking at people that are the results of parents of mixed traits. Mulattoes almost always facially look more black. That doesn't mean that usually (as chance predicts) they've gotten a equal amount of genes from both their parents. It's just that the face is not important as one would think, it's not the end all be all or even close of your overall genome.

[JohnSmith]

Genes and genetics I think can be complicated. My brother has red facial hair and blond hair and both my parents show neither trait. The point of recessive traits is they appear when the carrier has no physical evidence of them. They can be just as potent if not more so as dominate traits.

[Token]

Apparently people love to deny it when it comes to me, that includes you. However the thing is that what you've said is not entirely true. Certain traits are more dominant; curly hair, broad lips, dark eye color, dark hair color and so on. You need not find the genes exactly for those traits, you can just infer dominance or recessiveness by looking at people that are the results of parents of mixed traits. Mulattoes almost always facially look more black. That doesn't mean that usually (as chance predicts) they've gotten a equal amount of genes from both their parents. It's just that the face is not important as one would think, it's not the end all be all or even close of your overall genome.

You take what people say here too seriously. It seems that you are a bit confused about how dominance and recessiveness work, in most cases the individual will exhibit a intermediate between both of his parents, and the concept itself is very abstract. For example, two alleles can be at the same time recessive and dominant depending on the context and a phenotypic trait isn't defined by just one, but several genes, each one with a pair of alleles that can be dominant over each other or simply neutral. However, when we talk about craniometric traits (that is subject of this thread if you didn't perceived), they are polygenic, genetically stable and controlled neutraly by a number of gene loci, so they will corresponds perfectly to your genotype, but remember that environment can also influence it a lot so you need to take into account multiple variables. For a more practical example, see the comparison of a genetic and a morphologic PCA using only 8 descriptive traits (!!!) and see how they are basically the same. How people perceive you is pretty subjective, a mulatto will always be a stabilized blend of African and European traits if we assume that he is genetically exactly half-half.

[Sebastianus Rex]

Subscribed, agree with the conclusions altough there's no rule without exception, most of the time what people deem as "dominant genes" is just a consequence of superficial perception.