Why are WE so diverse??

[Boudica]

Why is it that only our race has such a wide variety of looks? We have red hair, blonde hair, green eyes and blue eyes, and such a wide range of skin tones, while no other race does (except for skin tone). Our people can have brown hair, blonde hair, red hair, or black hair and have hazel eyes, green eyes, brown eyes, blue eyes, or grey eyes.. Other races (asians and africans for example) are limited to only having black/very very dark hair and dark brown/black eyes..

Why is it that only our race has such a variety?

[Tarja]

General recessive nature of our genes, gives the necessary leeway for all of our beautiful aesthetics. :)

[Boudica]

General recessive nature of our genes, gives the necessary leeway for all of our beautiful aesthetics. :)

Yes :) but why did our people produce these genes while no other people did?

[rhiannon]

Why is it that only our race has such a wide variety of looks? We have red hair, blonde hair, green eyes and blue eyes, and such a wide range of skin tones, while no other race does (except for skin tone). Our people can have brown hair, blonde hair, red hair, or black hair and have hazel eyes, green eyes, brown eyes, blue eyes, or grey eyes.. Other races (asians and africans for example) are limited to only having black/very very dark hair and dark brown/black eyes..

Why is it that only our race has such a variety?

This is a question I have always pondered myself. Granted, there is some diversity amongst other races....but much less so than the extent to which you see in the Europids:)

[Sikeliot]

Well at least with Africa, in no part of Africa would blue eyes, light skin, or light hair be advantageous from an evolutionary point of view. Asia is more complicated because you would think these traits would prove advantageous in places..

[_______]

extremes of climate etc

[Boudica]

extremes of climate etc

But other people have had just the amount of climate extremes..

[Tarja]

Northern populations experienced positive selection for lighter skin due to the increased production of vitamin D from sunlight, and the genes for darker skin disappeared. I know you didn't mention skin, but melanin provides protection from sunlight so this would also apply to the lightening of eyes.

As for hair, I'm not so sure about that. Sunlight usually lightens hair (maybe this is only true for Europeans), how can Africans be under such intense sun all the time and still have pitch black hair? Hmm.

[Hess]

Europeans are by far the most phenotypically diverse civilization on Earth, It's not really my place to make a judgement on wether that is good or bad (like some people here do)

[Sikeliot]

As for hair, I'm not so sure about that. Sunlight usually lightens hair (maybe this is only true for Europeans), how can Africans be under such intense sun all the time and still have pitch black hair? Hmm.

Brown hair with light undertones to it will lighten in the sun but I think pitch black hair lacks these undertones.

[morski]

As for hair, I'm not so sure about that. Sunlight usually lightens hair (maybe this is only true for Europeans), how can Africans be under such intense sun all the time and still have pitch black hair? Hmm.
actually:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blond#Geographic_distribution

[Boudica]

Northern populations experienced positive selection for lighter skin due to the increased production of vitamin D from sunlight, and the genes for darker skin disappeared. I know you didn't mention skin, but melanin provides protection from sunlight so this would also apply to the lightening of eyes.

As for hair, I'm not so sure about that. Sunlight usually lightens hair (maybe this is only true for Europeans), how can Africans be under such intense sun all the time and still have pitch black hair? Hmm.

My hair, for example is naturally a light brown with blonde streaks.. In the summer (when I am in the sun all day lifeguarding) my hair transforms into a mainly blonde/golden brown color while in the winter, fall, etc it turns gets a sort of reddish tint.. It is odd that they don't have lighter hair from being in the sun.. If what you are saying about the sunlight for us is true, why didn't africans get the same vit. D from the sunlight which they had 100000x more of then us? It is all very interesting..

[SilverKnight]

Northern populations experienced positive selection for lighter skin due to the increased production of vitamin D from sunlight, and the genes for darker skin disappeared. I know you didn't mention skin, but melanin provides protection from sunlight so this would also apply to the lightening of eyes.

As for hair, I'm not so sure about that. Sunlight usually lightens hair (maybe this is only true for Europeans), how can Africans be under such intense sun all the time and still have pitch black hair? Hmm.

You're correct about the pigmentation in Human eyes and skin. When it comes to hair is different.

Straighter hair allows more UV rays to enter the skin, it acts like fiber optic tubes, while curly hair absorbs more moist to keep the head cold when in hot climates. But as skin hair also has pigmentation and works the same way as blonde hair to light skin and dark hair as darker skin tones, it can either protect from UV rays more or less.

[Tarja]

actually:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blond#Geographic_distribution

What I meant was that they all live their lives under the blazing sun, how is it that they manage to retain such dark hair? If that were us, we would all be gradually bleached a good few shades lighter than our natural colours and it would more or less be permanent, but this doesn't happen to them. There are isolated cases of light haired Africans, but this certainly isn't the norm, and their light hair won't be from sun-bleaching. It was just something that had never occurred to me before.

Anyway, in the time I took to write this, Sigur Rós gave an explanation. :D Thanks.



My hair, for example is naturally a light brown with blonde streaks.. In the summer (when I am in the sun all day lifeguarding) my hair transforms into a mainly blonde/golden brown color while in the winter, fall, etc it turns gets a sort of reddish tint.. It is odd that they don't have lighter hair from being in the sun.. If what you are saying about the sunlight for us is true, why didn't africans get the same vit. D from the sunlight which they had 100000x more of then us? It is all very interesting..

Their skin doesn't really need to work much to absorb vitamin D since they get so much sun and they retained their melanin in order to protect them from it. Our skin would peel off :p or at least mine certainly would. However, regardless of how we managed to get our lighter pigmentation, I wonder how/why it became recessive and theirs became dominant? That I can't answer. :mmmm:

[SilverKnight]

My hair, for example is naturally a light brown with blonde streaks.. In the summer (when I am in the sun all day lifeguarding) my hair transforms into a mainly blonde/golden brown color while in the winter, fall, etc it turns gets a sort of reddish tint.. It is odd that they don't have lighter hair from being in the sun..

Good question/point and allow me to answer it. It's all about catching as much UV rays as possible in the summer when the body [somehow] knows the sun rays are at their strongest , not the opposite so that might explain why your hair is lighter during that period of time rather then in the winter time when your hair goes back to being darker.

Its like solar panels and leafs they're both made to collect as much sun rays as possible, and in winter plants (At higher latitudes of the planet) go dormant by pausing their leaf production so they could safe important nutrients during the winter time when there's less solar energy to help them keep living. The same process happens with our bodies.

[Quasimodem]

We aren't. Maybe in pigmentation, but not overall: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19129123

[Boudica]

We aren't. Maybe in pigmentation, but not overall: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19129123

O'H! Okay so every single other race has a large population of blonde hair, red hair, blue eyes, and green eyes? Good to know, thanks for making me aware of this..

[Quasimodem]

We aren't. Maybe in pigmentation, but not overall: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19129123


O'H! Okay so every single other race has a large population of blonde hair, red hair, blue eyes, and green eyes? Good to know, thanks for making me aware of this..

:mmmm:

May I suggest [/URL][URL="http://www.amazon.com/Reader-Rabbit-Learn-Read-Phonics/dp/B00005LJEO"]this program (http://www.amazon.com/Reader-Rabbit-Learn-Read-Phonics/dp/B00005LJEO) to you?

[Mordid]

Because thats the way God made them.

[Boudica]

:mmmm:

May I suggest [/URL][URL="http://www.amazon.com/Reader-Rabbit-Learn-Read-Phonics/dp/B00005LJEO"]this program (http://www.amazon.com/Reader-Rabbit-Learn-Read-Phonics/dp/B00005LJEO) to you?

May I suggest the exact same, and the act of realizing what you write to you? You said that pigmentation is mainly the only difference, which is fucking stupid to say the least. I then made the sarcastic remark belittling such an idiotic statement by mentioning blonde hair, red hair, green eyes, and blue eyes...

[Quasimodem]

May I suggest the exact same, and the act of realizing what you write to you? You said that pigmentation is mainly the only difference, which is fucking stupid to say the least. I then made the sarcastic remark belittling such an idiotic statement by mentioning blonde hair, red hair, green eyes, and blue eyes...

Did I? You should be able to point it out then, right? I in fact said exactly the opposite: "maybe in pigmentation, but not overall".

[rhiannon]

We aren't. Maybe in pigmentation, but not overall: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19129123

Oh wow. That's very interesting. Thanks for the link...

[Troll's Puzzle]

some ppl have suggesed sexual selection as the mechanism which light pigmentation came so widespread in Europe in such a short period of time since hunam earthlings left Afrika.

i.e. it looks better ;)

eg this short 'internet essay' from usenet in 1997 by an unidentified 'american academic'


"Question: How is it that in some human populations homozygous recessive genes have replaced the homozygous dominant genes of their ancestors for outward physical appearance?

As far back as 1950 geneticist William Boyd listed about 20 gene loci for outward appearance traits that are homozygous recessive for typical Asians and/or Europeans but are homozygous dominant for Africans. These recessive genes include the 6 to 8 gene loci for light skin color, the genes for blue eyes, gray eyes, blond hair, red hair, thin lips, straight hair, sacral spot, lack of facial hair (beards), narrow nose shape, and some others.

Famed academicians J.B.S. Haldane (who published in 1924), R.A. Fisher, and S. Wright all helped to develop the mathematical approaches to population genetics in regard to selection and proved (among many other things) that it would require 1,001,741 generations (i.e. about 25,000,000 years for humans) for a dominant autosomal gene pair to be entirely replaced naturally by a new recessive gene pair in an ideal population (going from a gene frequency of 0.01% to 99.99%) if the improved selective advantage were 1 percent greater per generation (which is a fairly large advantage) for the new recessive genetic trait over the old dominant genetic trait, but the Euro/Asian line of humans split from the African line approximately a mere 100,000 years ago, and we must account for about 20 different recessive gene loci for appearance, not just one.

The mechanisms of genetic drift (including founder effect), migration, and gene flow have all been invoked to explain the rapid genetic change observed in small populations of early humans, but as an explanation for the observed changes in outward human racial appearance such reasoning is strained. The outward appearances of Euro/Asians seem to have very small, if any, actual advantages in regard to natural selection over that specified by the replaced African genes, but clearly some extraordinarily strong selective mechanism has been at work.

A partial solution to the problem of how the various races of man came to appear outwardly as they do now was proposed in 1931 by scientist and writer Sir Arthur Keith who pointed out that tribal isolation and the human predisposition for conflict, competition, and warfare against those who appear to be different from our own tribe (i.e. "instinctive prejudice") was most likely the cause, in that driving away or killing people with certain genes very quickly reduces the frequency of those genes in a population, but by the post-war 1950's such thinking had become politically unacceptable, as shown by Boyd's firm rejection of the idea -although he at least took the time to discuss the hypothesis at length in his famous 1950 book "Genetics and the Races of Man", which in many ways the model for L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza's "History and Geography of Human Genes" (1994). We may dislike Robert Ardrey's famous assertion that we are all "killer apes" at heart (African Genesis, 1961), and the solid support for that thesis supplied by Konrad Lorenz and Raymond Dart, but everything in our horrifying history of continual warfare from the Great Wall of China to the Holocaust attests to our inherently xenophobic nature.

The racial appearance puzzle is avoided in most evolution classes today by invoking Loomis' 1967 hypothesis that light skin color among Europeans and Asians exists because these populations could not get enough sunlight to stimulate sufficient vitamin D production in their skin in those terribly dark Northern continents of Europe and Asia. Although this theory has never been well supported by factual inquiry, it has been repeated so often and it is so politically comfortable that it has become enshrined as an indisputable fact in the minds of many casual students of evolution. In reality numerous valid objections have been raised to the vitamin D theory of light skin color:

1) It cannot satisfactorily explain the evolution of the many other appearance genes that are also autosomal recessives (such as for blue eyes, and blond hair, and several others) that seemingly have no significant natural selective advantage,

2) a small patch of the darkest African skin can produce more than the required amount of vitamin D from only a few minutes of exposure to faint sunlight each day (indeed, the Lapps live in arctic latitudes and are rather dark skinned), and in any event most of the vast land mass of Europe and Asia has been found to be quite sunny,

3) of the 6 to 8 gene pairs for skin color all of the genes for light skin color are recessive to those for dark skin color; for all the dominant genes for dark skin color to be replaced by recessive genes for light skin color would require an intensely strong selection advantage operating for many millions of years, but man left Africa only 100,000 years ago and the natural selective pressure for light skin over dark would be small at best and therefore too slowly acting to fit the time frame,

4) light skin color is a probably actually natural selective disadvantage at any latitude because sunlight causes skin cancer and may result in severe debilitating sunburn for those with white skin,

5) `white skin color has a strong peak only in Northern Europe and not in other parts of the world' (this is a quote by Cavalli-Sforza in his book "History and Geography of Human Genes" mentioned above as he discusses the problem with the vitamin D explanation for skin color invoking world pigmentation intensity maps drawn by Carleton Coon in 1954). Cavalli-Sforza also suggests the very light skin color of Northern Europeans may have appeared as recently as 5,000 years ago, a time so recent that no natural selection process could possibly account for it.

What about "sexual selection"? Often it has been proposed as the reason that racial differences exist, not to mention blue eyed blond women, but such white skinned women are regarded as hideous and repulsive by New Guinea tribesmen. Beauty is a relative concept and it is indeed a racist attitude to assume one type of human is inherently more beautiful than another, rather our individual concepts of human sexual attractiveness appear to be synonymous with people that appear to be similar to our set of internalized norms as imprinted in our childhood years- i.e. we generally find those not of our "tribe" less attractive than those people who more closely resemble us (there are always exceptions of course- some degree outbreeding is surely advantageous at times for a tribe of humans).

Darwin, in his 1871 book "The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex" asserted that racial appearance differentiation in humans was due to what he called "sexual selection", but a close reading of that book shows that for humans he regarded conflict and warfare (including genocide) as part of "sexual selection", a term he actually used for anything other than "natural selection", the other of his two selection mechanisms. Hence Sir Keith's 1931 idea on how the different races came to appear the way they do today really originated with Darwin, and Darwin's intuitive genius has been proven to be correct from what we now know about the genetics controlling human appearance.

Three other interesting factors affecting human appearance must be considered: 1) climate, 2) neoteny, and 3) intelligence. All of these factors must be considered in conjunction with tribal conflict in order to fully understand how we came to appear the way we do, and it must be understood that these factors are overlayed on a tapestry of genetic drift, founder effect, migration, gene flow, and geographic isolation.

1. Climate surely has played a factor in the initial development of several appearance traits, although it cannot account for strong selective pressure required for such rapid gene frequency change. For example, a narrow nose, epicanthal eye fold, straight hair, and thin lips are surely advantageous in a cold climate to warm the air we breathe, protect eyes form freezing winds, keep heads warm, and to prevent frozen lips, but blue eyes are a disadvantage in a dazzlingly sunny snow covered terrain, the long ears of Europeans are more prone to frostbite than are the short compact ears of most Africans, and lack of facial hair in the people of frigid Northeast Asia is certainly impractical, hence climate fails to explain neither the origin nor the rapid spread of some human appearance features.

2. Neoteny has been written about by Kollman (inventor of the term), Bolk, Portmann, and Gould. Louis Bolk best stated the case in 1926 with this famous line: "man is a primate fetus that has become sexually mature". The human fetal growth rate period actually lasts about 22 months - at birth we are simply an extrauterine fetus at the 9 month stage with our brain still growing at the rapid fetal rate, thus did nature solve the birth canal bottleneck problem for producing big brained humans. A series of increasingly neotenic mutations probably account for mechanism of the amazing 4 fold increase in hominid brain size over the past 3 million years, and our outward appearance owes much to this phenomenon (i.e. all adult humans look like a huge primate fetus that can walk). It was once acceptable to point out in textbooks that neoteny related traits in the races of man seem to differ, with Negroids (Africans) being the least neotenic, Mongoloids (Asians) being the most neotenic, and Caucasoids (Europeans) being not quite as neotenic as Asians for several traits, including the important brain to body size ratio and in having less body hair, but more neotenic in regard to pigmentation of hair, skin, and eyes. The empirical support for this distinction is quite compelling, but it has become a somewhat sensitive subject.

3. Intelligence is surely the most controversial factor that has influenced the different appearance of the human races, but any discussion of the reasons why it has had such an influence is a another very sensitive undertaking. As isolated tribes of humans over the past 200,000 years naturally attempted to expand they inevitably came into conflict with neighboring tribes. For humans and other hominids the most valuable genetic selective trait in such conflicts was probably a higher level of intelligence, for that is what generally determined the winner, although many other factors (such as disease resistance) played a role as well. An advantage in intelligence often allowed an ancient tribe to achieve a higher level of population density, better strategy and tactics for warfare and hunting, and greater levels of altruism and social adhesion within their group. Although, as mentioned above, neoteny related mutations were the genetic mechanism for the amazing 4 fold increase in hominid brain size over the past 3 million years, the value of intelligence for survival and tribal success was the driving evolutionary selection force and continued to be so until the recent advent of civilization.

Preserving the intellectual advantage of a successfully expanding tribe is a difficult problem however, because interbreeding with a tribe a lesser intelligence dilutes and decreases the genetic advantage of the advantged expanding tribe, thus eventually ending the expansion. The solutions for this problem have always ranged from genocide to ethnic cleansing, but being able to visually identify the genetic heritage of offspring to exclude offspring resulting from intertribal matings was always of great value to a genetically advantaged expanding tribe, allowing for continued expansion until the tribe were to encounter a more genetically advantaged tribe (i.e., generally meaning more intelligent) or some substantial geographical barrier. That is why autosomal recessive genes for outward physical appearance have an advantage over dominant genes in a genetically advantaged tribe: the introduction of a non-tribal dominant gene can be easily visually detected in offspring thus enabling exclusion methods to operate and therefore keeping the tribes' genetic lineage from being diluted.

Example: for a child to have blue eyes, the recessive genes for blue eyes must be inherited from both parents. A child with darker eyes would immediately be recognized as non-tribal in a blue eyed tribe. The child could possibly be exiled (and in some cases could be killed) by an ancient blue eyed expanding tribe, thus preserving the genetic integrity of the tribe. This example may seem totally absurd in today's civilized world, but human racial evolution goes back at least 200,000 years, long before civilized human behavior developed. If eye color discrimination seem too far fetched however, consider skin color. As recently as 100 years ago the birth of a dark skinned child to a white woman typically resulted in ostracism by her displeased family, and sometimes infanticide was committed. The other recessive appearance traits of present day Europeans and Asians were most likely at one time also used in a similar manner for tribal identification in order to account for their modern day geographic gene frequency distributions.

Eventually multiple traits (i.e. white skin blue eyed blondes for one example, although there are many others) were used for tribal identification in ever increasing rounds of conflict among tribes. Perhaps the most efficient trait for tribal identification is skin color, in that a polygenic system (6 to 8 gene pairs are involved) of recessive genes for light skin enables the visual identification of mixed tribe offspring having only a small amount of dark skinned dominant genetic racial ancestry - octoroons are thus revealed by the skin color system whereas they would not be detected very often in a single gene system such as eye color. The uniform of skin color was no doubt used by the warriors of conflicting tribes in much the same way as modern day military uniforms are used to distinguish opposing armies - then as now individuals wearing the uniform of the defeated group could be identified and dealt with accordingly by the victors.

As an overall consequence, tribes or races that have successfully expanded and displaced other tribes or races are likely to be characterized both by 1) genes for appearance that are homozygous recessive to the corresponding genes of the displaced tribe or race and 2) by the trait that gave the successful tribe the winning advantage over the displaced tribe. In the past 200,000 years of tribal conflict among humans (the past 3,000,000 years for all hominids) the trait conferring the winning advantage has most often been a higher level of intelligence, but at times it has also been disease resistance, aggressiveness, numerical advantage, technological superiority, and a variety of other differences. Nevertheless the role of intelligence in this matter should not be underestimated; the fossil record of dramatic hominid cranial capacity increase supports the point quite convincingly, as do differences in the average IQs of present day racial groups.

Geographical limits eventually stopped the expansions of the Europeans and the Asians (along with overall stalemate at their points of mutual contact), and the Sahara Desert protected the remaining Africans from further encroachment by the Euro/Asians, thus resulting in the distribution of the three major races as found in modern times.

Lastly, the coming of civilization and the reduction of the significance of geographical barriers have made the world a vast breeding pool into which the entire genetic variance of humanity is supposedly slowly blending - for all 100,000 gene loci, not just those coding for our appearance. All of us are genetic blends to some extent, and our varied appearances demonstrate the point well.

And that, very briefly and admittedly incompletely, is why the human races look the way they do today."

[Stars Down To Earth]

some ppl have suggesed sexual selection as the mechanism which light pigmentation came so widespread in Europe in such a short period of time since hunam earthlings left Afrika.
Agree with you, Renwein. When people are free to choose who to have kids with, they'll usually choose partners with lighter eyes and hair. Obviously, there's many exceptions, but that's been the historical norm. Maybe because it represents light and cleanliness, or maybe - to quote Agrippa here - because humans subconsciously want to evolve, and slim bodies with fair features are a sign of evolutionary progress.

It's also interesting to see the roles of culture and religion in eugenics. Islam, for instance, is a very dysgenic religion. Cousin incest and arranged marriages are the norm here, so the whole culture doesn't allow people to marry out of personal choice. As a result, good looks don't factor into mate selection. Add to this that Islam spreads negroid genes wherever it goes, and you end up with a dysgenic nightmare.

[Peyrol]

Well at least with Africa, in no part of Africa would blue eyes, light skin, or light hair be advantageous from an evolutionary point of view. Asia is more complicated because you would think these traits would prove advantageous in places..

There are some mongoloids (Mongolia, China, Japan) with natural red hairs.

[research_centre]

Yes :) but why did our people produce these genes while no other people did?

This is a really great question Boudica. :thumb001:

[research_centre]

There are some mongoloids (Mongolia, China, Japan) with natural red hairs.

Yes, great point, however Mongoloids with natural red hair are fairly rare. Images would be worth viewing for anthropological comparison purposes.

[Saruman]

Agree with you, Renwein. When people are free to choose who to have kids with, they'll usually choose partners with lighter eyes and hair. Obviously, there's many exceptions, but that's been the historical norm. Maybe because it represents light and cleanliness, or maybe - to quote Agrippa here - because humans subconsciously want to evolve, and slim bodies with fair features are a sign of evolutionary progress.

Yes, that is possible although a bigger factor is their recessive nature I'd say, because I think people do prefer variety of colors, so if somehow dark pigmentation was recessive I think we'd see the opposite trends.
For example I love blondes, yet I like black color more than yellow and their combinations even more so, so it quite possibly about combinations and contrasts as well.

Btw. Australoids show some blondism too.
Link about it:
http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2005/08/blonde-australian-aboriginals.php

[Saturni]

Northern populations experienced positive selection for lighter skin due to the increased production of vitamin D from sunlight, and the genes for darker skin disappeared. I know you didn't mention skin, but melanin provides protection from sunlight so this would also apply to the lightening of eyes.

As for hair, I'm not so sure about that. Sunlight usually lightens hair (maybe this is only true for Europeans), how can Africans be under such intense sun all the time and still have pitch black hair? Hmm.

But you're assuming that the "original" humans had dark skin to begin with.

Now suppose that the dark skinners were just one a many type of human simultaneously evolving.

[research_centre]

Brown hair with light undertones to it will lighten in the sun but I think pitch black hair lacks these undertones.

Ironic, I started a related thread on my personal colouration quirks some time ago, that no one responded to previously.

I do not want to steer people off this thread but for consideration, here is the original thread:
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?t=33241

[Agrippa]

Why is it that only our race has such a wide variety of looks? We have red hair, blonde hair, green eyes and blue eyes, and such a wide range of skin tones, while no other race does (except for skin tone). Our people can have brown hair, blonde hair, red hair, or black hair and have hazel eyes, green eyes, brown eyes, blue eyes, or grey eyes.. Other races (asians and africans for example) are limited to only having black/very very dark hair and dark brown/black eyes..

Why is it that only our race has such a variety?

The answer is quite simple, because the pigmentation of the hair is one of the least important phenotypical traits of racial significance you can think about, if talking about the adaptation to a natural environment.

The pigmentation of the skin is clearly and directly related to a certain habitat and way of life, which means skin depigmentation is an advantage if the UV-radiation is lower on average over the year and especially during the cold winter months, when the sun appears only for a few hours and you live a large time under protection by clothes and buildings, shelters, while at the same time your diet offers you little Vitamin D.

All regions in which Europids lived that way, show you similar levels of skin pigmentation and the variation though still present and strong, is rather limited and can be, in the end, grouped around a certain mean, which is exactly what you should expect, from the factors mentioned above.

Hair color on the other hand, can vary much more regionally and that is because it is not as important, if important at all, for the natural habitat and way of life (diet in particular) adaptation.

It is primarily the result of sexual and social selection it seems to me, and it is related, like I described already in other threads, to the fact, that a high contrast of the hair vs. skin color is disadvantageous especially for women, especially for women which have not that fine and refined facial features, are rather coarse. Cromagnoid women come to my mind in particular, because even though it can be an advantage for more infantile or refined-progressive women too, the selective pressure among more coarse-robust variants should be the highest, so this is my No. 1 candidate for a population in which it was established as a trait in a significant frequency for the first time.

I explained the pattern with examples here already:
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showpost.php?p=218014&postcount=13

http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showpost.php?p=218561&postcount=58

Add to that the factor of social selection, once the trait was established, which could have led to the preference of individuals having it or disadvantages for individuals not having it and group conflicts like those mentioned by the unknown "academic author", in which people of different phenotypes might have an increased level of aggression and the variants with certain traits just succeeded, leading to a new (part?) socioculturally determined standard which, even without the elimination of all other elements, would have led to an increased selective pressure in the direction of the physical traits of the conquerors, for example blond hair. If that trend didn't last long enough or was not strong enough, this would have led to an increase of blond hair, but not a full scale determination with just this genetic variants surviving, but a minority of deviation always surviving.

The variation could be further explained by the fact, that this trait is probably NOT GENERALLY advantageous for women, depending on their other traits (!), and surely not generally advantageous for men. In any case rarely more important than other traits, even for sexual and social selection, which would mean the survival and influx of other variants on a lower level percentage-wise could have been possible.

This means a certain balance could have come up in many regions, in which a variety of phenotypes survived and only in the most extreme regions, usually with a very light skin pigmentation and higher rate of coarse individuals, depigmentation could fully make it as a general standard in a given population.

Also, if saying the advantage was big enough, probably due to a minor natural habitat-way of life adaptation (UV-related?), plus sexual and minor social selection, we all know that we deal in Europe with a quite diverse and OLD bioracial history. So many elements came up, some faded away over time, other's could increase their numbers, again other numbers were decreased.

What we see is a great regional diversification, again based on the simple fact that some of the traits being not generally advantageous in a habitat, but much more dependent on the EXACT way of life, for example the diet and labour people being used to, sociocultural standards for beauty, tendencies for war and conflict, social stratification, dependence of the females from males or the absence of, and so on.

Europe being an old habitat which reached a higher cultural level for a very long time now, so a lot of options for the way of life people can have, even in the same climate zone, with a lot of natural barriers, but unlike for example the river landscapes of China or India, we don't deal with completely united and homogeneous people or cultures, but certain differences, isolation and independent regional developments (almost) always persisted, especially after the latest big impact, the Indo-Europeanisation. So a lot of space for regional forms and developments surviving, if being well enough adapted for survival - for which certain traits were of lower importance than others.

What we see in Europe are therefore, for the most part, results of the older and more regionally independent evolution in Europe, but also variation similar to other races or in traits which are/were simply less important for the general adaptiveness of a people and individuals.

[Frederick]

When people are free to choose who to have kids with, they'll usually choose partners with lighter eyes and hair.

Its usualy men who prefer blond women. Women dont prefer blond men.

Its also that females have a higher percentage of fair hair then men do.
Also children have lighter hair than adults.

Some scientists believe, fair hair is a childhood trait, that shall prevent people (children and women) from becoming victims of violence. Blond, adult men, beeing just an oddity.

Something that adds to this (childhood, goodness...) is the thing that in biblical mythology, angels are blond. Kind of interesting for a religion that shaped in the middle east. King David (that one man, god fell in love with. Well possibly his blond hair prevented him from the wrath of Yahwe ;) ) is also described as of blond hair.

Biblical mythology also knows the story that angels once, illegaly, produced children with human females. The offspring becoming a far superior race (the "Giants"), wich is said to have developed all the technology, the ancient humans use.

Since Angels are their fathers, they might have had a good percentage of blond people. :D If they would have ever existed for real, that is.

The question what happend with the "Giants", the biblical texts contradict each others.

One text says, god eliminated all the "Giants", because they had never meant to exist.

One text suggests that the Phillistians are descants of the "Giants".
Science believes, the phillistians beeing descants of the "seapeople" who possibly came from the Greek islands.

And the last text claims, the "Giants" live in a land far away from Israel. At "the northern end of the world". And that the Jews will once, in an age far away in the future, be enslaved, tortured and almost destroid by the "Giants". And the Giants all beeing heros even from childhood and they make the ground tremble under their iron charriots.

And god will close his eyes and ears to the screams of his people, until they are punnished hard enough and then he will save them and lead them home to the country of their fathers and re-new Israel.
And from this day on, the Jews will no longer praise the Lord who rescued them from Egypt, but they will praise the Lord who rescued them from the Land of the Giants in the north.

Whatever. ;)

Well, the TRADITIONAL interpretation of that prophesy is: the land at the northern end of the world is Babylon.

MY interpretation of a land in the northern end of the world is Germany :P
Iron charriots = Panzers? ;)

[Troll's Puzzle]

Agree with you, Renwein. When people are free to choose who to have kids with, they'll usually choose partners with lighter eyes and hair.

Specifically, men are more likely to choose that.

Canadian anthropologist Peter Frost also theorised that sexual selection caused the 'fixing' of lighter pigments in europe, resulting from competition due to a low male:female ratio led to european's lighter pigment as 'lighter' traits were selected for by men in women (the 'classic example' of sex selection, peacock tails, being the opposite, that females were selecting for males which had largest tails), he published a scientific paper on it here (http://www.ehbonline.org/article/PIIS1090513805000590/abstract) (needs access).

the abstract:

Human hair and eye color is unusually diverse in northern and eastern Europe. The many alleles involved (at least seven for hair color) and their independent origin over a short span of evolutionary time indicate some kind of selection. Sexual selection is particularly indicated because it is known to favor color traits and color polymorphisms. In addition, hair and eye color is most diverse in what used to be, when first peopled by hunter-gatherers, a unique ecozone of low-latitude continental tundra. This type of environment skews the operational sex ratio (OSR) of hunter-gatherers toward a male shortage in two ways: (1) men have to hunt highly mobile and spatially concentrated herbivores over longer distances, with no alternate food sources in case of failure, the result being more deaths among young men; (2) women have fewer opportunities for food gathering and thus require more male provisioning, the result being less polygyny. These two factors combine to leave more women than men unmated at any one time. Such an OSR imbalance would have increased the pressures of sexual selection on early European women, one possible outcome being an unusual complex of color traits: hair- and eye-color diversity and, possibly, extreme skin depigmentation.

He has a website talking about these themes, here (http://pages.globetrotter.net/peter_frost61z/), of particular interest probably is this article which follows on from his paper: Why Do Europeans Have So Many Hair and Eye Colors? (http://pages.globetrotter.net/peter_frost61z/European-hair-and-eye-color.htm)


But you're assuming that the "original" humans had dark skin to begin with.

Now suppose that the dark skinners were just one a many type of human simultaneously evolving.

the polymophisms for 'light skin' etc have been sequenced and dated and they aren't very old (some calculations being actually unbelievalby recent), which just adds to the strong evidence that the skin etc. colour of europeans is a 'special' occurance (sexual selection, divine blessing, manipulation/breeding with aliens, whatever theory you find most appealing :P)



Europe being an old habitat which reached a higher cultural level for a very long time now, so a lot of options for the way of life people can have, even in the same climate zone, with a lot of natural barriers, but unlike for example the river landscapes of China or India, we don't deal with completely united and homogeneous people or cultures, but certain differences, isolation and independent regional developments (almost) always persisted, especially after the latest big impact, the Indo-Europeanisation. So a lot of space for regional forms and developments surviving, if being well enough adapted for survival - for which certain traits were of lower importance than others.


surely some mistake? :wink

[Agrippa]

These two factors combine to leave more women than men unmated at any one time.

That holds up for most Europids and Mongolids, though, and is a basic difference to tropical races.

The idea of "mating" is somewhat imprecise though, because surely the males would have had no problem "mating" with the women, the problem is rather, that they would have, in criticial situations, especially during winter and when the rest of the group was totally dependent from the hunters provision, make difficult decisions. They would have had to set priorities for WHICH woman and WHICH child they support PRIMARILY!

And this was, more often than in the tropics, a life or death question, which might have came up not always, but often enough...

This resulted, in my opinion, in a higher sexual selection, favouring refined and/or Neotenic, in any case more progressive vs. primitive traits, females and males being more intelligent, females being more trustworthy, loyal and faithful, because the competition of females for male support was drastically increased in areas in which, especially during winter or cold periods, women could impossibly care for themselves, but even less so for their children or when being pregnant.

Also, it would have led to a stronger tendency for monogamy and deeper relationships probably, with the males being away for so long, they truly needed women to trust, even more so if investing so much, and exclusively, in just one or two...

Now considering the fact, that the Northern hunters were quite robust, cold adapted not by reduction-Borealisation, but mass and robustness, the concept I described becames even more likely, because the sexual attractiveness of the corresponding females would have needed "some support" - since sexual dimorphism has limits in modern mankind, even if being selected for, so the more coarse-brutal features might have prevailed even in the females, which made additional "benefits" a necessity in a hard general selection among the females, by the males.

Some Mongolids seem to have used other means, other signals - and being more Borealised-one sided, other Europids had again different strategies, resulting in the most progressive and refined features we have in modern mankind.

Again, Northern robust (to even archaic) Cromagnoids come to my mind as "first ones". When the more progressive variants, "which didn't needed it as desperately", went North and mixed, in the habitats which allowed it, a recombination took place, uniting the progressive morphology of the warm and transitional type Europids with the coloration of the archaic Northern ones = Nordisation.


surely some mistake?

India and China are huge, but inside of this huge areas, there are quite homogenous groups and regions, which are deciside and became mixed quite late oftentimes. For example the Indus valley was almost exclusively Indid, which is, in comparison, fairly homogenous, the Hwangho-valleys being almost exclusively Sinid - or became it over time - very homogeneous, with the exception of those areas, where Tungids came into the mix.
The Yangtze-area became almost fully Middle Sinid, again, a huge area, huge population and fairly homogenous, because we are talking about one single habitat for a large population, without too much barriers in between - but barriers towards others...

[Money Shot]

Aliens.


They come and tweak our DNA every few millenia.


I saw it on history channel so it's got to be true.:tongue

[Lurker]

Pure chance (genetic drift) + some sexual selection.

[Ouistreham]

Canadian anthropologist Peter Frost also theorised that sexual selection caused the 'fixing' of lighter pigments in europe, resulting from competition due to a low male:female ratio led to european's lighter pigment as 'lighter' traits were selected for by men in women (the 'classic example' of sex selection, peacock tails, being the opposite, that females were selecting for males which had largest tails), he published a scientific paper on it here (http://www.ehbonline.org/article/PIIS1090513805000590/abstract) (needs access).

That's right.

But we are also so diverse because of romantic love (a Western European invention) and sexual freedom.

The more are partners allowed to freely choose each other for marriage, the more enhanced is the role of sexual selection as a key factor since it tends to favour spreading of desirable recessive traits.

In cultures based on complex enlarged families (China, India, Balkans, Russia, Muslim societies) the choice of spouses was/is determined by decision of patriachs (or by specific customs favouring clanic endogamy as for the Arab world). Physical appearance was not a criteria, individual inclinations played little to no role. The probabilty that hereditary features would be more evenly spread and that one same set of dominant genes would ultimately prevail was consequently all the more stronger.

Nuclear families are generally associated with sexual permissiveness (and have always been, contrary to popular belief, except for a brief spasm of puritanism in the late 19th century — the Victorian era). In most of Western France, in the peasant and working classes, the only rule was "Marry the first lass you made pregnant", parents had not to object. I bet it was not much different in England.

About the seemingly illogical coexistence of strongly differenciated types in Western Europe, don't look any further.

[Allenson]

An interesting write-up on our diverse pigmentation:

http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2010/04/puzzle-of-european-hair-and-eye-color.html

[Boudica]

When people are free to choose who to have kids with, they'll usually choose partners with lighter eyes and hair. Obviously, there's many exceptions, but that's been the historical norm. Maybe because it represents light and cleanliness, or maybe - to quote Agrippa here - because humans subconsciously want to evolve, and slim bodies with fair features are a sign of evolutionary progress.


Hmm.. Well to be honest I don't really see this.. I have heard that men with blue eyes will subconsciously select a partner with blue eyes as well to reproduce with though. When it comes to couples I have seen people that look almost the same (eye color and hair color), and people that look the opposite (opposite eye color and opposite hair color). I don't really think that it's been the historical norm to be honest either..

I naturally have a golden/brown hair color and I have hazel eyes, my boyfriend has dark brown hair and hazel eyes, people say that we look alike for example. I have honestly never found very many blonde haired/light eyed men to be attractive. I have actually never dated a man with blonde hair.. I don't know why, but it's just not my type I guess.. I have heard women say the same as well (this is not to cause an argument or to be mean at all I am just giving my outlook/experiences regarding this). No offense as well, but I don't really think that having blonde hair or whatever you consider to be fair features is a sign of evolutionary progress... I don't quite understand why it would.. I am all for preserving blonde/red hair, etc but I'm almost 100% positive that eye color and hair color are not signs of evolutionary progression.. I think that evolutionary progression would have to do more with things such as bone structure/facial structure/height, etc, and being over all built in a more superior fashion.. It's kind of crappy in my opinion to call people with brown hair or black hair, brown eyes, and a darker olive skin tone, etc inferior and not being evolutionarily progressed when there is no evidence for such bold claims. It sort of sounds something along the lines of Aryanism or something.. Is that to say that practically all of Southern Europe and other whites around the world are inferior?

[Agrippa]

That's right.

But we are also so diverse because of romantic love (a Western European invention) and sexual freedom.

Do you know how old that pattern is? Just some hundreds of years "at best" (or probably worst?) and the described variation is far older.

"Sexual freedom" in Europe? What are you talking about? That's probably not much older than 50 years...


The more are partners allowed to freely choose each other for marriage, the more enhanced is the role of sexual selection as a key factor since it tends to favour spreading of desirable recessive traits.

That's no reason, because Europeans were not more "free" in that respect than others and arranged marriages don't have to mean that there is no such selection, in fact, especially of talking about the female's beauty, the contrary can be true, if the price for the bride being higher if she's a beauty, rather than random mating leading to - quite often - strange recombinations as well.


In cultures based on complex enlarged families (China, India, Balkans, Russia, Muslim societies) the choice of spouses was/is determined by decision of patriachs (or by specific customs favouring clanic endogamy as for the Arab world). Physical appearance was not a criteria, individual inclinations played little to no role. The probabilty that hereditary features would be more evenly spread and that one same set of dominant genes would ultimately prevail was consequently all the more stronger.

That's not true, not at all. And the "sexual freedom" you seem to describe is, like I stated, very young and actually foreign to Europeans. Going by that, some African and primitive cultures must be the most beautiful people on Earth, but in fact, the more progressive, patriarchal societies have more attractive people, especially females.


Nuclear families are generally associated with sexual permissiveness (and have always been, contrary to popular belief, except for a brief spasm of puritanism in the late 19th century — the Victorian era). In most of Western France, in the peasant and working classes, the only rule was "Marry the first lass you made pregnant", parents had not to object. I bet it was not much different in England.

a) That is not generally true.
b) France was culturally more degenerated earlier in this respect
c) The trend was going down since then, contraselection and dysgenic trends prevailed, the attractive and better features you can find in Europeans, are, as a rule, much older than any sort of "sexual permissiveness" you seem to have in mind.


About the seemingly illogical coexistence of strongly differenciated types in Western Europe, don't look any further.

You made the reason for the our degeneration a reason for the positive traits and diversity? Probably some aspects of the negative diversity are the results of it, of degenerative trends, the more progressive and harmonious features being bred, largely, under much harder and strict conditions, in societies which are much closer to todays Arabs, Pashtu and tribals than to the degenerated Western society, shaped by Liberalcapitalism, we have today.

[mymy]

I like diversity of European race.

When talking about what i find attractive on partner, i actually never thought about it, but now when i'm thinking, all my ex boyfriends had dark hair and light eyes. And no, none of them looked similar to myself. Quite opposite actually.
Once i read some theory how girls choose partners who resemble their fathers, and i really think it's sick, but my dad really has light eyes and medium dark hair. So i hope it is coincidence only.

In general, i like medium pigmented European men, not too light and not too dark. But it doesn't have to be rule, there are many dark pigmented as well as light pigmented men, just somehow they are harder to spot :D