Altered Maps 4: Partitioning Eastern Europe Like In The Good Old Days

[Tee Kay]

Call me a cynic but whoever did the Chinese map probably went overboard in Indonesia. To the best part of my knowledge nobody is certain about how many self identifying Chinese there are in the country. The matter is complicated somewhat by the fact that there exist many Indonesians with Chinese surnames who are indistinguishable from the parent populations they live in -- really they aren't Chinese except for the name.

I made the map. I just took the figure from Wikipedia (though in one place it says ~ 7 million and in another the figure is ~ 1 million)

Well in that case... Im going to be petty and immature and say this.

"You Europeans spent the last 1600 years killing each other for things that you glorify to be so damn important "Ohhhh, Im a Pole. Im different than you... I used to so strong... My culture is soooooo Central European, I want independence." to such a high standard when in actual fact, they are stupid, arbitary and just plain waste of time. And then after getting your so called right to do whatever you want, you all declare that you are all the same and try to be one country again. And then, you bicker with each other and call the Irish douches because they didnt sign stupid treaty and plan to expel them."

Europeans are high maintenance and rather silly...

Yeah they should just admit they hate each other like in SE Asians.

 

[Winner]

Well in that case... Im going to be petty and immature and say this.

"You Europeans spent the last 1600 years killing each other for things that you glorify to be so damn important "Ohhhh, Im a Pole. Im different than you... I used to so strong... My culture is soooooo Central European, I want independence." to such a high standard when in actual fact, they are stupid, arbitary and just plain waste of time. And then after getting your so called right to do whatever you want, you all declare that you are all the same and try to be one country again. And then, you bicker with each other and call the Irish douches because they didnt sign stupid treaty and plan to expel them."

Europeans are high maintenance and rather silly...

I agree, but Asians still look the same Seriously, when you get to know Asian people, you of course see differences, but on a first look when I see a group of Asians, it's pretty hard to distinguish them.

It's probably a natural reaction - the brain focuses on the similar facial features because they're uncommon in Europe.

 

[plarq]

It's pretty hard to notice difference between Europeans--unless they open their mouthes to speak, the same applies to Asians.

 

[Winner]

The thing is that Europeans are naturally much more diverse than East Asians - many different hair colors, eye colors, hair curliness, face shapes etc.

Diamond explained it somewhere, I don't remember it exactly. Europe is naturally much more diverse then North China Plain from which the Chinese civilization originated and so many different groups of Europeans lived in virtual separations from each other for a long time. During that time, they developed these differences in appearance. In China, the relatively unified northern population simply colonized the rest of China, assimilating the native peoples.

 

[aronnax]

Yeah they should just admit they hate each other like in SE Asians.

Im Chinese. My roots are from the Fuzhou Province of China. Not South East Asia so ha!

 

[aronnax]

The thing is that Europeans are naturally much more diverse than East Asians - many different hair colors, eye colors, hair curliness, face shapes etc.

Diamond explained it somewhere, I don't remember it exactly. Europe is naturally much more diverse then North China Plain from which the Chinese civilization originated and so many different groups of Europeans lived in virtual separations from each other for a long time. During that time, they developed these differences in appearance. In China, the relatively unified northern population simply colonized the rest of China, assimilating the native peoples.

Now that is just misleading. The Chinese people all look so different. I can tell the difference between a Southerner and a Northerner. A Shanghainese from a Hong Konger. A Taiwanese from a Singaporean Chinese. People from Yunnan have darker skins and are more "rugged" looking than those from Beijing, with their smoother skins and whiter faces.

 

[plarq]

but none of these are reliable criterion, only a statistical statement.

 

[Masada]

Im Chinese. My roots are from the Fuzhou Province of China. Not South East Asia so ha!

Yes, you are.

Now that is just misleading. The Chinese people all look so different. I can tell the difference between a Southerner and a Northerner. A Shanghainese from a Hong Konger. A Taiwanese from a Singaporean Chinese. People from Yunnan have darker skins and are more "rugged" looking than those from Beijing, with their smoother skins and whiter faces.

Yeah, Chinese on the whole seem tend to be easily identifiable by region -- for the record people from Beijing look out-and-out weird at least to me. Most Europeans can pick roughly where another European is from but it doesn't seem to have quite the same level of precision -- I'd attribute that to relatively high levels of population movement until even quite recently and the often arbitrary drawing of borders.

Diamond explained it somewhere, I don't remember it exactly.

Diamonds just white. White people's ignorance of the differences between different ethnic groups in Asia seems to be a perennial source of amusement amongst Asians I've known.

 

[choxorn]

"You Europeans spent the last 1600 years killing each other for things that you glorify to be so damn important

Which you Asians haven't done?

 

[Tee Kay]

Im Chinese. My roots are from the Fuzhou Province of China. Not South East Asia so ha!

Um... yeah you're SE Asian

Now that is just misleading. The Chinese people all look so different. I can tell the difference between a Southerner and a Northerner. A Shanghainese from a Hong Konger. A Taiwanese from a Singaporean Chinese. People from Yunnan have darker skins and are more "rugged" looking than those from Beijing, with their smoother skins and whiter faces.

I can't, though I can usually differentiate between a Chinese and Japanese, Koreans, or SE Asians. If I see a white person I can't tell whether s/he is English or French or German.

Diamonds just white. White people's ignorance of the differences between different ethnic groups in Asia seems to be a perennial source of amusement amongst Asians I've known.

Yeah, this.

 

[Gustave5436]

I agree, but Asians still look the same Seriously, when you get to know Asian people, you of course see differences, but on a first look when I see a group of Asians, it's pretty hard to distinguish them.

It's probably a natural reaction - the brain focuses on the similar facial features because they're uncommon in Europe.

All humans look alike. You just see more European people than East Asian people, so you are more accustomed to the minute differences in physical appearance between those individuals.

 

[PiMan]

All humans look alike. You just see more European people than East Asian people, so you are more accustomed to the minute differences in physical appearance between those individuals.

This.

If you grew up with squirrels instead of humans, then you'd be very good at telling squirrels apart according to where they came from.

 

[Winner]

Now that is just misleading. The Chinese people all look so different. I can tell the difference between a Southerner and a Northerner. A Shanghainese from a Hong Konger. A Taiwanese from a Singaporean Chinese. People from Yunnan have darker skins and are more "rugged" looking than those from Beijing, with their smoother skins and whiter faces.

You mean they have the same dark hair, dark eyes and flat oval faces? Gee, you're beginning to understand!

For white people living among other white people, it is normal to look for differences in them because you see them every day. When you suddenly see a number of people belonging to some other race, the brain switches from "difference" mode to "similarity" mode - which is why East Asians or African blacks often look the same to people from Europe (the parts of it where blacks or Asians are just a tiny minority). The brain simply focuses on the similarities in appearance, because they're unusual.

As I said, once you get to know these people, you learn to see the differences. In other words, it's a matter of experience. BUT I do maintain that whites are in general more diverse than East Asians in terms of appearance.

 

[Tee Kay]

Which you Asians haven't done?

We invented all the stuff you guys used to kill each other with.

 

[Winner]

And since we opened such an interesting topic, it's time for some maps

WARNING, it's an old historical map so it uses terms which are no longer politically correct. I seriously hope nobody will jump to conclusions (or give me infractions) for presenting historical documents:

Spoiler :

 

[Masada]

Those maps are comic! Southeast Asia is amusing in both of them. Obviously they're both works of German nationalists.

 

[Heretic_Cata]

That is really interesting, with all those Ukrainian/Eastern European immigrants, the Turks who now call Germany and Poland home, and the new found immigrants from Africa, on top of the huge amounts of Poles returning home from Western Europe, and we still get Negative Immigration? I'd like to see some sources.

People usualy want to leave poor eastern european countries.

 

[Winner]

Those maps are comic! Southeast Asia is amusing in both of them. Obviously they're both works of German nationalists.

English/American supremacists weren't much better - the best parts is how most colonized areas are marked as "European". I wonder how many ethnic Europeans were there in Indonesia

 

[Tee Kay]

Why bother with "Caucasian", "Negroes" and all those terms. Black, brown, yellow, white, indian - that's all you need to know!!

(Notice how Burma is "brown", while neighboring Thailand is "yellow", though often you won't be able to tell the difference between a Burmese and a Thai).

(And inland Australia, Siberia and the American Arctic are conveniently terra nullius)

 

[Masada]

English/American supremacists weren't much better - the best parts is how most colonized areas are marked as "European". I wonder how many ethnic Europeans were there in Indonesia

200,000 or so. Most of whom lived in Batavia.

(Notice how Burma is "brown", while neighboring Thailand is "yellow", though often you won't be able to tell the difference between a Burmese and a Thai).

Amerindians? That's way to politically correct!