How did they manage ancient Empires?

[Sharwood]

@innonumatu: I don't have time for that right now, as I'm actually posting here while waiting for stuff to load for uni, but I'll check them as soon as I can. I have no idea if there's anything online though.

@North King: Quite often, historians and scholars who reference things come to entirely different conclusions. Hell, I'm re-reading Sun-Tzu's The Art of War at the moment, and much of the commentators reach drastically different, yet still valid conclusions on an eighty page book.

@Cutlass: Absolutely. In fact, since humans evolved in tropical areas, it's more a case of Caucasians losing their dark skin colour, because it was no longer advantageous to us. I'd suspect something similar may have happened with the Incas, although I have no idea how or why. Possibly just a random mutation, in the same way that there are many Australian Aborigines with blonde hair, despite the fact it serves absolutely no purpose to them. For that matter, it doesn't really have any benefits for Caucasians either.

 

[scy12]

@Cutlass: Absolutely. In fact, since humans evolved in tropical areas, it's more a case of Caucasians losing their dark skin colour, because it was no longer advantageous to us. I'd suspect something similar may have happened with the Incas, although I have no idea how or why. Possibly just a random mutation, in the same way that there are many Australian Aborigines with blonde hair, despite the fact it serves absolutely no purpose to them. For that matter, it doesn't really have any benefits for Caucasians either.

I did read some news about a study that blonde hair where related with sexual arousal and so maybe there are benefits of the blond gene for humans.

 

[Cutlass]

I did read some news about a study that blonde hair where related with sexual arousal and so maybe there are benefits of the blond gene for humans.

As I understand it, the way the human eye works it is attracted to bright colors, so there is an inherent attraction to the color gold that transcends culture.

 

[scy12]

As I understand it, the way the human eye works it is attracted to bright colors, so there is an inherent attraction to the color gold that transcends culture.

True now whether Blond hair where a mutation or not originally if it proved advantageous by making people more attractive that would lead it into becoming more widespread .

 

[Cutlass]

True now whether Blond hair where a mutation or not originally if it proved advantageous by making people more attractive that would lead it into becoming more widespread .

It could have been a genetic oddity or dye or bleach.

 

[Sharwood]

Linkage.

Blonde hair is at the highest frequency in countries of Northern Europe. Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Iceland, parts of Great Britain, Northern Poland and Western Russia have the highest frequencies in the world. At least 50% of the native populations of all these countries or areas are blonde. In some parts of Sweden, Iceland, Finland, the rate is even as high as 80% or more.[8] Generally, blond hair in Europeans is associated with paler eye color (gray, blue, green and light brown) and pale (sometimes freckled) skin tone. Strong sunlight also lightens hair of any pigmentation, to varying degrees, and causes many blond people to freckle, especially during childhood. Aboriginal Australians, especially in the west-central parts of the continent, also have a fairly high instance of natural bright yellow blond-to-brown hair,[9][10] with as many as 90-100% of children having blond hair in some areas.[11] The trait among Indigenous Australians is primarily associated with children and women and the hair turns more often to a darker brown color, rather than black, as they age.[11] Blondness is also found in some other parts of the South Pacific such as the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. Again there are higher incidences in children but here many adults too carry this indigenous blond mutation.

Some Guanches populations, particularly the now extinct aboriginal population of Tenerife, one of the Canary islands of the African Atlantic coast, were said by 14th century Spanish explorers to exhibit blond hair and blue eyes.[12][13] Blondness was also reported among South American Indians. In Central and South Asia the same types of features were exhibited by certain groups. It is still found in higher frequency among some populations of Central Asia, particularly among the Kalash of Pakistan and the Nuristani people of Afghanistan. Blonds are found in North Africa in Morocco, Tunisia and northern Algeria, and in South West Asia as well. The Iranians and their related groups have a higher frequency of blonds than other ethnic groups of the Middle East, which includes the Kalash of Pakistan and Nuristani of Afghanistan.

In 2002 there was a worldwide hoax that scientists predicted blonds were eventually going to become extinct. The hoax cited WHO as the source of the scientific study. See recessive alleles for more information on the genetic basis of blond hair.

Further linkage.

Canadian anthropologist Peter Frost, under the aegis of University of St Andrews, published a study in March 2006 in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior that says blond hair evolved very quickly at the end of the last Ice Age by means of sexual selection.[4] According to the study, the appearance of blond hair and blue eyes in some northern European women made them stand out from their rivals at a time of fierce competition for scarce males. The study argues that blond hair was produced higher in the Cro-Magnon descended population of the European region because of food shortages 10,000-11,000 years ago following the last glacial period when the most of it was covered by steppe-tundra. Almost the only sustenance in northern Europe came from roaming herds of mammoths, reindeer, bison and horses and finding them required long, arduous hunting trips in which numerous males died, leading to a high ratio of surviving women to men. This hypothesis argues that women with blond hair posed an alternative that helped them mate and thus increased the number of blonds.

 

[North King]

@North King: Quite often, historians and scholars who reference things come to entirely different conclusions. Hell, I'm re-reading Sun-Tzu's The Art of War at the moment, and much of the commentators reach drastically different, yet still valid conclusions on an eighty page book.

I'm aware, but you've utterly failed to show it being cited anywhere besides being "mentioned" by commentators according to a single link. Not a one of the history books I've read on the Inca refers to anything like that.

Moreover, something like a strategy guide by necessity has an interpretation by every general. Blond hair is either blond or blond.

 

[Mr_Fusty]

Just a few quick thoughts....

1) I do remember that blond hair and blue eyes are resessive genetic markers. Find a society with a majority of blue eyes and blond hair - chances are that the society is a rather closed genepool (ie Scandinavia). I'm unsure of the Incas - if Native Americans also possesed the same resessive genes, the chances are they would show up. I do remember though that all native humans in the New World are the same blood group.

2) We don't know if the Incas had Literature or not. Most of the sources I have read on the subject say they do not, but they are quite old sources, and they may all be quoting the same few baised Spanish texts from the 16th Century or something. However, I would say that the other evidence suggests the Incas did not. Their country was organised more like a ant-colony than anything else, the Inca king had power and control over his people to make the greatist Pharoah's or the Chinese Emperors mad with jelousy. The quipu was amazingly hard to learn - even worse than any other written language known to history. This meant that only a very, very few people could read & write it. A goverment like this produces large amounts of paperwork - stuff like decrees, tax returns, consription reports, grain level checks, etc. Every detail of a person's life was controlled - from the cradle to the grave. There was no science. There were two main occupations - agriculture and the army. There was no place for creative thinking.