Well, light skin is an evolutionary trait. It's just not an evolutionary advance! It is a specific adaption to a specific circumstance. Native Africans don't have that circumstance, and so that adaption would not benefit them. In fact, the opposite is true, and people with very white skin is at a reproductive disadvantage in tropical climes.
The New Face of Nazism/ Racism
- Thread starter Triewd
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Well, light skin is an evolutionary trait. It's just not an evolutionary advance! It is a specific adaption to a specific circumstance. Native Africans don't have that circumstance, and so that adaption would not benefit them. In fact, the opposite is true, and people with very white skin is at a reproductive disadvantage in tropical climes.
Lohrenswald
世界的 bottom ranked physicist
Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
^ It seems that both very dark skin and very light skin are evolutionary adaptations.
First modern humans who lived in Eastern Africa were perhaps neither black like coal (an adaptation to humid tropical climate) nor white like milk. As for white skin - there are mutations in at least three genes that are responsible for white skin in Western Eurasians. And North-East Asians, who also tend to have white skin, have their own mutations for it, which emerged independently from European ones.
These "European skin mutations" are in SNPs rs1426654, rs16891982 and rs1042602:
http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Rs1426654
http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Rs16891982
http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Rs1042602
And here is the frequency of derived alleles (A and G) causing these mutations in European and South Asian populations:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JxxjOa-KOd2b5hhQ9DQ9L5z7rxf8WW2MRN6owtf22ag/edit?pli=1#gid=0
No surprise here, "lightening mutations" are rare in South Asians compared to Europeans.
First modern humans who lived in Eastern Africa were perhaps neither black like coal (an adaptation to humid tropical climate) nor white like milk. As for white skin - there are mutations in at least three genes that are responsible for white skin in Western Eurasians. And North-East Asians, who also tend to have white skin, have their own mutations for it, which emerged independently from European ones.
These "European skin mutations" are in SNPs rs1426654, rs16891982 and rs1042602:
http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Rs1426654
http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Rs16891982
http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Rs1042602
And here is the frequency of derived alleles (A and G) causing these mutations in European and South Asian populations:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JxxjOa-KOd2b5hhQ9DQ9L5z7rxf8WW2MRN6owtf22ag/edit?pli=1#gid=0
No surprise here, "lightening mutations" are rare in South Asians compared to Europeans.
Thanks. It worked a lot better with my grandfather than my mother. With her, it was anyone who wasn't "white" enough, and if she heard anyone speaking another language around her, she'd automatically jump to the conclusion that they were saying bad things about her.
It would have driven her nuts to ride on the bus here nowadays, since it's not unusual to hear 3 or 4 languages on a normal day.
warpus
Sommerswerd asked me to change this
My dad would throw "The Muslims are coming" type of talk around the dinner table, and I always gave him crap for it. My parents had a bunch of friends over for dinner once, and they started talking about that nonsense.. I didn't have any of it and started arguing with them about it... in a gentleman-like fashion of course.
Took a while, but now my dad doesn't even mention Muslims. He knows that such talk would push me away. So now he complains about Russian government instead.. Fine with me, because he actually makes good points, if some of them are a bit on the "hmm I don't know... Are you sure?" side.
Maybe some people just need someone to point to as the enemy? Mind you my younger sister was dating a Muslim guy years ago, and.. he wanted her to convert. My parents freaked.. The final straw came when my sister hugged my uncle at a family gathering, and the boyfriend told her that "that's not allowed". Up until that point I had been giving my sister neutral advice - by telling her things I know about the religion, so that she can make up her own mind. But after I heard things like that, I agreed with my parents. In the end my mom took a bus 8 hours away to see her, to convince her to dump the guy. Now my sister is with a Polish guy and she hugs my uncle and other people whenever she damn wants.
That whole experience has still got to be on my dad's mind. He's been through a lot in his life, he doesn't say any of that stuff anymore - I know that deep down inside he's a good guy. He just grew up in a near 100% homogenous culture.. and.. the stupid media got to him with the "the Muslims are coming" typen of nonsense.. and he bought into it to a degree, I guess. It seems to happen to a lot of older people from what I have seen. I can only hope that I don't find such an "easy enemy" to hate when I'm old and to say bigoted things about.
Took a while, but now my dad doesn't even mention Muslims. He knows that such talk would push me away. So now he complains about Russian government instead.. Fine with me, because he actually makes good points, if some of them are a bit on the "hmm I don't know... Are you sure?" side.
Maybe some people just need someone to point to as the enemy? Mind you my younger sister was dating a Muslim guy years ago, and.. he wanted her to convert. My parents freaked.. The final straw came when my sister hugged my uncle at a family gathering, and the boyfriend told her that "that's not allowed". Up until that point I had been giving my sister neutral advice - by telling her things I know about the religion, so that she can make up her own mind. But after I heard things like that, I agreed with my parents. In the end my mom took a bus 8 hours away to see her, to convince her to dump the guy. Now my sister is with a Polish guy and she hugs my uncle and other people whenever she damn wants.
That whole experience has still got to be on my dad's mind. He's been through a lot in his life, he doesn't say any of that stuff anymore - I know that deep down inside he's a good guy. He just grew up in a near 100% homogenous culture.. and.. the stupid media got to him with the "the Muslims are coming" typen of nonsense.. and he bought into it to a degree, I guess. It seems to happen to a lot of older people from what I have seen. I can only hope that I don't find such an "easy enemy" to hate when I'm old and to say bigoted things about.
Domen
Misico dux Vandalorum
Templeton's 2013 study suggested that dividing humans into 5 "traditional races" is a construct that doesn't exist in reality in the same sense as races of chimpanzees exist, because 5 human "traditional races" are much less discrete than chimpanzee races:
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.397.4618&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Maybe dividing humans differently into a larger than 5 number of "races" would result in a slightly more chimpanzee-like result.
But so far it seems that humans are not sharply divided into discrete races, but there is a clinal continuum in genetic variation.
At least traditional perceptions of race (such as for example that all Sub-Saharan Africans are a united "Black race") are wrong.
The (quite arbitrarily) chosen threshold of genetic variance above which discrete races can be defined, is 25%. In chimpanzees variance among races is 30%, above the threshold. In humans variance among 5 "traditional races" is 4%, well below the accepted threshold.
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.397.4618&rep=rep1&type=pdf
Maybe dividing humans differently into a larger than 5 number of "races" would result in a slightly more chimpanzee-like result.
But so far it seems that humans are not sharply divided into discrete races, but there is a clinal continuum in genetic variation.
At least traditional perceptions of race (such as for example that all Sub-Saharan Africans are a united "Black race") are wrong.
The (quite arbitrarily) chosen threshold of genetic variance above which discrete races can be defined, is 25%. In chimpanzees variance among races is 30%, above the threshold. In humans variance among 5 "traditional races" is 4%, well below the accepted threshold.
Formaldehyde
Both Fair And Balanced
Well, some scientists have proposed that as a theory. All that is known with any degree of certainty is that humans have varying amounts of melanin in their skin based on the latitude where they lived. And that those with darker pigmentation are much less susceptible to melanoma.
