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Utopia Talk / Politics / On the science of race
Habebe
Member
Tue Jun 30 01:10:46
So considering how frequently race is brought up in these forums I figured a discussion on the science behimd race ad we know it.

So the political term of races doesnt really exist, I think that we can all agree.

There are certain genes more prevalent in certain "races"

Such as Herc2/orca2 that gives white people blue eyes and may increase the chances of blonde hair.

Im not really sure how Sickle cell works... Someone else can field that one.

Then there are the different hominins that make up Humans

Homosapiens
Neandethal
Denisovian

These are the big three afaik, there are a bunch of extinct ones and I think some pacific Islanders hobbits or something that may still be mixed in the mix.

Now Whites/Euros have the highest amount of Neanderthall genes but still mostly HS.

Eurasian and Asians have the 2nd most amounts of Neanderthall genes as well as Denisovian DNA mixed in but again primarily HS.

Africans as I understand ot are the purest being almost entirely homosapiens.

Pigmentation is just recent evolution of certain genes that did better in different areas. For Euros paler skin was a bonus so LAC something genes were.l more common.

Anything way off here?
jergul
large member
Tue Jun 30 02:50:47
Race is just a way of colour coding systemic inequality. Racism a term used to describe the mechanisms creating that inequality.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Tue Jun 30 03:21:06
"Race" is s sociological term

It's not a scientific term or one that is used in biology. It has baggage and is not very precise. We had a thread about this before you came back, a few years ago. The term has too little scientific validity and too much cultural baggage to be useful. In biology you would have "lineages". Today "race" is almost exclusively used by sociologist and other social sciences to describe some archaic way that some societies still view themselves. It should all be put into a wood chipper and then burned.

And I can tell you right now, "pure" is not a scientific term to describe levels of genetic admixture :P

Funny enough I recently was thinking about how we became whiter. It would exclusively have been due to vitamin D deficiency. Vitamin D is important for our immune system, it has been postulated that this is why black people in the norther hemisphere have been over represented in corona deaths as they generally suffer from vitamin D deficiency. It is a hormone involved in the regulation of 5% (or something of that order) of our DNA. So who knows what else is important.

Take vitamin D!
jergul
large member
Tue Jun 30 03:27:21
Nimi
Even the girls are back on my codliver oil regime.

If you only are going to take 2 supplements, then D and magnesium should be the ones to go for.

Habebe
Member
Tue Jun 30 03:36:06
Nim, Sociological/political whatever you prefer. I distinctly got that out of the way early on.

Also, I wanted to makw the correctiom that East Asians may actually habe larger amounts of Neanderthall in them , currently thought to be due to 2 separate eras of inbreeding.
jergul
large member
Tue Jun 30 03:53:17
Mating cross species is the opposite of inbreeding.

You sure on Asian neanderthal DNA. My recollection is that it is significantly lower than white neaderthal dna (but higher than black).

Sicklecell is an adaptation to deal with malaria.

Blue eyes, blond hair correlates with light skin. This correlation is probably a major carrier for whitening in certain areas.

Their is sound reasons to think that blue-blond was spread for purely cosmetic reason. Its non-dominant, so you really have to work at spreading.

A credible theory is that the combination was extremely desirable for cultural reasons, so societies put a lot of effort into getting hold of breeding stock and breeding blond and blue into their family trees.
jergul
large member
Tue Jun 30 03:55:33
Ie better survivability due to higher vitamin D creation (my codliver oil comment indicates D was actually available to acient societies) is not the full explanation. Popular culture desire to be blond and blue gave better D creation coincidentally.
Habebe
Member
Tue Jun 30 04:22:03
I meant inter breeding ...not inbreeding...my bad.

As fornthe Asians its a difference within east Asians specifically having more Neanderthal.
Habebe
Member
Tue Jun 30 04:23:53
Jergul,I wonder why we as a species find blue eyes so attractive. Isnit coincidence or could there be an evolutionary reason.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Tue Jun 30 05:25:15
Habebe
You said there is no political term for race, while the reality is that politics (not science) is where race is being used. And it is to some degree being validated as a concept by social sciences that that rely on some ambigious historical biological concept that correlates very poorly with race.

The reason I lay this out and the baggage, is because this is one of those subject that requires precision. You know why. One does not simply walk into "science and race".

Regarding the blond and blue.
It is actually quite rare if you look globally and it appeared after the ice age according to evidence. Even today it is largely concentrated in Scandinavia. It is most definitly not an "Aryan" trait. For two reasons, Aryans while light skinned, had black hair and brown eyes. The Aryan migration did not genetically displace the stone age people already living in Europe. They mixed with them, but the main thing was the propagation of the cultural and linguistic phenomena. The Aryan migrations occured after when the blue eyes seems to have appeared.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Tue Jun 30 05:34:36
"Jergul,I wonder why we as a species find blue eyes so attractive."

We don't. It varies depending on culture. If it is rare, it is usually desired (unless it is deemed freakish). Ask all the blond blue eyed people who fawn over brown and black haird people. Blue eyed exist naturally in Iran for example, but they are rare, so they stand out among all the dark.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Tue Jun 30 05:38:30
Jergul
It is also credible, that after the ice age there were no humans in scandinavia, so when whoever it was that came there, there was not a big pool of people to mate with. Scandinavia is also relatively isolated (no large influxes). So whatever happend in Scandinavia stayed in Scandinavia for the longest time. :)
jergul
large member
Tue Jun 30 05:43:08
Nimi
I was not suggesting blue-blond became universal, but rather that it exists at all. Its not a random mutation that would have survived without great effort (its a non-dominate gene).

Selective breeding to promote the trait seems a very plausible explanation that coincidentally lead to a lightening of skintone. A cofactor in pigmentation loss.

The non-dominant aspect is compatible with lightening of "Aryan" skin too. Loss of pigmentation is neutral (offspring will tend to have the average amount of pigment both parents had).

Blond hair blue eyes would make much less of an inroad than less pigmentation would, even if a source of less pigmentation was blond-blue eyed slaves that simply did not achieve critical mass.
Pillz
Member
Tue Jun 30 05:45:11
Lol. Jergul believes paleolithic Europe culled brown eyed people for aesthetic reasons?
jergul
large member
Tue Jun 30 05:47:20
Pillz
The school district that failed to teach you how to read has much to be ashamed over.
Habebe
Member
Tue Jun 30 05:52:59
"You said there is no political term for race, while the reality is that politics (not science) is where race is being used. "

Poor wording on my part. I meant that scientifically the term race ( a political term) doesn't exist in science.

So i accidentally conveyes the opposite of what I meant.

Now as for Blue eyes, ive seen studies report time and time again blue is seen as overly attractive. But some say green too so whatever.

Are yoi suggesting that rarity/uniqueness is an attractive quality. Could attraction to the exotic be an evolutionary trait. Makes sense sort of, hedging your bets.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Tue Jun 30 05:57:56
Jergul
I was not suggesting that, I don't believe you think that. I was thinking how do we explain that something that is not dominant, survives for so long. I don't disagree with what you are saying, that it became a valued trait in the culture, but something has to thwart outside influence of the surrounding dominant brown eyes. Also, how did "it" deal with a potential large pool of brown eyed people. There were none and the geography insulated them for a long time. Is my guess. I should have framed it better, not as an alternative, but supplementary.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Tue Jun 30 06:08:27
Habebe
Ah yes, then it makes sense.

"Could attraction to the exotic be an evolutionary trait."

Speculations of a mad man, maybe. But I think it would be a rather primitive form. Like we are drawn to novelty, we are as a species very drawn to novel thing. We excel at it.

So say if an individual looks nominally like all the other people in your tribe, but they have green eyes. They are enough like you, but novel in some aspect that makes them more attractive. And then entire cultures emerge around these ideals. When that isn't enough we chop off our foreskin to make ourselves different :)

On a personal note, I always loved blond with brown eyes or black hair and blue eyes. Those combinations look really stunning to me.
jergul
large member
Tue Jun 30 06:14:47
Nimi
Novelty does have an evolutionary role. We seek the different so as to avoid unfortunate duplications of dna in our offspring.

More that we are primed towards seeking variation than it is a biological imperative.
jergul
large member
Tue Jun 30 06:15:49
Ah ok. Yes, I misunderstood your slant.
Habebe
Member
Tue Jun 30 06:39:58
Black hair with blue eyes is a great combo. My preference is heavily toward Mediterranean broads, Italian to Jew and all in between.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Tue Jun 30 06:50:40
Jergul
Yes, I was also thinking about that, we are generally presdisposed to not be attracted to the people we grow up with, siblings and parents. This disgust seems to be there when we are not genetically related, but still grow up as the same family. It is a good enough heuristic.

An interesting thing is the cultures who, at least at the elite level broke these conventions as a matter of rule. I have made some reading into old (Persian) Sassanid law. The available texts suggest Sassanids were "obsessed" with preserving lineages, even if that meant marriage between siblings. It is unknown if this was merely to preserve family wealth and status or if it actually involved significant inbreeding.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Tue Jun 30 08:54:47
Obviously not a heuristics, that was a bad word. Predisposition!
chuck
Member
Tue Jun 30 09:22:37
> Now as for Blue eyes, ive seen studies report time and time again blue is seen as overly attractive.

Have you really seen studies "time and time again" about this? Which of your various scholarly pursuits were you engaged in when these studies came to your attention?

Without more information, a skeptical reader might believe you were trying to make your personal opinions sound more dignified by attributing them to mountains of scholarship which are so plentiful as to need no specific mention.

I'm not saying I am skeptical that you've read any such studies, or, really, any studies at all. I don't understand why anybody would suspect that a person who needs 60mg/day of Adderall to function in society is spending a lot of time poring over research. I'm just pointing out that, invariably, some posters tend toward skepticism when they discover that a gentleman such as yourself is spending a non-zero amount of time reading studies. Perhaps you could share more specifics and put the whole matter to rest?
Habebe
Member
Tue Jun 30 22:43:48
Chuck, You sure have a lot to say to simply ask me to cite.

You also selectively quoted me, but whatever.


https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00266-011-9793-x

"Most surprisingly, no correlation was found between iridal color and rated attractiveness. However, the participants mentioned the color blue more often as a positive aspect than other iridal colors. "

Also try

Why do blue-eyed men prefer women with the same eye color? January 2007. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology 61(3):371-384. Bruno Laeng & Ronny Mathisen & Jan-Are Johnsen
Habebe
Member
Tue Jun 30 23:09:23
Nim, As to the attracted to the exotic or novel. We know that mixing different genes can give the offspring a higher chance of getting the better genes of both lineages.

Especially when Neanderthall and HS. Inter bred as well as HS with denisovians evidence suggests that the offspring had better disease resistance and to a wider array of diseases.

So in that case seeking out a sexual partner that was more different had a very real evolutionary reason.

Now I dont know how specific it is, meaning just a general preference for the different or less likely that specific traits could be linked to an evolutionary benefit.
Nimatzo
iChihuaha
Wed Jul 01 01:43:12
Some things are specific, like a tall, strong, smart, able, those things are not ambigious as a stranger with dark eyes. These thing are strange. I remember a summer flirt, she had really special eyes hazel colored (very rare), and you know I according to me have ordinary brown eyes. But not to her, they were the most beautiful eyes she had seen. And I was like, girl are you.... have you seen your own eyes? And the answer is yes, she had seen them every day of her life.
Habebe
Member
Wed Jul 01 02:08:18
Nimatzo, That reminds me of an oldmblack dude I was loclked up with Clayton. My hair is like dirty blonde, maybe a hint of red and it gets lighter in the summer, the guy would go on and on about how lucky I was becaise of "golden hair" that je jad never seen. It was a little creepy like he was looking at an ancient artifact.

He was a little off anyway. If people were drinking coffee he would come up with his cup and say " can monkey have some to?"

We caught him stealing too, which was almost a fight...anyway.
jergul
large member
Wed Jul 01 04:25:38
habebe
Mixing genes is not so much about getting good genes as it is avoiding duplicating crap ones. We sort of need two different sets because a lot of bad stuff is actually regressive.
Habebe
Member
Wed Jul 01 04:29:19
Jergul, Well if you gain protection from diseases can't it be both?
jergul
large member
Wed Jul 01 05:05:40
We don't really get protection from diseases unless they happed to be something that tends to kill off women before they have offspring.

We cannot out evolution virus and bacteria in any event. They have millions of lifecycles to evolve per human generation.

Evolution substracts what is not very viable. Culling in a manner of speaking to leave more room for what is more viable.

That is the mechanism of ensuring the survival of the fittest over time (say over 10 000 generations).

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