Human racial phenotypes

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Human racial phenotypes

Post by Khemehekis »

The Kankonians have always had dark skin, and brown or occasionally hazel eyes, with most of them having curly hair. I did throw in some variation from continent to continents (for instance, the Tzelshans being the heaviest Kankonians, with retroussé noses and oily hair; or the Kupulshans being the tallest people, with round heads and Roman noses), but much of the Kankonian phenotype -- hair and skin color, for instance -- stayed the same across all continents and ethnic ancestries).

I realized some time ago that this is unrealistic for a human population whose inhabited continents have as much climate diversity as Earth's and that has not had a population bottleneck in its recent past. So I've been trying to revise my physical descriptions of the different kinds of Kankonians by examining where different visible genetic traits could or would evolve, and what would get carried over or change when a population from one part of Kankonia colonized another part. I want to create a number of Kankonian races -- similar to our array of Caucasian, Black, East Asian, Southeast Asian, South Asian, Native American, Polynesian, Melanesian, Micronesian, etc. on Earth, but not mapped one-on-one onto Terran racial phenotypes* -- that Kankonians can recognize, put on missing person posters, and then have them all interbreed with each other and migrate.
Spoiler:
*As Salmoneus once put it: "The specific phenotypical combinations that characterise notable real world populations are A TOTAL COINCIDENCE. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever why, for example, there has to be one population with straight hair and a lack of epicanthal folds - this is just a coincidence. Likewise, the fact that there are no black-skinned, blue-eyed people on Earth is purely a coincidence (given that such a population used to exist)."
So I've been reading up about genetic traits in human populations. I have some questions.

First, here's what I already know about this topic, so no one has to waste her/his time explaining it to me:
Spoiler:
1. Melanin in dark-skinned populations like Sub-Saharan Africans, Australian Aborigines, and Fijians protects people in hot areas from the heavy helping of sunlight they get. Being light-skinned, on the other hand, is useful in cold areas like Scandinavia because it lets more sunlight into people's skin, allowing them to get the vitamin D they need.

2. But people in cold areas won't always be light-skinned. Speakers of the Eskimo-Aleut languages, such as the natives of Greenland, have fairly dark skin because they eat so much seafood that they get all the vitamin D they need from their diet, therefore Greenlanders with light skin didn't have a real "survival of the fittest" advantage over their darker-skinned compatriots.

3. As per Allen's rule, the general evolutionary law that explains why polar bears are so stocky, people near the poles will be squatter in body shape than people near the equator, who are likely to the tall and lanky (like the Dinka). This reflects the fact that a round body shape helps people and other life-forms conserve heat better.

4. Long, thin nostrils help desert-dwellers by keeping them from breathing in so much sand.

5. Similarly, epicanthic folds protect eyes from sandstorms and dust storms.

6. Some genetic traits, such as freckles, hair color, blue eyes, and baldness, have no effect on whether a human individual is more likely to survive long enoogh to reproduce. [https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 170343.htm ] These traits, therefore, will not be naturally selected for or selected against, but can be artificially selected for through mating if they are prized by the people in that population.

7. Sickle-cell anemia may make people lethargic, but it's a good guard against malaria, and therefore often survives among the population in places where there are anopheles mosquitoes.

8. Traits that aren't visible to the everyday observer, like blood type, are often distributed with the same frequency of different phenotypes across many different populations, and therefore don't match up neatly with races the way a lot of highly visible traits like hair and skin color or hair texture do.
Now, here's what I don't know:

1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the different hair textures: straight, curly, wavy, frizzy?

2. For that matter, why do some places have more variation in hair texture than others? How come East Asians almost always have straight hair and sub-Saharan Africans frizzy hair, while you see a lot of different hair textures in the Middle East or Southern Europe?

3. Why are thin lips, medium lips, or full lips selected for in certain parts of the world?

4. What are the advantages, if any, of the different nose types?

5. Will populations with epicanthic folds necessarily have monolids?

6. Are there any "survival of the fittest" advantages to different head shapes? (There's a popular theory on the Internet that head shapes correspond to different personality types, but that reeks of pseudoscience.)

7. Why is metabolism better in some ethnic groups than others? For instance, people always say that the Japanese have great metabolism.

8. Are there any "survival of the fittest" advantages to high cheekbones, or is that one of those traits like blue eyes or freckles or baldness?

9. Finally, what makes populations more likely to develop hair that is dry, normal, or oily? I can't find any information about oily hair on Wikipedia (if you type in "oily hair" it redirects to the article [[sebaceous gland]], which doesn't even have the phrase "oily hair" anywiere in the body of the article!)

Thanks for all your help!
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Re: Human racial phenotypes

Post by WeepingElf »

Just about everything in your second spoiler has been doubted by anthropologists. Race is a social construct, not a biological reality.
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Re: Human racial phenotypes

Post by lsd »

just as biology is...

everything is language...
the rest is unknowable...

we just have to be careful about speech acts.
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Re: Human racial phenotypes

Post by Salmoneus »

Khemehekis wrote: 02 Aug 2024 06:31 I want to create a number of Kankonian races [...] and then have them all interbreed with each other and migrate.
If they're interbreeding then they won't remain distinct "races" for more than a couple of generations.
Melanin in dark-skinned populations like Sub-Saharan Africans, Australian Aborigines, and Fijians protects people in hot areas from the heavy helping of sunlight they get. Being light-skinned, on the other hand, is useful in cold areas like Scandinavia because it lets more sunlight into people's skin, allowing them to get the vitamin D they need.
I've also seen it suggested that melanin has some role in reducing insect bites (or their effect?) though I can't remember the details.

It's likely that certainly pale skin and probably very dark skin are at least partially the result of sexual selection.
3. As per Allen's rule, the general evolutionary law that explains why polar bears are so stocky, people near the poles will be squatter in body shape than people near the equator, who are likely to the tall and lanky (like the Dinka). This reflects the fact that a round body shape helps people and other life-forms conserve heat better.
An important caveat to this is that those living in high-altitude areas tend not to be tall. But also, I wouldn't be too dogmatic about this: Norwegians live a long way from the pole and tend to be quite tall, whereas Twa live very near the equator and are extremely short ("pygmies").
4. Long, thin nostrils help desert-dwellers by keeping them from breathing in so much sand.

5. Similarly, epicanthic folds protect eyes from sandstorms and dust storms.
I'm extremely skeptical. Particularly about the eyes - I'm not sure why having the fold on one side rather than the other would make a huge difference to sand, and in any case I'm not sure there's any correlation between the distribution of eyefolds and the distribution of sand. At all. The Sahara has more sand than Vietnam!
1. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the different hair textures: straight, curly, wavy, frizzy?

2. For that matter, why do some places have more variation in hair texture than others? How come East Asians almost always have straight hair and sub-Saharan Africans frizzy hair, while you see a lot of different hair textures in the Middle East or Southern Europe?
It's not known why early humans evolved kinky hair, although they probably did: chimpanzees and gorillas have straight hair, but most branches of humanity have kinky hair.

One theory for this is that kinky hair allows the same level of "coverage" (blocking light from the skull) with lower density (allowing more heat transfer - a sponge rather than a felt blanket), and that this was the optimal way to keep the skull cool in savannah conditions. But this is obviously speculative.

In terms of diversity, it seems that kinky hair is the primordial state, and straight hair is a later invention in east asia. Subsaharan Africa, where there is most genetic diversity by far (all non-africans are more related to each other and to certain africans than those africans are to other africans) has almost universal kinky hair; likewise, melanesians, who are the most direct and unmixed non-african descendents of early migrations from africa, almost always have kinky hair. [in a broad sense, although I've read people say that melanesian hair actually has a slightly different structure from typical african hair]. Straight hair is associated with east asia, and the americas (settled entirely from east asia).

Europe and south asia have more mixed hair patterns because they are more racially mixed between east asian and non-east-asian populations. Or perhaps because the mutation actually began shortly after the migration into west asia, whence european and south asian populations, but only reached its extreme form in the subsequent migration to east asia (with back-migration from east asia then muddling up the picture further).

Why did east asians develop straight hair? Nobody knows. Maybe it looked sexy.
3. Why are thin lips, medium lips, or full lips selected for in certain parts of the world?

4. What are the advantages, if any, of the different nose types?
Random chance, sexual selection, and frankly great over-emphasis in stereotyping.

5. Will populations with epicanthic folds necessarily have monolids?
I'm not sure what you mean. Humans have both upper and lower eyelids, but only one of each per eye.

6. Are there any "survival of the fittest" advantages to different head shapes? (There's a popular theory on the Internet that head shapes correspond to different personality types, but that reeks of pseudoscience.)
It's alarming that you only say it "reeks of pseudoscience" rather than saying it's both total nonsense and obviously racist. It's not something even worth raising, and it's alarming that you frequent the parts of the internet where this sort of racist insanity is "popular".

7. Why is metabolism better in some ethnic groups than others? For instance, people always say that the Japanese have great metabolism.
What does "better metabolism" even mean? Humans all have basically the same metabolism - we eat the same sort of chemicals, and use them to produce the same chemicals, and to produce energy in the same ways. Small variations in metabolism can evolve to reflect circumstances: populations that rely on milk have evolved to be able to metabolise milk as adults (otherwise it produces bloating and diarrhoea); populations that rely on alcohol as a disinfectant of water have evolved to metabolise alcohol more effectively (so it takes more alcohol to produce symptoms of poisoning, including paradoxical addictive behaviours).

Basal metabolic rate - the amount of energy processed in a given span of time - does vary between individuals, but as a function of weight: heavier people have faster metabolism and lighter people have slower metabolisms. [the metabolic rate is the result, not the cause, of the weight difference]
8. Are there any "survival of the fittest" advantages to high cheekbones, or is that one of those traits like blue eyes or freckles or baldness?
I can't think why there would be.
9. Finally, what makes populations more likely to develop hair that is dry, normal, or oily? I can't find any information about oily hair on Wikipedia (if you type in "oily hair" it redirects to the article [[sebaceous gland]], which doesn't even have the phrase "oily hair" anywiere in the body of the article!)
I would avoid terms like "normal" in describing racial differences.

But I'm not sure oiliness is a racial difference anyway. In general, the amount of sweat and its contents can be affected by hormones, which is why teenagers tend to be stickier than adults. Hair washing is also significant. Perhaps hair density might affect how effective washing is? And soft, fine hair (thinner strands) looks shinier and feels silkier (or "oilier" perhaps) than thicker, coarser hair.
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Re: Human racial phenotypes

Post by WeepingElf »

While race is more of a social construct than of a biological reality in our world (well, there of course are differences in pigmentation, facial proprotions, etc. between different regions of our planet, but what do those mean?), it may be different in fictional worlds, but that could easily be construed a racist slur in disguised and is IMHO not advisable - and if you ask me, characters like Tuvok or Arondir make more problems than sense.
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Re: Human racial phenotypes

Post by Salmoneus »

WeepingElf wrote: 02 Aug 2024 18:47 While race is more of a social construct than of a biological reality in our world (well, there of course are differences in pigmentation, facial proprotions, etc. between different regions of our planet, but what do those mean?), it may be different in fictional worlds, but that could easily be construed a racist slur in disguised and is IMHO not advisable - and if you ask me, characters like Tuvok or Arondir make more problems than sense.
What do you mean "mean"? Why do you expect skin colour to "mean" something? Is there a code?

I don't know who Arondir is, but I don't see what's problematic about Tuvok - Vulcan has sunlight too, why wouldn't some vulcans have evolved darker skin than others to protect against it? [leaving aside the whole 'sentient races were seeded by ancient aliens who really liked species who looked a lot like humans' aspect of star trek mythology]
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Re: Human racial phenotypes

Post by Visions1 »

With regards to metabolism: Polynesians, due to basically living on rocks in the middle of the ocean, convert sugar to fat much more readily. This is why they suffer from high rates of obesity today.

I think the Asian eyes thing is in part due to the journey taken to get there. To get to let's say Vietnam, you have to cross vast steppes with snow, mountains with sharp winds, and/or deserts, if you choose to go by land. This I think combines with the fact that Asia is a bit bottlenecked compared to say the Middle East or Africa. With less genetic diversity and a bit of selective pressure over the course of centuries of migration, I think the theory makes sense. However, I think chance also plays a major role with it.
Salmoneus wrote: 02 Aug 2024 23:22 What do you mean "mean"? Why do you expect skin colour to "mean" something? Is there a code?
As far as I can tell, he's just explaining what race is - what particular categories of genetics-based appearance mean to individuals and societies.
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Re: Human racial phenotypes

Post by lsd »

races, cultures and languages are just avatars of the distance between human populations,
and globalisation will soon reduce this diversity to nothing...
I don't know whether this will have the same deleterious effect
as the concomitant annihilation of biological diversity...
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Re: Human racial phenotypes

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Salmoneus wrote: 02 Aug 2024 23:22
WeepingElf wrote: 02 Aug 2024 18:47 While race is more of a social construct than of a biological reality in our world (well, there of course are differences in pigmentation, facial proprotions, etc. between different regions of our planet, but what do those mean?), it may be different in fictional worlds, but that could easily be construed a racist slur in disguised and is IMHO not advisable - and if you ask me, characters like Tuvok or Arondir make more problems than sense.
What do you mean "mean"? Why do you expect skin colour to "mean" something? Is there a code?
Well, racists believe that such difference mean that some people are better than others.
I don't know who Arondir is, but I don't see what's problematic about Tuvok - Vulcan has sunlight too, why wouldn't some vulcans have evolved darker skin than others to protect against it? [leaving aside the whole 'sentient races were seeded by ancient aliens who really liked species who looked a lot like humans' aspect of star trek mythology]
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Re: Human racial phenotypes

Post by lsd »

WeepingElf wrote: 03 Aug 2024 09:41Well, racists believe that such difference mean that some people are better than others.
it's certain that certain phenotypic characteristics,
which some consider to be racial,
provide an advantage in a given biotope...

man's problem is that he no longer takes the biotope into account, but rather destroys it...

but rather than promoting a single, stronger humanity,
we end up with dislocated individuals who are nostalgic for their cultural unity,
as their social character is only satisfied in a small group...
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Re: Human racial phenotypes

Post by WeepingElf »

lsd wrote: 03 Aug 2024 12:01
WeepingElf wrote: 03 Aug 2024 09:41Well, racists believe that such difference mean that some people are better than others.
it's certain that certain phenotypic characteristics,
which some consider to be racial,
provide an advantage in a given biotope...
No, this "certainty" has been falsified decades ago, and it lies at the heart of racism. Of course, people adapt to their environments, but these adaptations are cultural rather than biological.
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Re: Human racial phenotypes

Post by lsd »

WeepingElf wrote: 03 Aug 2024 16:37 No, this "certainty" has been falsified decades ago, and it lies at the heart of racism. Of course, people adapt to their environments, but these adaptations are cultural rather than biological.
no, it's the opposite...
for example, it's obvious that melanin in black-skinned men is a biological advantage in tropical countries,
but white-skinned men are able to find cultural adaptations to live there...
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Re: Human racial phenotypes

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I don't think I will manage to convince you before the Sun shall rise in the west, but I felt it necessary to state my position.
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Re: Human racial phenotypes

Post by Salmoneus »

I'm baffled how anyone could claim that higher melanin concentrations in the skin are the product of "cultural adaptation"?

And no, saying that people with higher levels of melanin have lower levels of skin cancer is not "the heart of racism".
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Re: Human racial phenotypes

Post by Arayaz »

Race is, depending on context, a collection of biological features, or a social concept based on said biological features. The emergence of these biological features in different populations is likely driven by some combination of natural selection for environmental adaptations, sexual selection, and random chance, this last especially if there is some sort of population bottleneck. At least, that’s my take.
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Re: Human racial phenotypes

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Salmoneus wrote: 03 Aug 2024 21:34 I'm baffled how anyone could claim that higher melanin concentrations in the skin are the product of "cultural adaptation"?

And no, saying that people with higher levels of melanin have lower levels of skin cancer is not "the heart of racism".
Of course, melanin concentrations aren't "cultural adaptation"; this indeed seems to be a biological adaptation to different daylight levels (though he details are still controversial). But some people make much bolder claims than that, and lsd specifically has defended colonialism on the ZBB.
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Re: Human racial phenotypes

Post by lsd »

don't get everything mixed up,
stressing the role of colonization vs. decolonization vs. globalization
in the contemporary migrant crisis
has never led me to justify racism in any way...
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Re: Human racial phenotypes

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OK, I should have left that out of the game. But apparently, we disagree without a realistic chance of reconciliation, so there is no point continuing the quarrel, and we may better stop here.
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Re: Human racial phenotypes

Post by Visions1 »

Salmoneus wrote: 03 Aug 2024 21:34 I'm baffled how anyone could claim that higher melanin concentrations in the skin are the product of "cultural adaptation"?
I am aware that in Andamanese culture, pale skin was viewed as sickly. (I think Boa Sr. said that?) No idea how that fits in, but it's on the table.
In any case, we know this happens with pale skin. I imagine a similar story could easily happen with any skin colour/tone.

I know that sweat smell is pretty genetic.

Straight hair is probably easier to clean, and frizzy hair probably cushions better, but I doubt any of that really matters in terms of natural selection. Just call it chance and you're fine.
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Re: Human racial phenotypes

Post by WeepingElf »

There is also sexual selection: a trait (such as light or dark pigmentation) is positively selected because people find it attractive. And what people find attractive is a matter of culture. This way, culture may affect genetically determined traits. Also, culture may affect other genetic traits; for instance, lactase persistence is obviously of advantage to dairy farmers but not that much to people who do not practice dairy, and thus we find it most frequently among dairy-farming cultures.
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