Human racial phenotypes

[lsd]

Even if the chicken-and-egg question still comes into play,
a culture that makes counterproductive choices is de facto in danger...

you can't win against nature...

some think that this would be the case for our western society, a matter to be followed, or not...

[WeepingElf]

you can't win against nature...

Indeed you can't, and that is something many people seem to have forgotten today.

[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".

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.

Respectfully, I think that if we use one thread to respond to what people said, in the past, in a different thread, on a different (albeit related) topic, on an entirely different website that many of us won't have seen, conversations here will just get too confusing. After all, that's why we have threads in the first place - to keep different conversations in different places.

[WeepingElf]

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.

Respectfully, I think that if we use one thread to respond to what people said, in the past, in a different thread, on a different (albeit related) topic, on an entirely different website that many of us won't have seen, conversations here will just get too confusing. After all, that's why we have threads in the first place - to keep different conversations in different places.

OK, I shouldn't have done that. My apologies.

[Khemehekis]

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.

Just to clarify: These "races" will evolve with not all that much interbreeding going on for many generations (although there will be a lot of it in some parts of the world -- Tzelshans migrating to Povoi, for instance, just as there was a whole lot of Spaniard/Latin American Indian intermarriage in post-Columbian times, and African-Americans today have some White admixture (and probably Native American!)). But shortly after one-world government forms on Kankonia, the interbreeding of the stocks is going to speed up, with no more taboos against interracial love or sex and with traveling across the planet to be trivially easy and convenient. Of course, the "present" in Kankonia is long, long after that point, so today you'd have all kinds of mixtures, but you'd have the historic races. It'll be a lot like Earth many centuries from now: most of us will be part African, part Caucasian, part Asian, part South Asian, etc., but specific traits like red hair and blue eyes won't disappear (it's my understanding that the "red hair will die out in the future!" alarm has pretty much been debunked).

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.

You mean like all the anopheles mosquitoes and tsetse flies in Sub-Saharan Africa? Make sense. I'll keep that in mind (and that reminds me, I've got to decide where to place all my insect vector species on Kankonia).

It's likely that certainly pale skin and probably very dark skin are at least partially the result of sexual selection.

Judging by what's been posted in this thread, it seems a whole lot of visible physical variations all 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.

I'll keep this in mind.

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").

Excellent point! I hadn't thought about the Norwegians and Twa. (And BTW, I'm taking it you meant "Norwegians live a long way from the equator"?)

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!

This is just what I've read. You have a good point about Vietnam vs. the Sahara, and Visions1 has his own theory. Weeping Elf has said that most of this has been doubted by anthropologists, but he didn't say just how mainstream this doubt is among anthropologists. What would you say the origin of epicanthic folds is? More sexual selection?

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.

Thanks for all your help in explaining hair texture. I guess I'll just start out with the first Kankonian humans having frizzy hair, and let straight hair (along with curly and wavy hair) evolve by chance, overtake populations through sexual selection, and spread with the migrations. (If the first Homo sapiens sapiens did indeed have kinky hair, I figure it would evolve shortly after we diverged from other members of Homo, considering Neanderthals had straight hair.)

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.

Monolids: https://www.vogue.com/article/how-i-lea ... y-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.)

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,

It seems strange to call it "alarming" just because someone is restrained in criticizing something.

BOB: Hitler's theory of the "Master Race" was what is now called "scientific racism", plus Mein Kampf was really badly written.

BILL: This is Adolf Hitler we're talking about! Hitler was the most evil person who ever lived, so if you're talking about him, don't pull any punches: you need to state he was a terrible fascist pig who is now burning in Hell!

SPOILER: Discussion of the theory and some of the problems it runs into:

Spoiler:

This theory started with one Jim Black (you can google him, but the firstname + lastname combo may just be too common), who connected head shapes to the theory of the Keirseyan temperaments. For instance, Black said that "rational" types (like Richard Dawkins) tend to have rectangular faces.

Yes, I know a lot of people (including you in my Hunter-gatherer vs. Farmer thread!) believe Myers-Briggs and its Keirsey variant are bullshit. But even if you disagree with the idea that personality typologies are pseudoscience -- and it's been argued by some (as in this post of Nortaneous') that psychology as a whole, even stuff like Big 5 or the IQ concept of g, isn't really scientific (which is not an argument *I* agree with) -- Black's theory runs into problems when you consider that the shape of a person's skull stabilizes around age 16, while personality traits can change quite a lot over a person's lifespan. Seriously, I read an article a few years back on UPI (the news site) about a long-term study that tracked people from age 14 into their seventies. These people were personality-tested on the five personality fimensions of Big 5/OCEAN at different point of their lives . . . and the study found no correlation, on ANY of the five dimensions, between who you were at age 14 and who you will be as a septuagenarian! Example: Jim Black says that George W. Bush's square face is typical of "guardian" types -- square, hard-working, serious, socially conservative types who according to Black either have square or round heads. And yet that's only the George W. Bush we know as president! Bush was quite the party animal up until his forties, snorting cocaine, taking the easy way out of Air Force Service in Vietnam, and even being arrested for driving drunk and arrested for stealing a Christmas wreath from a hotel with a bunch of his party-jock-fratboy friends! Bush had the same head shape then.

And that's without getting into what you called the racist aspects of the theory. Granted, it's not cephalic index stuff (like the traditional "Nordic people tend to be dolichocephalic"), but rather oval heads, round heads, square heads, rectangular heads, heart-shaped heads, which all exist in plentiful numbers AMONG White people, and AMONG Black people. However, I've seen "racist" and "racial" used before for moral/personality stereotypes of traits like hair color that differ among people who are usually considered the same "race" or even the same ethnic groups (I've seen the "dumb blonde" and "fiery redhead" stereotypes being called racist before, for instance, even when both the blonde and redhead in question, real or fictional, are of Western European extraction), so I can see where you're coming from.

Skeptics often compare Jim Black's theory to phrenology!

and it's alarming that you frequent the parts of the internet where this sort of racist insanity is "popular".

Parts of the Internet like Quora? And Typology Central?

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]

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 didn't know that "the metabolic rate is the result, not the cause, of the weight difference"; I was confused about that. Thanks for explaining!

I have people drinking milk as adults over most of Kankonia, with fewer than 20% of Kankonians being lactose intolerant. (BTW, lactose tolerance as the norm isn't the way it is in my family: we're Jewish, and with over half of Jews (like other ethnic groups from the Middle East) being lactose intolerant, my father and all three of us (my brother, my sister, and me) are lactose intolerant, with only my mother being lactose tolerant.)

I never really thought about alcohol metabolism among Kankonians, but perhaps I should! So Europeans can handle alcohol well because medieval European folks would drink beer with their bread as the water was too contaminated?

Visions1, I don't quite follow you on why living on an island surrounded by ocean would result in Polynesians converting sugar to fat with such readiness.

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.

That was what I expected.

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.

What else would you call hair that is intermediate between dry and oily? "Normal" is the usual, standard word I see/hear people using for that hair type -- see https://organicaecosoaps.com/do-i-have- ... oily-hair/ for instance.

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.

When I was a teen, I was unhappy that my hair was so oily because my parents wanted me to shampoo it a lot. All that shampoo felt so slimy . . . it felt like the green slime from Nickelodeon's You Can't Do That on Television being poured onto my hair. When I said that my hair was "oily", my father wanted to "correct" me by saying I didn't have oily hair, and that oily hair was only found in "certain ethnic groups" (I think he mentioned some Pacific Islander groups). Guess I was the one who was right!



Well, I guess I'll get to work on all tjose Kankonian mutations and migrations . . .

[Visions1]

They metabolize sugars into fats more quickly because it stores the energy. Carbs are relatively scarce on small Pacific islands (at least compared to say on land), the weather is worse, and you may have to sail over long distances or swim. So it pays to have extra storage. Plus more fat keeps you warm.

In older years, this wasn't such a big deal - people were more active, suffered more weather exposure, and had less access to sugars. Today, all of these have changed.

[Khemehekis]

They metabolize sugars into fats more quickly because it stores the energy. Carbs are relatively scarce on small Pacific islands (at least compared to say on land), the weather is worse, and you may have to sail over long distances or swim. So it pays to have extra storage. Plus more fat keeps you warm.

In older years, this wasn't such a big deal - people were more active, suffered more weather exposure, and had less access to sugars. Today, all of these have changed.

Ah, this all makes sense now. Thanks for the clarification. (Is breadfruit a carb or just a starch?)

[Visions1]

I don't know about health food terminology, but it's definitely carbohydrate-rich.

[TBPO]

In Alterverse Humans are very varied:
-16% of Human Subraces* are white-skinned, 19% are black-skinned, 17% are yellow-skinned, 21% are red-skinned, 17% are grey-skinned and 10% are orange-skinned.
-24% of Subraces have always round pupils, 34% have vertical pupils only in big emotions and otherwise round, 39% have always vertical pupils, and 3% have horizontal pupils.
-22% have average adult height 2 m or higher, 37% have a.a.h. from 1.5 to 2 m, 29% have a.a.h. from 1 to 1.5 m and 12% have a.a h. 1 m or lower.

*Human is a Race, and Human-0, Human-9112 etc. are Subraces.

[Khemehekis]

In Alterverse Humans are very varied:
-16% of Human Subraces* are white-skinned, 19% are black-skinned, 17% are yellow-skinned, 21% are red-skinned, 17% are grey-skinned and 10% are orange-skinned.
-24% of Subraces have always round pupils, 34% have vertical pupils only in big emotions and otherwise round, 39% have always vertical pupils, and 3% have horizontal pupils.
-22% have average adult height 2 m or higher, 37% have a.a.h. from 1.5 to 2 m, 29% have a.a.h. from 1 to 1.5 m and 12% have a.a h. 1 m or lower.

Cool!

*Human is a Race, and Human-0, Human-9112 etc. are Subraces.

What are the non-human races?

[TBPO]

Spoiler:

In Alterverse Humans are very varied:
-16% of Human Subraces* are white-skinned, 19% are black-skinned, 17% are yellow-skinned, 21% are red-skinned, 17% are grey-skinned and 10% are orange-skinned.
-24% of Subraces have always round pupils, 34% have vertical pupils only in big emotions and otherwise round, 39% have always vertical pupils, and 3% have horizontal pupils.
-22% have average adult height 2 m or higher, 37% have a.a.h. from 1.5 to 2 m, 29% have a.a.h. from 1 to 1.5 m and 12% have a.a h. 1 m or lower.

Cool!

*Human is a Race, and Human-0, Human-9112 etc. are Subraces.

What are the non-human races?

Some Races are standard fantasy Races, some are more Animal-like (some even are sentient Animals!), some are like aliens and some are strange. All Races are as varied as Humans.

[Khemehekis]

Some Races are standard fantasy Races, some are more Animal-like (some even are sentient Animals!), some are like aliens and some are strange. All Races are as varied as Humans.

Well, it's good that you don't make all your orcs or all your shark-people look alike.

[lsd]

there are so many non-human races,
on earth, that are all sentient,
even if we're not interested in what they have to say...

[TBPO]

there are so many non-human races,
on earth, that are all sentient,
even if we're not interested in what they have to say...

What do you mean?

[WeepingElf]

there are so many non-human races,
on earth, that are all sentient,
even if we're not interested in what they have to say...

What do you mean?

I think he refers to various animal species whose intelligence we tend to underestimate (or overestimate).