an interesting article...

[Shaka[Zulu]]

In the current issue of Scientific American, about how differences in skin color evolved as humanity spread out from equatorial Africa, and what purposes said color serves... makes some nice ammo vs the racists, considering that the gist of the article is that eventually, anybody who migrates into areas where UV exposure is of a certain level or more will darken (as a society) to counteract the UV -- cultural & technological aadaptation can slow the process down, but not halt it. in a few thousand years, the 'white' settlers of australia will be as dark as the aborigines are now!

so much for race defined by skin color eh?

[Darth Wong]

In the current issue of Scientific American, about how differences in skin color evolved as humanity spread out from equatorial Africa, and what purposes said color serves... makes some nice ammo vs the racists, considering that the gist of the article is that eventually, anybody who migrates into areas where UV exposure is of a certain level or more will darken (as a society) to counteract the UV -- cultural & technological aadaptation can slow the process down, but not halt it. in a few thousand years, the 'white' settlers of australia will be as dark as the aborigines are now!

so much for race defined by skin color eh?

It's nice (not an entirely new idea, but nice). Unfortunately, we all know how the white-supremacist donkey-fuckers have developed a Logic-Blocking gene over many generations of inbreeding, so information like this is unlikely to have any effect whatsoever.

[weemadando]

Debateable due to the constant inter-mingling with other cultural groups and immigrants. Plus, goign by changes in the past 30 years all Australians will die of skin cancer before that happens and the aboriginals will rule agin.

[RayCav of ASVS]

In the current issue of Scientific American, about how differences in skin color evolved as humanity spread out from equatorial Africa, and what purposes said color serves... makes some nice ammo vs the racists, considering that the gist of the article is that eventually, anybody who migrates into areas where UV exposure is of a certain level or more will darken (as a society) to counteract the UV -- cultural & technological aadaptation can slow the process down, but not halt it. in a few thousand years, the 'white' settlers of australia will be as dark as the aborigines are now!

so much for race defined by skin color eh?

Actually, I thought it can happen on an INDIVIDUAL level as well (for example, tanning, or how my skin has become exceedingly pale from a complete lack of life)

[Shaka[Zulu]]

actually, it can happen on an individual level, but mainly that occurs with peeps like myself, who are of 'mixed' heritage, or those whose deep ancestry hails from sub-tropical climes... they can adapt more rapidly either way.

[Darth Wong]

In the current issue of Scientific American, about how differences in skin color evolved as humanity spread out from equatorial Africa, and what purposes said color serves... makes some nice ammo vs the racists, considering that the gist of the article is that eventually, anybody who migrates into areas where UV exposure is of a certain level or more will darken (as a society) to counteract the UV -- cultural & technological aadaptation can slow the process down, but not halt it. in a few thousand years, the 'white' settlers of australia will be as dark as the aborigines are now!

so much for race defined by skin color eh?

Actually, I thought it can happen on an INDIVIDUAL level as well (for example, tanning, or how my skin has become exceedingly pale from a complete lack of life)

That's not Darwinian evolution. That's Lamarkian evolution, which doesn't really work. Darwinian evolution would lead to the conclusion that the environmental advantages of darker skin would eventually lead to a generally dark-skinned people (not that a white supremacist will be swayed by evolutionary arguments any more than they are by human genome-based arguments, ethical arguments, or any other kind of rational arguments).

Mind you, in a modern age of technology and rapid travel (hence intermingling), this process doesn't work as well as it did in primitive eras, when people were outdoors all the time and didn't get around much.

[RayCav of ASVS]

Ummm...what's Lamarkian evolution?

[Darth Wong]

Ummm...what's Lamarkian evolution?

Lamarkian evolution is the idea that animals change to adapt to their environment during their lifetimes, and then pass this change onto their offspring. Darwinian evolution is the idea that there is pre-existing variation in any species, and that certain variants are simply preferable under certain environmental conditions, so they become dominant.

When a species gets split up into two separate populations in different environments, this process can eventually create two substantially different sub-populations as generational change forces each sub-population in different directions. Eventually, they might even become separate species which are no longer genetically compatible.

However, in the case of humans, they were re-introduced to each other by exploration before any deviations became significant enough to prevent inter-breeding (indeed, inter-breeding is helpful in many ways, eg- there are certain diseases that appear to be recessive genes in certain racial populations, eg- hemophilia in whites, sickle-cell anemia in blacks, and they are less likely in interbred children).

[HemlockGrey]

I'll translate.

Lamarkian: If you cut off a cat's tail, all it's children will be tailless.

Darwinian: If the cat is introduced into an enviroment where a tail is a liability, it will, over the process of many generations, lose the tail.


Sorry, had to do it.

[Shaka[Zulu]]

Debateable due to the constant inter-mingling with other cultural groups and immigrants. Plus, goign by changes in the past 30 years all Australians will die of skin cancer before that happens and the aboriginals will rule agin.

all that inter-mingling has really only been happening on a really large (inter-continental) scale for the last few hundred years, with the increasing speed and cross-range of transportation, it too is increasing its' pace. Indeed, the article addresses this concern in its' final segment, and I quote:

Despite great improvements in overall human health in the past century, some diseases have appeared or reemerged in populations that had previously been little affected by them. One of these is skin cancer, especially basal and squamous cell carcinomas, among light-skinned peoples. Another is rickets, brought about by severe vitamin D deficiency, in dark-skinned peoples. Why are we seeing these conditions?

As people move from an area with one pattern of UV radiation to another region, biological and cultural adaptations have not been able to keep pace. The light-skinned people of northern European origin who bask in the sun of Florida or northern Australia increasingly pay the price in the form of premature aging of the skin and skin cancers, not to mention the unknown cost in human life of folate depletion. Conversely, a number of dark-skinned people of southern Asian and African origin now living in the northern U.K., northern Europe or the northeastern U.S. suffer from a lack of UV radiation and vitamin D, an insidious problem that manifests itself in high rates of rickets and other diseases related to vitamin D deficiency.

while the article fails to adequately address possible counters to the problems faced by 'whites' ie extremely light-skinned peoples in sub-tropical and tropical climates, it does put forth strong evidence that diet is a key factor in maintaing adequate vitamin D levels in dark-skinned populations in regions of low to non-existent UV exposure -- the Inuit have been able to remain much more darkly pigmented by 1) being fairly recent emigeants to the area -- 5000 years ago, but that is longer than most all of the other 'recent arrivals' they mention -- and 2) by having a diet extremely rich in vitamin D (lots and lots of seafood), which forgoes the need to use the skin as a means of harnessing UV to produce it -- no need to grow lighter, and so they would not.

[weemadando]

Actually southern Australia is most at risk with skin cancer due to that goddamn hole in the ozone layer. Living is Tasmania sucks at times.