Posted on 04/27/2007 10:23:12 AM PDT by SirLinksalot
Yeah, sorry, no. Gene flow can happen with extraordinary rapidity. This hypothesis is perfectly plausible. Whether it's true or not I can't say. But you should read up more on gene flow.
Good idea.
It’s always a good idea to learn a subject well if you are going to argue against it.
I’m leaving shortly for work and won’t be trying to conduct a blitz course in biology.
Actually, I wouldn’t anyway. The people I teach want to learn the subject and put their money where their mouth is.
So, what is your theory about the origin of pale skin?
Whitey can now expect his skin to turn darker as a result of global warming.
LOL, congratulations, you won the internet.
Nice pics, but you really have no idea what other races have entered into the child and the woman’s bloodlines. India was occupied by the British for a long time.
Races is probably the wrong word, but you know what I mean. :)
probably not, but indians are a hodge podge of different races many of them migrants from central asia.
“So, what is your theory about the origin of pale skin?”
The fact that I have a theory, or whatever it is, would not tend to prove or disprove the article’s hypothesis, no?
Damned creationists!
< /sarc >
Ping for later
“Gene flow can happen with extraordinary rapidity. This ...Whether it’s true or not I can’t say. But you should read up more on gene flow.”
Yes, well, “scientists” also tell us that there will no blonds left in the US by the end of this century due to the influx of darker people and the recessive nature of the blond coloration gene.
My point is, I don’t think that the proliferation of pale skinned people in Europe squares well with evolutionary theory, which of course is “red in tooth and claw.”
That depends on how credible it is!
Let’s say you have a population of 100,000. Everybody has two kids, so the population is stable. The average age of the mother at the time of giving birth is 20 years. I’m thinking what a prehistoric population would have been like.
A woman gets a mutation. How long until nearly the entire population is decended from her and thus has a chance to get the mutation, assuming people are intermarrying among the whole population? By my math, it would take at least 330 years but definitely not more than 400 years. The woman would have 2 descendants in 20 years and 4 in 40 years and 8 in 60 years and so on. After 340 years, she would have 130,036 descendants. That’s more than the total population, so we would have to assume relatives marrying each other, but she would still likely have nearly all the population as her descendants.
In reality, if the gene were favorable to survival, and people had significantly more than 2 children in the family, it could happen a lot quicker.
In a 6,000 year period, genes can spread out pretty widely.
Yea, the descendents are called Anglo-Indians. They wouldn't go around as Hindus. Or Sikhs. They have plenty of entitlements as a result. "Affirmative action".
Part and parcel of islam is the reliance on captured slaves from eastern and central europe, for everything. Technical experts, language experts, soldiers, builders, artisans...
No one knows how many hundreds of thousands (millions?) of Europeans were captured and sold in the muslim slave markets.
One of Marie Antoinette's cousins was captured in the Mediterranean, sold in the slave market and eventually was mother to a Caliph...
“Lets say you have a population of 100,000...”
2 problems with this:
a. All the other women are having children too, and unless the “blonde” woman is a serious racist and her offspring are, too, they are all intermarrying with dark skinned people.
b. Light skin coloration is a recessive (non-dominant) gene. So the chances of the woman’s offspring being light skinned, short of cloning, are pretty low.
Skin color is not nessicarly dominant or rcessive. Mulattos have skin that is a half way between black and white.
That could be possible, but it does not explain how people on the upper levels of caste heirarchy also tend to have such features. Foreigners and slaves go as outcastes.
Besides, Muslim foreigners and their descendents would be Muslim, not Hindu, or Sikh. There are people with similar features where there has been barely any, if at all, foreign influence. The southern inlands, for example.
All I want to say is that this theory in the main article only “explains” one reason why skin could have gone pale, and the same reason fails when examined in cases in other regions.
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