Exactly. Your brain probably notices someone's facial features before they notice the skin color.
What if skin color had different genetic coding?
- Thread starter KyleB
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Exactly. Your brain probably notices someone's facial features before they notice the skin color.
Then think better of me! I would never assume America would develop similarly if at all with such a PoD.
Piebaldness has something to do with the genes involved in domestication, it's seen in multiple unrelated domesticated animals. Possibly just due to farmers liking to be able to spot their animals quickly. Horses already had different coat colors for camouflage, so it wasn't that big of a jump.
Anyway, since having different levels of sun protection on your skin would always been a bad idea evolutionarily, I don't see how it would ever be plausible that humans could evolve non-uniform skin color. Although I gotta admit, striped people would be really awesome.
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Okay, now this has got me thinking though. I think it's just not possible for humans to have evolved different skins colors with complete dominance, either. If skin color was dependent on only a couple genes, humans would have been unable to migrate above or below a certain latitude in Africa. People would only be able to travel so far north or south before the benefits of living in an uninhabited environment were outweighed by the effects of vitamin D deprivation. The occasional mutants with white skin or whatever would just as unhealthy as albinos in Africa; they'd still be too far south to benefit from their mutant skin color, and people wouldn't migrate without the rest of their tribe anyway.
I've found the whole judging by the color of skin the stupidest divisive issue invented. I can see why religion and ethnicity have conflict (since they could be from two very different cultures), but what does having black and white skin have to do with anything?
"Only whites are really human"
Skin color and such being the easiest thing to point to as a distinguishing factor between "real humans" and "apes", for those who thought that obscenely dumb argument made sense.
I think "only people who look like us are real people" predates pretty much everything.
Selection doesn't work that way, just because someone with vitamin D absorbence has an advantage at higher latitudes, doesn't mean the darker skinned people will just drop down and die. Besides its only seriously a problem in places that are cloudy as well as north - see the skin colour of those from northern asia or north america.
That might work in a nation were all its inhabitants were the same color, but it doesn't fly in a nation that was built not on religion or race, but on an idea. Embracing an idea seems to be a lot easier... but that would be drifting off topic.
And all humans are apes, so that can't work either.
To the OP, that would be really interesting. It kinda already happens. With one white parent and one black parent, the child will be of a mixed skin color. We already know that. But when you have 2 black parents, one with light skin and the other with dark skin, then your original post is actually true. I know perfect examples of this, me being one of them. My mother has very obvious light skin, and my father has dark skin. I came out with darker skin (brown) and look nothing like my mother. I have a best friend with the same parental combination. He came out with light skin and looks nothing like his father. Hey, it happens all the time.
A white Irlish lady I know married a very light skinned guy from the carribean. Their daughter has darker sking than his.
I'd like to point out (in case anyone is unclear) that skin colour is not determined by a single gene (allele-pair).
Rather there is a whole set of genes that add towards the amount of melanin in skin (and to some extent eye and hair colour but that's even more complicated!)
This is why children's skin colour tends to be a blend of their parents.
I often wonder what would have occurred if there was another skin pigment (e.g. green-blue or red-yellow) controlled by another set of genes. Perhaps racialism based on skin-colour would not have taken hold so easily.
[as an aside I'll also point out that " single gene = single phenotypic function" is largely untrue and that "many genes interacting with cell machinery = multiple phenotypes" is more accurate]
Rather there is a whole set of genes that add towards the amount of melanin in skin (and to some extent eye and hair colour but that's even more complicated!)
This is why children's skin colour tends to be a blend of their parents.
I often wonder what would have occurred if there was another skin pigment (e.g. green-blue or red-yellow) controlled by another set of genes. Perhaps racialism based on skin-colour would not have taken hold so easily.
[as an aside I'll also point out that " single gene = single phenotypic function" is largely untrue and that "many genes interacting with cell machinery = multiple phenotypes" is more accurate]