Stereotypical Terran looks

[rancke]

Sparked by the claim that caucasian looks are overrepresented in Traveller illustrations, I wondered if there are any caucasians (and any of the other subdivisions) left on Terra in the Classic Era?

Assuming for purposes of argument that the people of Terra have been intermarrying back and forth until their genes are now as thoroughly mixed as 3000 years of world-spanning mobility and lack of prejudice could make them, what would most of them look like?

And, please, no argument about how likely or unlikely it is that local racial prejudice would vanish once Terrans met Vilani and the other Human races and got into alife-or-death struggle against the 1st Imperium.


Hans

 

[flykiller]

well, given the mandatory assumption and mandatory deprecation of other possibilities (you work for the cbo don't you?), then they would all look ... probably kinda arabic/asian.

 

[HG_B]

Sparked by the claim that caucasian looks are overrepresented in Traveller illustrations, I wondered if there are any caucasians (and any of the other subdivisions) left on Terra in the Classic Era?

Assuming for purposes of argument that the people of Terra have been intermarrying back and forth until their genes are now as thoroughly mixed as 3000 years of world-spanning mobility and lack of prejudice could make them, what would most of them look like?

And, please, no argument about how likely or unlikely it is that local racial prejudice would vanish once Terrans met Vilani and the other Human races and got into alife-or-death struggle against the 1st Imperium.


Hans

Chaulker came up with a good description in his Warden Diamond book series. Medium tan skin, brown hair, hazel eyes, wavy hair.

 

[flykiller]

Medium tan skin, brown hair, hazel eyes, wavy hair.

I dunno man. by the time you work in all those chinese and indians and indonesians and africans there's not much brown hair or hazel eyes left.

nah. dark brown skin, brown eyes, black hair with maybe some weave.

maybe like this.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3zclimmP9Xc/TeURGwX-XNI/AAAAAAAAChU/p66P5hLGg6A/s1600/malay.jpg

 

[Timerover51]

Given the fact that people tend to group with like, and the settling of colonies from Terra once Jump Drive was developed, I suspect that you would have planets that are primary Caucasian, primary Black, primarily Asian, and maybe primary Asian Indian.

 

[rancke]

Given the fact that people tend to group with like, and the settling of colonies from Terra once Jump Drive was developed, I suspect that you would have planets that are primary Caucasian, primary Black, primarily Asian, and maybe primary Asian Indian.

I think you are right, but as I'm talking about Terra other worlds don't come into it.


Hans

 

[SnichtheWalrus]

Mixture

I am thinking more like Brazil or India with shades of skin, hair.

 

[HG_B]

I dunno man. by the time you work in all those chinese and indians and indonesians and africans there's not much brown hair or hazel eyes left.

If you understood how green eyes were possible in the 1st place you wouldn't say that... Also, the studies on what happened to the native genetic scene in England after the Danelaw was established.

 

[atpollard]

Realistic or not, IMTU I refuse to give up on the possibility of a burly security officer with red hair and a handlebar mustache.

I'll play the designer genetics card if necessary.

 

[HG_B]

Realistic or not, IMTU I refuse to give up on the possibility of a burly security officer with red hair and a handlebar mustache.

I'll play the designer genetics card if necessary.

FTW

 

[aramis]

I think you are right, but as I'm talking about Terra other worlds don't come into it.


Hans

The same phenotypes are present now as were 5000 years ago - somewhat more dispersed, but still present.

The tendency to inter-phenotypic marriage is very low, very western-European, somewhat recent, and constantly at odds with the politics of ethnic nationalities. In other words, likely to see a sociopolitical reversion on the basis of "ethnic identity."

Many bio-ethnic groups are divided by religion; many more such groups are in pairs, on either side of a religious change. Unless religion and marriage is abolished and mating by random lot, we're going to see preservation of ethnicities.

Further, canon shows us that there are ethnic enclaves (AM Solomani) in the Solomani Rim; they require that ethnicities survive, and they will, when returning to earth, be new bio-ethnic groups.

 

[rancke]

The same phenotypes are present now as were 5000 years ago - somewhat more dispersed, but still present.

The tendency to inter-phenotypic marriage is very low, very western-European, somewhat recent, and constantly at odds with the politics of ethnic nationalities. In other words, likely to see a sociopolitical reversion on the basis of "ethnic identity."

Many bio-ethnic groups are divided by religion; many more such groups are in pairs, on either side of a religious change. Unless religion and marriage is abolished and mating by random lot, we're going to see preservation of ethnicities.

Further, canon shows us that there are ethnic enclaves (AM Solomani) in the Solomani Rim; they require that ethnicities survive, and they will, when returning to earth, be new bio-ethnic groups.

If you'd like to start another thread about this digression, I'll be happy to explain why you're wrong.

In this thread I'm going to ignore it as being irrelevant to the original question.


Hans

 

[flykiller]

I dunno man. by the time you work in all those chinese and indians and indonesians and africans there's not much brown hair or hazel eyes left.

If you understood how green eyes were possible in the 1st place you wouldn't say that

ifn' you say so. but I read that in the majority of the world's populations 1) they happen and 2) they're uncommon. hey, in japan they don't even put a person's hair color or eye color on the drivers' licenses.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afghan_Girl

 

[HG_B]

ifn' you say so.

No. Facts say so.

 

[flykiller]

No. Facts say so.

well, I've cited and linked a couple 'o facts, and all you've said is "if you only knew". so. ifn' you say.

 

[aramis]

well, I've cited and linked a couple 'o facts, and all you've said is "if you only knew". so. ifn' you say.

Green eyes are a recessive trait. It would take a concerted effort (and DNA profiling) to remove it. HGB's rather brusque tone is because this is 5th grade elementary school curricular material - you should know it.

@ Hans: I'm neither wrong, nor willing to discuss it further. But board rules preclude me from going into signficantly more details outside the pit, and further, if you want to live in the delusion that people generally ignore the scientifically well established tendency to pair bond with their opposite gender parent's look-alike, so be it. If you want to ignore the evidence of african, southeast asia, eastern europe and the middle east, so be it. I would suggest, however, if you're going to take that approach, you would be far better off to not bother asking such questions.

 

[HG_B]

Aramis. When you mentioned 5th grade I flashed to age 10, Mendel, pea plants, Inheritance, home work creating eye color charts of extended family - bb Bb BB. Amazing how after all that time is can spring to mind so fully.

 

[rancke]

@ Hans: I'm neither wrong, nor willing to discuss it further.

Wil, do you really think that a bald statement is all that's necessary to convince me that you're right? Why do you bother to post this at all? It's not like you're adding one iota to the discussion.

But board rules preclude me from going into signficantly more details outside the pit, and further, if you want to live in the delusion that people generally ignore the scientifically well established tendency to pair bond with their opposite gender parent's look-alike, so be it. If you want to ignore the evidence of african, southeast asia, eastern europe and the middle east, so be it.

That's uncommonly nice of you. Yes, that is what I want, which was why I asked for it in the first post.

I would suggest, however, if you're going to take that approach, you would be far better off to not bother asking such questions.

Whereas I think I'd be far better off if you got off your high horse and stopped being so condescending. No one begged you to get involved in this thread, and most emphatically no one asked you to try to derail it.


Hans

 

[flykiller]

Green eyes are a recessive trait.

in 4/5 of the world's population they seem to have receded a whole bunch. so. given the original question - "what would most of them look like?" - dark brown skin, brown eyes, black hair.

 

[G. Kashkanun Anderson]

in 4/5 of the world's population they seem to have receded a whole bunch. so. given the original question - "what would most of them look like?" - dark brown skin, brown eyes, black hair.

I don't know if you intended to mean it that way, but 'receded' indicates that you think these traits will be disappearing in the future, and I have to contest that. Your implying that green eye color is some ancient trait that is being weeded out by natural selection, and that is just not true. Blue eye color is only a few thousand years old in humans, and I doubt that green eye color is much older than that. If nothing else, cultural pressures like sexual selection for novelty and/or neoteny will keep traits like blue/green eyes (and blonde/red hair, for that matter) prominently displayed in the human gene pool. That, and genetic cosmetology.

That said, of course it's a safe bet that 'most' Terrans in the 57th century will be dark all around (hair/skin/eyes). That's the way it is today, and the way it was 10,000 years ago, and likely the way it will be in the near and far futures.