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Stereotypical Terran looks

With respect to the near and far future, are we not approaching the point where things like eye color may be deliberately selectable?

I know many people who purchase contact lenses to change their apparent eye color, so I suspect that many would change their biological eye color if that technology were available and affordable.
 
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.

of course. but the original question specifically excluded that dynamic. if it is considered then in the future all females will be tall blond and blue-eyed and all males will be tall dark and handsome. few humans wants anything else if they have a choice. of course given asian preferences for males the male/female will range from 3/1 on up ....

That, and genetic cosmetology.

great concept, I like it.
 
of course. but the original question specifically excluded that dynamic. if it is considered then in the future all females will be tall blond and blue-eyed

And why do you say that?

Of course given asian preferences for males the male/female will range from 3/1 on up ....

As for the current imbalance between males in Asia, that is primarily a cultural phenomenon, and is unsustainable in the long run. The number of females controls the reproduction rate for humans. A steady decline in the number of females leads to a steady decline in the overall birth rate.
 
My original question was not "How likely is it that the various human races would homogenize here on Earth over the next 3000 years". It was (slightly paraphrased) "Assuming the various human races homogenize over the next 3000 years, what would the end result look like?"

If you start by saying "that's not going to happen", then you're not assuming that it has happened, are you?

I'll amend the original question by adding an 'average'. What would the average end result look like? I'm not suggesting that every single member of the Terran population would look like that.


Hans
 
Brown.

2 meters on average, brunette, very symmetrical (hence beautiful), brown to tan skin tones, and dark eyes. That is my average Terran descended human.
 
I imagine it would depend on what portion of the world and what culture the colonists of a given world were drawn from, modified for their new environment.

10 000 years of interactions has not been enough to significantly change how the various populations of Earth look to date, so I can not imagine a mere few thousand more are going to make a much of a difference in the appearance of those we send to space.

I will say that the populations going into space will be drawn from the more technologically advanced groups on Earth and most likely resemble the representatives of those locals. As a side note, any cloning of colonists (If you go that route) will also be drawn from the same groups, and thus also resemble the populations the genes are drawn from. Finally with the ability to do genetic modifications, and thus the ability to adapt colonists to their environments ahead of time, the real question is: "Will the colonists even look Human in the future."
 
I imagine it would depend on what portion of the world and what culture the colonists of a given world were drawn from, modified for their new environment.

the original question specifically excluded this. but I agree. few cultures/ethnicities on earth are physically expansionist. china and india had many opportunities for thousands of years to deploy colonies but they simpy had no interest in doing so and there is little reason to presume they will change in any appreciable way. other asian cultures are indistinguishable in practice. these constitute the bulk of humans and human culture. the american indians are destroyed. from africa there is ... nothing. europeans, in particular north american europeans, are the only realistic candidates for any interest in interstellar expansion.
 
My original question was not "How likely is it that the various human races would homogenize here on Earth over the next 3000 years". It was (slightly paraphrased) "Assuming the various human races homogenize over the next 3000 years, what would the end result look like?
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I'll amend the original question by adding an 'average'. What would the average end result look like? I'm not suggesting that every single member of the Terran population would look like that.

I think I would start by analyzing what we know of the history of Terrans from the Interstellar Wars period down to the 57th Century, according to Traveller Canon, keeping in mind that homogenization tends to occur in areas that are more "cosmopolitan" in nature (e.g. centers of trade/commerce and political centers).

During the Interstellar Wars era, the seat of government is still the United Nations, in New York City. From this I will extrapolate that in this period the center of civilization is an outgrowth of the political realities of present day (21st Century) Earth, and that Europe, and North America are still principal players. Asian power is on the rise, and contributes significantly to the major "players" of the period (being 20% of the world population), with perhaps Latin America close behind (since they seem to have a significant presence among various off-world colonies, and in terms of population dominate most of the Western Hemisphere). During the United Nations/Terran Confederation era presumably these groups would most likely be the ones "mixing", though in their home-regions they would still tend toward their modern 21st Century phenotypes. I would presume most Asians would still look "Asian" (due to simple population size), and Europeans and Western Hemisphere types would increasingly "blend together" regionally. North Americans would have a greater mix of Latin and Asian subtypes (due to migration resulting from the global economy), with increasing intermarriage between African-American and non-African groups, the general result tending to a slightly more brown-complexioned Latin/Afro-Amerasian mix. Europeans would perhaps be more "Euro-Asian/Middle Eastern" in appearance. As Vilani come into the mix, their phenotype will also have an increasing representation as the RoM progresses.

That being said, sometime during the Long Night/Old Earth Union/Third Imperium period, the population and political centers shift to the Southern Hemisphere (cf GT: Rim of Fire and DGP: Solomani & Aslan). The economic center of Terra moves to Johannesburg in southern Africa, and the political center moves to Brazil (Rio de Janeiro). These become the new "cosmopolitan" regions of the Earth during this period, where the bulk of the population dwells.

Likely during this (potentially) long period, significant "Latinization" and "Africanization" of the common Terran phenotype may occur. With southern Africa becoming the economic center of the planet, it is quite likely that many residents of the African continent of the 57th century would be somewhat lighter (or lighter-brown) skinned as people migrate to the African region from across the globe (with a significant number of immigrants originating from the political center of Latin/South America, and perhaps Asia as well) and mix with indigenous peoples of the continent. The DGP material (IIRC) also mentioned that the Asians (particularly Chinese), tended to cultural conservatism and maintained elements of their culture and language to a slightly higher degree than much of the rest of Terra.

So in short, the olive/light-brown complected, dark-eyed, dark-haired phenotype would most likely be fairly common (especially in the centers of population in the southern hemisphere), with a slightly more "Asian" cast in Eastern Asia.
 
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