| The beauty of the races |
| Last
night I had a brilliant idea. But as soon as I tried to explain it
to myself in some detail, I told myself: forget about it, if you don't
want to get barbecued. Nevertheless, my idea should be testable
experimentally, and if it proves true, it may turn out as a fact. And
facts should be known and not be ignored, just because we don't
like them. |
| Most
of us like the idea, that all people are equal from the start,
independent of race, gender and colour. Some even claim that there is
no such thing as race, because genetic variability within
"races" is even greater than between them. If you have read some of my
recent essays, you will not be surprised that I disagree. |
| I
disagree with the statement that there are no races, because I have a
non-genetic idea of race. If we define a human being as cultural,
principally relying on communication, symbols, language and tradition,
the molecular details of her/his
genes should be of minor importance. Any baby, equipped with any human
DNA - be it african, indian, french, chinese, papuan, icelandic - will
grow up as an authentic member of any ethnic community it is born into.
|
| Races
are defined culturally, not physically. They are important effective
realities of great influence. It is careless to ignore the existence of
races, merely by pointing out that genetically all humans are
identical. Our genetic variability is not the point in this connection.
"It's the culture, stupid", we could modify an often used phrase. |
| But
actually, that was not the "brilliant idea" I mentioned at the
beginning. My idea had to do with beauty. I wondered, whether some
races consisted of more beautiful people than others. A crazy idea?
Maybe. But if we remember my definition of race (a non-biological one), the idea might be explained quite simply. |
| Beauty
as we know it now, is not just in the eye of the beholder.
Several studies have demonstrated, that we follow rather simple rules
in judging the degree of beauty (Grammer & Thornhill 1994).
Thus, the beauty of a face depends on its symmetry and its averageness.
In that respect, beauty is a fact and not just a private opinion. |
| Of
course, we are attracted to humans not only because of such factual
beauty. Much more important to us are manners and character, humour,
vivacity, fidelity, reliability, and other virtues. But beauty is
important, especially as a first long-distance attractive parameter,
that is able to stir our first interest. |
| Imagine
pleistocene communities of a few dozen human beings making their bare
livings as gatherers and hunters. What might have been the marriage
customs at these early times? If we can generalize from actual
communities living still today on similar standards, the most likely
marriage was between cousins. At any rate, there was not much choice. |
| After
the "neolithic revolution", this situation changed dramatically.
People gathered in larger communities, and all of a sudden there WAS
choice. Every man and every woman was no longer confronted with just a
few well known candidates, but with hundreds or even thousands of
potential mates. |
| And now
beauty comes in. The bigger the choices, the greater the selection
advantage of beauty. My guess would we, that altogether in the long
run, the most beautiful people will have had the greatest reproductive
success. Therefore, I would expect the highest percentage of factually
beautiful people (with more symmetry, more averageness) to be found in
communities that had for many centuries the possibility to select their
mates from a large community. |
| In
our days, we all select from very large communities. But this was not
always possible a few thousand years ago. The beauty of actually living
people is the result of selection in past millenia.
Some people ("races") have been living in large communities since many
millenia, others started this life-style just recently. My guess would
be, that old "races" looking back to a long period of continuous
successes and prosperity (e.g. in the near-east, in China) consist of a
high percentage of beautiful people. |
| And there it is again in my ear: this sound of striking matches lighting my barbecue... |
| MB
(2/10) |
| Grammer K, Thornhill R (1994) Human Facial Attractiveness
and Sexual Selection: The Roles of Averageness and Symmetry. J Comp
Psychol 108:233-242 |
