(urth) Mystery of Ascia

[Gerry Quinn]

From: "Lee Berman" <severiansola at hotmail.com>
>>Gerry Quinn:

> Okay, then I am willing to give it one last go-around. It occurred to me 
> that is the trait
> of discussion were kidney shape or histone frequency or other non-visible 
> items it would be
> a less politically/culturally loaded discussion. Among visible human 
> features, surely none
> is more subject to biased thinking than skin color. But perhaps this can 
> be turned to an
> advantage. So, I'll try an alternate route to understanding.

It was never about skin colour.  [Nor is skin colour especially susceptible 
to biased thinking, in my opinion.  The notion that those who believe in 
racial differences are hypnotised by an obsession with skin colour is a 
popular straw man which has little basis in truth.]

I concede that my use of the term Dollo's Law to cover general principles of 
evolutionary irreversibility was incorrect.  Dollo's Law appears to be used 
only in the context of single complex traits of a certain kind.  However, I 
still think a form of evolutionary irreversibility will apply such that 
there can never be a "natural country type".

Even if all individual traits are recoverable, a particular constellation of 
traits may be statistically unrecoverable.

What I am saying is that there will be numerous possible valid adaptations 
to the conditions pertaining within a region, and the particular adaptations 
selected will depend both on the local conditions, and on the genetic 
history of the evolving group (and  undoubtedly on other things, too).  So, 
my hypothethical Swedish tribe migrating to Africa would develop a unique 
appearance; they would adapt to increased solar radiation, but not in 
exactly the same way as other groups living in the same place have adapted. 
By the same token, a tribe of Yoruba migrating to Sweden would, after 
adaptation, still look noticeably different from the current Swedish 
population.

That doesn't mean that Swedes don't have genes in their population - whether 
omnipresent but suppressed by regulatory genes or simply at low frequency - 
for dark skin, flat noses, curly hair, and any other traits that may be 
adaptive in tropical conditions.  It means that even if Swedish versions of 
such genes are enhanced in the population, they won't be exactly the same 
versions in the same proportions that are enhanced in other populations. 
Maybe there are even some Neanderthal genes that proved useless in Sweden 
but in conjunction with other genes would become frequent in such a 
transplanted population.


> When two golden brown skin Brazilian people people mate, their children's 
> skin color can be in
> a range from "white" to "black". Nothing has been lost. So it will remain, 
> generation after
> generation in Brazil and the world. Discounting a global eugenics 
> movement, killing all pale white
> and dark black babies, our human future involves retained diversity in 
> skin color not homegeneity.

I agree.  My argument does not depend on certain genes being unique to 
certain races.


> The same principle applies to your Neanderthal genes example. San people 
> are found to not have
> Neanderthal genes due to their extreme isolation. But the capacity for 
> that population to absorb
> Neanderthal gene has not been lost.

Neither the San nor the Yoruba peoples have been especially isolated.  Both 
throughout history have had considerable interaction with other populations. 
Yet the Neanderthal genes have not been observed in them.  This is clear 
evidence that occasional  gene transfer does not lead to genetic 
homogeneity.  (I would guess that Neandertal genes probably *are* present in 
some individuals, but have not breen selected for in the populations, so 
remain at low concentrations.)


> Perhaps, after 20 million years, if your isolated Swedish population 
> remained completely isolated, they might
> became a new species.

But it would not take so long for them to become a new race, nor would 
occasional outcrossing prevent it.


> Once this species became so different that there was 0.00% possibility of 
> viable mating
> with Homo sapiens, ONLY then could the rachet effect of Dollo's principle 
> come into play. For Dollo's law to
> apply to your Swedes they would have to cease being human (in which case I 
> think it would be fair to stop calling
> them Swedes. How about Eloi?...Morelocks?).
>
> And the key issue here is that Wolfe/Severian is asserting that on Urth, 
> beings spread across different continents
> and even different planets are still considered human. Thus no Dollo.

But also no natural country (or planetary) types, for reasons to do with 
evolutionary irreversibility, even if not precisely that aspect of it 
observed by Dollo.

Indeed, Wolfe himself gives an example in 5HoC.  The Sainte Croix populace 
display a similarity of features - their "planetary face" - due not to 
conditions of Sainte Croix but to their ancestry in a particular, relatively 
homogenous group of colonists.  [There are of course, "gypsies and criminal 
tribes" who look different, and among whom the descendants of the native 
Annese, or at least those who took on human appearance, are undoubtedly to 
be found.]

- Gerry Quinn