tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post3297825086436497626..comments2024-03-22T15:55:34.030-04:00Comments on Evo and Proud: Trading in fair-skinned women. Did it happen elsewhere?Peter Frosthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04303172060029254340noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-18559543130020208792020-05-15T06:34:35.820-04:002020-05-15T06:34:35.820-04:00Central Asia seems the exception, with the excepti...Central Asia seems the exception, with the exception of Kazakhstan, Y haplogroups of Asian origin are lower than non-Asian ones relative to the amount of proportionate ancestry.<br /><br />Europeans have impregnated women from cultures with polygyny more than their men have European women. This is easy to do if you have colonized the country and have shiploads of horny sailors who will take what they can get. <br /><br />But wouldn't the Imperial Chinese soldiers or invading Mongols/Turks occupying central Asia leave a bigger mark?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-26266084164502265392013-07-25T15:53:08.219-04:002013-07-25T15:53:08.219-04:00Japan is notable for an extraordinarily small gap ...Japan is notable for an extraordinarily small gap in life expectancy between men and women.<br />East Asians in general show little sexual dimorphism. I think that is due to the men's lack of prenatal tesosteronisation. That could also explain a lack of interest in the culture of sexual adventure that is dominant in the West.<br /><br />Do young Western women primarily want sexual adventures nowadays, or are they just in a culture where sex is expected and contraception means there is no longer fear of pregnancy as an excuse?Seannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-28350505067880116022013-07-24T16:55:27.774-04:002013-07-24T16:55:27.774-04:00The Japanese adopted the female tanning fad from t...<i>The Japanese adopted the female tanning fad from the Western world but then dropped it about thirty years ago. I suspect it has more staying power here because (a) traditional notions of feminity are weaker and (b) many if not most young men and women are locked into a culture of sexual 'churning'.</i><br /><br />Japan is also notable for pretty high drops in birthrates and sexual desire among the young.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-76492022679251638882013-07-23T14:48:41.735-04:002013-07-23T14:48:41.735-04:00Anon,
It does. I'll discuss this point in my ...Anon,<br /><br />It does. I'll discuss this point in my next post.<br /><br />Sean,<br /><br />I agree with part of what you say. Polygyny creates a surplus of young unmated males for whom the only way to get a woman is through raiding of other tribes. I'm skeptical, however, about the idea that these men simply moved into Austronesian communities. Such a move would entail a radical behavioral change, i.e., abandonment of polygyny and increased paternal investment.<br /><br />The Japanese adopted the female tanning fad from the Western world but then dropped it about thirty years ago. I suspect it has more staying power here because (a) traditional notions of feminity are weaker and (b) many if not most young men and women are locked into a culture of sexual 'churning'. <br /><br />Anon,<br /><br />What if men were the fairer sex? Would you then be arguing that this makes sense because men need more vitamin D to build their denser bone structure?<br /><br />Anon,<br /><br />We see a similar pattern in other primates but it's displayed on the fur and not the skin, i.e., wherever there is a sexual dimorphism in fur color, the females have the lighter color. Moreover, this lighter color seems to mimic the natal coat of the infant.<br /><br />Blaffer-Hrdy, S. and J. Hartung. 1979. The evolution of sexual dichromatism among primates, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 50:450.<br />Peter Fros_noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-58708095701757186052013-07-23T14:22:43.908-04:002013-07-23T14:22:43.908-04:00Women have lighter skin than men for one very obvi...<i>Women have lighter skin than men for one very obvious reason. Women are responsible for building the baby's bones in the womb. If the mother doesn't get enough Vitamin D through her skin and there's not enough in her diet, there isn't going to be a next generation. Thus women have had greater natural selection for lighter skin. Lighter skinned women were the ones who produced the healthiest offspring.</i><br /><br />One query about this would be whether the same dimorphism is present in chimpanzees, who are mostly covered with hair.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-15369232765052173972013-07-23T01:07:43.474-04:002013-07-23T01:07:43.474-04:00That's not what Systematic review of first-tri...That's not what <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21640968" rel="nofollow">Systematic review of first-trimester vitamin D normative levels and outcomes of pregnancy</a> found. Moreover, a large scale association study of the genetic determinants of vitamin D insufficiency in Caucasians found no links to skin pigmentation, See <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3086761/" rel="nofollow">here</a>.Seannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-4565558099935445342013-07-22T22:42:51.324-04:002013-07-22T22:42:51.324-04:00Women have lighter skin than men for one very obvi...Women have lighter skin than men for one very obvious reason. Women are responsible for building the baby's bones in the womb. If the mother doesn't get enough Vitamin D through her skin and there's not enough in her diet, there isn't going to be a next generation. Thus women have had greater natural selection for lighter skin. Lighter skinned women were the ones who produced the healthiest offspring.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-73960811042284266662013-07-22T16:34:31.340-04:002013-07-22T16:34:31.340-04:00Papuan polygyny would leave some men without wives...Papuan polygyny would leave some men without wives; they would not have land either (in a female farming system) so they would be disruptive. Papuan society could export the problem by encouraging unmarried males to move into areas inhabited by Austronesian communities to acquire their women <i>and</i> land.<br /><br /><br />Women with infant traits, like light skin, are supposed to be particularly desirable. Yet these traits are said to be non-erogenous in adult females, to the extent that women apparently choose a tanned appearance as a way of improving their sexual attractiveness. So light skin is sexual, but at the same time it is not.<br /><br />Infant traits in babies induce maternal feeling (mother love) which is not entirely dissimilar to romantic love. The mental pathway whereby infant traits induce a certain love (the motherly caring type) is already there.<br /><br />Under selection for eliciting care, provisioning and monogamy infant traits could have been adapted to the telenomic function in adult women of inducing <i>romantic</i> love in men.<br /><br />There are examples from history of polygynous non-European men buying European girls as sex slaves and then becoming entranced by them to the extent that the slaves were given unprecedented social position. <br /><br />In the modern WEIRD environment where men are not expected be immediately serious, the romantic love inducing trait of light skin may get in the way of eliciting sufficient male approaches to give females a choice of suitors. Tanning becomes favoured by young women as a superficial cue to men immediately interested in a casual relationship. <br /><br />Gigerenzer:"Paradoxically, in these situations a more noncompensatory environment may lead to examining cues in increasing order of validity [...] With sexual selection, it could often be that particular traits evolve as signals because of the stage of the assessment process in which they can be examined, rather than that the cue informativeness of preexisting signals has favored an order of inspection".<br /><br />I think the light skin cue for romantic love and monogamy, having been initially suppressed, would become more important once a stable relationship was established. A prediction would be that women are far less interested in tanning, or even avoid it, in a serious relationship.Seannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3734925856292601239.post-11890484695558997642013-07-21T17:17:26.386-04:002013-07-21T17:17:26.386-04:00"Some ethologists have argued that light skin..."Some ethologists have argued that light skin is one of several infant traits that the adult female body has adopted to calm aggressive impulses in men and induce caring behavior."<br /><br />This suggests the possibility that it changes over the monthly cycle.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com