A year ago, Science published an article showing that the ASPM and microcephalin genes continued to evolve even after the emergence of Homo sapiens, being more prevalent in some populations than in others. This finding raised many eyebrows because the evolution of these genes is closely tied to increase in brain size between lower primates and humans.
Eyebrows have been lowering over the past year. Two independent research efforts have failed to find any relationship between ASPM variants and performance on IQ tests. Today, the general feeling is that it is time to move on to other things. This finding, like so many others, seems to have been just a flash in the pan.
Yet some, like me, think otherwise. Two British researchers, Dan Dediu and D. Robert Ladd have recently argued that the latest ASPM and microcephalin variants are associated with populations that speak non-tonal languages (PNAS "Linguistic tone is related to the population frequency of the adaptive haplogroups of two brain size genes, ASPM and Microcephalin"). Their hypothesis might explain the latest microcephalin variant, which is estimated to have arisen 37,000 years ago. The latest ASPM variant, however, is much younger, being only 5,800 years old (95% confidence interval between 500 and 14,100 years ago). It is probably too young to account for the emergence of non-tonal languages. Neither Indo-European languages nor Uralic languages are tonal, so it is likely that a non-tonal language was ancestral to Proto-Indo-European (8,000 - 6,000 years ago) and Proto-Uralic (10,000 - 7,000 years ago).
What cultural change, then, might have favored the latest ASPM variant? This is the subject of an article I have recently written for Medical Hypotheses:
The spread of alphabetical writing may have favored the latest variant of the ASPM gene
Abstract:
ASPM, a gene that regulates brain growth, has evolved considerably in the primate lineage that leads to humans. It continued to evolve even after the emergence of modern humans, with the latest ASPM variant arising about 6000 years ago somewhere in the Middle East. The new variant then proliferated within and outside this region, reaching higher incidences in the Middle East (37–52%) and in Europe (38–50%) than in East Asia (0–25%). Despite its apparent selective advantage, this variant does not seem to improve cognitive performance, at least not on standard IQ tests. At present, we can only say that it probably assists performance on a task that exhibited the same geographic expansion from a Middle Eastern origin roughly 6000 years ago. The closest match seems to be the invention of alphabeticalwriting, specifically the task of transcribing speech and copying texts into alphabetical script. Though more easily learned than ideographs, alphabetical characters place higher demands on mental processing, especially under premodern conditions (continuous text with little or no punctuation, real-time stenography, absence of automated assistance for publishing or copying, etc.). This task was largely delegated to scribes of various sorts who enjoyed privileged status and probably superior reproductive success. Such individuals may have served as vectors for spreading the new ASPM variant.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mehy.2007.04.039
Monday, August 20, 2007
Monday, August 13, 2007
Peter in the news ...
In its August issue, Allure magazine ran an article by Maghan Daum on the origins of blond hair, including a summary of my work on the subject. I had talked with Maghan earlier over the phone, in addition to sending her the following capsule summary:
"Until 10,000 years ago, tundra covered Europe and the only food was migrating herds. Only a very able hunter could provide for a second wife, so polygamy was rare and women had to compete for mates. Men were also in short supply because they ran a high risk of death while hunting herds over long distances. The resulting sexual selection favored women with bright, novel, or striking hair and eye colors, such as blond hair."
The article was nicely written. I didn't expect to see this kind of stuff in a fashion magazine!
On August 10, I was a guest on The Leonard Lopate Show (WNYC/New York Public Radio (93.9 FM/820 AM) for a weekly series titled "Please Explain." The topic was hair – on the head and on the body, e.g., How did different ethnic groups end up with different colored hair, and different amounts of hair on the body? How is hair linked to skin and eye color? What evolutionary purposes does hair serve? Are some ethnic groups more likely to go bald than others?
How did I do? I suspect that my nervousness was audible, at least during the first half of the show. To be honest, I’m not used to giving quick answers to questions, even when they’re nicely put to me. God knows how I would do in a more confrontational situation!
"Until 10,000 years ago, tundra covered Europe and the only food was migrating herds. Only a very able hunter could provide for a second wife, so polygamy was rare and women had to compete for mates. Men were also in short supply because they ran a high risk of death while hunting herds over long distances. The resulting sexual selection favored women with bright, novel, or striking hair and eye colors, such as blond hair."
The article was nicely written. I didn't expect to see this kind of stuff in a fashion magazine!
************************
On August 10, I was a guest on The Leonard Lopate Show (WNYC/New York Public Radio (93.9 FM/820 AM) for a weekly series titled "Please Explain." The topic was hair – on the head and on the body, e.g., How did different ethnic groups end up with different colored hair, and different amounts of hair on the body? How is hair linked to skin and eye color? What evolutionary purposes does hair serve? Are some ethnic groups more likely to go bald than others?
How did I do? I suspect that my nervousness was audible, at least during the first half of the show. To be honest, I’m not used to giving quick answers to questions, even when they’re nicely put to me. God knows how I would do in a more confrontational situation!
Sunday, July 1, 2007
Skin color and mating preferences among African-Americans
Black College Wire has recently run a piece on skin color and mating preferences among African Americans, including a reference to one of my publications:
A majority of African American students polled at a Midwestern university say lighter complexions are more attractive than darker ones, according to a study conducted by researchers from two Louisiana schools.
The results, taken from a sample of 100 students, indicated that 96 percent of the men preferred a medium to light complexion in women while 70 percent of women found light skin of value in men.
This latest analysis of mating preferences explored a number of probable causes, all of which were rooted in the "colorism" prevalent from slavery through the 1960s, where lighter skin typically meant more privilege. The results were published in 2006 in the journal Race, Gender and Class.
Ashraf Esmail, a sociology and criminal justice professor at Delgado Community College in New Orleans, and Jas M. Sullivan, an assistant professor of political science and African American Studies at Louisiana State University, conducted the study.
According to Sullivan, its purpose was to test whether the color line continues to be a problem for the African American community.
... In the 2005 book "Fair Women, Dark Men: The Forgotten Roots of Color Prejudice," Canadian anthropologist Peter Frost reports that lighter women were preferred in medieval Japan, Aztec Mexico and Moorish Spain, even before there was significant contact with Western ideology.
Sullivan said, "What we sought to uncover in this study is whether or not the preference for lighter skin still exists" in the African American community. "Clearly you could make the connection between the preference for lighter skin and the past, but the deeper question, the question that needs much more observation is the why. Why does the black community self-select? Is this preference a dormant trait, is it something psychological, or is it just that light skin is all we see in the media and that affects our choices? These are the questions that still need answering."
A majority of African American students polled at a Midwestern university say lighter complexions are more attractive than darker ones, according to a study conducted by researchers from two Louisiana schools.
The results, taken from a sample of 100 students, indicated that 96 percent of the men preferred a medium to light complexion in women while 70 percent of women found light skin of value in men.
This latest analysis of mating preferences explored a number of probable causes, all of which were rooted in the "colorism" prevalent from slavery through the 1960s, where lighter skin typically meant more privilege. The results were published in 2006 in the journal Race, Gender and Class.
Ashraf Esmail, a sociology and criminal justice professor at Delgado Community College in New Orleans, and Jas M. Sullivan, an assistant professor of political science and African American Studies at Louisiana State University, conducted the study.
According to Sullivan, its purpose was to test whether the color line continues to be a problem for the African American community.
... In the 2005 book "Fair Women, Dark Men: The Forgotten Roots of Color Prejudice," Canadian anthropologist Peter Frost reports that lighter women were preferred in medieval Japan, Aztec Mexico and Moorish Spain, even before there was significant contact with Western ideology.
Sullivan said, "What we sought to uncover in this study is whether or not the preference for lighter skin still exists" in the African American community. "Clearly you could make the connection between the preference for lighter skin and the past, but the deeper question, the question that needs much more observation is the why. Why does the black community self-select? Is this preference a dormant trait, is it something psychological, or is it just that light skin is all we see in the media and that affects our choices? These are the questions that still need answering."
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Lost in Journalization
Recently, several journalists have contacted me about my article on the diversity of hair and eye color in European populations. They weren't interested in eye color. Nor were they interested in hair color diversity as such (red hair, brown hair, black hair, …). They wanted my opinion on blond hair.
They also wanted a summary that their readers could understand. Something short and sweet.
Well, I thought and thought. This is what I came up with:
Over most of Ice Age Europe, the main food source was wandering herds of reindeer. To exploit this food source, hunters had to cover long distances on foot, thus increasing the male death rate and reducing the ratio of men to women.
Meanwhile, this steppe-tundra environment offered no alternate food source that women could exploit. Women were thus less self-sufficient and only the ablest hunters could provide for a second wife. Not only were there fewer men, but also fewer were polygamous. Women had to compete more intensely for mates and the more successful tended to be those who could "stand out from the crowd." There was thus selection for hair and eye colors that deviated from our species norm of black hair and brown eyes.
One journalist answered: "…the parts of your quote about food and hunting are not relevant. The point is blondes had an edge over their darker-hair counterparts due to the rarity of that color."
I wrote back: "Blondes did not have an edge simply because blonde hair was less common. They had an edge because fewer men were available and because fewer of them were polygamous. When there are enough men to go around, there is no competition for mates and no "edge."
I got a response to the effect that something would be put in about competition … if space permits.
Most people seem to think that sexual selection is about preference. They're wrong. It's about choice. Choice is what you get when preference hits the brick wall of reality. If the numbers of mateable men and women are roughly equal, your preferences will not be fully reflected in your final mate choice. You'll have to compromise. The more favorable the sex ratio, the less trouble you'll have translating your preferences into your final mate choice and, ultimately, into the physical appearance of your descendants.
Conditions were unusually optimal for sexual selection of women among Ice Age Europeans. Men were in a position to translate very subtle preferences into mate choice. In most human populations, these preferences exist only as an unrealized potential.
They also wanted a summary that their readers could understand. Something short and sweet.
Well, I thought and thought. This is what I came up with:
Over most of Ice Age Europe, the main food source was wandering herds of reindeer. To exploit this food source, hunters had to cover long distances on foot, thus increasing the male death rate and reducing the ratio of men to women.
Meanwhile, this steppe-tundra environment offered no alternate food source that women could exploit. Women were thus less self-sufficient and only the ablest hunters could provide for a second wife. Not only were there fewer men, but also fewer were polygamous. Women had to compete more intensely for mates and the more successful tended to be those who could "stand out from the crowd." There was thus selection for hair and eye colors that deviated from our species norm of black hair and brown eyes.
One journalist answered: "…the parts of your quote about food and hunting are not relevant. The point is blondes had an edge over their darker-hair counterparts due to the rarity of that color."
I wrote back: "Blondes did not have an edge simply because blonde hair was less common. They had an edge because fewer men were available and because fewer of them were polygamous. When there are enough men to go around, there is no competition for mates and no "edge."
I got a response to the effect that something would be put in about competition … if space permits.
Most people seem to think that sexual selection is about preference. They're wrong. It's about choice. Choice is what you get when preference hits the brick wall of reality. If the numbers of mateable men and women are roughly equal, your preferences will not be fully reflected in your final mate choice. You'll have to compromise. The more favorable the sex ratio, the less trouble you'll have translating your preferences into your final mate choice and, ultimately, into the physical appearance of your descendants.
Conditions were unusually optimal for sexual selection of women among Ice Age Europeans. Men were in a position to translate very subtle preferences into mate choice. In most human populations, these preferences exist only as an unrealized potential.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
Monkey people of the Amur
In The Flying Tiger. Women Shamans and Storytellers of the Amur, Kira van Deusen mentions that the Tungus peoples of far eastern Siberia often refer to the past existence of "monkey" people in their region. One folk-tale describes how these "monkeys" once abducted a man:
So the older sister took the shaman's drum. She started to sing and then said, "Brother, when you go hunting in the taiga tomorrow, you're going to meet two people. Check out their breasts, and then marry them."
The next day, he woke up and set out to go hunting. He walked and walked and came to a hill, a mountain. There were big rocks. He looked up, and then went on. Suddenly he saw two people sitting there. He approached and at that time the ties on his skis broke.
He came up to those people and felt their breasts and they were women. And they took him along with them.
At home time went by. A day passed and another, and still he was gone. Many days went by. And then the younger sister said, "Sister, you made this happen. Now you bring him back. Those two monkeys in the mountain came and took him away and now they are keeping him in the mountains, sucking his blood. He's become just skin and bones."
… So the younger sister sang and drummed, flying to her spirits, but she couldn't get there. She tried a second time and still didn't have the strength. The third time she gathered all her strength and flew to those rocks. She took her brother and dragged him out of there. He flew, looking thin as a shirt. They got him back and healed him. And that's how the younger sister brought her brother back from those monkeys.
… So that's it about the monkeys. They lived in the rocks and when they rolled back and forth, they called, "Tsyoo, tsyoo, papandasyoo!!" (Deusen 2001:126-128)
Macaques inhabit East Asia and may once have existed as far north as the Amur, but none come close to human size, the males having a head and body length of about 41-70 cm. There is, however, another candidate: the last large non-human primate to inhabit the region—Neanderthal Man.
The Neanderthals inhabited Asia as far east as the Tien Shan mountains and Lake Baikal. Southern Siberia has several Mousterian sites, with some yielding Neanderthal bone fragments. The youngest site is dated to 28,000 BP (Goebel 1999). Recent mtDNA analysis has confirmed the Neanderthal identity of 30,000- to 38,000-year-old human fossils from Uzbekistan and the Atlai region of southern Siberia (Pennisi 2007).
When modern humans began to spread out of Africa, they quickly replaced Neanderthals throughout West Asia as far as the Aegean and Black Sea littoral. This wave of advance is attested by cranial remains of modern humans from Crete dated to 51,000 BP (Facchini and Giusberti 1992) and by early Aurignacian assemblages from Israel, Lebanon, and Bulgaria dated to 45,000-42,000 BP (Mellars 1992; Phillips 1987; Schwarcz et al. 1979; more). A secondary wave of advance seems to have spread out of eastern Africa through southern Arabia and into India c. 50,000 BP (Quintana-Murci et al. 1999).
The rapidity of this two-pronged advance should be no surprise, given the ecological similarities between the Middle East and northeastern Africa. The real "Out of Africa" event occurred further north, where modern humans entered environments with wide seasonal variations and different means of subsistence. On encountering boreal and alpine environments, the wave of advance would have slowed and shifted into a "hurry up and wait" mode, i.e., gradual adaptation in areas of ecological transition, followed by rapid penetration and colonization once sufficient adaptation had been achieved.
Modern humans penetrated the extensive alpine environments of central Asia fairly late, probably after the last ice age. It is also from this vast region that we have reports of large human-like creatures, notably the Yeti (commonly known as the Abominable Snowman). Like the "monkeys" of the Amur, the Yeti was believed to live in high rocky places (Yeti means "rocky place bear" in Tibetan).
Was Yeti an eastern Neanderthal? We may soon have an answer, thanks to the soon-to-be completed map of the Neanderthal genome and hair/skin samples that allegedly come from a Yeti.
References
Deusen, K.V. 2001. The Flying Tiger. Women Shamans and Storytellers of the Amur. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.
Facchini, F., and Giusberti, G. 1992. Homo sapiens sapiens remains from the island of Crete. In Continuity or Replacement. Controversies in Homo Sapiens Evolution. G. Bräuer, and F.H. Smith (Eds.). Rotterdam: A.A. Balkema, pp. 189-208.
Goebel, T. 1999. Pleistocene human colonization of Siberia and peopling of the Americas: An ecological approach. Evolutionary Anthropology 8:208-227.
Mellars, P.A. 1992. Archaeology and the population-dispersal hypothesis of modern human origins in Europe. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B 337:225-234.
Pennisi E. 2007. No sex please, we're Neandertals. Science 316:967. doi:10.1126/science.316.5827.967a
Phillips, J.L. 1987. Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers in the Wadi Feiran, southern Sinai. In The Pleistocene Old World. O. Soffer (Ed.). New York: Plenum Press, pp. 169-182.
Quintana-Murci, L., Semino, O., Bandelt, H.-J., Passarino, G., McElreavey, K., and Santachiara-Benerecetti, A.S. 1999. Genetic evidence of an early exit of Homo Sapiens sapiens from Africa through eastern Africa. Nature Genetics 23:437-441.
Schwarcz, H.P., Blackwell, B., Goldberg, P., and Marks, A.E. 1979. Uranium series dating of travertine from archaeological sites, Nahal Zin, Israel. Nature 277:558-560.
So the older sister took the shaman's drum. She started to sing and then said, "Brother, when you go hunting in the taiga tomorrow, you're going to meet two people. Check out their breasts, and then marry them."
The next day, he woke up and set out to go hunting. He walked and walked and came to a hill, a mountain. There were big rocks. He looked up, and then went on. Suddenly he saw two people sitting there. He approached and at that time the ties on his skis broke.
He came up to those people and felt their breasts and they were women. And they took him along with them.
At home time went by. A day passed and another, and still he was gone. Many days went by. And then the younger sister said, "Sister, you made this happen. Now you bring him back. Those two monkeys in the mountain came and took him away and now they are keeping him in the mountains, sucking his blood. He's become just skin and bones."
… So the younger sister sang and drummed, flying to her spirits, but she couldn't get there. She tried a second time and still didn't have the strength. The third time she gathered all her strength and flew to those rocks. She took her brother and dragged him out of there. He flew, looking thin as a shirt. They got him back and healed him. And that's how the younger sister brought her brother back from those monkeys.
… So that's it about the monkeys. They lived in the rocks and when they rolled back and forth, they called, "Tsyoo, tsyoo, papandasyoo!!" (Deusen 2001:126-128)
Macaques inhabit East Asia and may once have existed as far north as the Amur, but none come close to human size, the males having a head and body length of about 41-70 cm. There is, however, another candidate: the last large non-human primate to inhabit the region—Neanderthal Man.
The Neanderthals inhabited Asia as far east as the Tien Shan mountains and Lake Baikal. Southern Siberia has several Mousterian sites, with some yielding Neanderthal bone fragments. The youngest site is dated to 28,000 BP (Goebel 1999). Recent mtDNA analysis has confirmed the Neanderthal identity of 30,000- to 38,000-year-old human fossils from Uzbekistan and the Atlai region of southern Siberia (Pennisi 2007).
When modern humans began to spread out of Africa, they quickly replaced Neanderthals throughout West Asia as far as the Aegean and Black Sea littoral. This wave of advance is attested by cranial remains of modern humans from Crete dated to 51,000 BP (Facchini and Giusberti 1992) and by early Aurignacian assemblages from Israel, Lebanon, and Bulgaria dated to 45,000-42,000 BP (Mellars 1992; Phillips 1987; Schwarcz et al. 1979; more). A secondary wave of advance seems to have spread out of eastern Africa through southern Arabia and into India c. 50,000 BP (Quintana-Murci et al. 1999).
The rapidity of this two-pronged advance should be no surprise, given the ecological similarities between the Middle East and northeastern Africa. The real "Out of Africa" event occurred further north, where modern humans entered environments with wide seasonal variations and different means of subsistence. On encountering boreal and alpine environments, the wave of advance would have slowed and shifted into a "hurry up and wait" mode, i.e., gradual adaptation in areas of ecological transition, followed by rapid penetration and colonization once sufficient adaptation had been achieved.
Modern humans penetrated the extensive alpine environments of central Asia fairly late, probably after the last ice age. It is also from this vast region that we have reports of large human-like creatures, notably the Yeti (commonly known as the Abominable Snowman). Like the "monkeys" of the Amur, the Yeti was believed to live in high rocky places (Yeti means "rocky place bear" in Tibetan).
Was Yeti an eastern Neanderthal? We may soon have an answer, thanks to the soon-to-be completed map of the Neanderthal genome and hair/skin samples that allegedly come from a Yeti.
References
Deusen, K.V. 2001. The Flying Tiger. Women Shamans and Storytellers of the Amur. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.
Facchini, F., and Giusberti, G. 1992. Homo sapiens sapiens remains from the island of Crete. In Continuity or Replacement. Controversies in Homo Sapiens Evolution. G. Bräuer, and F.H. Smith (Eds.). Rotterdam: A.A. Balkema, pp. 189-208.
Goebel, T. 1999. Pleistocene human colonization of Siberia and peopling of the Americas: An ecological approach. Evolutionary Anthropology 8:208-227.
Mellars, P.A. 1992. Archaeology and the population-dispersal hypothesis of modern human origins in Europe. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B 337:225-234.
Pennisi E. 2007. No sex please, we're Neandertals. Science 316:967. doi:10.1126/science.316.5827.967a
Phillips, J.L. 1987. Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers in the Wadi Feiran, southern Sinai. In The Pleistocene Old World. O. Soffer (Ed.). New York: Plenum Press, pp. 169-182.
Quintana-Murci, L., Semino, O., Bandelt, H.-J., Passarino, G., McElreavey, K., and Santachiara-Benerecetti, A.S. 1999. Genetic evidence of an early exit of Homo Sapiens sapiens from Africa through eastern Africa. Nature Genetics 23:437-441.
Schwarcz, H.P., Blackwell, B., Goldberg, P., and Marks, A.E. 1979. Uranium series dating of travertine from archaeological sites, Nahal Zin, Israel. Nature 277:558-560.
Sunday, April 1, 2007
Parental Selection, Human Hairlessness, and Skin Color
Judith Rich Harris, known for her writings on child psychology (No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality), has just published an article on the evolution of hairlessness and lighter skin color in humans through "parental selection." She begins with the words of a !Kung woman who decides against killing her newborn daughter: “I don't want to kill her. This little girl is too beautiful. See how lovely and fair her skin is?”
Infanticide is common among the !Kung, especially if the youngest child has not been weaned yet, but the decision is never made lightly and arbitrary factors—such as a cute physical appearance—can make the difference between life and death. This is what Harris calls "parental selection." The decision to kill or not to kill often lies at a tipping point where extraneous factors can push the balance one way or the other. Over time, especially given the prevalence of infanticide in most human cultures, such factors may have eventually altered the appearance of children and even adults, making our skin less hairy, smoother, and fairer in color.
There remains, of course, the question as to why less hairy, smoother, and fairer skin is cute. Harris attributes the reason to culture: "Once the notion that “hairlessness is us, hairiness is them” became part of the culture of a group of hominids, then sexual selection plus parental selection could have eliminated hairiness very quickly. Any infant born too hairy would have elicited an “ugh” response; in all likelihood, it would have been killed or abandoned at birth."
Fine. But is the "ugh" response something we learn from our culture? Doesn't it exist in other animals? Animals that don't have culture? And why would culture predispose us to reject hairy, rough, and dark skin? Because such skin is "ugh"?
This sounds like a circular argument. Yes, culture may strengthen the "ugh" response by telling us whether others feel the same way, either directly through conversation or indirectly through songs, tales, and the very words we use—all of which continually remind us what is "ugh" and what isn't. But the response itself needs neither words nor a human mind. It exists in other animals. Birds do it, bees do it.
This differentiation between "ugh!" and "cute!" has been shown in non-human primates, particularly when they judge the physical appearance of infants. Jay (1962:472-473) notes:
The coat color of the newborn infant of all species of Old World monkeys for which information is available is different from that of an adult of the same species. Often this difference is extremely striking, as in the dark-brown fur of the newborn langur. Skin color of the infant langur, baboon, and macaque is pink, in contrast to the almost black skin of the older infant or adult. The infant’s pink face, hands, and feet and its large pink ears are in sharp contrast to its dark brown fur. The natal coat color is present during the first two or three months of life, when the infant most needs protection and nourishment from its mother and older monkeys. … As the infant’s coat changes to white and it becomes more and more independent of its mother, the interest of adult females decreases and they no longer seek out the infant to hold and groom it as often as they did when it was smaller, younger, and brown.
Infant fur is the primary releaser of these positive adult responses, apparently because it covers most of the body surface. Infant skin (in particular its pink color) seems to be a secondary releaser (Jay 1962:472-473; Alley 1980:418-419). As juvenile dependence progressively lengthened in ancestral humans, infant skin might have proved more effective than infant fur in stimulating adult care after weaning. For whatever reason, if skin had edged out fur in the child's struggle for adult attention, there would have been selection to project this visual cue more effectively, i.e., by increasing the hair-free portion of the body surface. This in turn would have increased its visual importance. Result: runaway selection for more and more naked skin.
Parental and sexual selection might then have extended the denuding process to adults. Or maybe not. Any selection for infants and juveniles with hair-free skin would inevitably have spilled over onto older age groups … unless there was selection for adults with hairy skin. Perhaps no such balancing selection existed. Or perhaps it wasn't strong enough.
On this subject, Judith Harris raises an interesting point: human hairlessness appeared very late in human evolution. Neanderthals seem to have adapted very well to subzero climates without the benefit of tailored clothing. Both needles and the human body louse (which lives in clothing) seem to date back no earlier than 50,000 years ago, i.e. the transition from Neanderthals to modern humans. Conclusion: body fur must have persisted until this transition, as probably did many other ape-like traits. Even the Neanderthal brain was much more ape than human. It was big, but only because it had to stockpile so many problem-specific and situation-specific algorithms. The quantum leap to general intelligence had not been made. Not yet.
If you could meet a Neanderthal face to face, you wouldn't think it was human. It would look like a big ape. Nor would its behavior change your initial impression.
This conclusion may seem startling. As Mrs. Harris points out: "Paintings and exhibits on human evolution often feature a line-up of increasingly humanlike creatures, starting from some apish ancestor, progressing through Homo habilis and Homo erectus, and ending up triumphantly at Homo sapiens." In fact, human evolution was not a straight line running from early hominids to modern humans. It was more like a logarithmic curve, with most of the big changes taking place recently … in the past 200,000 years. Our hominid ancestors were not man-apes. They were simply apes who stood a bit more erect and handled tools a bit better than do today's apes. Only hindsight makes us see their evolutionary potential.
This leads to an even more startling conclusion: the appearance of Homo sapiens was not a culmination of human evolution. It was a beginning. Such a view has recently gained support from a presentation by Gregory Cochran and John Hawks to the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. The two authors argue that "the origin of modern humans was a minor event compared to more recent evolutionary changes." The pace of evolution actually seems to have accelerated after the transition to modern humans.
References
Alley, T.R. (1980). “Infantile colouration as an elicitor of caretaking behaviour in Old World primates,” Primates 21:416-429.
Harris, J. R. (2006). Parental selection: A third selection process in the evolution of human hairlessness and skin color. Medical Hypotheses, 66: 1053-1059.
Harris, J. R. (2006). No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality. W.W. Norton, ISBN 978-0-393-05948-9
Jay, P.C. (1962). “Aspects of maternal behavior among langurs,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 102:468-476.
Infanticide is common among the !Kung, especially if the youngest child has not been weaned yet, but the decision is never made lightly and arbitrary factors—such as a cute physical appearance—can make the difference between life and death. This is what Harris calls "parental selection." The decision to kill or not to kill often lies at a tipping point where extraneous factors can push the balance one way or the other. Over time, especially given the prevalence of infanticide in most human cultures, such factors may have eventually altered the appearance of children and even adults, making our skin less hairy, smoother, and fairer in color.
There remains, of course, the question as to why less hairy, smoother, and fairer skin is cute. Harris attributes the reason to culture: "Once the notion that “hairlessness is us, hairiness is them” became part of the culture of a group of hominids, then sexual selection plus parental selection could have eliminated hairiness very quickly. Any infant born too hairy would have elicited an “ugh” response; in all likelihood, it would have been killed or abandoned at birth."
Fine. But is the "ugh" response something we learn from our culture? Doesn't it exist in other animals? Animals that don't have culture? And why would culture predispose us to reject hairy, rough, and dark skin? Because such skin is "ugh"?
This sounds like a circular argument. Yes, culture may strengthen the "ugh" response by telling us whether others feel the same way, either directly through conversation or indirectly through songs, tales, and the very words we use—all of which continually remind us what is "ugh" and what isn't. But the response itself needs neither words nor a human mind. It exists in other animals. Birds do it, bees do it.
This differentiation between "ugh!" and "cute!" has been shown in non-human primates, particularly when they judge the physical appearance of infants. Jay (1962:472-473) notes:
The coat color of the newborn infant of all species of Old World monkeys for which information is available is different from that of an adult of the same species. Often this difference is extremely striking, as in the dark-brown fur of the newborn langur. Skin color of the infant langur, baboon, and macaque is pink, in contrast to the almost black skin of the older infant or adult. The infant’s pink face, hands, and feet and its large pink ears are in sharp contrast to its dark brown fur. The natal coat color is present during the first two or three months of life, when the infant most needs protection and nourishment from its mother and older monkeys. … As the infant’s coat changes to white and it becomes more and more independent of its mother, the interest of adult females decreases and they no longer seek out the infant to hold and groom it as often as they did when it was smaller, younger, and brown.
Infant fur is the primary releaser of these positive adult responses, apparently because it covers most of the body surface. Infant skin (in particular its pink color) seems to be a secondary releaser (Jay 1962:472-473; Alley 1980:418-419). As juvenile dependence progressively lengthened in ancestral humans, infant skin might have proved more effective than infant fur in stimulating adult care after weaning. For whatever reason, if skin had edged out fur in the child's struggle for adult attention, there would have been selection to project this visual cue more effectively, i.e., by increasing the hair-free portion of the body surface. This in turn would have increased its visual importance. Result: runaway selection for more and more naked skin.
Parental and sexual selection might then have extended the denuding process to adults. Or maybe not. Any selection for infants and juveniles with hair-free skin would inevitably have spilled over onto older age groups … unless there was selection for adults with hairy skin. Perhaps no such balancing selection existed. Or perhaps it wasn't strong enough.
On this subject, Judith Harris raises an interesting point: human hairlessness appeared very late in human evolution. Neanderthals seem to have adapted very well to subzero climates without the benefit of tailored clothing. Both needles and the human body louse (which lives in clothing) seem to date back no earlier than 50,000 years ago, i.e. the transition from Neanderthals to modern humans. Conclusion: body fur must have persisted until this transition, as probably did many other ape-like traits. Even the Neanderthal brain was much more ape than human. It was big, but only because it had to stockpile so many problem-specific and situation-specific algorithms. The quantum leap to general intelligence had not been made. Not yet.
If you could meet a Neanderthal face to face, you wouldn't think it was human. It would look like a big ape. Nor would its behavior change your initial impression.
This conclusion may seem startling. As Mrs. Harris points out: "Paintings and exhibits on human evolution often feature a line-up of increasingly humanlike creatures, starting from some apish ancestor, progressing through Homo habilis and Homo erectus, and ending up triumphantly at Homo sapiens." In fact, human evolution was not a straight line running from early hominids to modern humans. It was more like a logarithmic curve, with most of the big changes taking place recently … in the past 200,000 years. Our hominid ancestors were not man-apes. They were simply apes who stood a bit more erect and handled tools a bit better than do today's apes. Only hindsight makes us see their evolutionary potential.
This leads to an even more startling conclusion: the appearance of Homo sapiens was not a culmination of human evolution. It was a beginning. Such a view has recently gained support from a presentation by Gregory Cochran and John Hawks to the American Association of Physical Anthropologists. The two authors argue that "the origin of modern humans was a minor event compared to more recent evolutionary changes." The pace of evolution actually seems to have accelerated after the transition to modern humans.
References
Alley, T.R. (1980). “Infantile colouration as an elicitor of caretaking behaviour in Old World primates,” Primates 21:416-429.
Harris, J. R. (2006). Parental selection: A third selection process in the evolution of human hairlessness and skin color. Medical Hypotheses, 66: 1053-1059.
Harris, J. R. (2006). No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality. W.W. Norton, ISBN 978-0-393-05948-9
Jay, P.C. (1962). “Aspects of maternal behavior among langurs,” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 102:468-476.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
"But what about suntanning?"
Cross-culturally, men prefer women who are lighter-skinned than average (Symons 1995; van den Berghe and Frost 1986). "Milk-white" complexions seem to be preferred in traditional European and Asian societies; "yellow" or "red" complexions, in sub-Saharan Africa.
But this cross-cultural trend has one exception. A big one. In modern Europe and North America, there has emerged a sustained preference for women with tanned skin. An English study has recently found that the degree of tanning significantly correlates with the perceived attractiveness of young women (Smith et al. 2007).
We know how the tanning fad started. Around the turn of the 20th century, the medical community became interested in the bactericidal action of ultraviolet light, especially for treatment of lupus vulgaris (tuberculosis of the skin). This "heliotherapy" earned Niels Finsen the 1903 Nobel Prize for Medicine and was soon used to treat pulmonary tuberculosis (even though UV light cannot reach the infected lung tissues). It increasingly became seen as a panacea, particularly after the discovery that UV light also helps the body synthesize vitamin D. By the mid-1920s, tanned skin had become a badge of health for large numbers of Germans, Britons, and North Americans who would tan themselves outdoors or under sunlamps. The fad snowballed. By the end of the decade, it had become so popular that the fashion designer Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel incorporated the tan into her new look for modern women (Frost 2005:48-53)
Since the 1980s, the dominant medical view has been that sunbathing does more harm than good. Yet, despite awareness of the health dangers, tans are still popular among women in Europe and North America. Such persistence is all the more puzzling because this fad has not lasted elsewhere.
In Japan, there was a time when tanned skin in summer was considered highly desirable; in the late 1960s to the mid 1970s, as soon as the fashion for tanned skin among western women came in, with images of women enjoying sunbathing on a beach in trendy places such as Nice, many Japanese women became keen on getting a tan in summer … but by the late 1990s Japanese women no longer unreflectively followed the western fashion. Tanned skin is still very popular and much admired among European people, whereas now very few Japanese women want to get a tan in summer (Ashikari 2005: 85).
When asked why they stay light-skinned, Japanese women say they wish to look 'pretty' (kirei) and 'proper' (chantoshita). They deny any desire to look European and affirm they are adhering to a traditional aesthetic (Ashikari 2005: 85). Indeed, Japan seems to be returning, after a brief hiatus, to a gender norm that existed long before its first contacts with Westerners (Ashikari 2005; Wagatsuma 1967).
In Japan, the tanned look came and went. In Europe and North America, it has proven much more tenacious. Are we looking at something that is more than just a fad? When modern European and North American women deliberately darken their skin, are they tapping into an alternate mode of sex appeal that is repressed in more traditional societies?
Before tans went mainstream
Before female tanning became fashionable, we find instances in literature and oral tradition where darker-skinned European women are perceived as sexually attractive, but almost always in a context of brief, stormy relationships. Victorian-era novels, for example, portray the 'dark lady' as an 'impetuous,' 'ardent,' and 'passionate' object of short-lived romances (Carpenter 1936:254). This theme goes back at least to the Middle Ages and appears in the literary traditions of many European languages: the nut-brown maid in English, the braunes or schwarzbraunes Mädel in German, the fille brune in French, and the barna kislány in Hungarian. Vasvari (1999) discusses the 'dark girl' motif in German and Hungarian folk ballads:
… dark girls … are inevitably imagined as sexually more available than their fairer sisters, with whom they are implicitly or explicitly contrasted. In addition, the change of a girl's complexion, such as being burned by the sun, is to be understood as symbolic of her having crossed a sexual threshold without the benefit of marriage. Doris Massny (1937) characterized the dark girl in German tradition as verführungsbereit (ready to be seduced). In many poems the dark girl can be a real sexual tease and, similarly, young men who approach her can be free with their language in telling her what they are after.
In Hungarian tradition we also frequently see the preference for the more available dark girl over the fair one, as in the following example, where a young man at first has difficulty making up his mind about what he desires. … "The hut is ablaze, the reed crackles,/ how I love the dark one! Once I loved a blond girl,/ didn't care the least for the dark one./ Now I long for the blonde, / just like I long for grapes;/ but I long even more for a dark one,/ like I long for a tart cider apple." … "The reed by the fence is ablaze,/ I love only the dark one;/ softly shines the moon,/ dark is certainly more beautiful than blonde" … In a Hungarian example, the young man roundly rejects fair girls but tells us in rather vulgar terms that he plans to sample as many dark girls as he can.
These 'dark girls' are, lest we forget, German and Hungarian women. They are not exotic others. Nor is the difference in skin tone due to differences in social class. The fair girls of these ballads, no less than their dark counterparts, come from the peasantry, as do the male lovers. Dark and fair are simply opposing ends of the normal range of European pigmentation.
To be sure, Vasvari (1999) sees an echo of attitudes to the Moors in Spain or the Gypsies in eastern Europe. It is likelier, however, that we are dealing with an in situ development that predates the movement of either group into Europe. This alternate preference for darker women has been documented by Siepe (2004:160-164, 185-190) for earlier periods of European history, with apparently the same characteristics that we see above.
Indeed, there is good evidence for the echo being in the other direction, i.e., ethnic/racial attitudes to skin color appropriated earlier attitudes based on gender. The saying "The darker the berry, the sweeter the juice" is today associated with African-American women, yet the same sentiments appear in a Venetian folk-song where a young man debates the merits of lighter versus darker Italian women: "My lady mother always told me that I should never be enamoured of white roses … she told me that I should love the little mulberries, which are sweeter than honey" (Martinengo-Cesaresco 1886: 105-106). This motif appears even earlier in an ancient Roman graffito that refers to a dark woman called Nigra: "Whoever loves Nigra burns as upon black coals. When I see Nigra I could easily eat blackberries" (Snowden 1970: 328). In general, if we look at the metaphors that now describe white skin as a sign of European identity (snow-white, lily-white, milk-white), we find that they originally described white skin as a sign of female identity (Curry 1916:80-84).
What is "preference"? Parameters of a mental algorithm
So far I have discussed this alternate preference for darker women as an exception to the cross-cultural preference for lighter-skinned women. The fact that it is an exception—and a huge one at that in contemporary societies—seems to preclude an innate basis for the cross-cultural preference. Yet plasticity in the expression of a preference does not necessarily imply plasticity in the mind's initial response to different stimuli. The same mental response—in other words, a "feeling"—may be appreciated in different ways in different contexts. "Preference" is a product of interaction between an individual's inner feelings and a cultural environment that determines how these feelings are interpreted and expressed.
If this mental processing is culturally determined in its final stages, why might it be hardwired further upstream? One reason is that our adaptive landscape has long been characterized by a difference in skin tone between men and women. Over time, natural selection tends to hardwire responses to any stimuli that appear regularly with the same characteristics, in order to eliminate the costs of learning a response that will almost certainly be needed.
Indeed, a real sex difference mirrors the cross-cultural preference for lighter-skinned women: in all populations, women are paler and less ruddy than men are, their skin having less melanin and less superficial blood circulation (Frost 2005: 54-63; van den Berghe and Frost 1986). The relationship between the two species-wide trends is still unclear. Is fair skin preferred because it is seen as normal for women? Or has this preference itself gradually lightened women's skin via sexual selection?
A third possibility, and one that I favor, is that of a coevolution where both the signal and the receiver have assumed new functions in a new adaptive context. In ancestral humans, lighter skin seems to have been one of several infant-specific stimuli (smaller nose and chin, smoother skin, higher pitch of voice) that enabled young children to arouse feelings of care and inhibit aggression in nearby adults. As the period of juvenile dependence lengthened, selection pressures increased on women to intensify male provisioning and make the sexual bond last longer. Since this outcome closely matches the one triggered by the 'infant schema,' natural selection favored women who presented a more childlike appearance, including a lighter complexion (Frost 2005: 64-66; Guthrie 1970).
This kind of infantile mimicry is reported for other primates, specifically for coat color. The "natal coat" is usually shed after weaning but may in some species persist into adulthood, almost always in the female sex. Of the eight primate species where adult males and females differ in coat color, seven involve the female keeping the infant's lighter coloration. Interestingly, 63% of the dichromatic species are monogamous, versus only 18% of all primate species (Blaffer-Hrdy and Hartung 1979). Retaining the natal color may help the female cope with the riskier social environment of monogamy, specifically the increased risks of male aggression (because cohabitation is longer and more continuous) and insufficient provisioning.
Skin, and not fur, largely covers our body surface. Human skin tone may thus have acquired the signaling function that coat color possesses in our primate relatives. In fact, although infant coloration is usually limited to the natal coat in other primates, it also extends to the skin of langurs, baboons, and macaques, whose epidermis is pink in newborns and almost black in adults (Jay 1962). Infant coloration apparently does more than help parents find wayward offspring. As it disappears with age, infant primates do not attract the same interest, are less often sought out and held by adult females, and no longer arouse defensive reactions from adults when humans approach (Alley 1980; Booth 1962; Jay 1962; Sternglanz et al. 1977).
Conclusion
If lighter skin has been favored in the human female because it inhibits aggressive impulses in her male partner, could it also be inhibiting certain impulsive components of sexual desire? And wouldn't tanning release this inhibition? This hypothesis is consistent with a finding that sunbathers are more action-oriented and have a more positive attitude to risk-taking; they also associate tans with a more adventurous approach to life (Keesling and Friedman 1987).
Such "hyperarousal" may also explain why the tanned look has remained so popular among modern European and North American women since the 1920s. But why was this look so marginal previously? And why has it not caught on elsewhere in the world?
In earlier generations, the preferred model of sexual behavior was one of stable, fecund, and long-term relationships. Other forms of erotic expression did exist and are attested in the literature, but at a lower level of prevalence than would be expected if allowed free and unfettered expression. They were discouraged by social custom because, in one way or another, they were less optimal in producing stable families.
One of these alternate eroticisms was the practice of deliberately darkening women's skin. Rightly or wrongly, the preferred model of sexual behavior encouraged women to keep their skin as fair as possible. This "meme" has proven highly successful in most human societies, and, like so many other memes, has succeeded without its practitioners fully knowing why. During my fieldwork in a rural community of eastern Québec, I asked retired farmwomen why they took such great pains to keep their skin untanned. Many had no idea at all. One simply said: "It was important. My sisters were the same. I don't know the reason. They never told us" (Frost 2005: 60-61).
With the 20th century, there developed in Europe and North America a new sexual environment that presents marriage and family formation as one of many possible life choices, thereby allowing alternate eroticisms to compete with the mainstream ideal on more equal terms, particularly among young single adults who tend to set fashion trends. For many people today, the aim is no longer to maximize reproductive potential. Rather, it is to maximize erotic stimulation. It is this new sexual environment that may have allowed the tanned look to make its breakthrough into the mainstream of women's fashion.
References
Alley, T.R. 1980. Infantile colouration as an elicitor of caretaking behaviour in Old World primates, Primates 21:416-429.
Ashikari, M. 2005. Cultivating Japanese whiteness. The 'whitening' cosmetics boom and the Japanese identity. Journal of Material Culture 10:73-91.
http://mcu.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/10/1/73
Blaffer-Hrdy, S. and J. Hartung. 1979. The evolution of sexual dichromatism among primates, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 50:450.
Booth, C. 1962. "Some observations on behavior of Cercopithecus monkeys", Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 102:477-487.
Carpenter, F.I. 1936. Puritans preferred blondes. New England Quarterly 9:253-272.
Curry, W.C. 1916. The Middle English Ideal of Personal Beauty, as found in the Metrical Romances, Chronicles, and Legends of the XIII, XIV, and XV Centuries. Baltimore: J.H. Furst Co.
Frost, P. 2005. Fair Women, Dark Men. The Forgotten Roots of Color Prejudice. Cybereditions: Christchurch (New Zealand).
Guthrie, R.D. 1970. Evolution of human threat display organs, Evolutionary Biology 4:257-302.
Jay, P.C. 1962. Aspects of maternal behavior among langurs, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 102:468-476.
Keesling, B. and H.S. Friedman. 1987. Psychosocial factors in sunbathing and sunscreen use. Health Psychology 6:477-493.
Martinengo-Cesaresco, E. 1886. Essays in the study of folk-songs. London: George Redway.
Massny, Doris. 1937. Die Formel 'das braune Mägdelein' im alten deutschen Volkslied." Niederdeutsche Zeitschrift für Volkskunde l5: 26-65.
Siepe, F. 2004. Farben des Eros. Marburg: Kline-Verlag.
Smith, K.L., P.L. Cornelissen, and M.J. Tovée. 2007. Color 3D bodies and judgments of human female attractiveness. Evolution and Human Behavior 28:48-54.
Snowden Jr., F.M. 1970. Blacks in Antiquity. Ethiopians in the Greco-Roman Experience. Cambridge (Mass.): Belknap Press.
Sternglanz S.H., J.L. Gray, and M. Murakami 1977. Adult preferences for infantile facial features: an ethological approach, Animal Behavior 25:108-115.
Symons, D. 1995. Beauty is in the adaptations of the beholder: The evolutionary psychology of human female sexual attractiveness, in P.R. Abramson and S.D. Pinkerton (Eds.), Sexual Nature. Sexual Culture. (pp. 80-118). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Van den Berghe, P.L., and P. Frost. 1986. Skin color preference, sexual dimorphism and sexual selection: A case of gene-culture co-evolution? Ethnic and Racial Studies, 9:87-113.
Vasvari, L.O. 1999. A Comparative Approach to European Folk Poetry and the Erotic Wedding Motif. CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture (December)
http://clcwebjournal.lib.purdue.edu/clcweb99-4/vasvari99.html
Wagatsuma, H. 1967. The social perception of skin color in Japan, Daedalus 96:407-443.
But this cross-cultural trend has one exception. A big one. In modern Europe and North America, there has emerged a sustained preference for women with tanned skin. An English study has recently found that the degree of tanning significantly correlates with the perceived attractiveness of young women (Smith et al. 2007).
We know how the tanning fad started. Around the turn of the 20th century, the medical community became interested in the bactericidal action of ultraviolet light, especially for treatment of lupus vulgaris (tuberculosis of the skin). This "heliotherapy" earned Niels Finsen the 1903 Nobel Prize for Medicine and was soon used to treat pulmonary tuberculosis (even though UV light cannot reach the infected lung tissues). It increasingly became seen as a panacea, particularly after the discovery that UV light also helps the body synthesize vitamin D. By the mid-1920s, tanned skin had become a badge of health for large numbers of Germans, Britons, and North Americans who would tan themselves outdoors or under sunlamps. The fad snowballed. By the end of the decade, it had become so popular that the fashion designer Gabrielle (Coco) Chanel incorporated the tan into her new look for modern women (Frost 2005:48-53)
Since the 1980s, the dominant medical view has been that sunbathing does more harm than good. Yet, despite awareness of the health dangers, tans are still popular among women in Europe and North America. Such persistence is all the more puzzling because this fad has not lasted elsewhere.
In Japan, there was a time when tanned skin in summer was considered highly desirable; in the late 1960s to the mid 1970s, as soon as the fashion for tanned skin among western women came in, with images of women enjoying sunbathing on a beach in trendy places such as Nice, many Japanese women became keen on getting a tan in summer … but by the late 1990s Japanese women no longer unreflectively followed the western fashion. Tanned skin is still very popular and much admired among European people, whereas now very few Japanese women want to get a tan in summer (Ashikari 2005: 85).
When asked why they stay light-skinned, Japanese women say they wish to look 'pretty' (kirei) and 'proper' (chantoshita). They deny any desire to look European and affirm they are adhering to a traditional aesthetic (Ashikari 2005: 85). Indeed, Japan seems to be returning, after a brief hiatus, to a gender norm that existed long before its first contacts with Westerners (Ashikari 2005; Wagatsuma 1967).
In Japan, the tanned look came and went. In Europe and North America, it has proven much more tenacious. Are we looking at something that is more than just a fad? When modern European and North American women deliberately darken their skin, are they tapping into an alternate mode of sex appeal that is repressed in more traditional societies?
Before tans went mainstream
Before female tanning became fashionable, we find instances in literature and oral tradition where darker-skinned European women are perceived as sexually attractive, but almost always in a context of brief, stormy relationships. Victorian-era novels, for example, portray the 'dark lady' as an 'impetuous,' 'ardent,' and 'passionate' object of short-lived romances (Carpenter 1936:254). This theme goes back at least to the Middle Ages and appears in the literary traditions of many European languages: the nut-brown maid in English, the braunes or schwarzbraunes Mädel in German, the fille brune in French, and the barna kislány in Hungarian. Vasvari (1999) discusses the 'dark girl' motif in German and Hungarian folk ballads:
… dark girls … are inevitably imagined as sexually more available than their fairer sisters, with whom they are implicitly or explicitly contrasted. In addition, the change of a girl's complexion, such as being burned by the sun, is to be understood as symbolic of her having crossed a sexual threshold without the benefit of marriage. Doris Massny (1937) characterized the dark girl in German tradition as verführungsbereit (ready to be seduced). In many poems the dark girl can be a real sexual tease and, similarly, young men who approach her can be free with their language in telling her what they are after.
In Hungarian tradition we also frequently see the preference for the more available dark girl over the fair one, as in the following example, where a young man at first has difficulty making up his mind about what he desires. … "The hut is ablaze, the reed crackles,/ how I love the dark one! Once I loved a blond girl,/ didn't care the least for the dark one./ Now I long for the blonde, / just like I long for grapes;/ but I long even more for a dark one,/ like I long for a tart cider apple." … "The reed by the fence is ablaze,/ I love only the dark one;/ softly shines the moon,/ dark is certainly more beautiful than blonde" … In a Hungarian example, the young man roundly rejects fair girls but tells us in rather vulgar terms that he plans to sample as many dark girls as he can.
These 'dark girls' are, lest we forget, German and Hungarian women. They are not exotic others. Nor is the difference in skin tone due to differences in social class. The fair girls of these ballads, no less than their dark counterparts, come from the peasantry, as do the male lovers. Dark and fair are simply opposing ends of the normal range of European pigmentation.
To be sure, Vasvari (1999) sees an echo of attitudes to the Moors in Spain or the Gypsies in eastern Europe. It is likelier, however, that we are dealing with an in situ development that predates the movement of either group into Europe. This alternate preference for darker women has been documented by Siepe (2004:160-164, 185-190) for earlier periods of European history, with apparently the same characteristics that we see above.
Indeed, there is good evidence for the echo being in the other direction, i.e., ethnic/racial attitudes to skin color appropriated earlier attitudes based on gender. The saying "The darker the berry, the sweeter the juice" is today associated with African-American women, yet the same sentiments appear in a Venetian folk-song where a young man debates the merits of lighter versus darker Italian women: "My lady mother always told me that I should never be enamoured of white roses … she told me that I should love the little mulberries, which are sweeter than honey" (Martinengo-Cesaresco 1886: 105-106). This motif appears even earlier in an ancient Roman graffito that refers to a dark woman called Nigra: "Whoever loves Nigra burns as upon black coals. When I see Nigra I could easily eat blackberries" (Snowden 1970: 328). In general, if we look at the metaphors that now describe white skin as a sign of European identity (snow-white, lily-white, milk-white), we find that they originally described white skin as a sign of female identity (Curry 1916:80-84).
What is "preference"? Parameters of a mental algorithm
So far I have discussed this alternate preference for darker women as an exception to the cross-cultural preference for lighter-skinned women. The fact that it is an exception—and a huge one at that in contemporary societies—seems to preclude an innate basis for the cross-cultural preference. Yet plasticity in the expression of a preference does not necessarily imply plasticity in the mind's initial response to different stimuli. The same mental response—in other words, a "feeling"—may be appreciated in different ways in different contexts. "Preference" is a product of interaction between an individual's inner feelings and a cultural environment that determines how these feelings are interpreted and expressed.
If this mental processing is culturally determined in its final stages, why might it be hardwired further upstream? One reason is that our adaptive landscape has long been characterized by a difference in skin tone between men and women. Over time, natural selection tends to hardwire responses to any stimuli that appear regularly with the same characteristics, in order to eliminate the costs of learning a response that will almost certainly be needed.
Indeed, a real sex difference mirrors the cross-cultural preference for lighter-skinned women: in all populations, women are paler and less ruddy than men are, their skin having less melanin and less superficial blood circulation (Frost 2005: 54-63; van den Berghe and Frost 1986). The relationship between the two species-wide trends is still unclear. Is fair skin preferred because it is seen as normal for women? Or has this preference itself gradually lightened women's skin via sexual selection?
A third possibility, and one that I favor, is that of a coevolution where both the signal and the receiver have assumed new functions in a new adaptive context. In ancestral humans, lighter skin seems to have been one of several infant-specific stimuli (smaller nose and chin, smoother skin, higher pitch of voice) that enabled young children to arouse feelings of care and inhibit aggression in nearby adults. As the period of juvenile dependence lengthened, selection pressures increased on women to intensify male provisioning and make the sexual bond last longer. Since this outcome closely matches the one triggered by the 'infant schema,' natural selection favored women who presented a more childlike appearance, including a lighter complexion (Frost 2005: 64-66; Guthrie 1970).
This kind of infantile mimicry is reported for other primates, specifically for coat color. The "natal coat" is usually shed after weaning but may in some species persist into adulthood, almost always in the female sex. Of the eight primate species where adult males and females differ in coat color, seven involve the female keeping the infant's lighter coloration. Interestingly, 63% of the dichromatic species are monogamous, versus only 18% of all primate species (Blaffer-Hrdy and Hartung 1979). Retaining the natal color may help the female cope with the riskier social environment of monogamy, specifically the increased risks of male aggression (because cohabitation is longer and more continuous) and insufficient provisioning.
Skin, and not fur, largely covers our body surface. Human skin tone may thus have acquired the signaling function that coat color possesses in our primate relatives. In fact, although infant coloration is usually limited to the natal coat in other primates, it also extends to the skin of langurs, baboons, and macaques, whose epidermis is pink in newborns and almost black in adults (Jay 1962). Infant coloration apparently does more than help parents find wayward offspring. As it disappears with age, infant primates do not attract the same interest, are less often sought out and held by adult females, and no longer arouse defensive reactions from adults when humans approach (Alley 1980; Booth 1962; Jay 1962; Sternglanz et al. 1977).
Conclusion
If lighter skin has been favored in the human female because it inhibits aggressive impulses in her male partner, could it also be inhibiting certain impulsive components of sexual desire? And wouldn't tanning release this inhibition? This hypothesis is consistent with a finding that sunbathers are more action-oriented and have a more positive attitude to risk-taking; they also associate tans with a more adventurous approach to life (Keesling and Friedman 1987).
Such "hyperarousal" may also explain why the tanned look has remained so popular among modern European and North American women since the 1920s. But why was this look so marginal previously? And why has it not caught on elsewhere in the world?
In earlier generations, the preferred model of sexual behavior was one of stable, fecund, and long-term relationships. Other forms of erotic expression did exist and are attested in the literature, but at a lower level of prevalence than would be expected if allowed free and unfettered expression. They were discouraged by social custom because, in one way or another, they were less optimal in producing stable families.
One of these alternate eroticisms was the practice of deliberately darkening women's skin. Rightly or wrongly, the preferred model of sexual behavior encouraged women to keep their skin as fair as possible. This "meme" has proven highly successful in most human societies, and, like so many other memes, has succeeded without its practitioners fully knowing why. During my fieldwork in a rural community of eastern Québec, I asked retired farmwomen why they took such great pains to keep their skin untanned. Many had no idea at all. One simply said: "It was important. My sisters were the same. I don't know the reason. They never told us" (Frost 2005: 60-61).
With the 20th century, there developed in Europe and North America a new sexual environment that presents marriage and family formation as one of many possible life choices, thereby allowing alternate eroticisms to compete with the mainstream ideal on more equal terms, particularly among young single adults who tend to set fashion trends. For many people today, the aim is no longer to maximize reproductive potential. Rather, it is to maximize erotic stimulation. It is this new sexual environment that may have allowed the tanned look to make its breakthrough into the mainstream of women's fashion.
References
Alley, T.R. 1980. Infantile colouration as an elicitor of caretaking behaviour in Old World primates, Primates 21:416-429.
Ashikari, M. 2005. Cultivating Japanese whiteness. The 'whitening' cosmetics boom and the Japanese identity. Journal of Material Culture 10:73-91.
http://mcu.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/10/1/73
Blaffer-Hrdy, S. and J. Hartung. 1979. The evolution of sexual dichromatism among primates, American Journal of Physical Anthropology 50:450.
Booth, C. 1962. "Some observations on behavior of Cercopithecus monkeys", Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 102:477-487.
Carpenter, F.I. 1936. Puritans preferred blondes. New England Quarterly 9:253-272.
Curry, W.C. 1916. The Middle English Ideal of Personal Beauty, as found in the Metrical Romances, Chronicles, and Legends of the XIII, XIV, and XV Centuries. Baltimore: J.H. Furst Co.
Frost, P. 2005. Fair Women, Dark Men. The Forgotten Roots of Color Prejudice. Cybereditions: Christchurch (New Zealand).
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