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 sample. |
| In our days, we all select from very large samples. 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... |
| 1/10 < MB
(2/10) > 3/10 Beauty & attraction |
| Grammer K, Thornhill R (1994) Human Facial Attractiveness
and Sexual Selection: The Roles of Averageness and Symmetry. J Comp
Psychol 108:233-242 Scott IM, Clark AP, Josephson SC et al (2014) Human preferences for sexually dimorphic faces may be evolutionarily novel. PNAS 111:14388-93 |