Europeans drawn from three ancient 'tribes' | Hacker News Reader

Europeans drawn from three ancient 'tribes'

bbc.com

41 pointsschrofer11 comments

Deleted comment

Farmers expand to the north slowly, a few miles a generation. Women with the lightest skin have many healthy children, the rest don't. Those healthy children grow and survive, as there's plenty of food and little competition. The next generation moves a little bit further north, where a little bit lighter skin is required to have healthy children.

This sort of even happens a little bit today. E.g. my wife is from Thailand. The No. 1 beauty feature to have in Thailand is pale skin. Women with pale skin are preferred of women with dark skin (by Thai men that is).

That's not skin color changing based on climate, that's just colonialism.

As the comment I replied to suggests, changing skin colour doesn't necessarily have anything to do with climate. the point is; if only the pale girls get to make babies then over time skin becomes lighter.

further more, I don't think this has anything to do with Colonialism, if I'm not mistaken, in many Asian countries pale skin is considered a feature of beauty.

Thailand was never colonized.

I don't know the actual origins of east/southeast asian skin color preferences, but arms aren't the only way to propagate culture.

If we lend the person you replied to the benefit of the doubt, they could've meant colonialism as a reference to global media or something.

Isn't this more likely down to pale skin being associated with higher social classes? Women from lower social classes (pre-industrialisation) would mostly work outdoors and so be tanned.

Yes. In general, whatever markers represent that one is a member of the wealthy/leisure class will be considered more attractive.

In a peasant society, pale skin means you don't have to work in the fields. In an industrial society, having a tan means that you have the money and free time to get out of the cube farm and vacation somewhere sunny (or at least can afford to go to a tanning salon). This one seems to changing as we learn more about sun damage.

In some societies, being plump means that you're wealthy enough to get plenty to eat, therefore attractive. In our society, being plump means that you eat a lot of cheap, high carb food, and that you can't afford (or don't have the free time) to spend on gym memberships, therefore less attractive.

It's all "stars upon thars".

That'd be my guess as well, but my point as more about discussion etiquette and trying to read the best/most plausible interpretation of what somebody said.

"Colonialism" refers to the political sovereignty of a community being subordinated to that of another. Colonialism generally carries cultural influence along with it, but the vast majority of cultural influence occurs outside the scope of colonialism.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com