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Perhaps this is not surprising news, but according to this women have gotten more beautiful as they pass their traits on to succeeding generations:Evolution producing more 'beautiful' womenI'm not sure what this is worth, aside from maybe altering our idea of the number of beauties who lived back in ancient Greece or Rome.
Depends on what is considered beautiful doesnt it? I personally dont find the current crop of emaciated fashion models to be in the least attractive. I am more of a Mae West type of guy. Not fat, but not skinny either. I think the old saying still holds true that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. I also dont think that everything can be quantified.
This is what many call cultural selection… subjects tend to mate with types that are considered the healthful norm for their society… will lead, over time, to a stereotypical look from cultural areas and hence our current problem with racial profiling.
Depends on what is considered beautiful doesnt it? I personally dont find the current crop of emaciated fashion models to be in the least attractive. I am more of a Mae West type of guy. Not fat, but not skinny either. I think the old saying still holds true that "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder". I also dont think that everything can be quantified.
It sounds kind of like you might hold to the baroque-era ideal of beauty. If you look at paintings of that time (early 18th century), you can see nudes painted who are depicted differently than the ideal woman from ancient Greece (as represented in a statue).
This is what many call cultural selection... subjects tend to mate with types that are considered the healthful norm for their society... will lead, over time, to a stereotypical look from cultural areas and hence our current problem with racial profiling.
How do you figure racial profiling into this? I had not heard of/thought of that angle within this issue.
Phid, you have never looked at someone and thought they looked German/English/Turkish/Arab/whatever? I think that is what Wally is getting at. BTW, the Germans say Americans have rounder heads than Europeans and that they can always tell an American no matter how they are dressed. I personally think dress tells you much more about origin than appearance. Most Americans dress fairly distinctively, I would actually say they look slovenly compared to the average European, especially the older ones. For example, you would not catch a German woman (young or old) caught dead downtown or at the store in sweatpants and crocs.
That is, if you reproduce with an attractive partner, your children will inherit your partner's genetic quality . . . which increases your children's chances of survival and reproducing, thus the genes for beauty experience a high probability of being passed on to future generations.
This doesn't make sense on two levels. So if an attractive man and woman mate and have children, then the offspring will be attractive too. What if the female child takes on more of her father's traits or vice versa? You will either have a "handsome" woman or a feminine looking man, wouldn't you? Doesn't that change the equation.Also this 'high probability' makes no sense either unless previous generations have killed off the ugly children.Sometimes I wonder what happens to peoples' logic when they study anthropology.
Also this 'high probability' makes no sense either unless previous generations have killed off the ugly children.
Isn't that called Eugenics. I seem to remember a group of Europeans trying that about 70 years ago and it didnt work out to well for them along with all of their other racial theories.
This doesn't make sense on two levels. So if an attractive man and woman mate and have children, then the offspring will be attractive too. What if the female child takes on more of her father's traits or vice versa? You will either have a "handsome" woman or a feminine looking man, wouldn't you? Doesn't that change the equation.Also this 'high probability' makes no sense either unless previous generations have killed off the ugly children.Sometimes I wonder what happens to peoples' logic when they study anthropology.
I think what it means is that attractive males and attractive females are more likely to find mates and reproduce. Less attractive people are less likely to find mates and so do not reproduce as frequently. Over time, the cumulative effect is that the pool of attractive people increases and the pool of less attractive people decreases.I think that if a father is attractive, and the female child takes on some of his traits, that child will still be attractive; there are, after all, attractive male traits (facial symmetry, healthy skin, etc) that can be "translated" into female offspring. However, since I am not a biologist my knowledge is limited in this area and your question is a good one.
Phid, you have never looked at someone and thought they looked German/English/Turkish/Arab/whatever? I think that is what Wally is getting at. BTW, the Germans say Americans have rounder heads than Europeans and that they can always tell an American no matter how they are dressed. I personally think dress tells you much more about origin than appearance. Most Americans dress fairly distinctively, I would actually say they look slovenly compared to the average European, especially the older ones. For example, you would not catch a German woman (young or old) caught dead downtown or at the store in sweatpants and crocs.
Scout, I see what you mean. When I hear "racial profiling" I think more of cars being stopped because of the shade of a person's skin, rather than their "look" from close-up....maybe "ethnic" profiling fits better.When I was living in South America I was very impressed at the genetic qualities of the people down there. The women were of course very beautiful, and the majority of males and females all had very good skin, even as teenagers (they didn't suffer much from acne). It must have had something to do with the native Inca/Quecha genes that were passed on.
How do you figure racial profiling into this? I had not heard of/thought of that angle within this issue.
In most societies people tend to marry folks that are the norm for that group; in early (pre-historic) peoples this might just mean those deemed likely to survive to raise the family, if you will.In equatorial areas that likely meant blacker... more melanin to make Vit D. and reduce the skin cancer issue... high latitudes little skin was thought an indication of health; they had less sun and a high fish oil diet. In each case the reverse (light in low lats. and dark in high lats. was often associated with sickness and hence less desirable in a mate).Simply the social norm on health and beauty becomes a cultural type of evolutionary process as the stereotype gets to mate more and more genes in the pool. Eons later these same traits are the physical phenotypes associated with the descendants of these folks. The stage is now set to use these phenotypes to profile the descendants, regardless of any other background information.Do we really want to judge someone by their far removed ancestors?
