Why do Asians look Asian?

[Urban Ranger]

Could be just camouflage.

[Az]

I don't think so, it would suck as a camouflage, esp. since by the time we were "bald" enough for our skin to show, we had hides to cover us from the cold.

[gsmoove23]

Actually, in cold climates its better to have a larger body.

Bergman's rule. Large bodies are beneficial in colder climates according to Bergman's rule:
The larger the animal the better it is at retaining heat. That is why during the glacial times many lineages of animals developed giant forms. Humans follow this rule in a broad way. People living near the poles tend to be larger on the average than those living near the equator, but there are a lot of exceptions. Certainly this is true in the new world where the native americans living in the amazon basin are among the shortest of all native americans.

[Az]

The improtant thing is the volume/surface relation, gsmoove.

[gsmoove23]

Yes, so large and stocky is best.

[Az]

Yep.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
The more melanin in the skin, the better protection against UV radiation from the sun. People whose ancestors come from equatorial areas tend to have more melanin in their skin and therefore are darker. Some scientists think that lighter skin evolved to allow people who lived in the climates closer to the poles the ability to capture more sunlight to make Vitamin D.

I'm asking about skin. I'm asking about hair colour.

Even during one summer you can see people's hair get lighter. So if people say a hot/cold environment affects height, how come it doesn't affect hair colour?

[Insigna]

Ok I have not read any of the posts but you must take into acount sevral things.

-People have been migrating over thousands of years.

-Climates change dramticly over thousands of years as
well.

-Ohter factors might be interconnected for example.
Why are blond people blond? there is no obvious genetic advantige but genes are interconnected so when a skin gene makes a person get lighter it is sometimes the skin gene that also effects the hair and eye color. Actualy it would be a pigment gene in that case. It is also often very much more complicated than this example.

[Zero]

Sometimes the trait is beneficial, harmful or completely neutral. Whenever a trait is neutral and happens to be very common, it's all a matter of luck. It could have come in a package with other traits that were advantageous, or population that had other advantageous trait just happend to have lots of people with that traits etc. A neutral trait by in itself may not have decided the survival factor but others have, and its just all matter of coincidence neutral trait A made it but noe neutral B.

[Ned]

Also, since we are on this topic, why do some men go bald and others do not?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Q Cubed
and that's precisely why it saddens me when i read or see asian men and women undergo plastic surgery to increase their eye sizes, or to drop their calves, or to increase bust sizes and what not...

When I was in college I took an Asian-American Gender relations class where the professor (she was Japanese-American) had some really interesting satistics about the sort of things you just spoke off. Seriously, 20% of Asain-Americans under 35 in California has had plastic surgery proformed on their eyes. What's more is the number gets higher and higher the younger the people are.

What does that say about us as a society that we have taught EVERYBODY (black, white, asian, hispanic, or other wise) that the Northern European idea of beauty is the absolute unquestionable best which every man, woman, and child must conform to or they risk having a low self image? I think it's kind of sad.

[Al B. Sure!]

Oerdin:

I think the mediterrenean look is the standard of beauty... i dont buy this blue-eyed blonde nonsense...

white women want to get tans to look mediterrenean... some black people like light-skinnedness because they also look mediterrenean... the caramel/coffee with cream skintone and dark hair and eyes is so obviously the beauty ideal if there is such a thing as standard of beauty.

[Dinner]

Speer: Pick up any girl's magazine and you will find you are wrong. Also notice that blond hair dye and blue eye contacts far out sell all others.

Girls get this crap shoved down their throats from the time they're old enough to watch TV.

[Q Classic]

it's tragic indeed.

east asians tend to have their calves shaped differently than caucasians; the korean term for it is mudari, or literally, radish leg.
our calves tend to have more of the muscle near the top close to the knee, and it actually starts thinning out before the middle of the leg (which is where caucasian calves tend to peak).
iirc, this is caused by a specific nerve... which is cut during plastic surgery to create a more western calf appearance.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by gsmoove23
Actually, in cold climates its better to have a larger body.

Bergman's rule. Large bodies are beneficial in colder climates according to Bergman's rule:
The larger the animal the better it is at retaining heat. That is why during the glacial times many lineages of animals developed giant forms. Humans follow this rule in a broad way. People living near the poles tend to be larger on the average than those living near the equator, but there are a lot of exceptions. Certainly this is true in the new world where the native americans living in the amazon basin are among the shortest of all native americans.

If you increase body size, the surface/volume decreases, and you need less food for per unit mass. But Bergman's Rule is only relative. An elephant still eats more food, in absolute terms, than a mouse. So that would only apply if food sources could support such an increase.