Posted on 09/19/2012 11:09:41 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
It really happened: Six generations of inbreeding spanning the years 1800 to 1960 caused an isolated population of humans living in the hills of Kentucky to become blue-skinned.
The startlingly blue people, all descendants of a French immigrant named Martin Fugate and still living near his original settlement on the banks of Troublesome Creek when hematologists studied them in the 1960s, turned out to have a rare blood condition called methemoglobinemia. A recessive gene was pairing with itself to change the molecular composition of their blood, making it brown as opposed to red, which tinted their skin blue.
The hematologists' attempt to trace the history of the mutant gene revealed a gnarly Fugate family tree, contorted by many an intermarriage between first cousins, aunts and nephews, and the like over the generations. Dennis Stacy, whose great-great-grandfather on both his mother's and father's sides was the same person — Henley Fugate — offered a simple explanation for the rampant interbreeding: In the old days in eastern Kentucky, Stacy said, "There was no roads."
It sounds sordid at worst and lazy at best, but in fact, the Fugates' tale is a miniature version of the story of human coupling since time immemorial. Local populations interbreed, causing a sharing of genes, a resulting in-group physical resemblance and, eventually, identification as a distinct race or ethnic group. According to Stephen Stearns, a Yale professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, before the invention of the bicycle, the average distance between the birthplaces of spouses in England was 1 mile (1.6 kilometers). During the latter half of the 19th century, bikes upped the distance men went courting to 30 miles (48 km), on average. Scholars have identified similar patterns in other European countries.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
We’re going to need more wax.
I hope this applies to women!!!
Smurf future? Morlocks perhaps?
TTIWWP
You owe me a keyboard. I think I may have scared a few of my co-workers when I laughed out loud and spilt my drink.
“Future Humans Will All Look Brazilian, Researcher Says”
BS! If it hasn’t happened by now, it won’t. Although the Brazilian women are particularly hot—somehow, I feel short changed.
BTW, recessive genes don't disappear, they just aren't as readily observed unless you know what to look for. For example there are 82 different alleles for liver construction and function. Just a couple of years ago they believed there were only 11, and 5 years before that they imagined there were just 2. Nobody even guessed at 82 ~ and in a single population ~ with literally everybody else on Earth sharing just 1!
Eventually the 82 alleles will spread and be expressed because humans will live under conditions that favor those different alleles.
Worth noting EYE COLOR has something like 15 genes controlling it. I had green eyes for decades and then cataract surgery left me with blue eyes. It's taken most of a decade to recover my natural green eyes!
Yet Americans are constantly being accused of being racist and that nothing has changed in hundreds of years.
My father was Irish and my mother was Dutch. Looking back I thought Irish/Dutch explained a lot - LoL!
But now my daughter is Irish/Dutch/German/Turkish, and seriously, at only three years of age you can’t tell her anything. I ask her how old she is and she says “old”.
Future humans will look like whatever they want to look like.
Am I mistaken, or has Ms. Wolchover actually slurred Brazilians by inadvertantly implying inbreeding, lol?
This woman's mom was Kenyan and her dad was Puerto Rican. She was killed in Afghanistan this month btw. Helicopter pilot 650+ missions. RIP.
I think a high percentage of the Victoria Secret models and the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit models are Brazilian.
They’re not very shy, are they?
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