beneficii wrote:
ooOoOoOAnaOoOoOoo wrote:
And yet you could have a black great great great grandmother and still have blond, straight-as-a-board hair, and blue eyes. No one would ever guess. All it takes is a few generations of grandparents marrying and procreating with partners that look like themselves and it buries all the genes from further back. So I don't know how the "one drop" rule applies.
At one point the genes might creep up but the odds are greater they won't. They will just stay recessive until paired with genes like themselves. They could present a little but it would be subtle, as in the shape of the nose or body. Hair could be wavy.
Not quite correct regarding white people's hair. While most white people's hair may seem "straight as a board" relative to most black people's hair, white people's hair actually has a far greater tendency to be wavy.
Among the peoples most likely to have "straight as a board" hair are Han Chinese, Koreans, and Japanese.
It could be wavy due to a gene from way back they inherited from an African ancestor. Most people cannot trace their ancestry through the generations. Asians are far less likely to have African ancestors for thousands and thousands of years while whites could possibly have some in their background because Africa is much closer to where the caucasians are clustered, traditionally, which would be Europe and some of Russia. And a caucasian might not necessarily have kids with a black partner, rather, one from northern Africa or the middle east, and since these places are either in Africa or very close, the chances some of the people from there will have genes from a black ancestor and this is how they were spread into Europe, through the Roman Empire for one. I haven't heard of anyone who can trace their genes back to the Roman Empire, 2000 + years ago. Maybe some of the royals can, and people in the ME.
It is interesting you noted the fact about Asians because they actually are the ones who are less likely to have black ancestry and if they do, it might be so far back it simply will not show up in their hair so you see a preponderance of straight hair.
Also, people who are native American without any white or black ancestors are likely to have the same hair as the Asians, and they were isolated, too, like the Asian population, from the gene that produces curls or waves, depending on what genes it's paired with.
I'm not sure I'd buy that the Asian population was isolated, but I think you might be right about there being greater African ancestry in Europeans; after all, it was right across the Mediterranean!
15 Jun 2015, 3:53 pm
