The Study of Racialism

I usually go by speech patterns, and even that is not always a good way of making a distinction. Looks are often deceiving. Many biracial people (black/white or Asian/African, etc.) do look like many people who are or consider themselves to be black or African American, regardless of how blacks or biracials feel about this. I also believe this has a lot to do with location in the U.S.

I’ve met a few African Americans from Atlanta, Louisiana, Washington DC, Maryland and Virginia who look no different from you average biracial person on say Mixed Folks.com. But when I lived in Western Pennsylvania, I could usually spot biracial people a mile away. The same goes for the Florida county where my parents live in which there are tons of such people. In both cases, they did indeed have a different look from light skinned black folks and black folks in general, though their speech patterns were often identical.

How do you think they retain the gaitas? That is a cultural tradition. The Kilt is still seen in Galicia. And they have parts of Celtic mythology as well:
http://usuarios.lycos.es/Celtic_Galiza/ ... ml#fairies

We all know that there have been migrations and mixing of populations throughout history. That's precisely why I asked this question. Populations are not pure and mixed people are supposed to produce anything. If the right individuals come together who haven't any known recent admixture (like in the past 3 generations or so) can two average looking West-Africans from West-Africa produce a completely nordic looking child and vice versa? If they can how high would the probability be?

Note: I'm not refering to isolated characteristics but phenotype combinations complete enough not to make this person stick out either among average Swedes or average West-Africans.

And my addition to that would be Could a population that has been mixed and remixed for so many generations produce extremes. As we know many mulatos in the Americas resemble Ethiopians, Berbers, East Indians, etc. Now I suspect in places where mixing as been going on freely for a long time you start to get some uniformity in the variation range. So you grab a couple of second generation mulatos and have them mix on England and they produced one kid that, at least as of now coulf fool anyone into beleiving she was just English decent. I am assuming the same thing could have happened the other way and the child could have fooled people into believing it was just African. But do two medium range Dominicans have the same probablility of doing that? What about two Libyans, Ethiopians or Bangladeshis who have that look that many could confuse for a mulato. Could two of any of those populations have the same probability of producing that child?

How long does it take a population to become pretty homogenous?

Note: I just want to point out that my question is completely different from Salsassin's question. I'm interested in average West-Africans and average Swedes alone. This is the topic of this thread and I would be grateful if anybody had any information on this. Thanks.

Hi,

Let's see what you mean by "nordic looking". Suppose you mean a person is "nordic" it has certain features like blond hair, light skin, blue eyes, narrow long face and nose, tall, etc. Let's get focus in one single feature to simplify the example. Let's say we are interested in the color of the eyes.

In that case one has to measure how many alleles for blue eyes exist in the population of West Africa. Is very likely the number of alleles for color of eyes in that region is small, but I doubt is nill. If only 1 in 100.000 people carry one blue eye allele, then only 1 in 10.000.000.000 of couples carry both alleles. And for them, 1 in 4 child would be blue eyed. In short, if only 1 in 100.000 carry the alleles that event would happen in West Africa once in 40 billion births (or in several centuries).

To get the probability of a "nordic" child, you will have to find out the frequencies of blond hair, long faces, white skin, etc. in that same West African population. If the frequencies are about the same like the one for blue eyes, then the probability will not be null but they will be extremely unlikely. An event that would happens once since the beginning of the universe, to give you an idea.

In short, the problem is to determine how many alleles of "nordic" float in a given population. In the case of colored eyes, In Northern Europe and North America those alleles are quite common. In Souther Europe, the Arab world, India, North Africa and Latin America, the frequencies are minor but do exist. About 1 in 20 individuals of those regions have colored eyes. In West Africa and China, where the presence of whites have been a lot smaller, the frequenquencies for those alleles are extremely small. Those populations simply don't have much of the alleles necesary to produce the effect.

Omar

Sorry, I didn't see this until now. Yes, there are similarities between Galicians and people of the British Isles in terms of some aspects of culture and the languages their ancestors spoke. In fact, it is believed by some that Iberians were among the early colonizers of the British Isles. Also, there has been a reverse flow of such peoples to the continent, such as the Bretons of France. In ancient times, the tribes we now designate as "Celtic" did speak similar languages and share some cultural aspects. But much of the transference of culture was by trade. Not all of it was by conquest and intermarriage of "Celts" with other peoples. One of the advantages of other tribes learning one of the Celtic dialects in later times, when Rome was beginning to spread its tentacles, was to use the various tribes speaking these languages close to the borders of Rome as middlemen in trade. It would be easier to trade with the rather wealthy Romans this way. Germanic tribes to the north sent amber to Rome via the "Celts" to the south. Two of the first Germanic tribes to be recorded by the Romans, in the late 100's B.C., learned to speak these Celtic dialects in addition to proto-Germanic, because they passed through these "Celtic" areas and even recruited some tribesmen there. Their very names have a Celtic ring to them, because it was through the "Celts" that these tribes became known to the Romans, and it was through one of the dialects of Celtic that the Romans learned the names, which had been altered by that time by the Celts. Their names were Cimbri and Teutones. Their original Germanic names probably sounded something like Ximbroz and Theudonez. This data comes from The Germanic People, by Francis Owen, a great book on Germanic peoples. Another good one is The Early Germans, by Malcolm Todd.

What I am really disputing is the idea of a vast "Celtic" identity. The various people spread across much of Europe in ancient times we now describe as "Celts" only had the few above-mentioned things in common. They likely didn't identify with eachother or feel any sense of relationship. They looked different. They acted different. They were different. The Germanic tribes, conversely, did tend to feel a sense of kinship with eachother, and Julius Caesar even alluded to it when he claimed that the "Germani" east of the Rhine may come to the aid of those to the west of the Rhine, who had already been conquered. The early Germans are almost universally described as big and blonde.

A good book about this is The Celts: The Construction of a Myth, by Malcolm Chapman. Another good book, by Peter Beresford Ellis, called The Celtic Empire, comes to similar conclusions, even though it is on the surface much more supportive of the "Celts."

In short, I'm not saying there were no such thing as "Celts." What I'm saying is that they weren't a single, vast people spread across Europe in ancient times. They were different tribes with different customs who came to learn Celtic dialects and adopt some aspects of Celtic culture. As long as this is understood, I have no problem with these people being called "Celts."

William,

There is also very interesting link between the Celts areas of the British Islands and Spain. In particular between Spain and Ireland. For some reason Spain have always feel close to Ireland and also Scotland, while at the same time feel a very deep rejection to Anglos. That's something very curious that you can trace in history.

It would be interesting to compare the genetics of the Celts of the British Islands and Spain. It is well know that Galicians, for instance, look different from the rest of the Spaniards and close to the Northern phenotypes.

Omar

I do not doubt the connection between the British Isles and Iberia; in fact, I mentioned it myself. My only beef is with the identification of a vast swath of Europe in the 0000's B.C. (last millenium B.C.) as "Celtic" when the only links between the different tribes and peoples there were language similarities and a few cultural similarities.

Unfortunately, my Historia Xeral de Galicia is in my office, and I won't be there for a couple of weeks. However, my recollection is that current scholarship rather doubts the ancient 'Celtic' origins of Galicians. The only completely verified Celtic group in ancient Galician history were the Britons, fleeing the Saxon invaders, who under the leadership of their bishop, Maeloc, settled in and around Bretoña in what is now Lugo province.

Well, Galicians always say they are Celts and Irish say they came from Spain.

This is the ancient Celt terrotory. Notice the distance is short between Ireland and North Spain.



The Gaita (bagpipe) has existed is documented in Galicia since the times of king Alphonse X. (Middle Ages)





This is from an skeptics than, however, find some unexplained things.
http://www.galiciaguide.com/Galicia-celtic-connection.html







Omar