Won't quite work that way, but humanity could end up more brown on average than on the extremes of skin color. It's entirely possible for dark-skinned parents to have a very light skinned child and very light skinned parents to have a dark skinned child due to how genetics work, and one way it can happen is multiracial heritage. Many aspects of skin color come from gene variants with stronger dominant/recessive relationships, while others are more additive. This is also why dark-haired parents can have redhead kids.
I think it would be interesting to live in a world that literally couldn't pay attention to skin color, though.
Won’t quite work that way, but humanity could end up more brown on average
Will it? I mean, the image above seems to suggest melanin is the recessive trait. Nevermind how the "averages" game tends to assume a steady, uninterrupted generational cycle. I don't think that's going to shake out well in the heat of a global extinction event.
Like, what will the global population even be in another century, when huge populous regions are rendered uninhabitable? Will the UK starve itself down to the population of Iceland or explode outward like a bunch of ravenous locusts and do another round of genocides in Africa and Latin America? Will we see a geological event that wipes Haiti and the DR off the map? Or will we get it in Washington or California first? Will China survive and thrive or the West obliterate it in a nuclear firestorm?
I'd argue this has a bigger impact on global skin tone distribution than any law of averages on couples.
I'm sure you're right, a bunch of violence and other factors will have a big impact. I'm just saying that even under the assumption that multiracial relationships and babies will be the thing having an impact on phenotype diversity, it's not just averaging, even with skin color, which is where I think people get the idea that everyone will eventually just be brown. With American race rules and genetics in mind, black parents can have a very light-skinned kid and light-skinned parents can have a dark-skinned kid, and variations on this idea are the norm, not th exception, due to particulate inheritance and the various genes that dictate this having different impacts when their alleles pop up together in a new human.
Won't quite work that way, but humanity could end up more brown on average than on the extremes of skin color. It's entirely possible for dark-skinned parents to have a very light skinned child and very light skinned parents to have a dark skinned child due to how genetics work, and one way it can happen is multiracial heritage. Many aspects of skin color come from gene variants with stronger dominant/recessive relationships, while others are more additive. This is also why dark-haired parents can have redhead kids.
I think it would be interesting to live in a world that literally couldn't pay attention to skin color, though.
Will it? I mean, the image above seems to suggest melanin is the recessive trait. Nevermind how the "averages" game tends to assume a steady, uninterrupted generational cycle. I don't think that's going to shake out well in the heat of a global extinction event.
Like, what will the global population even be in another century, when huge populous regions are rendered uninhabitable? Will the UK starve itself down to the population of Iceland or explode outward like a bunch of ravenous locusts and do another round of genocides in Africa and Latin America? Will we see a geological event that wipes Haiti and the DR off the map? Or will we get it in Washington or California first? Will China survive and thrive or the West obliterate it in a nuclear firestorm?
I'd argue this has a bigger impact on global skin tone distribution than any law of averages on couples.
I'm sure you're right, a bunch of violence and other factors will have a big impact. I'm just saying that even under the assumption that multiracial relationships and babies will be the thing having an impact on phenotype diversity, it's not just averaging, even with skin color, which is where I think people get the idea that everyone will eventually just be brown. With American race rules and genetics in mind, black parents can have a very light-skinned kid and light-skinned parents can have a dark-skinned kid, and variations on this idea are the norm, not th exception, due to particulate inheritance and the various genes that dictate this having different impacts when their alleles pop up together in a new human.