i am an avid sci-fi buff and have noticed on several occasions that aliens all appear the same. which got me thinking…in the future, can the same be said about us? what i mean is,with inter-racial relationships, overtime (many,many,many years…) is it possible that we all will be the same (skin color,hair color,eye color,etc). and if so, which features do you think would be dominant ?
Fact is that we are already completely mixed up…
The genetic diversity of homo sapiens sapiens is not that big. The visual differences between us are determined by series of complex interaction in minute variations of the genetic code. The details of this have been covered in Great Debates many times this thread is currently debating the issue.
Sparc
A related column by Cecil: Will all humans one day be the same color?.
Ferengi look like Klingons?
no…i meant that ferengis look alike and vulcans look alike and klingons look alike. there are some differences but for the most part, they are all similar within their respective species.
I’m not a scientist, but for all humans too look essentially alike, wouldn’t it require people constantly moving around intermarrying in different ethnic groups, then having their children do the same? As it is local populations tend to remain more or less local, causing inherited traits to build and get farther from the inherited traits in other locales. (I think)
Way back when there were far fewer humans, might they have more closely resembled one another, before spreading out and separating into regional groups?
dbimage,
Maybe an alien race would find that we look pretty much the same. When daily interaction between Asia and Europe increased a few hundred years ago both the SE Asians and the Europeans claimed that the other group ‘all looked the same.’ Obviously this is utter poppycock and only based on what characteristics we are used to applying for fast identification of an individual. Big noses and beards stood out as very exotic for the SE Asians who hence formed a homogenous mental image of Europeans based on the lowest common denominator.
Take another species. Ay first glance all chimps look very alike. Hang around our cousins regularly for a while and you will gradually acquire the capacity to see the individual characteristics very quickly. Presto, suddenly a chimp is not just a chimp anymore, it’s Alfred or Hieronymus Chimp, or perhaps eve Eulalie, or Mildred Chimp.
That’s what we have been doing for about 150.000 years, and we still are doing it. Isolated population groups are very rare. Once again, follow the above link or search on ‘race’ and ‘allele’ in Great Debates.
Sparc
This simply isn’t true; there are black Vulcans and white ones, the pattern of the brow-ridges varies greatly in Klingons; Ferengi? we don’t have as many examples to compare, but they only look alike to the extent that the theatrical prosthetics mask the nuances of the actor’s appearance. Anyway, to me all ducks look alike, but it’s probably a different story if you’re a duck…