It not only approaches it, it exceeds it. Read what Cecil has to say on the matter. . “Caucasians don’t show the widest variation in all traits, just certain superficial ones–hair color and texture and eye color… along with skin color… When it comes to something like height, on the other hand, Caucasians lose out to Africans, whose average stature ranges from 4’8" for adult male pygmies to 5’10" for adult male Batutsis. Similarly, other races show greater variation in nose configuration, distribution of body fat, and so on.”
As Colibri said, it seems like this perception stems mainly form your unfamiliarity with other populations. Let’s look at your opening post and consider the specific examples.
That isn’t even close to being the truth. Skin colour amongst the rest of the world runs the gamut from the deep ebony black of some Equatorial Africans to the Yellow-Pinks of Central and Eastern Asia through the chocolate Browns of Micronesia and Australia. By far the most distinctive skin colour is the Honey Brown skin of the San and related “Negrito” groups of Africa. All other people in the world, including Caucasians, have skin with dispersed melanocytes. These people have skin with clustered melanocytes of the type found in most other mammals.
So yeah, there are some brown skinned people in the rest of the world, but by no means all of them. And of course there’s no legitimacy in saying that San brown, Mongolian brown, Australian brown and Japanese brown are all ‘just’ brown while claiming that the Europeans pale brown that we commonly call white is somehow different.
That is also not even close to being true. Many people elsewhere in the world do indeed have black hair, but red hair for example also exists in North Africa. Polynesia and Tropical Australia. Brown hair is even more widespread.
And the idea that most people in the world have straight hair has even less basis in fact. Straight hair is rare over two entire continents: Australia and Africa. And of course curly hair is found throughout SE Asia, Polynesia, Micronesia, the Middle East, Central Asia and the Subcontinent. So no, most people outside Europe do not have straight hair. In fact I’m willing to bet that both more people and a greater proportion of people have curly hair outside Europe than within Europe.
[quote]
black eyes
[/quote
Are black eyes common anywhere in the world? Most people, in Europe and else where, have brown eyes. But it’s fair enough to say that eye colours other than brown are rare outside Europe.
Not all Europeans can grow beards. A great many Europeans can only grow sparse ratty beards.
Being able to grow a beard is in no way a rare trait outside Europe.
“Mongolid” and San ‘races’ are about the only two groups that can’t grow “beards.” Even amongst those groups beard growth is only impossible in the sense that the beard growth is ratty. here is a photograph of a SE Asian Moslem who has never shaved in his life. As you can see he can indeed grow a ratty beard. But then a great many Europeans have the same extent of beard growth. So either we concede that not all Europeans can grow beards, or we concede that pretty much everyone can grow a beard, depending on how we define “beard”.
In contrast most Africans can grow full beards. All Australians can grow full beards.
So there is simply no truth in the idea that all Europeans can grow beards, or that beard growth is rare outside Europe.
If you want to call out Cecil then show us your reference that contradicts his claim. Because Cecil says that facial structures like nose shape vary more wildly outside of
When exactly would that have been? Would it have been prior to Scandinavian Vandals invading North Africa? Or prior to Malaysian Mongoloids living in Australia? Or prior to European Greeks colonising North Africa? It’s not really possible to discuss this until you can define what you mean by “modern” racial mixing.
Given that there is no scientific basis for the concept of race to begin with, and given that genetic (and hence phenotypic) diversity predates migration from Africa, and given that there is no evidence that races have ever existed as discrete non-mixing populations it’s kind of hard to discuss what conditions were like before those things existed.
