Sunday, February 18, 2024

Those slanted eyes...

 


An interesting YouTube clip about "Asian eyes". Apart from actual East and Southeast Asians, many other peoples around the world have "Asian eyes" or at least somewhat "Asian looks": Polynesians, American Indians and the Inuit are obvious examples. Here, the explanation seems pretty straightforward: these ethnic groups are distant descendants from East Asians (or somewhat less distant in the Inuit case). 

But why do  some Europeans (yes, including the Sami - deal with it) have "Asian" eyes and/or looks? In some cases, genetic influx from Asians is the best explanation, in others, it´s something of a mystery. Why do some people in Britain have "Asian" eyes? Why does the Icelandic pop singer Björk look "Asian"? One explanation is that already the ancient Indo-Europeans had an Asiatic admixture, and that this particular lineage ended up among the Celts at the British Isles. Another possibility might be admixture with Americans Indians or Inuit. After the video was posted, Icelandic writer Bergsveinn Birgisson wrote a book about one of his medieval ancestors, a "Black Viking" whose mother may have been Siberian.

More unexpected are "Asian" eyes in Africa - except at Madagascar, where the population is partially descended from long-distance Asian seafarers. But why do Nilotic and Khoi-San people have "Asian" eyes? Perhaps here, we finally have a case of convergent evolution...

Surprisingly interesting for a "nerd video".      


 

4 comments:

  1. Björk iis part eskimo(i think it was). Anyway, slanted eyes protect against snow blindness and its not very complex genetics behind it, so any population could probably develop it if their survival depended on not getting blinded by the snow.

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  2. Aha. Interesting. According to the nerd, Björk has apparently stated that she is 100% Icelandic, but some Inuit ancestry would explain a thing or two.

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  3. https://www.quora.com/Is-Bj%C3%B6rk-Inuit

    Her ethnicity is a thing, apparently!

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  4. Maybe not eskimo then. But as some peolee in Qoura pointed out, its not that uncommon for scandinavians to have some mongol DNA. And Iceland was settled by norwegians and celts. So being noirther european with a dash of mongol DNA is perhaps what it really means to be "100% icelandic".

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