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azambetti's picture

Will We All be Brown?

In Thursday’s class, for those of you not in Dalke’s section, we briefly talked how studies have shown that in about 300 generations blonde haired, blue eyed people will no longer be in existence.  Having these apparently endangered characteristics, I was intrigued as to whether or not this was true.  For days I have been wondering why there would be an averaging of human characteristics against the combination of blonde hair and blue eyes, and if it was true that there would be an extinction of people who look like myself and everyone in my family (I have four brothers and sisters, and we all have blue eyes and blonde hair).

I suddenly realized that if this “summary of observations” is correct, then not only would the blue eye, blonde hair combination become extinct, but also the other extreme would become extinct.  Therefore, in the future, people with black hair and black eyes will be extinct with those that have blue eyes and blonde hair.  With their extinction, there will again be two different extremes, let’s say light brown hair and eyes and people with dark brown hair and eyes, that will then, even more into the future, become extinct.  This pattern of averaging will occur until, as Caroline said “everyone is brown.”  Will we all really have similar coloration in the far-away future?  I am skeptical.

Andrea Zambetti

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