if 100 Chinese families moved to Britain?

Question

They are only allowed to breed among themselves and are not to have sex or children with any other race.
would they at some point in the future however long it takes turn into western looking people.

and the same question if a 100 white families moved to Africa, would they at some point become black people

How could this actually happen? it seems impossible??.

But it can't be impossible. because it is what we are told is what happened.

For e.g.. Black people moved to Europe and became white people

Answer 1

It IS impossible, dummy! Have you never studied genetics??? It's part of HighSchool biology.



The changes you describe took place over millions of years.....they were adaptations to the conditions that existed in the "new" environments. We can't forsee what natures adaptations might be.

Blacks that moved northward became lightskinned due to lack of sun exposure to the skin. We manufacture our Vitamin D in the skin, due to sunlight. When people moved northward, it was colder, so we wore clothes. Not enough sunlight = not enough Vitamin D. The darker skinned individuals died out, due to lesser amounts of VitD, leaving only the lighter skins to reproduce. That's evolution through adaptation.

Answer 2

Ah! the question is, given the same environment, will the evolution follow the same path? Good question.

Three reasons why the answer is no for this particular case:

(1) You don't have the same starting point. The new arrivals and the indigenous have both evolved substantially from the days when migration divided the gene pool originally (maybe 15,000 years ago, maybe less, I'm not sure what the latest idea is).

(2) You don't have the same environment. North Europeans are light skinned and inclined to put on weight because they are adapted to the climate as they experience it. The climate, and our experience of it, have both changed. What's the evolutionary advantage nowadays of a propensity to excessively store energy and to not bother defending your DNA against sunlight?

(3) Evolution is a "hill climbing" local optimisation process, not a global optimisation with a full search of the sample space. The problems of living in the cold and wet could easily have been solved by other (evolutionary) means. For example, North Europeans could have regrown all the body hair they lost in Africa. The fact that they didn't is simply because, well, the dice didn't land that way up. What your Chinese in UK or your whites in Africa come up with as evolutionary solutions would depend on very subtle bits of random chance.

So even if you did have the same starting point and the same environment, what you came up with could be completely different.

PS I'm sure some people will interpret your question as racist eugenics rather than a rational, dispassionate thought experiment, which I think it is. Never mind.

Answer 3

Current thinking suggests that homosapiens first developed in africa and different 'tribes' spread out in different directions. Over many hundreds of thousands of years, the genetic differences compound and became different 'races'.
So to answer your question, 100 chinese families would not become 'western looking' because they would only have asian genes.
Over countless thousands of generations, we are a very complex mix of genes. That's why racism is so ridiculous. Most southern brits hate the french, although they are most likely part french since the norman conquest. As goes for many people where I'm from in the north east of england, most of us and the scots have a drop of viking coursing round our veins.
With increased immigration and travel that is now available, "cross-breeding" between the races is exploding. Interestingly, a scientifically chosen 'beautiful' face was that of a mixed race woman (can't remember components, but very wide-spread genetics - south american / scandanavian / asian etc) and beauty is currently seen as plainness. The chosen lady had a perfectly symmetrical face and was bereft of any of the 'usual' characteristics of race (ie. african wide nose / mediteranean long nose / oriental narrow eyes etc)

Answer 4

Interesting, very interesting and true. Because, way way back there has been mixed breeding, given time, the past catches up to the future. There is not one pure race, that is why, a white family will produce a black child and vice versa. There is not one pure race. You see this in the Jewish people. For decades there are blond/blue eyed and all of a sudden, you get a very dark skinned, black hair/black eyed child....and the cycle goes on

Answer 5

possibly, but it takes 1000s of years to happen, evolution is slow, but DNA points out that we all came from Africa, so either the Africans developed darker skin at some point, or we developed lighter skin, something happened there.

look at island communities who hae not had any outside influence and then think where they came from to figure out what happens in these cases. Tonga is a kingdom in the pacific, they are quite black now though they must have travelled quite far to reach the islands of tonga. Tongans are sort of dark skinned, not as dark as Africans, though they live in a latitude same as South Africa with similar climate. So you see, as South Africa was settled by Central Africans (befor the European) they are darker than what their climate would make them.

I hope this answers your question. It's natural selection, the person with wrong type of skin would maybe catch skin cancer, somehow be less favoured in cultural terms because they get ill of hot sun burns.

Answer 6

Life evolves to meet the characteristics that it needs for survival, or the species in question will die out. During the industrial revolution moths that where light colored died out b/c they were eaten by birds, etc. The moths that were dark flourished and thrived.

In order for the chinese situation to be true, it must be that those who did not have at least some western looking characteristics were killed or died out. Those that were left, and had the western characteristics, would breed and thus those western characteristics would become more prominent. The same is true for any race or species.

Answer 7

As you said they are a race of people and race is not dependent on environment so their genetic traits would continue. These traits were evolved over tens of thousands of years so unless you are thinking in terms of that length of time in the future, they would never look like westerners. The cultural aspect is dependent on environment so their attitudes would become westernised quite quickly

Answer 8

I suspect that unless you tamper with their genes, then Chinese will always look Chinese, Caucasians will always be white, and Negros will always be brown.
Your "Black people moved to Europe and became white" - been reading fairy tales have we?

Answer 9

If everyone bred randomly then yes but most people stick to their own culture and race

Answer 10

Nobody can say - environment is important, but you also have to believe in the theory of evolution...