Post 41:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Rishi Kapila - appears to have been blond.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Give the reference please. At least state how old he was when he was described as blond. (By the way, what's the word for 'blond' in Samskritam, I'd like to know?)
My grandfather had black hair until he got old. Then his hair went gray. Then, because the sun browned it, it yellowed to a golden colour. If I were to describe his hair in his final years, it be as "yellowish goldish". (Thousands of years down the road, hopefully no one will mistake my description of my granddad as being that of a blond Aryan invader left-over)
Then again, this is common among many people: some old men of Africa whose hair has turned gray also have to live with their white hair yellowed by the sun. It happens (blame it on the sun if you will). Yet neither they nor we have any fear of being branded Aryan invaders to bother dyeing it back to black or gray.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The big question is how come there should even be a single fair skinned man in the middle of Tamil Nadu?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->From time to time, Brahmins from North India (Indus region) had migrated to south and other part of India. North Indians are light color, reason is climate and distance from Equator. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->That's one reason: some Tamil brahmin communities have one or two ancestors from North India from the remote past. However, all Tamil Hindu communities, not just brahmins, have the occasional very fair children born among them. The answer for this lies in India's vast gene pool. And finally another more universal reason is the genetics controlling skin colour. Skin colour alleles don't work on the model of "dominant+dominant=dominant phenotype; dominant+recessive=dominant phenotype; recessive+recessive=recessive phenotype". It's far more complex. Skin colour genes code additively and many genes determine how one's skin looks.
Dark grandparents might have a medium brown child who might give birth to an even lighter coloured grandchild.
It happens. All over the world. We can stop looking for European causes or in this case North Indian causes for these things in South India.
Whether it's a good or bad thing, whether it's a natural disaster or utterly irrelevant, sometimes it just happens. Among Africans too. Fair, medium, dark are all to be understood in context. "Very fair" among Indians tends to mean at its lightest 'average Mediterranean'. Among Africans the scale is skewed more to one side because Africa has all three tropic lines running through it.
Likewise for "very dark".
Another quirk of skin-related genes: women of any population tend to be on average fairer than the men. That's probably where the term "the fair sex" originated. That doesn't mean all women are fairer than all men. Just that, compared to the darkest-complexioned male in a given population at a given time, the darkest complexioned woman of the same population will most likely be fairer. And likewise, there will most likely be a woman lighter than the lightest-complexioned male in a population. (The normal distribution graph for women's complexions of any population is shifted to the lighter side whilst that of the men are shifted to the darker side). They say the reason for this is - no, not an Aryan Women Invasion all over the world - but to do with some evolutionary advantage for women during childbirth.
Note that green and gray eyes occur more frequently in vast populations like ours. If you remember basic biology class, they teach only about brown and blue eye allele combinations. That's because if the teacher factored in green and gray, than the biology lesson would become really complicated really fast. These are more commonly occurring light colours. They actually occur among many populations, including among Indians.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->However I have seen blue eyes among the following castes - Saraswata Brahmanas, Punjabi Khatris, Rajputs, Jats, Gujars, Yadavas, Bihari Brahmanas, Bengali Brahmanas, Jains, Kayasthas and also among South Indian Brahmanas.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Ooooh - it's a miracle: Blue eyes occurring among small generally-endogamous groups!
In what way does this confound genetics? It happens. I've seen thousands of Tamil brahmins. No blue eyes. Sorry to disappoint all the avid blue-eyed-brahmin fans. I've seen what looked like a greenish-light-brownish-eyed Tamil brahmin. But then I've seen dozens of green- and gray-eyed Tamil Hindus who were not of the brahmin community (and I'm not even counting Aishwarya Rai.) Sorry if this disrupts your weird fantasy of Indian eye-colour distribution. Sometimes facts have that effect.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Rishi Kapila - appears to have been blond.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Give the reference please. At least state how old he was when he was described as blond. (By the way, what's the word for 'blond' in Samskritam, I'd like to know?)
My grandfather had black hair until he got old. Then his hair went gray. Then, because the sun browned it, it yellowed to a golden colour. If I were to describe his hair in his final years, it be as "yellowish goldish". (Thousands of years down the road, hopefully no one will mistake my description of my granddad as being that of a blond Aryan invader left-over)
Then again, this is common among many people: some old men of Africa whose hair has turned gray also have to live with their white hair yellowed by the sun. It happens (blame it on the sun if you will). Yet neither they nor we have any fear of being branded Aryan invaders to bother dyeing it back to black or gray.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The big question is how come there should even be a single fair skinned man in the middle of Tamil Nadu?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->From time to time, Brahmins from North India (Indus region) had migrated to south and other part of India. North Indians are light color, reason is climate and distance from Equator. <!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->That's one reason: some Tamil brahmin communities have one or two ancestors from North India from the remote past. However, all Tamil Hindu communities, not just brahmins, have the occasional very fair children born among them. The answer for this lies in India's vast gene pool. And finally another more universal reason is the genetics controlling skin colour. Skin colour alleles don't work on the model of "dominant+dominant=dominant phenotype; dominant+recessive=dominant phenotype; recessive+recessive=recessive phenotype". It's far more complex. Skin colour genes code additively and many genes determine how one's skin looks.
Dark grandparents might have a medium brown child who might give birth to an even lighter coloured grandchild.
It happens. All over the world. We can stop looking for European causes or in this case North Indian causes for these things in South India.
Whether it's a good or bad thing, whether it's a natural disaster or utterly irrelevant, sometimes it just happens. Among Africans too. Fair, medium, dark are all to be understood in context. "Very fair" among Indians tends to mean at its lightest 'average Mediterranean'. Among Africans the scale is skewed more to one side because Africa has all three tropic lines running through it.
Likewise for "very dark".
Another quirk of skin-related genes: women of any population tend to be on average fairer than the men. That's probably where the term "the fair sex" originated. That doesn't mean all women are fairer than all men. Just that, compared to the darkest-complexioned male in a given population at a given time, the darkest complexioned woman of the same population will most likely be fairer. And likewise, there will most likely be a woman lighter than the lightest-complexioned male in a population. (The normal distribution graph for women's complexions of any population is shifted to the lighter side whilst that of the men are shifted to the darker side). They say the reason for this is - no, not an Aryan Women Invasion all over the world - but to do with some evolutionary advantage for women during childbirth.
Note that green and gray eyes occur more frequently in vast populations like ours. If you remember basic biology class, they teach only about brown and blue eye allele combinations. That's because if the teacher factored in green and gray, than the biology lesson would become really complicated really fast. These are more commonly occurring light colours. They actually occur among many populations, including among Indians.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->However I have seen blue eyes among the following castes - Saraswata Brahmanas, Punjabi Khatris, Rajputs, Jats, Gujars, Yadavas, Bihari Brahmanas, Bengali Brahmanas, Jains, Kayasthas and also among South Indian Brahmanas.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Ooooh - it's a miracle: Blue eyes occurring among small generally-endogamous groups!
In what way does this confound genetics? It happens. I've seen thousands of Tamil brahmins. No blue eyes. Sorry to disappoint all the avid blue-eyed-brahmin fans. I've seen what looked like a greenish-light-brownish-eyed Tamil brahmin. But then I've seen dozens of green- and gray-eyed Tamil Hindus who were not of the brahmin community (and I'm not even counting Aishwarya Rai.) Sorry if this disrupts your weird fantasy of Indian eye-colour distribution. Sometimes facts have that effect.