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Re: homo species
Ralph L Holloway (rlh2@columbia.edu)
Fri, 14 Jul 1995 10:52:33 -0400
Pete Vincent wonders about sexual attractiveness and cues, and speculates
about the possibility that at the level of genetics, H.s.s. and H.s. n
could exchange genes but may simply have not "wanted" to, for a
combination of hard-wired and culturally determined reasons. There has
been some research during the past year or two that impinges on the
question on "attractiveness", mostly reported in NATURE, as I recall.
It's simply too complex to unravel in terms of biology vs. culture, and
is clearly some inextricable mixture of the two. I appreciate his anecdote
too. I
remember falling madly "in love" instantaneously when a separating
blackboard between two 5th grade classes was opened to allow one teacher
to monitor both classes. There was this girl sitting there and I fell.
It's taken about 50 years to get her out of my mind.
That said, I hope this thread doesn't degenerate into a series of
personal preferences. The NATURE article I seem to recall showed that
compositie faces built using computer images varying ratios of facial
features, such as face braedth to height, etc, were tested on both Asian
and Western males and the agreements were pretty strong. One question is,
of course, given cultural paradigms and rules regarding social units,
marriage, and offspring, does the hard-wired aspect have any real impact
on gene exchange and flow? Will we ever know?
Ralph Holloway
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