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Re: homo species
Pete Vincent (VINCENT@TRIUMF.CA)
13 Jul 1995 21:54:44 GMT
In <Pine.SUN.3.91.950713003157.17393D-100000@aloha.cc.columbia.edu>
rlh2@columbia.edu writes:
[.......]
. There are populations such
` as sibling species that appear morphologically identical and there
` morphologies so wildly different, i.e., great danes and Dauschunds, being
` the same species. In these cases we can test whether or not the
` populations are reproductively isolated, but with the fossil record we
` are in no such position.
Now this is an interesting point. With Danes and Dauschunds, they are
genetically sufficiently similar to interbreed, but I would suggest
that if the two breeds were turned loose in an ecology that included
no intermediate sized canids, there would never occur any interbreeding
between them, as the physical obstacles would just be too great to
overcome. I can see this as an avenue for speciation. How that might
apply to the case of genus homo would be extreme speculation, but
I wonder about the sexual attraction cues, which are seemingly
very finely tuned to bodily, and particularly facial, appearance.
ie. it might have been genetically possible for h.s. and h.n.
(or: h.s.s. & h.s.n.) to interbreed, but they would never want to,
due to the extent of the difference in physical appearance.
This inevitably sets me off on paths of introspection and
speculation about the patterns of sexual attraction I find
encoded in myself, and I wonder how much of it is cultural,
and how much is hardwired. I recall having immediate sexual
responses to images in `adult' magazines which I encountered
at the age of three, in a culture that at that time did not
have a lot of overt instances of sexual cultural programming
(pre-television, in a somewhat post-victorian family). On
the other hand, I look around at the couples I see on the
street every day, and I'm forced to conclude that sexual
tastes must be pretty diverse, or else a lot of people
submerge their sexual selection criteria to other considerations.
If everyone responded like I did, the species might hardly ever
breed.
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vincent@triumf.ca <== faster % Pete Vincent
vincent@freenet.vancouver.bc.ca % Disclaimer: all I know I
% learned from reading Usenet.
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