From: ptkwt@...1.aracnet.com (Phil Tomson) Date: 2001-02-04T18:40:02+09:00 Subject: [ruby-talk:10341] Re: ANN: Slide show available (neoteny?) In article , Christoph Rippel wrote: >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Ben Tilly [mailto:ben_tilly@hotmail.com] >> Sent: Saturday, February 03, 2001 04:18 PM >> To: ruby-talk ML >> Subject: [ruby-talk:10324] Re: ANN: Slide show available >> >> >> matz@zetabits.com (Yukihiro Matsumoto) wrote: >> >> >How about having a smoke-less party when I visit you. >> >> Much preferable. :-) >> >> >Some people there were astonished when they knew my real age. I was >> >appeared like a child from westerners' view. >> >> Indeed. That is due to something called neoteny. And I thought the point was that he looked younger because he doesn't smoke. >> >> >> >> Neoteny consists of retaining juvenile characteristics >> into adulthood. Compared to the great apes all humans >> show a great deal of neoteny. Different races different >> amounts. The various Oriental races have more of a >> tendancy that way than Caucasians do, with the result >> that Caucasions look old to Orientals and conversely >> Orientals look much younger than they are to Caucasians. There are a lot of other factors that could account for this... cultural, dietary, (and in this case not smoking versus smoking). Compare a Caucasian that smokes (and has for a while) with another Caucasian of the same age who never smoked - you can generally tell that the smoker looks older. >> >> Virtually all domestic animals likewise show neoteny. >> For instance dogs are biologically immature wolves. Careful here... If you start extrapolating this sort of theory to humans (and it sounds like a half-baked theory to me)... well it smells of racism to me. And please know I'm not accusing you of anything, just think about your previous two paragraphs in this context and you'll probably see my point. >> Indeed the closer a particular breed of dog comes to >> actually growing up, the more aggressive it is. Who is to say which breed of dog is more 'mature' than the others and that agression is a sign of maturity? All of the breeds of dogs are still dogs - despite their differences they are one species. There are not, in reality, different 'races' of humans - 'race' is an artificial distinction - we are all of the same race (the Human race - homosapiens). The whole idea of 'races' lead to racism. In reality we are all more the same than we are different. >> For much (much) more on this, Stephen J. Gould has an >> interesting book on this topic called "Ontogeny and >> Phylogeny". >> >> > >Hm the juvenile characteristics you quote include >large body size and small teeth. I believe that >you won't have trouble finding anthropologists who >will be rather skeptical if neoteny is particularly >relevant for human evolution and some of Gould's >more material claims have been proven wrong. > I'm not an anthropologist and I don't play one on TV, but I'm very skeptical. Anyway, sorry for continuing the digression, I know this actually belongs on one of the evolution newsgroups, but I just had to get my 2cents in on this topic. Phil