I have been reading a very old school and little known science fiction author, Leigh Brackett. It was actually here at dKos I was reminded of her when there was some diary on women science fiction authors and the discussion hadn't mentioned her. So I brought her up. For those completely unfamiliar with her, among her best known works is the script adaptations of The Big Sleep and Rio Bravo...she also did the first script version of the Empire Strikes Back but little of her script made it to the final version.
Most of my home reading has been, along with my son, going through the entire Dr. Who novels. I JUST finished the first Doctor's stories, and my son requested I wait until he catches up before I start on the second Doctor. So I decided to read some Leigh Brackett.
One of her most famous characters is Eric John Stark. On the covers of the Eric John Stark books he is presented as a typical swords-and-sorcery hero: muscular, macho, white and usually blond. Yet her description of him is clear from the very first story: skin almost as dark as his black hair. He does have blue eyes, but his skin is supposed to be almost black from having grown up on Mercury. He was an orphan so his racial ancestry is not made clear, I think deliberately since his name amongst the aboriginals of Mercury translates to "man without a tribe." I think she was a.) trying to make it realistic, and she felt a dark skinned character would survive better on Mercury, and b.) since this is supposed to be in the future she often has our preconceived notions of race completely overturned because race is malleable and will not be the same in the distant future. This is most dramatically shown in the Book of Skaith stories which have divergent evolution actively occurring from the original human settlers to fill empty niches in the ecosystem.
Keep in mind she is writing this in the 1950's and 60's. So it is amazing that she made her character dark skinned at a time when mixed marriages were actually illegal in many states. But even well after this, the design of the book covers ALWAYS shows Eric John Stark as white, showing the basic prejudices of the genre...prejudices that Leigh Brackett did not herself carry, it seems.
Well, interestingly enough, scientists studying human genetics from 7000 years ago carry the same preconceived notions as the illustrators drawing the book covers for the Eric John Stark books. See below for new discoveries in human evolution, including some that shine a light on the prejudices of even scientists in our modern world.
We are in an amazing age for the study of genetics. Back when I was in grad school, DNA sequencing was a big deal. I became an expert in it, honing my ability to sequence even the most difficult pieces of DNA. It was slow. My Ph.D. dissertation and two published papers are largely taken up with the cloning and sequencing of some pieces of DNA and my analysis of those sequences.
Today that work would take a matter of weeks to months rather than years and would comprise maybe a paragraph and a couple of panels in one figure of a paper. Advances in technology, initially pushed by the human genome project, have made my wonderful skills carefully honed in grad school completely outdated. And in the process have made it possible, for about $1000, to sequence the entire genome of practically any individual. In addition, technology allows sequencing from much smaller amounts of DNA than used to be possible.
We are on the verge, for better and worse (mostly better I think) of genomic medicine, where your personal genome can be sequenced and medical treatment, both preventative and acute, be geared to your individual genetics. There are clear bioethics issues this advance brings up, particularly given how insurance companies would want to use this information...but the possibilities of improving medical treatment is huge. For example, my wife has observed many in her family die in their 50's from various forms of cancer. She has, through considerable determination, been able to trace at least some of that cancer susceptibility to a couple of small mutations in her DNA which can clearly be linked to an increased chance of cancer. This has altered how both she and her doctor approach her health and have led to particular preventative measures that will almost certainly allow her to largely escape the curse her family has of dying in their 50's from cancer.
But there is another side to whole genome sequencing and the ability to sequence small quantities of DNA: the study of human evolution. We can now extract DNA from ancient skeletons, including Neanderthals, and find links to modern humans that have completely changed how scientists view our evolution. In fact it now seems modern humans do not derive from one distinct species of ancestral humans but at least four. What used to be considered three separate species, plus a fourth species never before known until DNA sequencing revealed it, have contributed to modern human populations, meaning these distinct species may all have been essentially subspecies of one human species and interbred. For example, a fairly large chunk of the genetic difference between modern Europeans and the rest of the world may well be due to interbreeding with Neanderthals. Modern African populations largely lack the contributions from these other species. The contributions are small (on an order of magnitude of around 1% of our total DNA sequence) but include particular shared traits (e.g. red hair may come from Neanderthals).
All this is fairly new and I am sure our interpretations will be revised and refined as more data comes in. I also am somewhat oversimplifying the controversies surrounding paleoanthropological debates today. But a new discovery gives some very interesting information about early Europeans. At least some early Europeans in Spain, based, I should mention, on only two skeletons from 7000 years ago, had blue eyes, dark skin, black hair, were lactose intolerant, and could not digest starch at all, and so had to depend largely on meat. Interestingly, the modern populations these ancient Spaniards are most closely related to are the Swedes and Finns. There is so much in this DNA-derived data that overturns preconceived notions even among expert scientists.
From BBC News:
Genetic tests reveal that a hunter-gatherer who lived 7,000 years ago had the unusual combination of dark skin and hair and blue eyes.
It has surprised scientists, who thought that the early inhabitants of Europe were fair...
The team found that the early European was most closely genetically related to people in Sweden and Finland.
But while his eyes were blue, his genes reveal that his hair was black or brown and his skin was dark.
"This was a result that was unexpected," said Dr Lalueza-Fox.
Scientists had thought the first Europeans became fair soon after they left Africa and moved to the continent about 45,000 years ago.
First off, this suggests the future vision of Leigh Brackett in the form of Eric John Stark is completely in line with European ancestors 7000 years ago--dark skin and hair with blue eyes...she of course was right: racial traits are malleable, of course, and ancient races and future races may have little in common with modern races. I mean duh! And yet we are so stuck in our beliefs about race that even scientists project backwards, and science fiction aficionados project forward, fixed notions of race.
Why did scientists think early inhabitants of Europe were fair skinned and haired? I am unaware of any evidence for this. Clearly at some point fair skin and hair genes entered the European population, but the skin color and hair color of Europeans has NEVER been uniform, has always involved a whole spectrum of colors, and we, to date, have no clear idea of where the fair skin and hair traits originated or when (other than the possible link between red hair and Neanderthals). The scientists studying human evolution made some of the same assumptions the illustrators of the Eric John Stark books made. Showing that even scientists are human ; -)
It is also interesting that the modern populations these ancient Spaniards are most closely related to are in distant Northern Europe. Traditionally, many scientists have believed (on thin evidence they themselves admit) that modern Basques are the most direct descendants of the ancestral European population. That may yet be true if you go far enough back, but one large, sweeping migration that occurred BEFORE agriculture links Spain 7000 years ago with modern Scandinavia. In many ways this is not unexpected....but still, many hold onto deep beliefs that the roots of modern racial, ethnic and cultural divides go back as far as one cares to go. Again there may be some truth in this (as in the Neanderthal connection among modern Europeans that is lacking in modern Africans in particular and to a large degree in modern Asians). But even 7000 years ago some of our deepest held racial, ethnic and cultural preconceived notions just don't hold up.
But wait, there's more. The recent study also shows that agriculture required some pretty sharp changes in our DNA: namely the abilities to digest lactose and starch.
The early European would have subsisted on a diet of mainly protein, and his DNA reveals that he was lactose-intolerant and unable to digest starch. These are traits that came after agriculture was adopted and people changed what they ate.
I kind of disagree with this last sentence. I think the point that is being made is that agriculture has affected our evolution, which is true. But these traits had to somewhat predate agriculture. As hunter-gatherers we lacked the enzymes to digest the products of agriculture, so developing agriculture would have been restricted to populations that had ALREADY developed one or both of these traits. Usually we think of agriculture as mainly requiring the ancient ancestors of domesticatable plants and animals (see for example Jerad Diamond's book
Guns, Germs and Steel). But obviously the genetic trait allowing digestion of starch was also necessary to make agriculture work. In essence we had to be domesticatable too, if you will.
Race, ethnicity and culture are all very dear to us, and they often interact closely with nationalism, a force that has had an undeniable historical impact on the modern map and which haunts us today across the globe. Here in NYC we have parades celebrating just about every ethnicity and local politics often split along ethnic lines. Yet deep down these differences are just a snapshot of a much, much more complicated and ever changing interplay of genetics, migrations, and almost indiscriminate sex, possibly even across species, that are the real history of what it means to be human.