A few months ago, an older man told me, in English, I had nice eyes. He said that Asian people don’t have big eyes because of the Mongolian Desert. I never thought too much about it until last night when Adam and I were watching A Long Way Round. It is a TV series where Ewan McGregor travels around the world on his motorcycle with his friend Charlie. As they enter Kazakhastan Ewan says something to the effect to, “How do people know, how does the world know to change the way people look based on where they live.” Immediately I thought of my conversation about eyes. So, I went and did some research. It turns out, in a nutshell… he was right.
It seems that all babies develop the epicanthic fold on their eyes. In western society, as the nose develops, this disappears. But, in Asian counties, evolution has overtaken this. It seems that this all began with climate. In Mongolia the sunlight is so bright and the snow so harsh…that the light reflects off of the ground and the eyes have not lost this fold basically for protection. The same goes for the pebbles in the Gobi desert. I also read that the dry savannahs and yellow dust create the same type of light reflection which has caused the fold to remain for protection.
Other cultures such as Native Americans, Hawaiians, Nepali’s and Thai’s have also developed this trait.
I personally think Asian eyes are beautiful, along with their perfect skin and great fashion. I know many of the women however think otherwise and instead of getting the Asian blepharoplasty to add in an eyelid, many of the stores sell an adhesive tape that the women use to create this look. Just an FYI
2 comments:
I did a few brief lesson on this for my undegrad and there are a few Arch/Anthro theories. The one you mentioned is one but the counter argument are that these types of eyes are not seen in the middle east or africa.
Some have suggested selective breeding (this was pomoted as the beautiful ideal so people with these traits are more likely to breed).
There are a few asian scholars that actually suggest that white and black people are a completely different species of human. I think that is chinese nationalistic bullshit.
There are a lot of theories but it's very interesting.
Thats all I can remember.
Fliss
Sorry I meant that black and caucasian is a different species of human to asians.
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