The perfect lens, or in praise of mammals

[shkrobius]

...nuclear architecture of rod photoreceptor cells differs fundamentally in nocturnal and diurnal mammals. The rods of diurnal retinas possess the conventional architecture found in nearly all eukaryotic cells, with most heterochromatin situated at the nuclear periphery and euchromatin residing toward the nuclear interior. The rods of nocturnal

Comments

Re: Part 2

[i_eron]

I do not propose an absolute effect. In the genetic study you have recently recommended, a good correlation was shown between looks and traditional status on the one hand and genes on the other in India. So, imagine a (God forbid) mass genocide event in the Indian past. Surely, the currently observed racial diversity there would have been lower than it is now.

I think I understand about blending. But I believe that the period of the Civil war was unlike any other in the Chinese history because the Han population has dropped so dramatically. It was the period of the highest potential effect of europeoid diffusion into China. Some regions were surely populated by recent europeoid immigrants or by mixed populations (like the Liqian village). Given time, these people would have been thoroughly mixed with the bulk of Han, producing some rate of occurrence of European features, probably with a North-South gradient like in India. But they never got the chance, they were exterminated. The effect of invasions was reduced without "thorough weeding all the time".

You are right to criticize the weak parts of my reasoning. But this reasoning has led me to "predict" ethnic cleansing events during the Chinese Civil war. Later I have learned about a mass event quoted by independent sources (a revered XIX century Russian sinologist, Wikipedia, many Chinese bloggers that presumably learn this at school) from "the official Chinese history annals". The description of this event is frighteningly close to what I have guessed. So there must be some merit in the reasoning after all.

In any case, thank you very much for the argument and for consulting Prof. Shaughnessy, it was very interesting indeed.