Are Asians More Evolved than Other Races?

Evolution and body hair loss.
Human evolution. Loss of body hair, loss of scalp hair and gain of weight. Source: Economist cover page December 2003.

This lengthy post is not meant to be a race baiting attempt, even though that is exactly what the title and content suggest. Moreover, while most people take the phrase “more evolved” to be complimentary and take the phrase “less evolved” to be insulting, I am not so sure.

What if so called “more evolved” higher intelligence humans destroy earth in the coming years via: nuclear wars; environmental destruction; newer chemical/biological/nanomaterial/gene based weapons; low birth rate/negative population growth related self-destruction; and so on?

Can we even say that something is more evolved than something else without knowing for certain the definition of more evolved?

From thecupidscousin blog:

Evolution and rise of women.
Evolution and rise of women.

Evolution and Race

In any case, going back to the subject matter of this post, I used to have a caucasian workmate some years ago who told me many times that he thought Asians were the most evolved of all human races. By Asian, he primarily meant East Asians, which includes Chinese, Japanese and Koreans (along with the diaspora of these groups across the world).

My ex-workmate’s definition (with some minor additions on my part that I am sure he would agree with) of “more evolved humans” includes among many other characteristics: generally peaceful daily behavior; emotional outburst control; less crime and homicides; cleanliness; delayed gratification; lack of religiosity; high IQ; herbivore men; extensive use of technology, often in unusual socially frowned upon ways in less evolved societies.

Examples of this include boyfriend arm pillows, hi-tech toilets, robot companions, fembots/sexbots); high rates of asexuality; liberal attitudes and self-control in the presence of scantily clad women; sizable segments of the population practicing extreme forms of isolationist antisocial behaviordeath from playing video games; low birth rates; and limited to no body hair. Recently, another friend of mine raised this same issue, and I was reminded about my ex-workmate’s argument and decided to subsequently write this post.

I find this whole concept very interesting, and I agree with many parts of it. I also think that much of the “less evolved” world is headed in this direction (i.e., we are evolving into Asia in many respects, with: homicides falling globally; virtual lives increasingly important; men becoming more feminine/less savage; religiosity decreasing; technology becoming highly addictive and omnipresent; birth rates falling globally; and isolationism increasing in spite of people having many online friends.

However, lack of daily violent confrontations does not necessarily correlate with lack of major genocidal violence potential. It is quite possible that China will go to war with some of its Asian neighbors in the coming years even though you would never get that idea from seeing daily largely very peaceful life throughout Asia.

Animal cruelty in Asia is also astounding and the region dominates world demand for shark fin soup, tiger bones, ivory and much more. I think that more evolved human societies will have a much larger proportion of the population being some combination of vegan, vegetarian and synthetic lab grown meat eaters.

Animal rights will continue to become increasingly important as more advanced countries deem animals to be sentient beings. It is also highly debatable whether higher IQs and test scores in the Asian world are more important for a society to thrive compared to much higher rates of creativity and invention in the western world (at least historically speaking).

I think that a more evolved society will entail significant behavioral elements of both modern Asian and, to a lesser extent, Northern European peoples and societies. Both of these groupings are often accused of having less emotional and outburst prone people. In terms of racial diversity, I think that Northern European based societies are more evolved and fairer than Asian societies.

It is interesting to note that Native Americans, with similar genetics to mongoloid Asians, have vastly different behavioral patterns and cultures. This would seem to favor “nurture” in the “nature” versus “nurture” debate and make the subject of this whole post (related to genetics) a moot point. But perhaps native Americans are not as genetically similar to say the Chinese or Japanese as we think?

Body Hair and Evolution

The part of this whole theory of my ironically very hirsute (excess body hair) caucasian ex-workmate that interests me the most is the lack of body hair in Asians phenomenon. Over the years, I have noticed that people with excessive body hair (especially back hair and chest/stomach/abdomen area hair) tend to go bald much faster and more extensively than people with less to no body hair.

Asians and Native Americans in general tend to have less to no body hair, and in my opinion, less extensive balding patterns. So is the book “The Naked Ape” more applicable to Asians than to the other major races that still have a lot of body hair?

To end this somewhat rambling post, here is a video that shows that even Asians can sometimes surprise you when it comes to body hair quantity:

Dr. Claire Higgins and her Hair Research

On May 20, I made a post about UK-based Dr. Aaron Gardner because of his presentation at the WCHR2014. Dr. Gardner, who works under Dr. Colin Jahoda at Durham university, has also worked under Dr. Claire Higgins.

Dr. Claire Higgins and Higgins Lab

Dr. Jahoda and Dr. Higgins are probably the two foremost hair loss researchers in the UK, and among the world’s ten most cited ones. Dr. Higgins and her team are based at Imperial College (UK) via the Higgins Lab.

In the Linkedin profile for Dr. Higgins, you can scroll down all the way to see various summaries of her extensive prior hair loss related research. In recent years, both Dr. Jahoda and Dr. Higgins have become well known for their work related to 3D culturing/3D spheroids. In Dr. Higgins own words:

“Human dermal papilla cells, when grown as spheroids, are capable of inducing de novo hair follicles in human skin.”

In 2013, Dr. Higgins was a co-author of an important article on 3D culturing of dermal papilla cells.

Below are two videos of Dr. Higgins that are well worth watching. The first is courtesy of blog reader Desmond yet again. The second, surprisingly, is from a Latino news channel’s daily science, health and technology segment. I am impressed by Dr. Higgins’ knowledge and communication skills. Perhaps the wonderful accent biases my opinion a bit.