Safe Speed Forums

I wonder if anyone has studied the effect on genetic diversity of restricting travel? A non travelling society would clearly suffer more from in breeding than one which spreads itself far and wide and who accepts outsiders readily. I wonder if one could argue freedom to travel is necessary for evolutionary advantage? There is also a risk with mass transit systems of disease spreading more readily than if people travel in their own spaces. 'Don't take the bus, drive you car to stop bird flu' would make an excellent slogan I know there have been some studies on commuters showing that those that travel by bus/train are ill more often and more stressed than those of us taking our cars and getting stressed in traffic jams. I don't know whether they have accounted for economic background as I'd imagine the more well off you are the more you are likely to commute by car regardless of the costs incurred eg heavy parking charges etc.

It's an interesting thought, but we've only been a travelling society for a relatively short period of time. Wouldn't the counter arguments be that it didn't do us any harm before easy transport became available (individuals and some times local settlements yes, but not on a large scale) and that we haven't had easy transport long enough to have had much benefit yet?

_________________
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

Are you just researching excuses for spreading some Euro-seed?

we may not have had EASY transport, but we (as a race) have had transport since we could walk. Genetic fingerprinting has shown that early humans crossed continents and interbred with 'locals'. Modern easy transport has simply made that easier. (says the result of a mixed race marriage ).

Are you perchance refering to the migratory flows on the M1/M6 on Fridays and Sundays in both directions.??

e.g. - the populous of the south travels north , whilst on the other carriageways the populous goes south.
Come sunday - the reverse is true .
At one end of the social scale we see Mercs and Hi Spec BMW- at the other end - beat up honda's and Datsuns (the latter being driven by the former population of the uk, Brits )

_________________
lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

As I understand it, the size of a human population necessary to maintain adequate genetic diversity is not all that great, maybe a few thousand, so we have perfectly healthy populations on many fairly isolated Polynesian islands. Even in the days before mass travel, it was only in a small number of unusually isolated communities that problems resulted from inbreeding.

Mass travel, particularly air travel, is likely to result in a lot more inter-race breeding and may tend to erode some particularly distinctive racial characteristics, such as very fair skin and blonde hair in Scandinavians.

However, it can be argued that the running-down of oil supplies means that we only have maybe twenty years of cheap, easy air travel remaining

_________________
"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

There is only one thing to say about restricted travel/inbreeding....Stroud

_________________
"Are you sh**ing me?"
"John Spartan, you are fined one credit for a violation of the verbal morality statute."

I hear even the dogs have club feet there

Seriously, though, my wife teaches at an inner-city school in Brum where a majority of the children are of Bangladeshi extraction - most born locally of first- or second-generation immigrants. These people have clearly travelled a long way from their original home, but it doesn't seem to have resulted in much genetic diversity. They're all keeping up the tradition of marrying their (usually first) cousins with just as much enthusiasm as the deep South and the royal family, so the gene pool is not expanding, and there is a lot of evidence of defects associated with inbreeding - deafness, blindness, some spasticity and just plain stupidity. Health workers are aware of the problem, and are doing their best to spread good advice, but I fear it will be an uphill struggle against ingrained cultural habits.

_________________
Keep right on to the end of the road ...

Where does diversity end and the ghetto start? Widely differing cultures do not mix well. The Brits create ghettos in other countries. Eventually in many thousands of years it is possible we might all be the same colour and have the same culture but we have a long way to go and is that desirable anyway?

_________________
Shooting is good for you and too good for some people.

There's a pathologist in the US who asserts the view that the Human Race is in fact a dangerous abnormal freak of nature and the sooner we wipe ourselves out and give the planet (or whats left of it!) back to the animals the better.

He bases this view on his life-times work in dealing with mans unrelenting ability to inflict pain, suffering and death on his fellow human beings.

The one sound that has followed the 'march of civilisation' across the globe is the scream.

Happy Christmas!

Shall we start by handing George Monbiot the loaded revolver ?

_________________
Keep right on to the end of the road ...

Hold on a minute, is he saying that animals don't inflict pain, suffering and death on other animals?

I think that just depends whereabouts you are in the food chain doesn't it?

_________________
Shooting is good for you and too good for some people.

And if you remember that video of killer whales playing volleyball with live sealions, you can't say they never do it for fun.

Or any cat playing with a mouse, for that matter.

_________________
"Show me someone who says that they have never exceeded a speed limit, and I'll show you a liar, or a menace." (Austin Williams - Director, Transport Research Group)

Any views expressed in this post are personal opinions and may not represent the views of Safe Speed

Seems to me like the only big difference is our ability to kill/inflict pain at a distance, and it could be argued that even that was a natural adaptation because we're too weak and slow to do it up close most of the time.

_________________
Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler - Einstein

I don't know if any of you have read Bill Bryson's 'Brief History of Almost Everything' but there's a few interesting things on (sort of) this topic. He makes the point that none of us would be here without a little (or a lot!) of incest.

I often wonder if evolution even applies to humans any more. Being extra intelligent or skillful doesn't really increase the chances of successfully breeding, possibly the reverse (i.e educated people tend to have fewer children).

Bill Bryson - good books.

I think the 'Darwin Awards' would be more applicable in this instance.

All I know about how road safety and diversity is the longer we have speed cameras diverse it gets...

_________________
CSCP Latin for beginners...
Ticketo ergo sum : I scam therefore I am!

Paul, ban him, or at least suspend him. That's the worse joke I think I've ever heard.....

(Only kidding, JT )

it's worse than that because medicine is allowing people who nature would have had her way with to reproduce. Great for our feelings, not exactly the best thing for evolution though.

Mankind is actually devolving, and at an alarming rate. Look at chav populations for example. They don't travel much, so they inbreed. Average age of first child is 14, so they're burning through generations at twice the rate everyone else is, and they typically have way more sprogs than the 2.3 or whatever average that the general population does!