Individuals and populations

• Main Author: Rose, Geoffrey
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford University PressNew York, NY 1993
• Subjects: eskimo*
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192624864.003.0005; https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/52509502/isbn-9780192624864-book-part-5.pdf

Abstract Motor car manufacturers try to design the best possible car to meet the requirements of a particular market and then, in theory if not always in practice, every car coming off the production line conforms to this ideal design. Humans are not like this; they are all different. Some elements of their distinctiveness may be common to a whole population. Kalahari bushmen and Eskimos, for example, are clearly built according to different designs (corresponding no doubt to the demands of their contrasting environments), but even within any one population individual people differ much more than individual motor cars—in their size, physical strength and stamina, intelligence, energy intake, patterns of behavior and temperament, blood pressure, and a host of other personal attributes. This is surprising. Why, after some millions of years of Darwinian selective survival, do we not all conform to an ideal height, intelligence, and athletic performance? Our variability cannot all be blamed on defects in manufacture, since near-perfect standardization is achievable when such uniformity is required. For example, humans vary but little in their basic biochemical and physiological mechanisms: we all have almost identical concentrations of sodium and potassium in the blood, delicately and accurately stabilized.