Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Mercadian Masque wrote:I'm not going to engage on the ethnicity point, since Dakka really isn't the place for serious discussion of such things. That being said, I though to quickly address the following, and I apologize if someone already caught it.

Kanluwen wrote:And you have to admit the majority of the world's population falls under what many would consider "white guys". .

This isn't even remotely true. As has been said, the majorities of the English, American, and GW staff populations are comprised by white guys, but not the world population. It isn't even close.

Just talkin' facts...

If you want to talk facts, then I'd suggest you not start with "Caucasian" whilst only mentioning the United Kingdom and United States populations.

Most of Europe, large swathes of South America(Brazil, for example), a large portion of Russia(fun fact: where do you think the Caucasian moniker comes from?), a chunk of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and most of Canada, and parts of the Ivory Coast are considered 'Caucasian' descent.

Just saying.

Kanluwen wrote:
If you want to talk facts, then I'd suggest you not start with "Caucasian" whilst only mentioning the United Kingdom and United States populations.

Most of Europe, large swathes of South America(Brazil, for example), a large portion of Russia(fun fact: where do you think the Caucasian moniker comes from?), a chunk of Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and most of Canada, and parts of the Ivory Coast are considered 'Caucasian' descent.

Just saying.

Perhaps I'm missing your point. I didn't start with 'caucasian;' I used your phrase. Are you trying to say that the majority of the world's population is caucasian? Perhaps you misunderstood my point? I was suggesting that the idea that the people at GW didn't put much thought into race is probably a good one. You need not get snarky and defensive. What am I missing?

OK...lets calm down....

Evolution of skin color
Rogers et al. (2004) performed an examination of the variation in MC1R nucleotide sequences for people of different ancestry and compared the sequences for chimpanzees and humans from various regions of the Earth. Rogers concluded that roughly five million years ago, at the time of the evolutionary separation of chimpanzees and humans, the common ancestors of all humans had light skin that was covered by dark hair.

Over time the hair disappeared to allow better heat dissipation through sweating[3] and the skin tone grew darker to protect from folate depletion to the increased exposure to sunlight.[4] By 1.2 million years ago, shortly after the final speciation of homo sapiens from homo ergaster, the ancestors of all people living today had exactly the same receptor protein as modern Africans.[43] Evolutionary pressure meant that any gene variations that resulted in lighter skin were unable to survive under the intense African sun, and human skin remained dark for the next 1.1 million years.

Approximately 70,000–100,000 years ago modern humans began to migrate away from the tropics to the north where they were exposed to less intense sunlight, possibly in part due to the need for greater use of clothing to protect against the colder climate. Under these conditions there was less photodestruction of folate and so the evolutionary pressure stopping lighter-skinned gene variants from surviving was reduced. In addition, lighter skin is able to generate more vitamin D (cholecalciferol) than darker skin so would have represented a health benefit in reduced sunlight if there were limited sources of vitamin D.[3] Hence the leading hypothesis for the evolution of human skin color proposes that:-

1. From ~1.2 million years ago to less than 100,000 years ago, the ancestors of all people alive were as dark as modern Africans.
As populations began to migrate, the evolutionary constraint keeping skin dark decreased proportionally to the distance North a population migrated, resulting in a range of skin tones within northern populations.

2. At some point northern populations experienced positive selection for lighter skin due to the increased production of vitamin D from sunlight and the genes for darker skin disappeared from these populations.

3. The genetic mutations leading to light skin, though different among East Asians and Europeans,[25] suggest the two groups experienced a similar selective pressure due to settlement in northern latitudes.[5]

There is a long-standing hypothesis that the selection for lighter skin due to higher vitamin D absorption occurred soon after the Out of Africa migration sometime before 40,000 years ago. A number of researchers disagree with this and suggest that the northern latitudes permitted enough synthesis of vitamin D combined with food sources from hunting to keep populations healthy, and only when agriculture was adopted was there a need for lighter skin to maximize the synthesis of vitamin D. The theory suggests that the reduction of game meat, fish, and some plants from the diet resulted in skin turning white many thousands of years after settlement in Europe and Asia.[44][45] This theory is supported by a study into the SLC24A5 gene which found that the allelle associated with light skin in Europe may have originated as recently as 6,000–10,000 years ago[23] which is in line with the earliest evidence of farming.[46]



-------------------------------------------------------------

So? The race known as "white", "caucasian" or whatever today might be as young as 6.000-10.000 years. 40K clearly covers a larger time period. In short, ethnicity might not mean much.. or have evolved in rather radical new ways, especially if one considers the spread to different planets (considering how moving about a little on just one planet creates such drastic effects). Not to mention the Warp, Chaos and perhaps some Alien cross-breeding. The dominant ethnicity of 40K might well be pink-skinned with purple stripes.

I read through the first page and missed the rest of the thread, but in case no one has mentioned it already, the Salamanders chapter is not 'black guys' in the sense of African-descent.

They are, quite literally, fire giants based on Nordic archetypes; blackened skin and glowing red eyes, skilled craftsmen and powerful warriors.

This changed a bit between 4th and 5th editions as the artwork went from brown-skinned normal-looking guys with hair in corn rows (clearly urban African heritage-esque) to the current depiction with coal black skin and glowing red eyes.

As to what 'color' SM tend to be, GW fluff has made it pretty clear that they will produce whatever amount of melanin is suitable to their environment. Because they have a tendency to wear full body-covering armor that seals them away from sunlight, they generally tend to be pale.

Imagine727 wrote:I have noticed something about 40k, that all the space marines are Caucasian. I would be able to overlook this, only the only space marines of non-white origin, the salamanders, are classed as mutated. I want a discussion, not someone trying to rationalize it, and say racism is non existent. The fact that the greatest heroes of humanity are white, and the only black ones are mutated makes me feel there is some sort of institutional racism or racial preference.

4 things to say to this:

1. WHITE SCARS

2. race is not white guys and black guys, race is the genetic composition of groups of humans that have been seperated. GW make the easy story move of making each world have its own single race (whih isn't that hard to believe due to tech level allowing movement across the planet allowing for a migration of genetics)

3. most space marines recruit from feral worlds, with uncivilised populations, if GW made alot of worlds with non-white populations they would get a storm of 'their a bunch of racists' complaints.

4. space marines are not human, they are heavily effected by the chapters genessed, any chapter that has stable geneseed has no fixed skin colour. They will also resemble the primarch of origin to some extent due to the geneseed (some features of race are seen in bone structure, so having your bone structure completely changed will make you different )

This thread is DONE! SO STOP BLOODY ANSWERING TO MY OLD COMMENTS!

You don't have a choice unfortunately. Don't make the post if you don't want a response, or ask for a thread lock. There's also no need to get angry either, considering the original post was horribly misguided.