Breeding Between the Lines: Why Interracial People are Healthier and More Attractive by Alon Ziv

Author:Alon Ziv [Ziv, Alon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781569804827
Publisher: Barricade Books
Published: 2006-07-24T00:00:00+00:00

Inspecting the Towers

PUTTING THE THEORY TO THE TEST

MUTINY IS SERIOUS business. On April 28, 1789, the HMS Bounty was sailing home with a cargo of over one thousand Tahitian breadfruit plants. They were to be transplanted to the West Indies to provide cheap food for slaves. The plants would never arrive, however, because on that morning, First Lieutenant Fletcher Christian led a mutiny that successfully took control of the ship. Captain William Bligh and eighteen men loyal to him were set adrift in a twenty-three-foot launch.

The story of the Bounty has been told many times in many different forms. There are hundreds of books on the mutiny, including one written by William Bligh himself. At least four separate fi lm versions have been made throughout the years, each featuring one of the biggest stars of his generation: Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, Marlon Brando, and Anthony Hopkins. Many stories have focused on Captain Bligh’s leadership in order to determine if the mutiny was justified. Others focused on Bligh’s odyssey home, a trip of over 3,600 miles in what was essentially a rowboat; remarkably he and all but one of his men survived.

There is a rather unsatisfying conclusion to the story. Bligh survived and led a second voyage to Tahiti. This expedition was incident free and he successfully transported over two thousand breadfruit plants to the West Indies. However, all of Bligh’s hard work was for naught—the slaves there refused to eat the breadfruit.

But what of the mutineers? After a stop on Tahiti, Christian, the lead mutineer, took eight of his men and eleven Tahitian women and started a new colony on the remote island of Pitcairn. This was an excellent choice of hideout because Pitcairn was in the wrong place on the Royal Navy’s maps. It would not be rediscovered until 1808. Basically, Christian and his men lived in a remote, tropical paradise with a bunch of young Tahitian women, and no one could find them. Not a bad ending.

As I discussed in Chapter One, it was commonly accepted at that time that mixed marriages were unnatural, and the offspring would be physically and intellectually inferior. The inhabitants of Pitcairn found quite the opposite. The couples were extraordinarily prolific, averaging 11.4 children. And these children grew strong and tall. The men of the first generation on Pitcairn were taller than their British fathers (and the average Tahitian man at that time) by two and one-half inches.

The mutiny on the Bounty is a dramatic story. The impressive number and stature of the half-British/half-Tahitian children born on Pitcairn is not surprising to me. It fits in perfectly with my theory. This first generation of Pitcairners no doubt received very different genes from their British fathers and Tahitian mothers. Their high heterozygosity allowed them to develop tall and (I assume) healthy, symmetrical bodies. This is still just anecdotal evidence, but it fits in perfectly with all of the scientific data I have presented.

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