Bright-Sized: Skull Study Shows Eye-Sockets Have Grown Larger at Higher Latitudes

Human eyeballs may have grown larger as populations migrated farther and farther from the equator, an eye-socket analysis shows















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"For some reason, orbit size increases with latitude," Kirk says. "That's a phenomenon that needs to be explained."
 



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  1. 1. bongobimbo 05:27 PM 2/6/12

    This seems weird. I have friends of North Sea and Scandinavian origin with smallish eyes, often deeply sunken, which I used to think might be protection against glacial cold. Kris Kistofferson and Konrad Adenauer are well-known exemplars. Some of them even share a tendency to develop an epicanthic fold similar to East Asians'--and I believe that fold is known to be protection against severe cold and snow blindness.

    I also have friends whose ancestors were from India, Italy and West Africa. Many have eyes are unusually large and often more protruding than usual in Northern Europe. Any Bollywood movie will show these large prominent eyes.

    Is the eye socket volume referred to inside the body and not visible to observers in daily life?

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  2. 2. Gerard 11:34 PM 2/6/12

    Did the study account for body height ?
    It's the first obvious correlation to be expected, and depending of the population selected, you can have a nice height gradient going away from equator.

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  3. 3. annapobedovna 09:26 AM 2/8/12

    I concur that when it comes to visible eye size, this article doesn't seem to apply. I think the article referred to what is not immediately visible, i.e the general skull structure.

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