Paragraphs 2 and 3 pose some intriguing science implied by the movie Avatar
Written before the science news reports this May of 2010 of evidence of the presence of 2 to 4 percent of Neanderthal genes in European and Asian modern human populations:
Such genes must have also been passed on to the black pan-African diaspora hybridized under the trade in African slaves, African enslavement and colonization by their Arab and European enslavers and colonizers.
The black African populations of particularly the Americas, east Africa and South Africa in large numbers to the majority no longer are virtually black in complexion (Be assured that a virtual black complexion does exist plentifully among the indigenous people elsewhere in the other parts of sub-Saharan Africa) and non-Negroid features variously and randomly are present in the physical makeup of these people. These hybridized black Africans have thoroughly intrabred domestically and have occasionally freely reproduced with people of other phenotype races at home and abroad as well as with continental black Africans. Reviled President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, in Africa, clearly has a European facial bone structure, nose and lips, and distinctively, while not light complexioned, does not have a virtually black complexion that is prevalent in the Zimbabwean people. It is certain that he is racially mixed with European. Broadly speaking, in any black African diaspora family complexions of children may or may not differ strikingly as well as may differ from the complexions of their parents. Marriage and reproduction among these also occurs between mates of any combination of completions. Simarly, marriage and reproduction between virtually black complexioned black Africans and any gradient of brown to pale complexioned Africans are commonplace across the continent. As result, racial purity of black Africans anywhere is doubtful and would likely be a rarity if it exists. It is pseudo-science myth or bad, flawed and wrong science that purports to find that black pan-Africans too, in tremendous proportion, do not share Neanderthal genes, albeit via secondary and tertiary trans-racial reproductive transmission, if direct mating and reproduction occurred between Neanderthals and the modern human populations of Europe and Asia (the black African populations of the east African islands of Madagascar, the Seycelles and Zanibar have been hybridized with non-African and Far-Eastern peoples) and Neanderthal genes reside in their genomes.
I saw the movie Avatar on Tuesday, February 23, 2010. It's a blend of science fiction and science fanciful about the attempt of a human, particularly American, industrial-military usurpation of mining land, bearing the closest thing to priceless minerals ("unobtainium" at $20,000,000.00 kg.), from the blue-complexioned ET human-like but low-tech natives, the Na'vi, on the fictional moon Pandora, with an atmosphere breathable by humans, in a different solar system that results in a human hi-tech war against the Na'vi. The Na'vi are supported in the last moments of the first battle, as best as I can remember, while they are being exterminated, in a spontaneous or happenstance counterattack by the whole of the local powerful and dangerous animal kingdom of the moon against an armada of human fighter-bomber aircraft and a ground force of artillery, giant and nimble war robots and troops equipped with ferocious weapons. Prior to the human military assault, human scientists on Pandora breed or bio-engineer their own Na'vi, in what looks like a bio-genesis amniotic fluid-filled glass tank (aquarium-like, or glass, womb), who can be animated and controlled remotely by a human thinker-meditator and human thought and through whom the human controller can also view and experience (a kind of astral projection, mental telepathy, remote viewing through or psychic habitation of another). The industrial-military complex commissions creation of the lab Na'vi for him to infiltrate the natural Na'vi and have him influence the natural Na'vi to voluntarily and peacefully move from their ancestral land, located on the site of the nearly priceless minerals, so the industrial-military complex might not have to attack them with the overwhelming power of hi-tech weapons to take the land forcibly and then mine the minerals.
See the movie for the whole story. It has strong historical and political overtones. A most original thing about the movie is the vegetated asteroids suspended in the moon's upper atmosphere -- the Hallelujah Mountains.
The Science Implications
Like humans, the Na'vi are primates but are tall and slender hominid monkeys, with a tail, whereas humans are ape-related or-derived hominids without tails. Roughly speaking, hominids are upright-standing, bipedal, manually intensive and centered, tool and technology making and using primates. The Na'vi have cat-like faces, hiss like cats and wear their head hair in long, neat dread-lock-style thin braids.
The idea of post-monkey hominids with tails paralleling post-ape human hominids without tails may not be as far fetched as it might seem. Some humans, male and female, are periodically born, in rare instances, with a small non-prehensile, naked, fleshy tail and in similarly rare instances some humans, as they develop in childhood or adolescence, grow a full-body, low-density to medium-density coat of hair relative to most hairy animals but high-density relative to the body hair on most humans. Specimens of these humans have occurred in Europe, Russia and India. Undoubtedly if these specimens were to be specialized or exclusively reproduced and bred among themselves, apart from further reproduction with the mainstream of the human species, tailed and furred strains or populations of human hominids could be biologically or pheno-racially established from these, coexisting with the tailess and relatively naked-body version of human hominids that overwhelmingly populate the human species. It might be possible to further evolve, via more in-depth selective breeding, from the new phenotype races, long, prehensile-tailed humans and whole-body-covering thick-furred humans. Whether these biological oddities are atavistic or neo-genetic traits in humans can only be logically guessed at for the moment to dredge from our phylogenetic past. Indeed, as some primate and Neanderthal researchers have proposed, possibly there was some interbreeding between Neanderthals and our version of humans (homo sapiens sapiens) and maybe Neanderthals were parallel post-monkey hominids with tails, who were nevertheless human and capable of mating with our tailess, post-ape version of humans. I would conjecture that such mating would have been without affection or emotional bonding between the involved specimens of our divergent species but would have occurred during tribal raids on or wars against the counterpart version of human by rape or during enslavement or subjugation, as interspecies aversion, as well as even much interracial unattraction and aversion, on the erotic-aesthetic and romantic level, is the norm or prevalent. It has been generally found that the more salient similarities and highly valued physical (as well as psychological and behavioral) traits there are between different phenotype races or specimens of these races of humans, the more social acceptance and interbreeding tolerance there is between those phenotype races or specimens of those races. On the erotic-aesthetic level, I would propose that humans have a natural sexual and romantic aversion of 100%, population wide, for the males and females of our closest primate relatives of the chimpanzee, bonobo, gorilla, (orangutan) and gibbon species. However, I would also conjecture that a large number of specimens of our species could acquire a truly romantic and sexual attraction for specimens of another species, race or phenotype race of any kind that had extraordinary technology, and/or intellectual, military or seemingly magical powers that dwarfed our own -- in a sense, as very many, many humans are in awe of and fawning, subservient and absolutely slavish to their conceptions of their deity (God/god) and supernatural beings such as saints, angels and devils, and have done, do and are disposed to do anything in compliance with the believed instructions, directives, commands or wishes of these entities of believed transcendent power (the virgin Mary of Christian scripture is reported to have conceived the messiah son of God, Jesus, by Almighty God; historians report that Alexander the Great of Imperial Greece and Julius Caesar of Imperial Rome personally made prior such claims asserting respectively their true divine paternity and ancestry, as they also report Mongol Emperor Genghis Khan did centuries later). Also, there have been cases of interspecies desensitization, comfortableness and affection with and toward each other, that might have led as well as might lead to interspecies mating -- something that occurred in Avatar, vicariously, through a Na'vi avatar proxy, on the part of the remote viewer and controller human.
Human families and family members, churches and educational and medical institutions must not persecute, harass, and pressure for the normalization alteration or pruning of other humans with biological oddities that do not physically endanger them -- oddities such as six fingers, four arms, a tail, comparatively dense whole-body hair, albinism or dwarfism, etc. These oddities may positively correlate functionally with special human long-range capabilities and strains of new human types if left to coexist in peace with the present human-type majority. Our dominant bio-architectural type must not be frozen as the only unchanging type for all time, or our time. To me, it is wonderful to see the different phenotype races of humans and their within-race varieties as well as the hybrids from their mixtures, so long as they are pleasant, peaceful and well behaved.
Na'vi is pronounced NAW VEE. Unobtainium is pronounced UN OBTAIN E UM.
