Why do Asians tend to look more alike than other races?

*-Im not intended to make fun of or demean anybody, and I apologize if this thread offends anybody-but its just an observation I made.

I know people say that if youre not exposed to many people of a certain race, you have a hard time distinguishing their faces, and while it's true I dont know that many asians, I also dont know that many black or hispanic people either, and yet people from those races look very different to me. While a few people say it about black people that they look alike, for me personally, I dont think they look alike.

Many individual asian people look very different and distinct from each other, but in general, many of them tend to look "alike", more so than people from other races-Ive noticed. Is there a possible genetic reason for this?

 

I can easily distinguish the faces of different Asian people no different than any other group. If I can do it so can others.

They don't look more alike to me than say Blacks or Whites. One interesting claim I have heard is that Asians can distinguish different Asian ethnic groups (e.g. Japanese from Korean) by appearance. There's a website that tests this theory.

http://alllooksame.com/

 

Modern Europeans are very diverse ethnically because there are three ethnic groups which contributed to their genetic ancestry (i.e. Basal Eurasians, West Eurasians, Ancient North Eurasians). Basal Eurasians with Haplogroup U first colonised Scandinavia and Ancient North Eurasians with haplogroup N subsequently admixed with European hunter-gatherers and Ancient North Eurasians contributed to modern Europeans' ancestry (up to 20%) after migrating from Siberia to Scandinavia as well as Eastern Europe. West Eurasians from the Middle East brought agriculture to Europe and European hunter-gatherers became lactose tolerant after interbreeding with the Middle Eastern farmers. As a result, there are over 20 haplogroups representing modern Europeans but typical Asian Y-DNA haplogroups are limited to only three or four (i.e. C, D, N, O).

 

While not being a racial expert, I am a Nazi (no I do not support the Holocaust, just the political views), and I did some research on all of the races. What I found was that because the Caucasoid race stretches from India to Spain (at least on the Euro-Asian land mass), they tend to have distinct facial features that tend to look a lot different, as a guy from India obviously looks different from a German, and a German looks different than a Spaniard. This is because of inter-marriage between all of these different people, and each feature was mixed, but still kept slightly distinct (there is the rare oddball where two people look alike, but not as much as other races). Blacks also probably had this kind of geographic mixing of ethnicities, which is why they look different from each other, but not as much as Caucasoids do. Asians on the other hand probably had a distinct portion of land, which if measured, is smaller than that of the Indo-European and African landmasses, and thus because of such tight spaces, mixing of the subraces went by faster, so people started to look even more similar. They still look a little different, but it is not as noticeable. That's just my theory based on some simple facts though.

Hail Victory!

 

Then why do most Jpop and Kpop singers look alike to me?

 

We are all different respectively. That is, we perceive differences differently depending on our surroundings and physical circumstances. You (OP) may not see much difference in Asian faces because you are not a part of that genetic culture.

 

Then how come I never thought that black (or any other minority race) of people all had similar looking faces? Why only asians?

 

I don't know. I am not Asian but have Asian friends and have worked with Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese etc. None of them look exactly alike to me.

 

Op, can you tell the difference between a Zulu and a Mande? If so then your topic may hold some validity, otherwise you are just expressing ignorance as in not knowing

 

East Asians really do look more alike I think. This may be related to lower genetic diversity. I am quite good at recognising East Asian races, having lived there for 5 years.

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No that would be totally irrelevant.

 

This thread is irrelevant

 

I sometimes struggle distinguishing Asians from other Asians. It is really hard for me. When I was watching Japanese/Korean horror movies, I had a hard time figuring out who the characters were because they all looked the same to me. Then again I rarely see Asians so that might explain why.

 

ah yeah, that's because Japanese look very different to say, Chinese. I can spot the difference a mile away. Koreans ditto.

 

I would like to see you take the test and prove that.

 

Wow, are you actually impressed by that? It's quite usual amongst Asians, especially those who've lived in different parts of the region.

 

If non-Asians can't see a difference I don't see how Asians can see a difference. People make this claim to see differences between Northeast Asian ethnic groups but when put to a proper test I have yet to see them validate that claim.

 

you said that out loud.

education time. if everyone around you 'looks the same' you become very good at spotting subtle differences. just as blind people hear better than sighted people.

 

I don't buy it. Take the test.

 

This thread is hysterical. I've been LOLing over it. I mean, really, this is like the most innocent and "awwww" inspiring thread. How cute.

But yea, of course if you are not exposed to a range of Asian faces you might have a difficult time discerning the differences at first. Not everyone's cognitive abilities are the same and some people just have bad eyesight.

But really, this thread sounds like something my four year old cousin would ask. Adorable.

 

I spent nearly half of my childhood in Singapore and went to high school in Hong Kong. I've never thought individual Asians looked so similar to each other that I couldn't tell them apart. On the other hand, I might have more trouble with distinguishing different Asian ethnic groups, at least if we're sticking to East Asia. I know Southeast Asians (e.g. Malays, Filipinos, or Thais) generally have darker skin than Northeastern ones (Chinese, Japanese, and Koreans), but not so typical distinctions within each of those two regional subgroups. Don't get me wrong, there could very well be subtle differences between the average Korean and Japanese appearance, but it's not like I'm trained to see them clearly.

 

In what way do Japanese and Chinese look different from each other?

 

Could you be any more patronising?

 

The Chinese are up to 45% Austronesian and there are traces of Denisovan ancestry in Chinese samples as the heat map above shows and you could detect Austronesian physical characteristics among Southern Chinese people. The Chinese population historically admixed with southeast Asians and there are a number of tribal groups in China which are closely related to Aboriginal Australians. On the contrary, the Japanese and Koreans are almost pure North Asians and the percentages of Austronesian admixture in both populations are less than 3%. The Japanese have descended from the Ainu from Siberia, while the Koreans are closely related to the Chinese with Haplogroup O (39%) which originated in northern China, and Haplogroup O has not been found in Ainu males.


Babymetal, a Japanese metal idol group.

 

Japanese look nothing at all like other asian peoples. They have their own skin tone, and their faces have a unique structure.

Central Chinese peoples, such as the Chin, tend to look alike because they are from the same tribal ancestry. Like how many NativeAmerican tribes look alike because they were once a single people.

Souther Asians, Burmese, Vietnamese, Thai, etc are the same way, so they can look alot alike, and it the changes in clothing and culture that makes the main differences.

Koreans look a lot like some chinese tribes, because they are actually decended from the same ancestry.
Then you have the other chinese tribes, such as the Tibetans and Huns, which dont look anything like the Chin, and have darker skin.

 

This is garbage and they all overlap and can be hard to tell apart.