often when i see pictures of a middle eastern family, i'm taken aback by how white the women and often the children are, and how differently looking the men are.

it's just a reminder that the middle east is an integral component of western civilization, and that such a large part of western civilization originated in the middle east during a period when the inhabitants were primarily light-skinned: hittites, iranians, greeks and romans.

waves of migrants flushed into the region, some now argue as a consequence of climate change but certainly as a complicated set of inter-related causal push forces. from the south. from the east. from the north. the migrants killed the men that lived there, and took their wives. the phenotypic expression of this historical narrative is fascinating.