Mutt?s and possible explanation of therianthropy
From my point of view, given I have extensive knowledge of genetics, the mutt fenomena is quite interesting.
That is, there is a rather fat chance that a hybrid from two races that were breeding seperate for a large amount of time, will have features of the two races' last common ancestor.
This basically means that mutts have a high probability to have the characteristics of our aincient ancestors. And since in aincient human history, the relations to animals (to me of particular interest would be the domestication of the dog icon_wink.gif ) held evolutionary importance, this might just explain Therianthropy!
By Thoth?
Yes, I believe that the more mixing of blood we have, the closer we get to all looking very much alike, and in such we look like the first of our kind did. Initially, the development of races had to do with the region of the world one lived in, and if a person living in a very sunny area were born with very fair skin, they would become ill more easily and probably not live long enough to reproduce, so those genetically darker would survive simply because they were better suited to their habitat. But since we're at a point now where science has methods of preventing climate-related illness and death, and because our food and shelter needs are basically met, all genotypes are equally capable of surviving...so we're starting to homogenize and redistribute the genes. You have a very good point there
DustWolf.
Actualy quite the way you put it except it's not really that simple. That's because genetics tends to have a few vile twists. If you just went allong the blood-lines, you'd notice that most of the genetic material could have degenerated between the aincients and your parents... there would be say a 25% chance that you'd either be a mutant and a 25% chance you would be an aincient and then an 50% chance you'd be an aincient / mutant hybrid. So take 25% on say only 5 independend genes and your chances of being an aincient in all of those are just under 0.1%.
But in reality, each gene is made up of two components that work as a backup to oneanother and each of the two components may either be a dormant or a dominant gene. When in a combination of a dromant and a dominant gene, the dominant one takes effect and due to the nature of cellular chemistry, the mutant genes are often dormant (genes are after all instructions on how to build chemical tools, a mutation on a gene produces an ineffective chemical tool, so if you produce both the effective and the ineffective one, the end result will be the same or at least very simmilar as the one of only the effective one).
This little twist dramatically increases the chances of the aincient genes to surface in hybrids. If interested, you might actually take a book on genetics and a sheet of paper and write down a few generations schematics (actualy creating a computer program for it would be better, but it can be complex to get it acurate at times) and see what all you end up with to better explain everything and have a more accurate %.