The World's a Melting Pot - the falsity of racial constructs in pictures

Mongolia, like Siberia live in my mind as mysterious, harsh, desolate places. We watched a travel documentary the other night that sparked my imagination and opened that travel bug within me.

The show followed two Canadian guys through Mongolia. Apart from the gorgeous scenery and stark solitude of it’s expanse, I was intrigued the most by it’s people.

I have always been interested in the peoples of the world – what they look like, what they do, where they come from.

Mongolia on a map is a largely empty area between China and Russia, and not surprisingly the people look vary Asian but also with Russian or Causasian features. Some are blond and blue eyed. They defied my preconceived notions.

This got me thinking about race as a concept and how the world is held together, but apart, by defining places and people within a racial framework. We assume that people from a certain part of the world will look a certain way, and we make sweeping judgments. Ultimately we separate ourselves based on these assumptions.

All of this rekindled my passion for learning more about people. I started scouring the net about groups of people that defy our preconceived ideas. People that prove race is a box we need to see beyond. I discovered that due to human migration patterns, genetics and various mutations, people around the world exhibit far more similarities than we imagined.

Many sites discuss these topics, and include photos of people that surprised me and intrigued me further. I decided to gather some of the photos to share.
Maybe we can all learn something about our connectedness through the innocent eyes of the children:







These are photos from the Hmong peoples in Laos and the Uyghur peoples in China:










These next pictures are of kids from Pakistan, Afghanistan and India from groups like the Nuristanis, Kalash, Kashmir, Kurghan, Rajasthan (very interesting to read about these groups of people!):























So who are the redheads of the world? Who has green eyes or blonde hair? The existence of these diverse characteristics across continents and geographies should show us how alike we really are, how some of us moved west, some north etc., but we left the DNA markers to remind ourselves that the boundaries we create now are a facade. Just look at the children's faces - it's in their eyes that we all are one :) Thanks For Making This Possible! Kindly Bookmark and Share it.