I’ve read that East Asians developed slanted eyes or Epicanthic Folds as a way to adapt to snow blindness in the more snowy and colder regions of Asia, and I was wondering why Northern Europeans, specifically Germanic and Nordic people that lived in the colder regions of Northern Europe, didn’t develop the same genetic trait or at least something similar to it.
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The best explanation I have ever heard is that evolution cares who your ancestors were, or rather it matters who your ancestors were.
Bats have wings with fingers and membranes because their ancestors were probably gliding and had long fingers. Birds did it differently, because manuraptorid dinosaurs had those weirdly folding wrist bones and hands that wouldn’t pronate well.
Why DON’T some people have pronounced epicanthic folds? Because their ancestors didn’t, and not having them didn’t kill enough of them to matter, at least not enough so that the one weird kid who DID have them had to repopulate an entire area.
It can also be an accident. Maybe one large clan, who all happened to have epicanthic folds survived some famine or disease that devastated surrounding populations for reasons other than their eyelids.
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