Origins of the initial Manticore colonists?

Been reading a few selected passages in the books describing characters and perusing the illustrations by Ghenkis. Weber has stated that the first wave of Manticore colonists were from the Western Hemisphere. Being American, I arrogantly presumed that Weber was referring to the United States. The predominance of dark skin could be explained as merely a seperatist subset of America's population.

However; upon further reflection I realize that a more plausible explaination is that the Manticore colony was founded primarily by immigrants from Brazil. Brazil is in the Western hemisphere and the predominant ethnic group is people of mixed African ancestry. Brazil is also undergoing a somewhat painful transition into one of the world's largest economies. Brazilians of the future would have the bucks to buy the Buck Rogers.

Now for the interesting clue that seems to confirm this speculation. I Googled "Manticore Brazil" and found this.

http://cryptidz.wikia.com/wiki/Manticore

The primary habitat of the Manticore is the Amazon jungle.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:Been reading a few selected passages in the books describing characters and perusing the illustrations by Ghenkis. Weber has stated that the first wave of Manticore colonists were from the Western Hemisphere. Being American, I arrogantly presumed that Weber was referring to the United States. The predominance of dark skin could be explained as merely a seperatist subset of America's population.

However; upon further reflection I realize that a more plausible explaination is that the Manticore colony was founded primarily by immigrants from Brazil. Brazil is in the Western hemisphere and the predominant ethnic group is people of mixed African ancestry. Brazil is also undergoing a somewhat painful transition into one of the world's largest economies. Brazilians of the future would have the bucks to buy the Buck Rogers.

Now for the interesting clue that seems to confirm this speculation. I Googled "Manticore Brazil" and found this.

http://cryptidz.wikia.com/wiki/Manticore

The primary habitat of the Manticore is the Amazon jungle.

Brazil may be inspired, but your source says that the manticore is of Persian origin. It only mentions possible observations in the Amazon and does NOT list the Amazon jungle as its primary habitat.

Here's what House of Steel says. No mention of South America

House of Steel wrote:The original colony expedition to Manticore departed Old Earth on October 24, 775 PD, aboard the sublight hibernation ship Jason bound for the Manticore Binary System. Manticore, which lies approximately 512 light-years from Earth, was first confirmed to have planets in 562 PD by the astronomer Sir Frederick Clarke. Its distance was such that the voyage would take 640 years (just over 384 subjective years allowing for relativistic effects), requiring that each colonist be waked from cryosleep for exercise seven times. Accordingly, the colonists were investing about four and a half years of their lives and all their money in the voyage.
Sixty percent of the colonists were Western Europeans, with most of the remainder drawn from the North American Federation, the Caribbean, and a very small minority of ethnic Ukrainians.

(Emphasis added. Also the much older 'More than Honor' had essentially the same text but HoS came up first in my search)

Well I am full of crap.

Between the American South and the Caribbean, that's plenty of people with darker complexions, and they're not exactly a rarity in Europe either.

But the current composition of the SKM is very different from the original colonists, since a huge percentage of them died off in the Plague, thus necessitating the immigration call that brought in the Harringtons. We have no real information on the ethnic backgrounds of those later, but still pre-MWJ waves that resulted in the "baseline" of the SKM. So there could still be plenty of people with Brazilian backgrounds! They just would have come from nearby systems that heeded Manticore's call for help.

Post-discovery of the MWJ, among the random immigrants there are probably strong currents of people with Chinese (via Beowulf) and Hispanic and/or Latinx (via San Martin) backgrounds. (It's not clear in text where San Martin's original colonists were from, beyond the "speak Spanish" bit.)

I'm still trying to get my head around Grayson:-

Welsh accent and Country & Western style music?

The Welsh are renowned for their male voice choirs, a far cry from C&W

Welsh accent?

George J. Smith wrote:I'm still trying to get my head around Grayson:-

Welsh accent and Country & Western style music?

The Welsh are renowned for their male voice choirs, a far cry from C&W

I never said they brought a Welsh accent from Earth with them, guys! It developed in the odd millennium or so of isolation and only sounds Welsh.

Sheesh!

And there's some C&W that turns out remarkable harmony. Not a lot of it, but some of the C&W/Gospel groups are really good at it.

Marty Robbins for example.

NortonIDaughter wrote:Between the American South and the Caribbean, that's plenty of people with darker complexions, and they're not exactly a rarity in Europe either.

But the current composition of the SKM is very different from the original colonists, since a huge percentage of them died off in the Plague, thus necessitating the immigration call that brought in the Harringtons. We have no real information on the ethnic backgrounds of those later, but still pre-MWJ waves that resulted in the "baseline" of the SKM. So there could still be plenty of people with Brazilian backgrounds! They just would have come from nearby systems that heeded Manticore's call for help.

Post-discovery of the MWJ, among the random immigrants there are probably strong currents of people with Chinese (via Beowulf) and Hispanic and/or Latinx (via San Martin) backgrounds. (It's not clear in text where San Martin's original colonists were from, beyond the "speak Spanish" bit.)

The plague might have been selectively lethal. Think Maleria. The people with dark complexions might have been blessed with other genes similar to the genes for sickle cell anemia that made them less vulnerable to the plague.

Also, do not forget the socio-genetic implications of having a royal family that is notable for dark complexions. The male Wintons are no doubt similar to the youger males of the Windsor dynasty, namely Harry Pothead and Randy Andy. These two have taken full advantage of the many women who will eagerely have sex with them because they are members of the royal family. The fact that they inherited genes from their spectacularly beautiful mother as well as their asthetically disabled father helps tremendously. Even assuming that the Winton males average only one extra offspring resulting from extrapair copulations, then the Total Fertility Rate for the Wintons would be the average Manticoran TFR + .5. An average of 3 children per woman would after 20 generations result in the average first wave colonist having 3,300 descendants while the Wintons with an average TFR of 3.5 would have 72,000 descendants. If those genes for dark skin are locked along with all of the genetic enhancements, dark skin is going to be extremely prevelant. If people who are unrelated to the Wintons but look like Wintons because they share thebsame skin tone have only s modest reproductive advantage, then they too will have more descendants.