The world is full similar people who are not connected by blood ties. How is it possible that two people, born and raised in different parts of the world, look like two peas in a pod? Is there a clear scientific explanation for this phenomenon?
People who are similar to each other and are not relatives - is this possible? It turns out yes. A French photographer once had a wonderful idea. He found and captured on film similar people who were not related by any blood ties. His name is Francois Brunelle. It took him about twelve years to realize his idea. The photographer tracked people with eerily similar features around the world and helped them find their doppelgängers. Some photos of similar people from the work of Francois Brunelle are presented in this article. Carefully study the proposed images and compare how many similarities there are between complete strangers who are not related by blood.
Every person in this world has 7 doubles
They say that every person in this world has at least seven very similar people. One can easily agree that this assumption is quite frightening and unnatural. It is hardly possible to find two exact copies on our planet, identical as two drops of water. Even blood twins have features that, at least slightly, make it possible for those around them to distinguish them, not to mention a stranger who lives on the other side of the Earth.
Not the same, but, nevertheless, incredibly similar people still exist, and not as rarely as it might seem. They live in different cities, countries, continents, and lead a completely different way of life. They do not have common genes, they differ in language and culture, but their similarity really cannot be denied.
Same appearance - same character?
We all know that there are similar people. Is this purely a superficial resemblance? Can a person and his counterpart from another country have the same character traits and type of activity? It would be strange and surprising at the same time. In fact, it happens in different ways. For example, there once lived in Rome an emperor named Maximin (early 4th century AD), and so, looking at his bust, you can see in his features the well-known dictator from the 20th century - Adolf Hitler. These similar people not only had the same facial features, but both were dictators in their time, and both died ignominiously.
This question is quite difficult to answer, modern science There are no exact answers, there are only guesses. One of the most likely versions is the one that explains the external resemblance completely strangers identical genetic structure. For a reason that is unclear to date, similar people have exactly the same DNA.
These twins are also called biogenic. This means that their genetic material is the same, but their biological parents are different. It happens that people can be similar and live in different places at the same time and be the same age. Some may be separated by years, centuries, or even entire millennia. Natural diversity, it turns out, is not limitless, there are billions of people in the world, and there is always a chance of a random coincidence of genetic sets.
Secret relationship
Scientists believe it is quite possible that similar people are very, very distant relatives. By resorting to basic mathematical analysis, one can make the following calculations: the average citizen, after eight generations, will be the descendant of 256 relatives who, one way or another, are related by blood ties. If we imagine that 40, 50 or more generations have passed, the relatives will number in the millions. And no one knows where the genetic material will coincide and in what generation.
In card jargon, genes are shuffled like cards in a deck, but at a certain moment the same “hands” appear with minimal probability. Then doubles are born, people who are as similar to each other as two peas in a pod. Perhaps nature has its own plans for this, its own secret goals.
Search for doubles on the Internet
Today on the World Wide Web there are many sites with which you can find a photo exact copy yourself among show business stars, great emperors and historically significant leaders. They are also looking for their doubles among the most ordinary people of their different cities and states. You just need to upload your photo in a certain format, and after a while the search engines will be able to find for you a couple of twins, or at least people who will be very similar to you.
Such sites are quite popular, because it is actually interesting to know, and even more so to see, your double. It's like meeting yourself in parallel world. Before the advent of the Internet, this was almost impossible to do, but now there are a lot of active search opportunities, and why not take advantage of them?
Miracles, and that's all
Doppelgangers are a phenomenon that is interesting in itself. People are more or less accustomed to the similarity of blood twins and granddaughters and their great-grandmothers, but to meet a person who is exactly like another person who is not a relative, and even lives thousands of kilometers away, this is more interesting.
Who knows, maybe in the future scientists will figure out how to use this quirk of nature. It is likely that the similarity of genomes can open up incredible prospects in such a field of medicine as transplantology. As biologists assure, the chance of an exact match of genetic sets infinitely approaches zero. However, partial copying of genes is quite normal, which proves that all of humanity is one big family.
Recently, American scientists were able to explain where similar people come from in the world, and in particular, this concerns why the Chinese are so similar to each other. It turned out that the more isolated a certain ethnic group develops, the more similar its representatives become.
Michael Sheehan, who is an assistant professor of neurobiology at Cornell University, says that the set of genes that are directly responsible for appearance man, is a kind of deck of cards in the hands of nature, and regardless of how it is shuffled, a combination that has already been encountered before periodically appears.
Why is this happening?
Scientists have determined that similar people appear because a certain number of genes are associated with appearance much more than with any other areas of human anatomy. Of course, scientists have not yet been able to determine which specific genes are responsible for the width of the nose, the shape of the face and ears, as well as other features of appearance. But one fact remains clear - if people who are not relatives to each other, but have an external similarity. They will also be similar to each other at the gene level, and the genes responsible for appearance humans are an excellent illustration of this.
An interesting fact is that human faces differ much more from each other compared to body parts such as feet or hands. Most likely, in the process of evolution it was made separate accent on detailing human faces so that members of a certain family can easily be distinguished from others.
Groups
In the process of evolution, several main ethnic groups have formed, in which similar people are found. The largest such groups are the Chinese and Hindi, and at the same time, accordingly, the maximum chance of meeting your double is directly within a certain ethnic group. In other words, it is virtually impossible for a Chinese person to meet someone incredibly similar to himself among African Americans. It is worth noting the fact that within the Asian group there can be a huge number of doubles, and similar people are found here much more often than anywhere else.
Such identity in certain cases reaches a level where the similarity is not only external, but also internal, since an almost identical set of genes can be present even in people who are not closely or distantly related.
As a rule, people who are similar to each other and have the same nationality are distinguished by a similar set of genes, since in isolated ethnic groups all kinds of infusions from even neighboring groups were minimized.
How many doubles can there be?
Nature periodically creates copies of humans, but academic science cannot reliably say why they appear, and only guesswork remains. Of course, the most common version today is the version described above, which says that people who are similar to each other have an identical genetic structure. For a currently unknown reason, several “versions” of a person appear, and yet they all have almost identical DNA. In scientific circles, such twins are usually called biogenic, since, despite the fact that they have different biological parents, they differ in similar genes.
It often happens that in nature a huge number of identical people appear in short periods of time, and incidents also occur when these intervals stretch for hundreds or even thousands of years. That is why you should not be surprised when you see a double of some famous classic or political figure on the street.
Mathematical calculation
Mathematicians also decided to take up this issue and contribute to the investigation of why people are similar to each other. In particular, the theory of probability was used, according to which the chances of a random coincidence of sets of genes are far from zero, because there are several billion people, and this number is only growing.
Some scientists say that the phenomenon of the emergence of such doubles is caused by the so-called “secret relationship.” Even if you use the standard one, you can understand that any person after 8 generations is a descendant of 256 relatives related to each other by blood. Thus, if we talk not about 8, but, for example, about 30 generations, then this will be a million people, and all these closely related ties are based on the transfer of genetic material. Due to this, to some extent, all people in a certain ethnic category are related to some extent.
Doubles of famous people
Interesting examples of what very similar people are like can be found in our country. For example, while Alla Pugacheva and Philip Kirkorov were spouses, the Diva said that she liked Nemtsov, since he was very similar to her husband. After that, many people really took a closer look at them and realized that they had the same ears, eyes, nose, and both at that time were curly and had a very cheerful character, but at the same time they had no even approximate relationship.
Historical counterparts
There are also doubles that are extremely far apart in time. For example, at the end of the 3rd century in Rome, the ruler was Emperor Maximin, who was an almost perfect double of Adolf Hitler, and at the same time remained in history as an extremely tough dictator. His death was as inglorious as that of a distant descendant.
The busts of Thebes Montuehmet (the ruler of ancient Egyptian Thebes) and Mao Zedong are very similar, despite the fact that the ruler of Thebes lived more than 700 years BC.
Makeup
Probably every resident or guest of the capital paid attention to the fact that on Red Square you can almost always meet doubles of Lenin, Stalin and a huge number of other famous personalities who earn extra money by taking pictures with passers-by. Also, similar doubles can be found in a variety of theatrical performances.
In fact, it often happens that similarities are present only in racial and anthropological types, as well as external design and facial proportions. If such people are undressed and the makeup is completely washed off, then the similarity will either completely disappear or will no longer be so obvious, which is quite important. Of course, quite often various theater troupes prefer to hire real doubles into their cast, rather than just made-up personalities, as this allows them to make the performance truly unique.
How to find your double?
In fact, in the era information development there is nothing complicated about it. Outwardly similar people are quite often found on the Internet, and you can often see such photographs in the news, on some websites or in various in social networks. There are already a huge number of precedents when people found their doubles on the Internet and posted photos for comparison.
There are even specialized sites through which similar people in the world can be found based on photographs. Some provide the opportunity to find your own copy only among the stars, or while others expand the possibilities to the point that you can find your own double even among ordinary people from other countries. On such resources, it is quite enough to simply upload your own photo in a certain format, and then after a few days you will receive one or even several photos of people who are very similar to you. If you wish, you can find similar ones that interest you, rather than looking for your own double.
Similarities between spouses
Many people often notice that couples who live together for a long time begin to resemble each other, and some even become so similar that they are then perceived as brother and sister. First of all, many try to explain why people are similar in in this case, by the fact that quite often we ourselves choose partners who are similar to us to a certain extent, but besides this, even over time they begin to become similar.
In the process of conducting research, scientists determined that visual similarity is quite important factor to attract two people to each other. In particular, it was determined that two similar people of the opposite sex are most often attracted, especially if they have similar facial features.
What explains this?
This is explained by the innate tendency that every person seeks someone who can be trusted and whom he “knows”. When we literally see ourselves as a reflection of ourselves in someone, we begin to automatically associate the person with those thoughts.
Even more interesting is the fact that people who are visually similar to each other are prone to long-term relationships, they can trust each other as much as possible and enjoy carefree cohabitation. According to psychologists from the University of Michigan, older couples who have lived together for decades also begin to look alike over time because people who have a close bond often unconsciously imitate the different facial expressions and gestures of their loved ones.
Besides everything else, it cannot be said that happy couples often differ in similar physical characteristics.
Genetics plays the most important role in this case, since people with different genetic indicators begin to attract each other much more, compared to people who have a similar genetic code.
Even ordinary people It is often noticed, for example, that many women are often interested in men who resemble their fathers - this is a subconscious act of selection. Fathers represent to young girls, and this model subsequently subconsciously postponed and forms the further choice of the spouse already adult woman. This is precisely one of the reasons why quite often couples are similar to each other.
People who belong to the same religion, race, age and social class are always more likely to develop truly strong and lasting relationships. Subconsciously, they are pushed towards each other by the fact that for them culture, traditions and food habits are not any obstacle, but are only another similar feature.
If people live together for a long time, then they are more likely to eventually adapt to their partner, and these life experiences, according to scientists, are ultimately reflected in facial features. But no one has been able to reliably say why people are similar to each other.
Hello.
The topic of doppelgangers has long haunted many people: some want to be like some star, others simply dream of finding a person similar to themselves, while others became interested in it just by chance. As a rule, these people (especially if they are not very good at computers) have one thing in common: they ended up on some site that promises to find their double, sent an SMS (most often the service did not even say that it would withdraw money, but simply under the guise of checking) - and as a result, instead of a found double, they saw a message that a search was carried out, the double was not found (and a certain amount of money was withdrawn from the phone...).
In this short article I want to tell you a few simple (in my opinion) ways to find your double using a photo, without any tricks or loss of money. So, let's get started...
What do you need to find a double?
1. A computer with an Internet connection (this is obvious 🙂).
2. A photograph of the person for whom you are going to look for doubles. It is best if it is an ordinary photo without processing by different editors (Photoshop, etc.). The most important thing is that the person captured in the photo looks straight at you, so that his face is not turned to the side or down (the accuracy of the search depends on this). Yes, one more detail, it is desirable that the background in the picture be some kind of neutral (white, gray, etc.). A full-length photograph is not needed - just the face is enough.
Option No. 1 - searching for doubles among celebrities
Website: http://www.pictriev.com/
The site PicTriev.com is the first one worth paying attention to. It's very easy to use:
- go to the website (link above) and click the “Upload image” button (upload picture);
- Next, select your prepared photo;
- then the service pauses for 5-10 seconds. - and gives you the results: the age of the person in the photo, his gender, and famous people, who the photo resembles (by the way, the percentage of similarity is calculated automatically). The service is especially useful for those people who want to be like someone - they changed their image a little, took a photo, uploaded the photo and looked in which direction the percentage of similarity has changed.
Rice. 1. pictriev - search for doubles using a male photo (photo similar to Phoenix Joaquin, similarity 8%)
By the way, the service (in my opinion) works better with women's photos. The service almost accurately determined the gender and age of a person. The woman in the photo is most similar to Phoenix Edwige (26% similarity).
Option No. 2 - searching for a double through search engines
This method will live as long as search engines live (or until they block the option to search for pictures based on pictures (sorry for the tautology)).
In addition, the method will give results more and more accurately every year (as search engine algorithms develop). There are quite a lot of search engines, I will give a short instruction on how to search in Google by photo.
1. First, go to the website https://www.google.ru and open the image search (see Fig. 3).
Rice. 3. Google Image Search
3. Then upload your photo and Google will search for similar photos.
As a result, we see that the woman in the photo looks like Sofia Vergara (the results found will contain a lot of photos similar to yours).
By the way, in a similar way you can find similar people in Yandex, and indeed any other search engines that can search by photo. Can you imagine the scope for testing? What if a new search engine comes out tomorrow or new, more advanced algorithms appear?! Therefore, this method is the most reliable and promising...
Where else can you look?
1. http://celebrity.myheritage.com- on this site you can find a double among celebrities. Before searching, you need to register. While it works for free, it is possible to install an application for a mobile phone.
2. http://www.tineye.com/ - a site with a huge number of photographs. If you register on it and upload a photo, you can scan it for similar people.
3. play-analogia.com is a good site for finding doubles, but Lately often unavailable. Maybe the developers abandoned it?
This concludes the article. To be honest, I have never been specifically interested in or deeply studied this topic, so I would be very grateful for comments and constructive additions.
And lastly, don’t be fooled by various promises about finding similar people via SMS - in 90% of cases this is a scam, unfortunately...
29 March 2017, 18:01I read an interesting article by Natalia Radulova: “I look at you like in a mirror.”
In it she talks about how people often fall in love with those who are similar to them in appearance, i.e. they have the same shape of chin, nose, eyelids, lips, etc. - of course, adjusted for gender differences. Many couples are like brother and sister. With age, people can gain weight and develop wrinkles, but the main features remain the same, so they are comfortable with each other. In this article I provide an abbreviated retelling of that article and comments on it, followed by my thoughts on this matter and several additional photographs.
“Recently, an experiment was conducted at one of the bourgeois universities: the subjects were shown photographs different people and asked to choose the cutest one. Among all these photographs there was a photograph of the subject himself, but altered - a woman was turned into a man with the help of light computer graphics, and vice versa. Well, let’s say they added a bit of masculinity to a girl, an Adam’s apple, a goatee, and weighted her features. But in general, the face and the features of its structure did not change. And guess which picture the experiment participants chose? Who did the person call the most beautiful? Naturally, yourself. Camouflaged, but yourself.”
“In 2009, scientists from the University of St. Andrews conducted a study and found that women tend to choose men similar to themselves. Scientists from the University of Liverpool also made a similar conclusion in 2006.”
Moreover, the same thing is observed in couples with a significant difference in the partners’ ages:
“And dogs don’t become like their owners over time. They are initially similar. The owner chooses. Best friends or companions may be of different heights, weights and ages, but most likely there will be something in common in their face. Because we are comfortable with those who seem to be our second self, at least externally.” - I don’t completely agree with this, the main thing for a pet is its character, which over time really adapts to the owners (and they to it).
“And New Yorker, writer Christina Bloom, even launched a dating site for people looking for a partner who looks like themselves. In a conversation with QMI Agency, the author of the idea said that she decided to open such a site after she divorced her husband and fell in love with a man who turned out to be similar to her. Bloom admitted that at first she did not notice that she and her new chosen one were similar. However, then friends increasingly began to point out her external resemblance to her lover. After that, she became interested in the question of the dependence of happiness in her personal life on the external similarity of partners and began to look for couples consisting of similar people.”
Here are the people who met on her website
It must be said that some of the pairs shown are not very similar; apparently, not everyone is chosen based on visual criteria. And some are similar, but have already broken up: “Similar appearance irresistibly attracts. But if people different areas interests, different principles and goals, then sooner or later this will begin to cause quarrels. This is how, because of the same shape of eyebrows, nose and chin, people fall in love, and then spend years in meaningless relationships from which they cannot extricate themselves.”
I must say, this is interesting and if it turns out to be true, it will be many consequences:
- theories of the origin of peoples
: different types of appearance are divided,
- theory of finding partners similar to parents
: parents used to choose a couple for their children, and sometimes in a very early age and quite successfully, now it’s clear how - on your own,
- there are theories that facial features correlate with character traits
, which means that the parental traits are a familiar character to which he adapted in childhood,
- importance of similarity not only due to genetic reasons
: there are many beautiful people in the world, each is beautiful in their own way, so it’s difficult to choose one over the other and there is always a chance that there will be someone better, at the same time, “your” image is special for a person, this is the starting point for all comparisons, and you won’t get tired of it , even if you look at it daily,
- theory, why is cosmetics popular?
: bright lipstick and long eyelashes from mascara become a subconscious signal that the woman is alone, because... if she has a partner, then she will prefer to choose modest cosmetics in order to become visually similar to him; approximately the same applies to rare hair colors, such as blonde, because... men rarely dye their hair; for teenagers it may be the other way around if they simultaneously change something in their appearance (unusual hairstyle, clothes) to show that they are a couple,
- similar theories of auditory and kinesthetic likening of spouses to each other: for example, if the husband speaks loudly and the wife speaks quietly, then over time he will speak more quietly and she will speak louder, so that approximately the same volume level is obtained,
- in most cases this is all unconsciously
, which suggests that Homo sapiens, in fact, sometimes does not trust his reason in the most important things.
Possible reasons:
mentioned above:
- a person is accustomed to and likes his own appearance, so he likes people who are similar to him;
- a person likes his parents, so he likes people who are similar to them;
- people adapt to each other over time, adopt habits, facial expressions, etc.;
and:
- role in education: children imitate their parents in behavior, appearance, etc. If the parents are very different, then the children will have to choose which one to imitate. Then there are two options: either the children will be divided into two camps - “father’s” and “mother’s” - and most likely will begin to compete with children’s maximalism, which will undermine the family and contribute to its disintegration; or they will take some of the traits from the father, some from the mother, which will help the search for a common image and help strengthen the family. The similarity of the parents is therefore important because reduces the risk of family breakdown for the above reason, and also provides greater emotional comfort, since the children will be similar to both, but everyone will feel that they are just like him;
- inheritance of information: people inherit not only genetic information, and not only “national” information - language, traditions, laws and customs - but also “family” information, which can represent, in addition to some family traditions, also behavioral characteristics, facial expressions , lifestyle, etc. The similarity of parents makes it possible to transmit this information to offspring without conflict.
