Europeans had dark skin and blue eyes 7000 years ago.

[Gorr]

By studying the genome of a 7000 year old skeleton found in Northern Spain researchers found that the man had dark skin and blue eyes. Furthermore the skeleton has share DNA with a skeleton found in eastern Siberia.

La Braña 1, the name used to baptize a 7,000 years old individual from the Mesolithic Period, whose remains were recovered at La Braña-Arintero site in Valdelugueros (León, Spain), had blue eyes and dark skin. These details are the result of a study conducted by Carles Lalueza-Fox, researcher from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), in collaboration with the Centre for GeoGenetics (Denmark). La Braña 1 represents the first recovered genome of an European hunter-gatherer.

The research is published in Nature.

The Mesolithic, a period that lasted from 10,000 to 5,000 years ago (between the Paleolithic and the Neolithic), ends with the advent of agriculture and livestock farming, coming from the Middle-East. The arrival of the Neolithic, with a carbohydrate-based diet and new pathogens transmitted by domesticated animals, entailed metabolic and immunological challenges that were reflected in genetic adaptations of post-Mesolithic populations. Among these is the ability to digest lactose, which La Braña individual could not do.

Lalueza-Fox states: "However, the biggest surprise was to discover that this individual possessed African versions in the genes that determine the light pigmentation of the current Europeans, which indicates that he had dark skin, although we can not know the exact shade."

CSIC researcher, who works at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (a joint centre of CSIC and the University Pompeu Fabra (UPF), located in Barcelona, adds: "Even more surprising was to find that he possessed the genetic variations that produce blue eyes in current Europeans, resulting in a unique phenotype in a genome that is otherwise clearly northern European."

The study of the genome suggests that current populations nearest to La Braña 1 are in northern Europe, such as Sweden and Finland. In addition, the work points out that La Braña 1 has a common ancestor with the settlers of the Upper Paleolithic site of Mal'ta, located in Lake Baikal (Siberia), whose genome was recovered a few months ago. Lalueza-Fox concludes: "These data indicate that there is genetic continuity in the populations of central and western Eurasia. In fact, these data are consistent with the archeological remains, as in other excavations in Europe and Russia, including the site of Mal'ta, anthropomorphic figures -called Paleolithic Venus- have been recovered and they are very similar to each other."

DNA with an "exceptional" preservation

La Braña-Arintero site was discovered by chance in 2006 and excavated by Julio Manuel Vidal Encinas, archeologist of the Council of Castilla y León. The cave, located in a cold mountainous area with a steady temperature and 1,500 meters below the sea level, contributed to the "exceptional" preservation of the DNA from two individuals found inside, and they were called La Braña 1 and La Braña 2.

According to Iñigo Olalde, lead author of the study, "the intention of the team is to try to recover the genome of the individual called La Braña 2, which is worse preserved, in order to keep obtaining information about the genetic characteristics of these early Europeans."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140126134643.htm

I guess that Hollywood will have to cast differently when making movies in a pre-historic setting.

 

[The_Blue_Rider]

Wasnt it already widely accepted that everyone used to be black? I highly doubt movies will be changed at all by this revelation, I mean since when have most films or even television shows cared about Historical accuracy? Half the programming on the damn history channel isnt even about history these days

 

[Nickolai77]

I believe that the blue eye phenotype has been traced to modern Turkey, which sits right on the migration route of humans moving into Europe. It's been theorised before that the first European humans were black skinned (having migrated from Africa) and paled as they settled in colder, darker Europe. Having paler skin, if i recall correctly, helps you absorb Vitamin D more efficiently in low-light conditions but the trade-off is that you're more vulnerable to sun-burn.

So what we can establish is that blue eyes preceded pale skin in indigenous European populations.

 

[Fireaxe]

Yes. Europeans stopped having dark skin because in countries with comparatively low levels of sunlight it's actually a biologically inferior trait (as it lowers Vitamin D intake) in that climate.

 

[Atrocious Joystick]

This is an interesting discovery, depending on the "shade" of the skin. I would have assumed that we would have stopped being downright black (as in african black) before we ever came into Europe, having started being more arabic loking. Of course it´s not like we´re actually white now, rather being a really pale shade of brown. I would have assumed "changing colors" through evolution would have taken more than 7000 years though.

 

[Korolev]

It's not that surprising. We all came from Africa, one way or another. Africa is the birthplace of the human race as any competent biologist would tell you. The first migrants that came to Europe, came from Africa, and would have had dark skin and their descendants would have had dark skin for quite a while.

It's not shocking at all, really, if you know about the story of human migration.

 

[Da Orky Man]

Is this surprising? People likely hadn't been in Europe long enough to evolve significantly lighter skin, and hell, Europe, more specifically Norther Europe, has the highest incidence of blue eyes in the world. Over time, the fact that large swathes of Europe basically have 24/7 cloud cover for a good bit of the year meant that lighter skin evolved so we would get a vaguely healthy amount of sunlight.

 

[Muspelheim]

That's interesting. I wonder what the dear old racists will say.

It does seem rather obvious, but some form of evidence to support it is always nice. Although I've always felt skin complexion is given a lot more importance than it should.
I wonder what it must have been like for the first few immigrants setting off north, though. The hunting must've been good, indeed, if they felt it was worth waving goodbye to proper sunlight for months on end.

Yes. Europeans stopped having dark skin because in countries with comparatively low levels of sunlight it's actually a biologically inferior trait (as it lowers Vitamin D intake) in that climate.

Hmm, now that I think of it, the ancient Norse religions were rather fatalistic. I wonder if that was a cultural effect of nearly annual winter depression, due to low vitamin D levels. Well, it being a rather hash time and place certainly helped, but I wonder if SAD didn't have something to do with it.

 

[tippy2k2]

That's interesting. I wonder what the dear old racists will say.

"It was a study done by BLACK scientists, of COURSE it's going to show that they were the same as us!!! Now I'm off to drink gasoline!"

I don't know if racists actually drink gasoline but there's bound to be a reason they think the way they think, right? I doubt "science" and "knowledge" and "common sense" come into the equation for a racist...

OT: To state what a few others have, I thought this was already known with the "Mother of Africa" (or whatever it was actually called) thing. I suppose this is just more proof of it or maybe it's proof that it's a newer phenomenon than we originally thought.

 

[JoJo]

Wasnt it already widely accepted that everyone used to be black? I highly doubt movies will be changed at all by this revelation, I mean since when have most films or even television shows cared about Historical accuracy? Half the programming on the damn history channel isnt even about history these days

Undoubtedly the ancestors of Europeans were dark-skinned at some point, since all humans originated in Africa but the question is when the change happened. But yeah, too many hominids that only ever lived in tropical regions are still depicted in the media with pale skin, so I won't be holding my breath for that to change any time soon.

OT: Interesting result, I studied this sort of thing as part of my final year at university. We mustn't be too hasty to jump to any conclusions though, since:

A) This sample only came from one individual, it's easily possible he could have been an outlier, possibly descended from migrants further south. Further samples would be needed to test this.

B) All people with no European ancestry hold the 'African' versions of those genes, including East Asians who often can be as pale as Europeans due to a different mutation. Similarly, this individual may have been paler than your average African due to a different mutation, even if he wasn't as pale as modern day Europeans.

If I had to guess, I'd say he would probably be similar colour to modern day Middle Easterners. After-all, it's estimated that modern humans first successfully left Africa around 75,000 years ago and Europeans and East Asians diverged around 30,000 years ago, so the modern pale skin mutation found in Europeans but not in East Asians must have happened within the last 30,000 years. 7000 years ago is fairly recent on that time scale, so I wouldn't be surprised if Europeans were already well on their way to their present colouring then.

 

[Morti]

stands to reason that we would have to get here before our skin adapted and that it would take a lorg time to do so. Vitamin D deficiency is a lot less fatal than excess sun, and it can be easily compensated for with diet.

 

[Fireaxe]

stands to reason that we would have to get here before our skin adapted and that it would take a lorg time to do so. Vitamin D deficiency is a lot less fatal than excess sun, and it can be easily compensated for with diet.

Easily compensated now, perhaps, not so easy back then.

 

[Zykon TheLich_v1legacy]

I guess that Hollywood will have to cast differently when making movies in a pre-historic setting.

You mean that One Million Years BC wasn't historically accurate? Holy Shit!

 

[midknight129]

There's a notable exception to the "paler = better vitamin D production". Cultures that had diets that provided plenty of Vitamin D (particularly via fish oil) had no evolutionary advantage to having pale skin and no disadvantage to having dark skin. This is why Inuits, despite living WAY far north and who would be expected to drop dark skin ASAP, still have particularly dark complexion because not producing enough Vitamin D through sun exposure was a moot issue for them. So, if this 7000 year old person were part of a culture that heavily relied on Vitamin D rich food, dark skin would never have been selected out of their gene pool.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

Huh. I was reading this article [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25944817] earlier and it seems relevant. There's a theory that modern Europeans became paler much faster due to interbreeding with Neanderthals. It makes sense that you might find early European Homo Sapiens with dark skin, I'd be interested to see if there's any Neanderthal DNA in the genes.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

Huh. I was reading this article [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25944817] earlier and it seems relevant. There's a theory that modern Europeans became paler much faster due to interbreeding with Neanderthals. It makes sense that you might find early European Homo Sapiens with dark skin, I'd be interested to see if there's any Neanderthal DNA in the genes.

Yeah well, interbreeding with the Neanderthal has said many times before and dismissed just many times before. I would take it with a grain of salt.

Looking at the article (and a few others that I've read on the BBC) there's a very strong weight of DNA evidence this time, and the populations that they appear in make sense with our migration out of Africa.

 

[J Tyran]

Edited: Someone already posted it, can a mod please delete this?

 

[Gorr]

I wanna know how dark the skin was. Was it central Africa dark or more like Northern Africa dark?

There us a picture in the link, but the researcher says that it is very difficult to know exactly how dark.