Europeans had dark skin and blue eyes 7000 years ago.

[Someone Depressing]

...Wasn't everyone black, and only the Africans who moved way up north turned white?

Is this even news? It's pretty logical to say that humans were black until only recently (in a sense of how long the species has been around).

 

[Yopaz]

Not sure if anyone should be surprised by this unless they deny evolution (which means they likely deny that the world is older than 6000 years ago so this isn't doing much).

We likely started out with a skin tone kinda like the chimps and gorillas have which is fairly light. Then as time went by we got darker skin to prevent melanoma. We then migrated to the north and those started adapting to an environment with less sun and got lighter skin since melanoma wasn't a risk, but lack of vitamin D was causing a lo of issues.

 

[JoJo]

...Wasn't everyone black, and only the Africans who moved way up north turned white?

Is this even news? It's pretty logical to say that humans were black until only recently (in a sense of how long the species has been around)

It's probably considered news because of the relatively young age of the specimen. Considering the ancestors of Europeans left Africa approximately 75,000 years ago, just 7000 is pretty damn recent. That's the 'surprise' in this news, for everyone who's commented on that so far.

Still as I mentioned in my earlier post on this thread, one specimen isn't conclusive and we shouldn't treat it as fact without further samples from other people living in Europe at the time. Really, the title of this thread should more accurately be 'One European had dark skin and blue eyes 7000 years ago' rather than what it currently is.

 

[O maestre]

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.

No this is exqactly why the discovery is new, skin change seems to have less to do with climate and sunlight intake as previously thought, and more to do with diet. I am quoting your post because it was first, but many others are reading the findings incorrectly, and why this is new news.

All people have appearantly still been as dark as modern africans up to 7000 years ago, but have been in europe for over 60000. Which means that something else has contributed to the skin and eye colour mutation. The leading theory is diet, sonce about 7000-6000 years ago was when agriculture began. Therefor our ancestors stopped eating as much meat and instead began eating grains. Cereals and many forms of startch are not part of our natural diet. Pigs and cows are a good example mutation that could be based on nutritional deficiancy, a pig looks nothing like a wild boar.

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.

ding ding ding we have a winner!

Good example using inuits hadn't thought of that. I wonder if everyone went "back" on a paleo diet would eventually go black in a few generations

...Wasn't everyone black, and only the Africans who moved way up north turned white?

Is this even news? It's pretty logical to say that humans were black until only recently (in a sense of how long the species has been around)

It's probably considered news because of the relatively young age of the specimen. Considering the ancestors of Europeans left Africa approximately 75,000 years ago, just 7000 is pretty damn recent. That's the 'surprise' in this news, for everyone who's commented on that so far.

Still as I mentioned in my earlier post on this thread, one specimen isn't conclusive and we shouldn't treat it as fact without further samples from other people living in Europe at the time. Really, the title of this thread should more accurately be 'One European had dark skin and blue eyes 7000 years ago' rather than what it currently is.

read it again, they found two specimens that had uncanny resemblence seperated by great distance, one in spain and one in russia.

 

[PoolCleaningRobot]

Reminds me of an article I read a while ago that theorized Neanderthals had red hair. I've always seen the vitamin D thing for skin but its interesting that blue eyes came first

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.

There's also certain human "traits" to consider. Neanderthals actually lived longer and may have been smarter than Homo Sapiens at the time. Thing is, Homo Sapiens tend to fuck anything that moves so we bred a lot faster than them. Its usually theorized that humans either killed the Neanderthals or interbred with them and the latter makes a lot of sense given our "instincts"

 

[TheIceQueen]

This is only shocking in a country that hates science to the point where over half of its population doesn't believe in evolution. Other than that, most people are aware that Africa is where humankind started.

 

[JoJo]

...Wasn't everyone black, and only the Africans who moved way up north turned white?

Is this even news? It's pretty logical to say that humans were black until only recently (in a sense of how long the species has been around)

It's probably considered news because of the relatively young age of the specimen. Considering the ancestors of Europeans left Africa approximately 75,000 years ago, just 7000 is pretty damn recent. That's the 'surprise' in this news, for everyone who's commented on that so far.

Still as I mentioned in my earlier post on this thread, one specimen isn't conclusive and we shouldn't treat it as fact without further samples from other people living in Europe at the time. Really, the title of this thread should more accurately be 'One European had dark skin and blue eyes 7000 years ago' rather than what it currently is.

read it again, they found two specimens that had uncanny resemblence seperated by great distance, one in spain and one in russia.

Are we looking at the same paper? I think you'll have to read it again. The blue eyes and dark skin find only came from the first specimen, 'La Braña 1', the second specimen 'La Braña 2' found in the dig has yet to have it's genome analysed as due to it's inferior quality. Both of these specimens came from Spain. The study also said that the first specimen was genetically related to a specimen found in Russia, it did not say the Russian specimen had dark skin and blue eyes. Even if it did my point still stands, two specimens aren't a large enough sample size for a reliable result either.

 

[Maxtro]

I'm interested in where the blue eyes came from.

Pretty much only light skinned people have blue eyes in the current age. What's the evolutionary benefit to blue eyes? Did the blue eyes develop once the moved to Europe or was it when they were still in Africa?

 

[JimB]

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

Depending on the stripe of racist, I imagine it will be either, "That's proof that the noble white man is more evolved than blacks, who are just evolutionary throwbacks," or, "That study is untrue because there's a picture of Adam and Eve in my Bible, and they're white in it, so."

...I feel bad for having thought of those things.

 

[O maestre]

...Wasn't everyone black, and only the Africans who moved way up north turned white?

Is this even news? It's pretty logical to say that humans were black until only recently (in a sense of how long the species has been around)

It's probably considered news because of the relatively young age of the specimen. Considering the ancestors of Europeans left Africa approximately 75,000 years ago, just 7000 is pretty damn recent. That's the 'surprise' in this news, for everyone who's commented on that so far.

Still as I mentioned in my earlier post on this thread, one specimen isn't conclusive and we shouldn't treat it as fact without further samples from other people living in Europe at the time. Really, the title of this thread should more accurately be 'One European had dark skin and blue eyes 7000 years ago' rather than what it currently is.

read it again, they found two specimens that had uncanny resemblence seperated by great distance, one in spain and one in russia.

Are we looking at the same paper? I think you'll have to read it again. The blue eyes and dark skin find only came from the first specimen, 'La Braña 1', the second specimen 'La Braña 2' found in the dig has yet to have it's genome analysed as due to it's inferior quality. Both of these specimens came from Spain. The study also said that the first specimen was genetically related to a specimen found in Russia, it did not say the Russian specimen had dark skin and blue eyes. Even if it did my point still stands, two specimens aren't a large enough sample size for a reliable result either.

Normally I'd say that several hundreds of samples would be needed for a conclusion, but in archaeology broad strokes are often painted when dealing with the past due to lack of samples.
I get the feeling that the second sample is probably going to have similar genes to the first sample, especially after having attended a talk at the university of Copenhagen with Morten Allentoft, one of the archaeologists associated with the project. It is hard to demand more, when it is one of the best preserved specimens ever in the area found. Three or two specimens would in my book be near evidence enough, radical skin mutations are not that common. It would also correlate well with the change in diet theory, and why the Inuit people still have dark skin, despite living for generations in sun depraved environments.

I don't think the Russian specimen would have been brought up if there wasn't a significant genetic correlation despite long distance, so when I say "uncanny resemblance" I don't think I am exaggerating. Genetic related is something you can just about say to every human who has ever walked the earth. Semantics.

 

[x EvilErmine x]

I'm interested in where the blue eyes came from.

Pretty much only light skinned people have blue eyes in the current age. What's the evolutionary benefit to blue eyes? Did the blue eyes develop once the moved to Europe or was it when they were still in Africa?

It depends on what you mean by 'blue eyes' I don't know how much you know about eyes and eye colour so forgive me if preaching to the converted here.

First thing's first, there is no such thing as blue eyes, green eyes, hazel, or any other colour. Eye colour is the result of the distribution and concentration of the pigment melanin (which actually is brown/black in colour) within the structures of the eye. The appearance of colour is due to the way light is bent by Rayleigh scattering [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_scattering], which also explains things like why the sky is blue and why blood vessels can appear blue/green incidentally.

Secondly, it was thought that eye colour was the responsibility of only one maybe two gene but recent research shows that there is much more to it than that, so it could be a little difficult to answer the question of just when blue eyes originated as now there are multiple genes that need to be investigated.

If you are interested in finding out a little more here's a quite interesting report on the topic [http://www.evergreen.edu/upwardbound/docs/eyecolor.pdf]

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[JoJo]

...Wasn't everyone black, and only the Africans who moved way up north turned white?

Is this even news? It's pretty logical to say that humans were black until only recently (in a sense of how long the species has been around)

It's probably considered news because of the relatively young age of the specimen. Considering the ancestors of Europeans left Africa approximately 75,000 years ago, just 7000 is pretty damn recent. That's the 'surprise' in this news, for everyone who's commented on that so far.

Still as I mentioned in my earlier post on this thread, one specimen isn't conclusive and we shouldn't treat it as fact without further samples from other people living in Europe at the time. Really, the title of this thread should more accurately be 'One European had dark skin and blue eyes 7000 years ago' rather than what it currently is.

read it again, they found two specimens that had uncanny resemblence seperated by great distance, one in spain and one in russia.

Are we looking at the same paper? I think you'll have to read it again. The blue eyes and dark skin find only came from the first specimen, 'La Braña 1', the second specimen 'La Braña 2' found in the dig has yet to have it's genome analysed as due to it's inferior quality. Both of these specimens came from Spain. The study also said that the first specimen was genetically related to a specimen found in Russia, it did not say the Russian specimen had dark skin and blue eyes. Even if it did my point still stands, two specimens aren't a large enough sample size for a reliable result either.

Normally I'd say that several hundreds of samples would be needed for a conclusion, but in archaeology broad strokes are often painted when dealing with the past due to lack of samples.
I get the feeling that the second sample is probably going to have similar genes to the first sample, especially after having attended a talk at the university of Copenhagen with Morten Allentoft, one of the archaeologists associated with the project. It is hard to demand more, when it is one of the best preserved specimens ever in the area found. Three or two specimens would in my book be near evidence enough, radical skin mutations are not that common. It would also correlate well with the change in diet theory, and why the Inuit people still have dark skin, despite living for generations in sun depraved environments.

I don't think the Russian specimen would have been brought up if there wasn't a significant genetic correlation despite long distance, so when I say "uncanny resemblance" I don't think I am exaggerating. Genetic related is something you can just about say to every human who has ever walked the earth. Semantics.

Feelings are all very well and good, but I'll need a little more convincing evidence than that. I'm not demanding that they find 400 more specimens and analyse them all before I listen, simply that we stick to the evidence we have. We know that 7000 years ago one European had the genes which equate to blue eyes and darker skin in modern day populations, that's it. There's other possibilities why someone might have darker skin other than radical skin mutations or being typical, perhaps they had heritage from migrants further south?

Equally, look at how heterogeneous Europe is now in regards to skin and eye colour within it's native populations, there are darker and paler skin Europeans nowadays and with varying shades of brown, blue and green eyes. A scientist 7000 years in the future who dug one of our remains up and decided that all Europeans must have had [insert eye colour] and [insert skin tone] would be foolish, which is why I object to the title of this thread.

 

[Maxtro]

I'm interested in where the blue eyes came from.

Pretty much only light skinned people have blue eyes in the current age. What's the evolutionary benefit to blue eyes? Did the blue eyes develop once the moved to Europe or was it when they were still in Africa?

It depends on what you mean by 'blue eyes' I don't know how much you know about eyes and eye colour so forgive me if preaching to the converted here.

First thing's first, there is no such thing as blue eyes, green eyes, hazel, or any other colour. Eye colour is the result of the distribution and concentration of the pigment melanin (which actually is brown/black in colour) within the structures of the eye. The appearance of colour is due to the way light is bent by Rayleigh scattering [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rayleigh_scattering], which also explains things like why the sky is blue and why blood vessels can appear blue/green incidentally.

Secondly, it was thought that eye colour was the responsibility of only one maybe two gene but recent research shows that there is much more to it than that, so it could be a little difficult to answer the question of just when blue eyes originated as now there are multiple genes that need to be investigated.

If you are interested in finding out a little more here's a quite interesting report on the topic [http://www.evergreen.edu/upwardbound/docs/eyecolor.pdf]

captcha:
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Heh, that's pretty much over my head.

I'm still going to believe that eyes are blue and brown and green. It makes the world simpler to understand.