Ancient Europeans were Dark

New research finds that most prehistoric Europeans had dark skin, hair, and eyes until about 3,000 years ago.

The genes that cause lighter skin, hair and eyes emerged among early Europeans only about 14,000 years ago, during the Old Stone Age. But light features appeared only sporadically until relatively recently. If I had to guess, I would say that the genes for lighter features are recessive, and a person would have had to get the recessive genes from both mother and father, which wouldn’t have happened that often.

Lighter skin may have had an evolutionary advantage for Europeans because it enabled people to synthesize more vitamin D in Europe’s weaker sunlight. But lighter eye color, like blue or green, does not seem to have any major evolutionary advantages, so its eventual emergence may have been driven by chance or sexual selection.

Scientists analyzed 348 samples of ancient DNA from archaeological sites in 34 countries in Western Europe and Asia. The oldest, from 45,000 years ago, was from western Siberia, and another high-quality DNA sample came from a 9,000-year-old individual from Sweden. But many of the older samples were badly degraded, in which case the researchers estimated their pigmentation using “probabilistic phenotype inference” and the HlrisPlex-S system, which can predict eye, hair, and skin color from an incomplete DNA sample.

Palaeoanthropologists think the first Homo sapiens arrived permanently in Europe between 50,000 and 60,000 years ago, which meant they weren’t far removed from African modern human ancestors. Therefore, early Europeans initially only had genetics for dark skin, hair, and eyes. This coloring relies on hundreds of interconnected genes.

The study showed that the frequency of people dark skin was still high in parts of Europe until the Copper Age, about 5,000 years ago. In some areas, dark skin appeared frequently until even later.

Researchers found that light eyes emerged in Northern and Western Europe between 14,000 and 4,000 years ago, even though dark hair and skin were still dominant at that time. There were those who bucked the trend; as a 1-year-old boy living in Europe about 17,000 years ago had dark hair and skin, but blue eyes.

The genetic basis for lighter skin seems to have emerged in Sweden at about the same time as lighter eyes but initially remained relatively rare. The research also showed a statistical “spike” in the incidence of light eyes color at this time, which suggests that blue or green eyes were more prevalent at that time than earlier or later.

So it looks like the Nazis were wrong. Instead of blond hair and blue eyes proving the owners were “pure”, these traits actually proved these individuals were descended from “mutants”.

But then, all of us are, because that’s how evolution works.

 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/most-ancient-europeans-had-dark-skin-eyes-and-hair-up-until-3-000-years-ago-new-research-finds/ar-AA1AN5EZ?ocid=mailsignout&pc=U591&cvid=92b66b3d61ca48d8deba7416e37ab7fb&ei=36