DNA test of 7,000-year-old tooth overturns popular image of light-skinned European hunter-gatherers

[ashling]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/26/dna-test-of-7000-year-old-tooth-overturns-popular-image-of-light-skinned-european-hunter-gatherers/

DNA taken from the wisdom tooth of a European hunter-gatherer has given scientists an unprecedented glimpse of modern humans before the rise of farming. The Mesolithic man, who lived in Spain around 7,000 years ago, had an unusual mix of blue eyes, black or brown hair, and dark skin, according to analyses of his genetic make-up.

He was probably lactose intolerant and had more difficulty digesting starchy foods than the farmers who transformed diets and lifestyles when they took up tools in the first agricultural revolution.

The invention of farming brought humans and animals into much closer contact, and humans likely evolved more robust immune systems to fend off infections that the animals passed on. But scientists may have over-estimated the impact farming had in shaping the human immune system, because tests on the hunter-gatherer’s DNA found that he already carried mutations that boost the immune system to tackle various nasty bugs. Some live on in modern Europeans today.

*****
The DNA threw up a series of surprises. When Lalueza-Fox looked at the genome, he found that rather than having light skin, the man had gene variants that tend to produce much darker skin. “This guy had to be darker than any modern European, but we don’t know how dark,” the scientist said.

Another surprise finding was that the man had blue eyes. That was unexpected, said Lalueza-Fox, because the mutation for blue eyes was thought to have arisen more recently than the mutations that cause lighter skin colour. The results suggest that blue eye colour came first in Europe, with the transition to lighter skin ongoing through Mesolithic times.

[Warpy]

1. They obviously never got as far as Ireland.

Most of the rest of Europe will tan, at least. If you've got a proper Irish hide, it just burns, peels, and burns again.

[loudsue]

10. My Irish-ancestried hide sure does.

Burn. Peal. Burn. Peal. I got the blue eyes, but the dark skin didn't quite make it to my genetic swimming pool party.

[hunter]

23. Me too.

Great fun as a Southern California beach kid.

I now occasionally get chunks of skin cut out of me and sent to pathology or frozen off, depending on how nasty they look.

One of my kids was unfortunate to get the same skin from Irish ancestors on both sides.

This kind of pale skin is awesome in places where the sun rarely shines and vitamin D is hard to come by, but not so great elsewhere.

My dad's skin tried to kill him, but the surgeons cut all the cancer out before it had spread, leaving a very big hole. It was the kind of surgery where they cut, send it off to pathology, and cut again until it's all gone.

I was completely terrified by the sun by the time I'd turned twenty, so I'm still probably screwed. The blistering sun burns I suffered as a kid left scars ticking like time bombs. I have to watch out for those getting close to zero time and have them removed before they explode.

[jimlup]

2. Fascinating and probably a distant cousin...

as I too have the blue eye gene...

[democratisphere]

3. Amazing information and insight into our early ancestors appearance, way of life......

and immune systems. Looking more like we are all brothers and sisters.

[cally]

4. Striking coloring

I can't remember seeing many people with darker skin color and blue eyes. Interesting.

[Cleita]

8. Many Sicilians are brown skinned, black haired and blue eyed.

One of my girlfriend's husband and his brothers are. Mom and dad were immigrants from Sicily. They were very handsome too.

Most famous example is Frank Sinatra, ole blue eyes.

[Ken Burch]

5. Jesus! It's Russell Crowe's great-to-the-100th power grandfather! N/T.

[WorseBeforeBetter]

7. I was going with Gerard Butler...

...but yeah, I see Crowe in there.

[Scootaloo]

13. You're both wrong

(But between the two? Way closer to Russel Crowe.)

[Spitfire of ATJ]

6. White people just can't catch a break,....can they.

[another_liberal]

9. Obviously just an evolutionary aberration . . .

Most likely their kind will soon pass and like the Dodo become only a memory.

[Spitfire of ATJ]

17. Unless they go underground...

[loudsue]

11. Warn us!!!

[Scootaloo]

12. Uh... duh?

To some degree the conceit of archaic humans corresponding the modern humans is understandable - we don't really have any valid basis for alternative depictions, whether in art or cinema - all the people around us look like modern humans after all, and all the actors we find are invariably also modern humans.

But taking the conceit and believing it to be an accurate and factual representation is a bit silly. People in Europe as recently as a thousand years ago looked quite a bit different than modern Europeans. Why would neolithic-age people look like jean Auel's six-foot, blonde-and-blue-eyed caucasian hunks?

It's always good for a laugh when the topic of Ice Age European migration to North America comes up. someone invariably tries to turn it from an archaeological question to a race in, "so white people WERE here first!" - Ignoring of course that if you saw a band of these explorers they would likely look more like Yothu Yindi than Led Zepplin.

[Xithras]

14. Shouldn't be a shock to anyone who is familiar with Grimalidi man.

For those unfamiliar with "Grimaldi Man", it was the discovery of two skeletons on the northwestern coast of Italy, near the border with France and not that far from Spain, that were immediately controversial and remain somewhat so today. The two Grimaldi skeletons show many anatomical structures normally associated with Cro Magnons and which are considered "white", but they also show several distinctly African features. They were intensely controversial for a long time (sadly, many tried to claim them to be evidence that human life started in Europe, and therefore supported European "superiority" as a "pure" variant of the human race), but the general belief today is that they represented some sort of hybridization. The current theory is that they represent a mix of Cro Magnon and an as-yet unidentified people related to the Khoisan (the Bushmen of southern Africa). Given that theory, it's almost expected that the Grimaldi would have been much darker than modern Europeans.

And let's not forget that there are a number of ethnicities in North Africa (only 7 miles away across the strait of Gibraltar) that have blue eyes, caucasoid facial structures, and dark skin. While there is no evidence that the two are related, the possibility is obvious.

[theHandpuppet]

18. I once saw some men with those same striking features...

... in a documentary on Morocco.

[pipi_k]

22. Similar...

the iconic photo on the cover of "National Geographic" of the Afghan girl with the striking eyes...

[RainDog]

15. I thought blue eyes had been traced to 10,000 years ago

in the area near the Black Sea - which is one route for migration into western Europe, via the Danube and rivers in France, etc. That was the explanation I read, long ago, for the origin of the "celts" who were in western Europe - the ones who fought Caesar in the Gallic Wars.

I have green eyes. I don't sunburn unless I've not been in the sun much. My brother has green eyes and his skin is much darker than mine. Most people in the U.S. with green eyes are descended from the celts - not necessarily Irish ones, tho. Celts were in France (Gallic), Belgium (Belgaie), a belt across central Europe, to the Black Sea. Last I heard, green eyes were traced back to the Bronze Age...3600 bce.

[theHandpuppet]

19. I believe there were also Celts in NW Spain.

Some recent archaeological discoveries support it. I believe there was an article on the BBC news just a few days ago.

[Xithras]

20. You're thinking of the Basque, who are far more ancient than the Celts.

The Basque may actually be the last cohesive remnants of the original ice age era Cro Magnon population in Europe. Their language is completely distinct from anything else spoken in Europe, there are notable genetic differences between them and other European populations, their facial and skeletal structures have slight distinctions that are a perfect match for most European cro magnon skeletons, and archaeologists can trace a virtually unbroken historical road from the current peoples into the earliest recorded histories of the area, and then on from there through the archaeological record. While most of the ice age era natives interbred with later European migrants and became indistinguishable from everyone else, the Basque seem to have been spared this by their relative geographic isolation.

The Celts were an Indo-European people, and they were the ancestors of most of the Europeans we see today. The ancestors of the Basque were already on the Iberian peninsula before the Indo-Europeans had even started moving off of the Caspian steppe. One key difference between the two is the fact that the Basque (and Europe in general) had a completely matriarchal culture until the Celts moved in and brought their patriarchal belief systems with them. The fact that the Basque were not wholly colonized is attested to by the fact that the Basque kept that aspect of their society all the way until their Christianization, and even after that held onto some of their female dieties and matriarchal traditions all the way up until the Inquisition in the 1600's. The Inquisition brutalized the Basque, as the outside church accused empowered Basque women of being witches and Basque society of being dominated by witches...more than 7000 Basque were put on trial for their beliefs in a process that finally eradicated those ancient beliefs from their society.

[zabet]

16. I have blues and

olive skin with black hair (going grey now LOL). I tan super easy and get really dark if I spend a lot of time in the sun. My daughter has the same skin tone and black hair that I do but her eyes are an amber color with hints of green around the edges. She tans so dark that she is often mistaken as being from another country if we are around people who don't know us.

[JCMach1]

21. Should we be shocked that African genes showed-up in Spain... ummmm

You can almost throw a stone from Gibraltar...

[FarCenter]

24. The first Africans to enter the Middle East about 70,000 ya would have had dark brown skin

That is obvious from peoples such as the Aboriginal Australians, Papuans, Andaman Islanders, and various tribal groups from India to Melanesia.

Penetration of more northern regions of Eurasia did not happen until around 35,000 with the invention of sewing, so the evolutionary selection of lighter skin for vitamin D production would not have started until then. And it was probably not until the invention of herding and farming that the pressure became significant, since hunter gatherers probably got more D in their food. Siberians, Inuit, and Native Americans living at high latitudes all have darker skin than Finns or Irish.