It was initially assumed that Cheddar Man had pale skin and fair hair, but his DNA paints a different picture, strongly suggesting he had blue eyes, a very dark brown to black complexion and dark curly hair.
The discovery shows that the genes for lighter skin became widespread in European populations far later than originally thought – and that skin colour was not always a proxy for geographic origin in the way it is often seen to be today.
The Money Shot here:
Tom Booth, an archaeologist at the Natural History Museum who worked
on the project, said: “It really shows up that these imaginary racial
categories that we have are really very modern constructions, or very
recent constructions, that really are not applicable to the past at
all.”
Yoan Diekmann, a computational biologist at University College London
and another member of the project’s team, agreed, saying the connection
often drawn between Britishness and whiteness was “not an immutable
truth. It has always changed and will change”.
I really wish Pioneer Little Britain Europe hadn't banned me from their face book pages because I would post this every place I could.
and along with the cartoon fun, enjoy a little Friday science geek, appropriately following the declaration of more candidates for the conservative candidacy for president. This is applicable for multiple reasons, ranging from how this demonstrates evolution where right wing candidates have repudiated and denied evolution science, and because of the right wing nut move here and abroad to keep Europe (and apparently by extension, America) for Europeans, culturally, linguistically and yes, racially. Our conservative candidates ALL believe some people are white because that's how Jesus made us, and that Santa Claus is white, too.
Conservatives, and especially conservative candidates, are, in these areas as in most things, wrong on all counts.
Common European traits like pale skin evolved relatively recently in central and southern Europe. How Europeans evolved white skin
ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI—Most
of us think of Europe as the ancestral home of white people. But a new
study shows that pale skin, as well as other traits such as tallness and
the ability to digest milk as adults, arrived in most of the continent
relatively recently. The work, presented here last week at the 84th
annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists,
offers dramatic evidence of recent evolution in Europe and shows that
most modern Europeans don’t look much like those of 8000 years ago. The origins of Europeans have come into sharp focus in the past year
as researchers have sequenced the genomes of ancient populations, rather
than only a few individuals. By comparing key parts of the DNA across
the genomes of 83 ancient individuals from archaeological sites
throughout Europe, the international team of researchers reported
earlier this year that Europeans today are a mix of the blending of at
least three ancient populations of hunter-gatherers and farmers who
moved into Europe in separate migrations over the past 8000 years. The
study revealed that a massive migration of Yamnaya herders from the steppes north of the Black Sea may have brought Indo-European languages to Europe about 4500 years ago. Now, a new study from the same team drills down further into that
remarkable data to search for genes that were under strong natural
selection—including traits so favorable that they spread rapidly
throughout Europe in the past 8000 years. By comparing the ancient
European genomes with those of recent ones from the 1000 Genomes
Project, population geneticist Iain Mathieson, a postdoc in the Harvard
University lab of population geneticist David Reich, found five genes
associated with changes in diet and skin pigmentation that underwent
strong natural selection. First, the scientists confirmed an earlier report that the
hunter-gatherers in Europe could not digest the sugars in milk 8000
years ago, according to a poster. They also noted an interesting twist:
The first farmers also couldn’t digest milk. The farmers who came from
the Near East about 7800 years ago and the Yamnaya pastoralists who came
from the steppes 4800 years ago lacked the version of the LCT
gene that allows adults to digest sugars in milk. It wasn’t until about
4300 years ago that lactose tolerance swept through Europe. When it comes to skin color, the team found a patchwork of evolution
in different places, and three separate genes that produce light skin,
telling a complex story for how European’s skin evolved to be much
lighter during the past 8000 years. The modern humans who came out of
Africa to originally settle Europe about 40,000 years are presumed to
have had dark skin, which is advantageous in sunny latitudes. And the
new data confirm that about 8500 years ago, early hunter-gatherers in
Spain, Luxembourg, and Hungary also had darker skin: They lacked
versions of two genes—SLC24A5 and SLC45A2—that lead to depigmentation and, therefore, pale skin in Europeans today. But in the far north—where low light levels would favor pale skin—the
team found a different picture in hunter-gatherers: Seven people from
the 7700-year-old Motala archaeological site in southern Sweden had both
light skin gene variants, SLC24A5 and SLC45A2. They also had a third gene, HERC2/OCA2,
which causes blue eyes and may also contribute to light skin and blond
hair. Thus ancient hunter-gatherers of the far north were already pale
and blue-eyed, but those of central and southern Europe had darker skin. Then, the first farmers from the Near East arrived in Europe; they
carried both genes for light skin. As they interbred with the indigenous
hunter-gatherers, one of their light-skin genes swept through Europe,
so that central and southern Europeans also began to have lighter skin.
The other gene variant, SLC45A2, was at low levels until about 5800 years ago when it swept up to high frequency. The team also tracked complex traits, such as height, which are the
result of the interaction of many genes. They found that selection
strongly favored several gene variants for tallness in northern and
central Europeans, starting 8000 years ago, with a boost coming from the
Yamnaya migration, starting 4800 years ago. The Yamnaya have the
greatest genetic potential for being tall of any of the populations,
which is consistent with measurements of their ancient skeletons. In
contrast, selection favored shorter people in Italy and Spain starting 8000 years ago,
according to the paper now posted on the bioRxiv preprint server.
Spaniards, in particular, shrank in stature 6000 years ago, perhaps as a
result of adapting to colder temperatures and a poor diet. Surprisingly, the team found no immune genes under intense selection,
which is counter to hypotheses that diseases would have increased after
the development of agriculture. The paper doesn’t specify why these genes might have been under such
strong selection. But the likely explanation for the pigmentation genes
is to maximize vitamin D synthesis,
said paleoanthropologist Nina Jablonski of Pennsylvania State
University (Penn State), University Park, as she looked at the poster’s
results at the meeting. People living in northern latitudes often don’t
get enough UV to synthesize vitamin D in their skin so natural selection
has favored two genetic solutions to that problem—evolving pale skin
that absorbs UV more efficiently or favoring lactose tolerance to be
able to digest the sugars and vitamin D naturally found in milk. “What
we thought was a fairly simple picture of the emergence of depigmented
skin in Europe is an exciting patchwork of selection as populations
disperse into northern latitudes,” Jablonski says. “This data is fun
because it shows how much recent evolution has taken place.” Anthropological geneticist George Perry, also of Penn State, notes
that the work reveals how an individual’s genetic potential is shaped by
their diet and adaptation to their habitat. “We’re getting a much more
detailed picture now of how selection works.”
