# Population Genetics > Paleogenetics > Paleolithic & Mesolithic >  Neandertal origin of MC1R haplotypes related to skin color

## Angela

Dienekes points us to a new study about the impact of a MCIR haplotype introgression from Neanderthals that is associated with red hair and pale skin.
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2014/06...aplotypes.html

Strangely, the introgression in Europeans is low (about 5%), and is much higher in East Asians(30%), and very high in the Taiwanese (60-70%) who don't have many red-heads, so far as I know. That does correlate, however, with the fact that other studies have shown higher levels of Neanderthal introgression in east Asia versus Europe.

From the distribution, it is higher at the margins...Ireland to Micronesia.

Perhaps it is expressed in anatomically modern humans as red hair/pale skin only in the presence of other alleles? As the scientists keep telling us, pigmentation traits are polygenic.

It is also being discussed at 23andme: https://www.23andme.com/you/community/thread/30510/

GG here, no risk alleles, and yet I've been hospitalized for sun burns on more than one occasion, so go figure. Maybe I can stop worrying about melanoma?

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## Maciamo

Finally a proof that fair skin and red hair came from Neanderthals. It has been known for years that some Neanderthals had red hair. I have been saying for years that Europeans got the red hair mutations from them, but many people liked to dismiss my claim based on the fact that the few European Neanderthal genomes tested to date did not share the same MC1R mutations as modern Europeans. I had actually theorised that red hair originated with Central Asian Neanderthals and that the mutations were spread by Y-haplogroup R1a and especially R1b during the Indo-European migrations.

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## Aaron1981

This is not one of the common variant found in west Europeans, but the kind found in South/East Asians. People who have tested with 23andME can look this one up - rs2228479, aka Val92Met . Anyone who is curious on exploring further should Google SNP + MC1R, you will hit the SNPedia page with good information. I think the jury is still out on this one, at least concerning NW Europeans.

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## Fire Haired14

> Finally a proof that fair skin and red hair came from Neanderthals. It has been known for years that some Neanderthals had red hair. I have been saying for years that Europeans got the red hair mutations from them, but many people liked to dismiss my claim based on the fact that the few European Neanderthal genomes tested to date did not share the same MC1R mutations as modern Europeans. I had actually theorised that red hair originated with Central Asian Neanderthals and that the mutations were spread by Y-haplogroup R1a and especially R1b during the Indo-European migrations.


So Neanderthals had red hair versions of SNPs which have been shown in modern people to determine if someone has red hair or not? That is very hard to believe. Red hair is not exclusively European but it does seem to be exclusively west Eurasian. The R1a and R1b, ANE, Indo European, etc. theory is not constant with nearly 1% red hair in Sardinia(around the same rate as in parts of R1a Z282 dominated east Europe), and the existence of red hair in west Asia. From what I have read most experts believe there was probably one time period of Eurasian human-Neanderthal admixture and it was around when the ancestor's of Eurasians first became a separate group, and so if red hair is from Neanderthals why is it non-existent in east Asians and south Asians. I guess it is still possible Neanderthals are the source but I really doubt it.

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## motzart

I am AG for the rs2228479 SNP, makes sense because I have a pretty homogenous british background. I find it interesting that the MC1R mutation is also found in Native Americans (Cheyenne) in such high frequencies, this would imply that the neaderthal mixing occured with Y DNA Haplogroup K, that would explain the mutation in asian(O), Western Europe(R1b), Russian(N), and Native American(Q) populations.

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## LeBrok

> This is not one of the common variant found in west Europeans, but the kind found in South/East Asians. People who have tested with 23andME can look this one up - rs2228479, aka Val92Met . Anyone who is curious on exploring further should Google SNP + MC1R, you will hit the SNPedia page with good information. I think the jury is still out on this one, at least concerning NW Europeans.


Can it be that in some Europeans Neanderthal allele mutated farther in rs2228479? 

In map B, the hotspots of introgressive MC1R in Russia and GB/Ireland correlate nicely with red hair from Maciamo's map.

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## Nobody1

> Can it be that in some Europeans Neanderthal allele mutated farther in rs2228479? 
> 
> In map B, the hotspots of introgressive MC1R in Russia and GB/Ireland correlate nicely with red hair from Maciamo's map.


 rs2228479 = A derived and G ancestral
It depends how many copies of A / just one, none or maybe two [homozygous A _derived_]; 
The ancient corpses Stuttgart/Motola12/Loschbour were all still G ancestral [Hirisplex] not sure what their Neanderthal mix was;

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## Aaron1981

> Can it be that in some Europeans Neanderthal allele mutated farther in rs2228479? 
> 
> In map B, the hotspots of introgressive MC1R in Russia and GB/Ireland correlate nicely with red hair from Maciamo's map.


Not sure, but for some reason the most common variation in European populations is rs1805009 and not tested on the v2 or v3 23andMe chips. rs1805008 has been linked heavily in Irish populations but probably in western Europe in general. The one in the study is actually quite rare in Europe, but as we've seen from at least one commenter, does pop up. I don't believe they are linked or else I would expect to seem them pop up together and rs2228479 be far more frequent in Europe.

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## Nobody1

rs2228479 derived *A* copies are by far the most common in Europe from all the MC1R SNPs; rs1805007 and rs1805008 derived *T* [homozygous T/T] is a strong associate to red hair in MC1R (not sure the Neanderthal link); Either way i read nowhere in that 'Abstract' neither the word red nor hair; Only photoaging, skin color, Neanderthals and introgression; So obviously rs2228479[Val92Met] is a minor Neanderthal introgression in a fraction of most (_almost all_) European populations;
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-a1xz08Y-Sz...s1600/mc1r.jpg

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## Maciamo

> This is not one of the common variant found in west Europeans, but the kind found in South/East Asians. People who have tested with 23andME can look this one up - rs2228479, aka Val92Met . Anyone who is curious on exploring further should Google SNP + MC1R, you will hit the SNPedia page with good information. I think the jury is still out on this one, at least concerning NW Europeans.


Rs2228479 is found throughout Eurasia. It has been associated with red beard hair. The red pigmentation is only visible in individuals with fair hair (i.e. those who also carry mutations for blond hair), which explains why red hair is not normally observed in East and South Asians. 

Since pure Neanderthals disappeared in Central Asia over 30,000 years ago, this gene would have been picked up by Y-haplogroup NOP, which is also ancestral to haplogroups Q and R. That explains why the gene is so widely distributed today, and why predominantly N1c1 Uralic people like the Udmurts and the Mordvins have high frequencies of red hair. 

So far there is no evidence that the Mesolithic or Neolithic Europeans possessed MC1R mutations for red hair. On the other hand it is possible that the original N, O, P, Q and R people who possessed the mutations didn't have red hair, but pitch black hair like modern East and South Asians. It is only when haplogroup R moved into eastern Europe and mixed with blond hair people that the reddish tinge would have become visible in their hybrid descendants.

It's harder to explain why red hair became so much more frequency in R1b than in R1a populations, as if natural selection in cloudy north-west Europe favoured red hair, while it favoured blond hair in sunnier but colder north-east Europe.

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## MOESAN

> So Neanderthals had red hair versions of SNPs which have been shown in modern people to determine if someone has red hair or not? That is very hard to believe. Red hair is not exclusively European but it does seem to be exclusively west Eurasian. The R1a and R1b, ANE, Indo European, etc. theory is not constant with nearly 1% red hair in Sardinia(around the same rate as in parts of R1a Z282 dominated east Europe), and the existence of red hair in west Asia. From what I have read most experts believe there was probably one time period of Eurasian human-Neanderthal admixture and it was around when the ancestor's of Eurasians first became a separate group, and so if red hair is from Neanderthals why is it non-existent in east Asians and south Asians. I guess it is still possible Neanderthals are the source but I really doubt it.


outside the debate about genes causing it, I speak here of the phenotype: very often I reed overevaluated %s for red hairs (even high reddish ones included)
Sardigna was considered 0,5% red, like Armenia, a bit more than other southern régions 0,3%: the morst of Iberia, the southern Italy, The most of Greece, Turkey and some Balkans-Dinaric régions...
the Slavic régions where R1a dominates vary: more than 1,0% (to 1,4%?) less than 1,0% in Ukraina and Russia: but the diverse females "co-opted" on the way can explain too the phénotypes based on autosomals - but I believed that about 7 mutations at leat could cause more or less red hairs

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## motzart

So basically MC1R is the catalyst for red hair/pale skin but it is only expressed in the presence of some other pigmentation SNP. Now we have an explanation for the red hair of the Tarim Mummy. 

The rate of MC1R frequency in a population probably gives us a good example of how much that particular population interbred with other groups. Taiwanese Aboriginals are probably the most similar to Y DNA NOP (as Maciamo prefers this instead of K  :Laughing: ), which makes sense because their geographical isolation would cause a more homogenous genetic makeup.

So it seems R1a migrated to eastern Europe a very long time ago and almost completely lost most of its original genetic makeup while R1b remained a homogenous group and migrated to Europe much later, which makes sense and is pretty much what we know already. 

It seems that the other SNP may have been picked up by R1b (and some N) before it migrated to Europe otherwise we wouldn't see that Russian hotspot of red hair with the huge gap between it and Europe, either that or it was an eastern migration of the other SNP from Europe to a mesolthic continuity spot of R1b. Either seems possible.

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## Fire Haired14

> Rs2228479 is found throughout Eurasia. It has been associated with red beard hair. The red pigmentation is only visible in individuals with fair hair (i.e. those who also carry mutations for blond hair), which explains why red hair is not normally observed in East and South Asians. 
> 
> Since pure Neanderthals disappeared in Central Asia over 30,000 years ago, this gene would have been picked up by Y-haplogroup NOP, which is also ancestral to haplogroups Q and R. That explains why the gene is so widely distributed today, and why predominantly N1c1 Uralic people like the Udmurts and the Mordvins have high frequencies of red hair. 
> 
> So far there is no evidence that the Mesolithic or Neolithic Europeans possessed MC1R mutations for red hair. On the other hand it is possible that the original N, O, P, Q and R people who possessed the mutations didn't have red hair, but pitch black hair like modern East and South Asians. It is only when haplogroup R moved into eastern Europe and mixed with blond hair people that the reddish tinge would have become visible in their hybrid descendants.
> 
> It's harder to explain why red hair became so much more frequency in R1b than in R1a populations, as if natural selection in cloudy north-west Europe favoured red hair, while it favoured blond hair in sunnier but colder north-east Europe.


Loschbour and Stuttgart had derived rs1110400(in MCR1 gene) C/C which is nearly non existent in modern people.

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## Nobody1

> Loschbour and Stuttgart had derived rs1110400(in MCR1 gene) C/C which is nearly non existent in modern people.


In reality both Stuttgart and Loschbour are homozygous ancestral *T*/*T* 
[Lazaridis et al p.47 Apr.2014 / p.37 Dec.2013];

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## motzart

> So basically MC1R is the catalyst for red hair/pale skin but it is only expressed in the presence of some other pigmentation SNP. Now we have an explanation for the red hair of the Tarim Mummy. 
> 
> The rate of MC1R frequency in a population probably gives us a good example of how much that particular population interbred with other groups. Taiwanese Aboriginals are probably the most similar to Y DNA NOP (as Maciamo prefers this instead of K ), which makes sense because their geographical isolation would cause a more homogenous genetic makeup.
> 
> So it seems R1a migrated to eastern Europe a very long time ago and almost completely lost most of its original genetic makeup while R1b remained a homogenous group and migrated to Europe much later, which makes sense and is pretty much what we know already. 
> 
> It seems that the other SNP may have been picked up by R1b (and some N) before it migrated to Europe otherwise we wouldn't see that Russian hotspot of red hair with the huge gap between it and Europe, either that or it was an eastern migration of the other SNP from Europe to a mesolthic continuity spot of R1b. Either seems possible.


To further extrapolate on this last post a bit, lets find the Neaderthal mtDNA.

We know that MC1R is found at high frequencies in Taiwanese Aborigines and the Cheyene. So we can take this to imply that they remained relatively homogenous since paleolithic times. So what mtDNA do we find in Taiwanese Aboriginies and Native Americans?

http://dienekes.blogspot.ca/2005/07/...olynesian.html

"We assessed mtDNA variation in 640 individuals from nine tribes of the central mountain ranges and east coast regions of Taiwan. In contrast to the Han populations, the tribes showed a low frequency of haplogroups D4 and G, and an absence of haplogroups A, C, Z, M9, and M10. Also, more than 85% of the maternal lineages were nested within haplogroups *B4, B5a,* F1a, F3b, E, and M7."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic...f_the_Americas 

"All Indigenous Amerindian mtDNA can be traced back to five haplogroups, A, *B*, C, D and X.[48] More specifically, indigenous Amerindian mtDNA belongs to sub-haplogroups that are unique to the Americas and not found in Asia or Europe: A2, *B2*, C1, D1, and X2a (with minor groups C4c, D2, D3, and D4h3)."

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## Angela

> rs2228479 derived *A* copies are by far the most common in Europe from all the MC1R SNPs; rs1805007 and rs1805008 derived *T* [homozygous T/T] is a strong associate to red hair in MC1R (not sure the Neanderthal link); Either way i read nowhere in that 'Abstract' neither the word red nor hair; Only photoaging, skin color, Neanderthals and introgression; So obviously rs2228479[Val92Met] is a minor Neanderthal introgression in a fraction of most (_almost all_) European populations;
> http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-a1xz08Y-Sz...s1600/mc1r.jpg


You're right, Nobody 1; the abstract doesn't say anything about red hair. I got that from SNPedia and just made the association. I'm not sure, frankly, if the paper itself proposes that this particular variant is _not_ associated with red hair, as the paper itself is not open access so far as I know. 

http://www.snpedia.com/index.php/Rs2228479

I also found this interesting:
[PMID 23744330] [Association study of MC1R gene polymorphisms with freckles in Chinese Han population from Chengdu] 

In the hysteria that the topic of ancient pigmentation seems to engender in some people, what is lost sight of is that these expressed traits are _polygenic._

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## Fire Haired14

> In reality both Stuttgart and Loschbour are homozygous ancestral *T*/*T* 
> [Lazaridis et al p.47 Apr.2014 / p.37 Dec.2013];


No, they have C/C you should check it again. I was shocked so I checked it multiple times.

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## Fire Haired14

> In the hysteria that the topic of ancient pigmentation seems to engender in some people, what is lost sight of is that these expressed traits are _polygenic._


You seemed to be excited about ancient pigmentation to. How is discovering what people 1,000's of years ago looked like in person not interesting? I am tired of you(Angela) assuming everyone who shows any interest in pigmentation is raciest. You're previous angry responses to me questioning the assumed skin color of Mesolithic Europeans and accuracy of skin color predictions revealed your own racism. You're a fool if you believe you're more clean than the people you ridicule.

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## Nobody1

> No, they have C/C you should check it again. I was shocked so I checked it multiple times.


I dont get it;

p.37 (Dec.2013/Lazaridis et al) http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/s...1/001552-3.pdf
p.47 (Apr.2014/Lazaridis et al) http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/s...4/001552-3.pdf

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## Aberdeen

> You seemed to be excited about ancient pigmentation to. How is discovering what people 1,000's of years ago looked like in person not interesting? I am tired of you(Angela) assuming everyone who shows any interest in pigmentation is raciest. You're previous angry responses to me questioning the assumed skin color of Mesolithic Europeans and accuracy of skin color predictions revealed your own racism. You're a fool if you believe you're more clean than the people you ridicule.


Okay, we get it - you're the kind of guy who "doesn't like girls". But some of your comments about skin colour seem to me to be ill-informed and driven by a rather peculiar agenda that I haven't quite figured out.

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## Angela

> You seemed to be excited about ancient pigmentation to. How is discovering what people 1,000's of years ago looked like in person not interesting? I am tired of you(Angela) assuming everyone who shows any interest in pigmentation is raciest. You're previous angry responses to me questioning the assumed skin color of Mesolithic Europeans and accuracy of skin color predictions revealed your own racism. You're a fool if you believe you're more clean than the people you ridicule.


I think it's best if people don't assume that general comments are directed at them personally. I can be over sensitive at times too, but it can lead to wrong conclusions. Hard as it may be for you to credit, I wasn't thinking specifically of you at all.  :Smile:  You, on the other hand make it a regular habit to address me personally and accuse me personally of various nefarious behaviors, and I would appreciate it if you would desist. I particularly resent any attribution to me personally of racism in any form; you will never find any indication of it in any post I have ever made anywhere about any group. The same cannot be said of other posters on this forum. Kindly do not accuse me of it again; it is a reportable offense, and I am getting tired of "turning the other cheek", even when the offender is perhaps just very young. 

For the record, once again, I'm very much a person who by nature is interested in what ancient people looked like and acted like, in addition to my academic interest in the subject. Absolutely nothing wrong with any of that. 

What I found odd, and continue to find odd, is that from the first, when virtually _all_ of the papers and data indicated not only a late spread, but a late occurrence in Europe and northern Eurasia of the mutations responsible for depigmentation, the very thought seemed to be anathema to certain people. I don't think that is an unfair categorization. I don't think it necessarily had a basis in racism, although that's undoubtedly an element, unless you're going to deny the absolutely blatant racist comments made on the internet by some of these people? For some, I do think it sprang from difficulty in accepting that human phenotypes may have changed much more recently than we had imagined, although it's obvious from the situation with lactase persistence, for example, that this is indeed possible. 

In terms of the subject of this thread, it indicates to me, at least at the present time, that as the scientists keep on insisting, but as some people seem to have difficulty absorbing, pigmentation is a *polygenic* trait. 

That's why, in forensics situations, situations where I have personal, first hand experience, much use is made of HirsPlex tests where the best outcomes, i.e. the greatest correlation with actual "expressed" phenotype comes from the presence of multiple depigmentation mutations. 

So, for example, now that we have more data from more ancient samples which show a more complicated picture than was apparent at first, I think that it would be a very good exercise for people with the time and the interest to input the data from various ancient genomes into the latest calculators and let us know the results. I think that would be very interesting, although I realize it might not be conclusive, as the coverage of these ancient genomes varies on a case by case basis.

I assure you that I have no problem with whatever the results might ultimately show today, tomorrow, or ten years from now with better technology. I don't "value" one phenotype above any other. Whatever my ancestors looked like nine thousand years ago, all of them, I happily claim them all.

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## Fire Haired14

> I dont get it;
> 
> p.37 (Dec.2013/Lazaridis et al) http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/s...1/001552-3.pdf
> p.47 (Apr.2014/Lazaridis et al) http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/s...4/001552-3.pdf


Why did they change C/C alleles to T/T alleles?

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## Fire Haired14

> Okay, we get it - you're the kind of guy who "doesn't like girls". But some of your comments about skin colour seem to me to be ill-informed and driven by a rather peculiar agenda that I haven't quite figured out.


Ill-informed? I have the same information as the other posters, but I realized known light skin mutations can't explain European light skin because middle easterns and south Asians also have them, and also because a minority of Upper Palaeolithic-Mesolithic north Eurasians had them(it is unlikely skin color varied significantly between members of small tribes). We should all agree that we can't determine the skin color of stone age hunter gatherers and farmers, we can only make guesses.

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## Greying Wanderer

1) From spending a lot of time in the remoter parts of Britain and Ireland it always seemed to me like there were three layers:
a) a darker layer mostly (edit: now mostly) restricted to the remotest mountainous places like north wales
b) a paper-white, red haired layer weighted more to the north and west but less restricted than (a)
c) a standard euro layer

Which to me would fit the Lazaridis components if
a) a coastal WHG population that remained dark-skinned cos fish
b) an inland population (ANE?) that lost pigmentation through a loss of function gene
c) a composite population of (a) and (b) plus the farmer component with their improved tanning version of depigmentation

The combination of those three (plus maybe some extra east asian depigmentation genes in the East) could create the Euro distribution we see today imo

2) As mentioned the derived version (actually versions plural IIRC) of MC1R may not be the cause of the phenotype in itself but act in conjunction with others. For example maybe in Cheyenne derived MC1R acts in conjunction with something else to effect the redness of the skin (somehow effecting UV) whereas in Europeans it works in conjunction with something like OCA2 to create the paper-white, red haired phenotype. Dunno.

3) As to the distribution map shown above, personally - if the cause is UV - then i think the initial distribution may have been much more inland and much wider i.e. most of the inland region, with two big changes since.

a) migrated west or pushed west by the steppe dudes
b) red hair is partial depigmentation while blond is extra depigmentation beyond that so i think more blond hair in the east is maybe caused by the addition of extra depigmentation genes (possibly from east asia) onto a previously red haired population. if correct that island of red hair in Russia would be a remnant of the original phenotype centred on a swamp or mountain that wasn't suitable for steppe herders allowing the original population to remain unchanged.

4) fun stuff

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## Drax

> Rs2228479 is found throughout Eurasia. It has been associated with red beard hair. The red pigmentation is only visible in individuals with fair hair (i.e. those who also carry mutations for blond hair), which explains why red hair is not normally observed in East and South Asians. 
> 
> Since pure Neanderthals disappeared in Central Asia over 30,000 years ago, this gene would have been picked up by Y-haplogroup NOP, which is also ancestral to haplogroups Q and R. That explains why the gene is so widely distributed today, and why predominantly N1c1 Uralic people like the Udmurts and the Mordvins have high frequencies of red hair. 
> 
> So far there is no evidence that the Mesolithic or Neolithic Europeans possessed MC1R mutations for red hair. On the other hand it is possible that the original N, O, P, Q and R people who possessed the mutations didn't have red hair, but pitch black hair like modern East and South Asians. It is only when haplogroup *R moved into eastern Europe and mixed with blond hair people that the reddish tinge would have become visible in their hybrid descendants.
> *
> It's harder to explain why red hair became so much more frequency in R1b than in R1a populations, as if natural selection in cloudy north-west Europe favoured red hair, while it favoured blond hair in sunnier but colder north-east Europe.


I'm sorry to ask that...but who are these "blond hair people" ? I'm curious because I don't remember to have seen, before the IE invasions (or migration), the presence of blond hairs in Europe; if I remember correctly, Mesolithic and Neolithic europeans were dark haired and brown skinned.

The Udmurts, according the article of Eupedia, have also the R1b haplogroup; that could explain also their redhead.

edit: For blond hair peoples, I suppose you talk about R1a peoples in the eastern Europe, in contrast with r1b supposed to be more redhead.

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## Greying Wanderer

a topical reference, Saddam's general rumored to be connected to the current trouble in Iraq illustrates what i mean when i say paper-white

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vMOVlkax4B...62621097_n.jpg

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## joeyc

Inbefore Drac II says that such kind of studies are utter crap and only Sandra Beleza knows everything.

Hell she has even said that Portuguese people are lighter skinned than Poles. Which is perfectly normal.

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## Theodorik

Neanderthal DNA Underestimated?

 
"*PHOTO IN THE NEWS: DNA-Based Neanderthal Face Unveiled"*




Difficulties in accurately reconstructing Neanderthal DNA is likely to cause the amount of Neanderthal DNA in modern Europeans to be underestimated. It may as high as 25%.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1634942/




"Many excavated archaeological remains appear to contain DNA from multiple individuals (Gilbert et al. 2003a,b), raising the issue of how to authenticate ancient human DNA when ‘unique’ sequences, such as the Neanderthal (Krings et al. 1997) or distinct modern human groups like the Andaman Islanders (Endicott et al. 2003), are not reproducibly obtained. A good example is the analysis of Italian Cro-Magnon specimens (Caramelli et al. 2003), where comprehensive protocols of authentication (Cooper & Poinar 2001; Hofreiter et al. 2001b) were followed. However, because the resulting sequences were indistinguishable from modern Europeans, sample contamination must remain the null hypothesis. By contrast, Serre et al. (2004a) assume that it is impossible to authenticate any modern human sequence obtained from archaeological specimens and instead confirm the absence of Neanderthal-specific mtDNA sequences from five European early modern human (EMH) specimens. Since coalescence theory indicates that the (inferred) modern human mtDNA sequences of the five EMH specimens are unlikely to exactly match the 5–7 ancestral lineages of modern populations, this effectively doubles the number of modern human mtDNA lineages known to exist in the Late Pleistocene. This value was used with population genetic models to calculate that the maximum Neanderthal genetic contribution to EMH is likely to have been less than 25% (Serre et al. 2004a). Although not independently replicated, this study demonstrates how aDNA can dramatically increase the resolving power of population genetics studies (Cooper et al. 2004)."


Linking Neanderthal DNA with known traits such as hair color and facial features, and adding knowledge of Neanderthal skull shapes, it is possible to reconstruct what a Neanderthal looked like. Modern Europeans look more like Neanderthals than they look like Africans. And, the technology and behavior of the last Neanderthals was virtually identical to that of Cro-Magnons, the "early modern humans" from whom Europeans are descended. Neanderthals made flutes, had art, and used the same weapons and tools.



"*September 17, 2008—Meet Wilma—named for the redheaded Flintstones character—the first model of a Neanderthal based in part on ancient DNA evidence.*
*Artists and scientists created Wilma (shown in a photo released yesterday) using analysis of DNA from 43,000-year-old bones that had been cannibalized. Announced in October 2007, the findings had suggested that at least some Neanderthals would have had red hair, pale skin, and possibly freckles.*
*Created for an October 2008 National Geographicmagazine article, Wilma..."*
*http://forums.delphiforums.com/paleogenetics1*
*http://forums.delphiforums.com/chromosome*
*http://forums.delphiforums.com/neanderthal*
*http://forums.delphiforums.com/racism13*
*http://forums.delphiforums.com/nordichistory4*
*http://forums.delphiforums.com/truthseekers23*

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