# Population Genetics > Paleogenetics > Bronze Age >  Copper & Bronze Age Steppe people (PIE) had mixed light and dark pigmentation

## Maciamo

A very interesting new paper by Wilde et al. 2014 tested three genes (HERC2, SLC45A2 and TYR) associated with skin, eye and hair pigmentation in 63 ancient samples from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe (mostly modern Ukraine) dating from the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age.

The results are relatively surprising. Mutations in SLC24A5, another gene for fair skin related to SLC45A2, has previously been associated with the spread of Neolithic farmers and Bronze Age Steppe people (Proto-Indo-Europeans). This paper tested SLC45A2, a gene that mediates melanin synthesis. The authors found it to be present in only 43% of the samples. Nearly 100% of modern Europeans possess the light skin variant for both the SLC24A5 and SLC45A2 genes.

One gene alone isn't enough to determine skin colour with certainty. But it probably means that the Proto-Indo-Europeans possessed various shades of skin colour. That may be the result of the very composite nature of the Bronze Age Steppe people, who I believe belonged to a mixture of Y-haplogroups indigenous East European R1a, East Anatolian R1b, and other Near Eastern haplogroups (G2a3b1, J2b2, T1a1a) that may have come through the Balkans/Carpathians. 

That SLC24A5 mutation was absent from Mesolithic samples from Spain and Luxembourg, although they did possess the HERC2 mutation. What we can say is that fair skin was positively selected in Europeans in the last 5000 years. We still don't know when this mutation reached fixation (nearly 100%) in the European population. It has struck me before that ancient Romans and Etruscans appeared to have had much darker skin than modern southern Europeans. That could mean that fair skin only became a common feature throughout Europe during the Middle Ages, perhaps in part due to the influx of Germanic and Slavic people into the Roman Empire. Fair pigmentation would presumably have been positively selected more quickly in Northern Europe for reasons of adaptation.

The frequency of the two other genes, HERC2 and TYR, came as an even bigger surprise, as a mere 16% and 4% of Bronze Age Steppe people possessed them. Their modern frequency in Europe is, in all fairness (pun intended), also lower than SLC45A2, being found respectively in 71% and 36% of Europeans. Unfortunately I do not have data on their regional distribution in Europe, nor in the Middle East.

The article mentions that the TYR mutation (rs1042602) is highly polymorphic in Europeans. According to the HapMap data, Tuscans (TSI) have a higher frequency of the derived allele than Northwest Europeans (CEU).

The HERC2 mutation (rs12913832) is associated with skin pigmentation, but especially with eye colour (the GG allele corresponding to blue eyes 99% of the time). So blue eyes were present among Proto-Indo-Europeans, but at low frequency. Blue eyes might have been more common among Mesolithic Europeans, at least in the Atlantic and Baltic region. The 16% of HERC2 in the Pontic Steppe would have come from the genes maternally inherited from Mesolithic Europeans (U2, U4, U5).


On a side note, it is highly frustrating that this team of geneticists tested 63 samples from the Yamna and Catacomb and related cultures and did not test any Y-DNA at all ! This could prove once and for all that R1b people spread from the Pontic Steppe and not with Neolithic Near Eastern farmers as so many academic papers have claimed.

Nevertheless, the supplementary information provides a list of all the samples tested with their location and age, and mtDNA haplogroups, which is quite useful. But the study would have been much more interesting if they had also provided the Y-DNA haplogroups for each sample. We would have been able to determine whether there was an ethnic heterogeneity in the Steppe population 5000 years ago. I have always suspected that R1a tribes lived in the northern forest-steppe during the Yaman period, while R1b lived in coastal areas and in the Northwest Caucasus. G2a3b would also be in the Northwest Caucasus, but I am not so sure about J2b2 and T1a1a.

*UPDATE*:

Of the 47 samples tested for the HERC2 mutation, only four had the *GG allele for blue eyes*. Two of them were from the Yamna culture (one from Kalinovka I near Samara in the Lower Volga region, and one from Mayaki near Odessa in southwest Ukraine) and two from the subsequent Catacomb culture (both from Novozvanovka II, near Donetsk in eastern Ukraine). Five other samples were *AG*, three from the Yamna culture and two from the Catacomb culture. *All the Chalcolithic samples were AA (brown eyes)*. The sample size is small, but that could mean that blue eyes were not present in the Pontic Steppe before the Early Bronze Age, and that there was therefore a migration of people from outside the steppes, or a dramatic expansion from one small part of the steppes.

Only three samples had the TYR mutation. There were two from the Yamna culture, including one that was homozygous (AA). The other one was from the Catacomb culture. Once again, none of the Chalcolithic samples were derived. 

Interestingly, the AA sample (KAL1) was also from the Kalinovka I site, but that one was AG for the HERC2 gene, not GG like KAL2. Surprisingly that KAL1 individual belong to mtDNA N1a1a (the only one in all the samples), which is more typical of Southwest Asian Neolithic farmers than of PIE speakers. But the SLC45A2 allele (CC) suggests that he/she had dark skin.

Only 22 samples were tested for the SLC45A2 mutation (rs16891982). The European allele for white skin is GG, which was found in 5 Yamna individuals and one Catacomb skeleton. There were seven other samples that were CG, 3 Yamna, 3 Catacomb, and interestingly one Early Chalcolithic too. The Chalcolithic sample was from Vinogradnoe in southern central Ukraine. It was in the same kurgan as a Yamna and a Catacomb sample that were also CG. That could be a sign of unusual continuity in population in that particular area. But it could also mean that the dating is wrong and that it is Yamna too.


Here is the breakdown of mtDNA haplogroups by period. I don't understand why the authors just listed haplogroup U without mentioning at least the top subclade. They had the data. I have added it myself.

*Early Chalcolithic*

SMY3 : H (rCRS)
SMY4 : H5
SMY9 : H7a1 or H13
SMY11 : T2e
VIN1 : H (rCRS)

*Late Chalcolithic*

DUR1 : U5a2a
MAJ8 : T2
MAJ9 : W
MOB1 : U5a1
MOB3 : U5a1

*Yamna*

BEN3 : H33c
KAL1 : N1a1a
KAL2 : H*
MAJ3 : U5a1
MAJ4 : U5b2
MAJ5 : X2h (?)
NIK1 : T1a
NIK7 : H (rCRS)
OLE1 : T2
OLE7 : J2b
OVI2 : K
OVI3 : U/K
PEJ1 : U5a1
PES7 : H1a1 or H5a1j
POD1 : W6
POD2 : T2
POP1 : T2a1b
POP3 : U2e
POP4 : U5a1
RIL3 : K1
SUG2 : I1a
SUG6 : H1, H3 or H6
SUG7 : H (rCRS)
SUG8 : H (rCRS)
TET2 : U4a1
VIN2 : T1a
VIN5 : T1a
VIN12 : T1

*Catacomb*

KNO4 : U4
LIS1 : U5a1
LIS2 : U4
LIS3 : H2a1
NEV1 : U5a1
NEV3 : H1, H3 or H6
NOZ1 : U4
NOZ2 : U4
PEJ2 : H1 or H13
PEJ3 : H1, H3 or H6
PEJ4 : H1, H3 or H6
PEJ5 : U4
SAC2 : J2b
SUG5 : H6
TEM1 : U4
TEM2 : H (rCRS)
TEM3 : J1b1a1
TEM4 : U5a1
TEM5 : R1a
TEM6 : R1a
TEM7 : U4
TEM8 : U (?)
TET1 : I1d
VIN3 : U5a1
VIN8 : J1b1a1


*Points of interest:*

- U5a is found in all periods. All the Bronze Age samples are U5a1, which I have described as the main Indo-European subclade of U5 (although of Mesolithic Northeast European origin).

- Haplogroup T is oddly absent from the Catacomb samples. T1a, which I have linked to the spread of PIE people, is found in several Yamna samples. Chalcolithic samples only have T2, including T2e (also found in LBK samples from Neolithic Germany).

- J1b1a1, one of the maternal lineages most strongly associated with the original pre-IE R1b people in the Near East, is found in two Catacomb samples.

- Haplogroups I and W, which are both strongly associated with PIE migrations, are indeed found in Bronze Age samples, and W even in a Late Chalcolithic sample.

- Note the absence of haplogroup V, which has been very elusive in ancient samples from all periods.

- The Early Chalcolithic samples look very much like Near Eastern farmers. I would expect that these lineages (H5, H7, T2e) represent the arrival of G2a3, J2b2 and T into the Pontic Steppe from the Carpathians or Balkans. 

- The Late Chalcolithic samples look much more native Europeans, and probably represent the descendants of the Mesolithic inhabitants of the steppes (I2a1 and/or R1a), or new immigrants from the north.

- Apart from one U4a1 sample from Yamna in Moldova, U4 is found exclusively in Catacomb samples and at extremely high frequency (28%). This tends to confirm my hypothesis that Yamna was an R1b-dominant culture or mixed R1a-R1b, and that R1a tribes from the north invaded the Pontic Steppe from central European Russia and the Volga-Ural during the Catacomb culture. U4 strongly correlates with R1a and peaks in the Volga-Ural region today.

- Overall, the Yamna samples look quite similar to those from the Corded Ware culture. Therefore there might have been more R1a in the Yamna culture that I expected. In that case, the bulk of R1b would have been in the Maykop culture or in very coastal parts of the Pontic Steppe. I believe that the J1b1a samples (TEM3 and VIN8) are the most reliable proxy for Y-DNA R1b. The samples are from Vinogradnoe, immediately north of Crimea, and Temrta in southern Russia, between the North Caucasus and Kalmykia (only about 250 km from Maykop). TEM3 was not tested for autosomal DNA, but VIN8 had apparently dark skin. However it is one of the three samples derived for the TYR gene.

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## Wilhelm

Since we don't know the autosomal-dna of these samples, we cannot know if they were Asian-admixed, hence the results, since asians don't have these mutations. Im more in favor of population replacement rather than selection, seems more plausible.

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## Goga

Once again according to me you're misinterpreting some facts. Who's saying that those Bronze Age Steppe people were *Proto*-Indo-European at the first place and are not just Indo-Europized natives? If original R1b came from the Eastern Anatolia they could have Indo-Europized the natives of the Steppes. If that was the case you can also count on Y-DNA hg. J2a. Once again you're ignoring this haplogroup in your PIE story. According to me the Maykop folks Indo-Europized the Yamna folks and then all other Pontic-Caspian Steppes natives. It has been proven that the Maykop folks came from Northwest Iranian Plateau. So the ORIGINAL Maykop folks were according to me R1b & *J2a*. So, original PIE that Indo-Europized peoples of the Steppes belonged mostly to R1b & *J2a*! *J2a* was a very imporant haplogroup among the Maykop folks, maybe part of their elite!

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## Goga

> Since we don't know the autosomal-dna of these samples, we cannot know if they were Asian-admixed, hence the results, *since asians don't have these mutations*.


Which mutations? I'm West Asian and I'm *AA* for *rs12913832* and *CC* for *rs1042602*. So I'm an 'Asian' from the western parts of the Iranian Plateau and I do have these mutations!

edit

and *CG* for *rs16891982*

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## kamani

I guess these initial steppe people in the Bronze-Age were still nomadic semi hunter-gatherer, hence they had only partially mixed with the European Neolithic farmers, which explains why they were only 43% "white". 
Another conclusion is that their number was small and by mixing with a much larger European population, their genes watered down. If we look at the IE languages, the big ones are: Latin, Germanic, and Slavic, all of which could have gotten their current spread fairly "recently". The mysteries are: Albanian, Greek, and Armenian. If we take out "recent" borrowings, Albanian words are a mix of Germanic, Latin, and non-IE words. Greek and Armenian also are partially non-IE. So the IE languages spread in Europe could be more of a post Iron Age event due to the migrations of various Germanic tribes and the rise of the Roman empire.

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## Aberdeen

These are fascinating results, but I don't quite know how to interpret them. Is it possible that the samples were taken after the Indo-European migrations began, and that the people sampled were at that time recent incomers to the area? These days, people don't just pack up en mass and emigrate as a complete group, but in a tribal society of the past that could have happened. If these people are representative of the IE folk, I agree with kamani that their genes must have been watered down considerably as their language group and their culture spread through Europe. However, if we look at the timing of when linguists say that different branches of the IE languages hived off, it doesn't really support the idea of it being a recent event, as the most recent major linguistic development (proto-German) apparently developed about 2500 years ago and other IE languages being much older.

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## Nobody1

Could it be that the other half of these samples were Mongoloids? 
And/Or was SLC24A5 (Rs1426654) also tested? 

The Neolithic peoples in Europe (Ötzi / Stuttgart) were already tested positive to have *Rs1426654* (*A*/*A*) light-skin; In contrast to dark-skinned Mesolithic Hunter-gatherers (Loschbour / LaBrana) Rs1426654 (*G*/*G*) which is described [info box on the right] as - '_probably darker-skinned, Asian or African ancestry_'
http://snpedia.com/index.php/Rs1426654%28A;A%29


These Mongoloids/Lappanoids could also explain _Brachycephaly_ in Europe; The *non*-(pre)-Indo-European Ligurians were examined as proper _Brachycephalic_ (Alpinoid) and identical to the Lapps (Uralic);

*Roberto Bosi* - The Lapps (1977)
_Then Virchow examining a number of Lappish skulls at Helsinki, Lund and Copenhagen, in conjunction with ancient Ligurian skulls, discovered many mutual features suggesting an identical strain._..._The mandible of the Lapps is always small, the bone/formation unemphasized and the chin of a receding pattern not exactly repeated in any other human group - with the very exception of these almost entirely extinct Ligurians._

So also other pre-(non)-Indo-Europeans -

*George Bradshaw* - Bradshaw's illustrated hand-book to Switzerland and the Tyrol (1899)
_Swiss Lake-dwellings - In his careful investigations of pile dwellings, Dr. Studer met with two extreme types of skulls, the brachycephalic and the dolikoccphalic; the former, at Schaffis and Lüschery (Lake of Bienne), belonging to the pure Stone period, and the latter, at Vinolz and Sutz, to the Bronze period. The facts point to an invasion by the Bronze men, involving a complete transformation of the group of domestic animals; the horse appears for the first time, and new races of sheep and dogs replace the older forms of the Stone period. The occurrence of mesocephalic, and even considerably shortened skulls, in the Bronze period, shows that there was no extinction of the brachycephalic race, but that the two races mixed._

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## Wilhelm

> Which mutations? I'm West Asian and I'm *AA* for *rs12913832* and *CC* for *rs1042602*. So I'm an 'Asian' from the western parts of the Iranian Plateau and I do have these mutations!
> 
> edit
> 
> and *CG* for *rs16891982*


I meant East-Eurasian admixed, part mongoloids that is.

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## Maciamo

> These are fascinating results, but I don't quite know how to interpret them. Is it possible that the samples were taken after the Indo-European migrations began, and that the people sampled were at that time recent incomers to the area?


The Yamna culture was the first Bronze Age culture in the Pontic Steppe (contemporary with Maykop) and is seen as the source of the PIE migrations. 

I see the Catacomb culture as a southern expansion of the Abashevo culture (with a lot of R1a-Z93 lineages) from central European Russia, after the biggest part of the Yamna people left the steppes.

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## ElHorsto

I don't see any reason to assume significant mongoloid influence as some suggest. Yamna people probably were mostly west_asian autosomally with slowly increasing north_european over time. The paucity of blue eyes in early IE cultures is not very surprising. 




> Overall, the Yamna samples look quite similar to those from the Corded Ware culture. Therefore there might have been more R1a in the Yamna culture that I expected. In that case, the bulk of R1b would have been in the Maykop culture or in very coastal parts of the Pontic Steppe.


I would not dismiss the possibility that even R1a is partially of more southern origin like R1b.

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## Wilhelm

> I don't see any reason to assume significant mongoloid influence as some suggest. Yamna people probably were mostly west_asian autosomally with slowly increasing north_european over time. The paucity of blue eyes in early IE cultures is not very surprising.


Does anyone have the West-ASian or middle-eastern statistics for those pigmentation genes ? Because they onle compare Africa-Europe-Asians...so we can only guess mongoloid admixture,

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## Sile

In regards to eye colour, these papers have stated
* Sturm et al. (2008) . “A single SNP in an evolutionary conserved region within intron 86 of the HERC2 gene determines human blue-brown eye color.” Am J Hum Genet 82(2):424-31. 
Eiberg et al. (2008) . “Blue eye color in humans may be caused by a perfectly associated founder mutation in a regulatory element located within the HERC2 gene inhibiting OCA2 expression.” Hum Genet 123(2):177-87. 
Kayser et al. (2008) . “Three genome-wide association studies and a linkage analysis identify HERC2 as a human iris color gene.” Am J Hum Genet 82(2):411-23. 

Two copies of the G version of this SNP usually results in blue eyes—but green eyes are possible too, also due to other SNPs. Three studies have found that blue eyes most often result if a person has two copies of the G version of this OCA2-controlling SNP, suggesting that the genetic origin of the trait can be traced back to a single point in human evolution. The authors of one of the studies hypothesize that the mutation event that created this version of the SNP happened somewhere around the Black Sea between about 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. During that time generations of migrating farmers gradually carried agriculture from the Near East to northern Europe, where blue eyes are most often found. These same researchers found that blue-eyed individuals from the Mediterranean (five from Turkey and two from Jordan) also have the G version of this SNP, suggesting that blue eyes the world over can be explained by variation in this one SNP.

The heritability of eye color is extremely high. Twin studies have estimated that 90% to 99% of the variation in human eye color is due to genetics. 
In Europeans, 72% chance of blue eyes; 27% chance of green eyes; 1% chance of brown eyes.
Blue eyes are found only in people with European ancestry. The widespread nature of blue eyes in these populations suggests that it was a trait that was somehow selected for after it arose. But there is no known advantage to having blue eyes. In fact, some eye diseases, such as uveal melanoma (the most common eye cancer in adults) and Age-related Macular Degeneration, are more common in people with lighter eyes. The lower rate of such diseases in people with darker eye colors may be due to the protective effects of eumelanin in darker eyes. Just as melanin helps protect skin against UV damage from the sun, melanin may also protect cells in the back of the eye that are important for vision.

You have the GG marker* ..........you as in myself

Now the issue is that with all the data above, and the knowledge that G2a and I2a ( apart form the R1 group, which seems not older than the late-neolithic ) has many "european only" clusters, is the only Ydna markers in the northern part of the black sea. 
The J , T and L, ydna groups have all no clear clusters without middle-east clusters which leads one to suggest they only arrived in Europe in the early bronze-age.

To conclude with the R1 group, the G2a and I2a seem the only candidates for the above and no J1, J2, L or T migrations to that area until later on

http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2008/05...e-studies.html

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## Aberdeen

I want to slap those researchers for not testing the Y DNA. However, I like what the Eurogenes blog had to say about this study.

"Surprisingly, the article doesn't mention Keyser et al. 2009, a very important study which showed that a sample of Kurgan nomads from Bronze and Iron Age South Siberia had frequencies of light hair and eyes comparable to those of present-day Northern and Eastern Europeans. Also worth noting is that the most common Y-chromosome haplogroup among these individuals was R1a, which is today the most frequent haplogroup in Eastern Europe, including Ukraine. What this suggests to me is that the Kurgan cultural horizon was not genetically homogeneous. I suspect that Kurgan groups closer to the Balkans carried significantly higher levels of Near Eastern Neolithic farmer ancestry, and were thus much darker than those in the more temperate northerly regions. However, it seems that at some point, the Neolithic farmer DNA was diluted enough by continuous movements of light pigmented groups from the north and east, possibly made up mostly of males, that there was a major shift in pigmentation traits from Near Eastern-like to Northern European-like across most of Eastern Europe. This scenario actually fits very nicely with the latest on the genetic origins of Europeans."

Some references are provided for further data on the issue. Perhaps these folk were IE, but only one component of the IE folk, with the more northerly component of IE on the steppes being more inclined toward the light complexions and light eye colours that are now common in Europe.

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## Maciamo

The only mtDNA from the Bronze Age Pontic Steppe tested before this study were three samples reported in Jeremy Newton's master thesis. These were two C4a6 and one C4a3, all from Odessa region in Ukraine, dating from c. 2000 BCE (Catacomb culture). 

There were also seven Neolithic samples from central Ukraine (Dnieper region), among which once again were three C samples (including C4a2), alongside H, U3 and U5a1a.

It's odd that none of the 63 individuals tested by Wilde et al. belonged to haplogroup C when 6 out of 10 of the earlier samples had belonged to C. C4a being mostly a west and central Siberian lineage, I wouldn't be surprised if it was one of the original maternal lineages of Palaeolithic R1 people.

There must have been quite a bit of ethnic heterogeneity in the steppes from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age. That may also explain why the Proto-Indo-Europeans possessed such varied mtDNA haplogroups (see maternal lineages of R1a and maternal lineages of R1b).

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## Aberdeen

Here's a link to an abstract of a paper suggesting that the move towards pale skin in Europeans during the last 5000 years is more a result of selection than migration.

www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/03/05/1316513111

I don't know how sound the conclusions are, or whether this paper illuminates the issue or whether it just confuses things. Here's a copy of the abstract.

"Pigmentation is a polygenic trait encompassing some of the most visible phenotypic variation observed in humans. Here we present direct estimates of selection acting on functional alleles in three key genes known to be involved in human pigmentation pathways—_HERC2_, _SLC45A2_, and _TYR_—using allele frequency estimates from Eneolithic, Bronze Age, and modern Eastern European samples and forward simulations. Neutrality was overwhelmingly rejected for all alleles studied, with point estimates of selection ranging from around 2–10% per generation. Our results provide direct evidence that strong selection favoring lighter skin, hair, and eye pigmentation has been operating in European populations over the last 5,000 y."

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## Alan

I also believe this is very much a prove of a movement from folks who came from West-South_Central Asian (wider Middle East) into the steppes.

Considering the exclusive high caste distribution of J2a in South Asia and it's general association (after R1 and R2) of it with Indo-Iranic folks, it probably was, together with J2b, part of the Indo European movement too.

@kamani, the mtDNA of the samples look pretty much Neolithic farmer. And considering the fact the Yamna was an animal domestication culture (farming technique), it is unlikely that they were still "pure H&G".

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## Alan

> I don't see any reason to assume significant mongoloid influence as some suggest. Yamna people probably were mostly west_asian autosomally with slowly increasing north_european over time. The paucity of blue eyes in early IE cultures is not very surprising. 
> 
> 
> 
> I would not dismiss the possibility that even R1a is partially of more southern origin like R1b.



Exactly, As we know ANE was partly ancestral to Gedrosia-Caucasus/North Euro/Amerindian/ASI. So what if the ANE component among the Indo Europeans was more "Gedrosia_Caucasus like" (note the "like", because Caucasus_Gedrosia as component arose with farmer adfmixture) earlier and drifted through time into a "North European like" component.

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## kamani

> Here's a link to an abstract of a paper suggesting that the move towards pale skin in Europeans during the last 5000 years is more a result of selection than migration.
> 
> www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/03/05/1316513111


good find! it says blue eyes were exclusive to Western Eurasia (fancy word for Europe). This other paper says that blue eyes happened 6000-10000 years ago and are irelevant in terms of evolution; meaning they neither help nor hinder. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0130170343.htm. I was fixated that blue eyes are better in ice and snow, because Husky dogs usually have them, but I guess they don't really make a difference (polar bears have brown eyes). Since they didn't spread through evolution, the option left is sexual selection drift (for some reason they looked more attractive to ancient Western Eurasians). I'm not quite sure which one was true thou: "Men like blondes" or "Women like blondes".

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## Aberdeen

> good find! it says blue eyes were exclusive to Western Eurasia (fancy word for Europe). This other paper says that blue eyes happened 6000-10000 years ago and are irelevant in terms of evolution; meaning they neither help nor hinder. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0130170343.htm. I was fixated that blue eyes are better in ice and snow, because Husky dogs usually have them, but I guess they don't really make a difference (polar bears have brown eyes). Since they didn't spread through evolution, the option left is sexual selection drift (for some reason they looked more attractive to ancient Western Eurasians). I'm not quite sure which one was true thou: "Men like blondes" or "Women like blondes".


I think that for reasons of history (many Europeans have blue eyes and Europeans and their descendents overseas have been the dominant force in the world in the last few centuries) there have probably been a lot of people assuming that the Indo-Europeans must have been blue eyed blonds, but in fact the only part of the world where we know that the descendents of the IE folk are still in positions of authority is India. Perhaps the IE folk who swept over Europe were dusky brown eyed people who lost their postions of authority over the centuries because Europe doesn't have a rigid caste system. I'm just not sure what kind of cultural bias would have favoured pale skin, light hair and blue eyes - personally, I like women who are a bit darker and find Arab and Afghan women to be very attractive when not excessively covered up. But perhaps it can be explained by the christian "light is good, dark is bad and evil" bias, which plays into human tendencies to fear the night because we're actually creatures of the day rather than being nocturnal. So perhaps those IE people we're trying to find look different than what we'd expect. Except that we know from looking at the genetics of Hindu brahmins that R1a does appear to have been important in terms of the spread of IE, and most R1a folk in Europe are very stereotypically "white" in terms of skin colour and hair and eye colour. So the more I look at all this, the more confused I feel. Did skin tone and eye colour change while the same haplotypes remained common in eastern Europe?

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## kamani

Going along with the idea that original IE people were brown and changed tone once in Europe, the "aryans" of India were never "Nordic white" (they were just an offshot branch of these original IE people). A question is why didn't Selection Drift for blue eyes work in Italy or Spain? Italy has had no significant gene inflow from middle east in the last 2000 years and the paper was saying that the drift could be as fast as 10% per generation. Something doesn't check out..Maybe it wasn't Selection based on looks but based on status; a few blue eyed men became tribal chiefs...This could have only happened later in the Bronze Age and Iron Age, since Neolithic and Early Bronze Age were very egalitarian societies.

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## Angela

Just for clarification, as Nobody 1 pointed out, the light skin pigmentation snp for which Stuttgart (and Oetzi) tested positive and for which Loschbour and La Brana, and Malta, tested negative, and which has reached fixation in Europe, is SLC 24A5, not the SLC42A5 which was tested in this paper. SLC42A5 has not quite reached fixation, although it's close...97% in the last study I saw.

Also, neither SLC24A5 nor SLC42A5 have anything to do with fair skin in East Asians. They have totally different color draining snps.

This is the global distribution of SLC24A5:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...tribution0.png

This is the global distribution of many of these snps from the Norton et al 2007 paper; 374G is SLC42A5.
http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/conten...expansion.html

Global maps for the distribution of some of these eye color snps are here:
http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2009/07...wn-eyed-a-bit/

This is a well known table from Norton et al of some color draining snps in Hap Map populations, including TYR. Go to Supplementary Table 2.

That said, I don't see why the mechanism would have been any different, i.e. neolithic diet combined with selection in areas with less sunlight.

Anyway, as to these pigmentation snps, I never expected people with high ANE (Malta like) levels who came late to agriculture to be predominantly very light skinned. (If indeed we propose that ANE did arrive with the "Indo-Europeans"? After all, if it didn't come with them, with whom would it have arrived, and when? And the popular theory is still that the "Indo-Europeans" were Yamnaya people who came up the Danube, into Central Europe, and then spread out from there? )

So, what light pigmentation snps they would have picked up would have come from farmers.

In terms of the Eurogenes quote, maybe someone can help me out here, because it doesn't make much sense to me. Why would populations east of eastern Europe, which would presumably be more hunter-gatherer, more ANE, be lighter skinned? Also, I don't understand the reference to Kurgan peoples in southern Siberia. This table is from Jean Manco's Ancestral Journeys...the samples that carry light pigmentation genes are from 1800 B.C. Are there others of which I'm not aware?
http://www.ancestraljourneys.org/autosomaladna.shtml

Also, forgive me if I'm off base here, as this isn't a topic that I've spent much time on, but isn't the prevailing view among the hobbyists that Andronovo is a descendant culture of Yamnaya? That's certainly the point of view, or used to be, anyway, of the Eurogenes blogger. The Yamnaya samples in this current paper date to between 3000 to 2500 BC. So, wouldn't it make sense if Andronovo descends from Yamnaya, that people from the "lighter" of these two groups, the Yamnaya group, who moved east to Andronovo might, more than a thousand years later, due to selection, be 60% "light"? 

I hate to cite Wiki, but I'm pressed for time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karasuk_culture
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andronovo_culture


As to why mtDNA V is proving scarce in ancient dna samples, I think that contrary to what was earlier believed, mtDNA V is relatively young, as per Behar et al.

It's interesting that mtDNA U4, which is such a northeastern European marker, is only present, and at high numbers, in the Catacombe culture, which is the "darker" of the two, at least going by these samples.

----------


## Angela

I thought that the selection for skin pigmentation to which the authors were referring had to do with selection for fitness among farming populations in low sunlight areas. If scientists are talking about other kinds of selection, they usally are specific about it. The correlation with solar radiation levels is quite extraordinary, I think.


How blonde hair could be of benefit in terms of fitness I don't know. As to blue eyes, I don't know that I'm willing to accept the judgement of one paper that they might not have been of benefit in snow and ice conditions. After all, all of the WHGs so far have had them.

One thing I do know is that Mediterranean peoples didn't always find blue eyes attractive. Ancient amulets against the evil eye look like this:



People still wear them.

----------


## Engel

Just wondering what are the mutations associated with purple eyes
and dark purple pupils

----------


## bicicleur

> Once again according to me you're misinterpreting some facts. Who's saying that those Bronze Age Steppe people were *Proto*-Indo-European at the first place and are not just Indo-Europized natives? If original R1b came from the Eastern Anatolia they could have Indo-Europized the natives of the Steppes. If that was the case you can also count on Y-DNA hg. J2a. Once again you're ignoring this haplogroup in your PIE story. According to me the Maykop folks Indo-Europized the Yamna folks and then all other Pontic-Caspian Steppes natives. It has been proven that the Maykop folks came from Northwest Iranian Plateau. So the ORIGINAL Maykop folks were according to me R1b & *J2a*. So, original PIE that Indo-Europized peoples of the Steppes belonged mostly to R1b & *J2a*! *J2a* was a very imporant haplogroup among the Maykop folks, maybe part of their elite!


'It has been proven that the Maykop folks came from Northwest Iranian Plateau.'
Where did you get this information? What proof do you have?
IMO the originals Pontic Steppe population was R1a and R1b came from the Northwest Iranian Plateau. The Maykop were mainly G2a and they came from the Balkans/Carpaths.

----------


## bicicleur

> One thing I do know is that Mediterranean peoples didn't always find blue eyes attractive. Ancient amulets against the evil eye look like this:
> 
> 
> 
> People still wear them.


it's not that they were afraid of the evil eye, the evil eye was protecting them and threatening their ennemies

trireme1.jpg

----------


## Goga

> 'It has been proven that the Maykop folks came from Northwest Iranian Plateau.'
> Where did you get this information? What proof do you have?


http://dienekes.blogspot.nl/2013/06/...ngularity.html http://dienekes.blogspot.nl/2013/05/...-caucasus.html 
http://dienekes.blogspot.nl/2013/06/...zarnitsky.html http://dienekes.blogspot.nl/2013/05/...henomenon.html http://dienekes.blogspot.nl/2013/07/...n-culture.html 
http://dienekes.blogspot.nl/2012/07/...atures-of.html

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## Maciamo

> Here's a link to an abstract of a paper suggesting that the move towards pale skin in Europeans during the last 5000 years is more a result of selection than migration.
> 
> www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/03/05/1316513111
> 
> I don't know how sound the conclusions are, or whether this paper illuminates the issue or whether it just confuses things. Here's a copy of the abstract.
> 
> "Pigmentation is a polygenic trait encompassing some of the most visible phenotypic variation observed in humans. Here we present direct estimates of selection acting on functional alleles in three key genes known to be involved in human pigmentation pathways—_HERC2_, _SLC45A2_, and _TYR_—using allele frequency estimates from Eneolithic, Bronze Age, and modern Eastern European samples and forward simulations. Neutrality was overwhelmingly rejected for all alleles studied, with point estimates of selection ranging from around 2–10% per generation. Our results provide direct evidence that strong selection favoring lighter skin, hair, and eye pigmentation has been operating in European populations over the last 5,000 y."


But that's the same paper as I posted about in this thread...

----------


## Maciamo

> Considering the exclusive high caste distribution of J2a in South Asia and it's general association (after R1 and R2) of it with Indo-Iranic folks, it probably was, together with J2b, part of the Indo European movement too.


I very much doubt it. J2a could have been picked up by the Indo-Aryans in southern Central Asia (Bactria, Margiana) before entering the Indian subcontinent. But J2a isn't found at comparably high levels proportionally to R1a and R1b in North Asia or most of northern and western Europe. For example in Denmark, Sweden, Belarus and Russia there is only about 2.5% of J2 and half of it J2b2. In Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Iceland there is close to 0% of J2. I don't see how J2 could have been a significant lineage of the PIE Steppe people.

----------


## Goga

You're talking about the most peripheral parts of Europe where Indo-Europeans arrived pretty late and already evolved into somehow different people. The places you're talking about are *NOT* really traditional Kurgan areas, right!? Indo-Europeans migrated to the peripheral parts of Europe in STAGES. Before that they lived in Central Europe, where they gained more other haplogroups. In Ukraine and Northern Caucasus around the places where the Maykop culture and proto-Yamna was there's a lot J2a. Also J2a is arguably the most important haplogroup in the northern Middle East. It was part of all civilizations in that part of the world. If R1b is also from the Middle East how is it then possible that they haven't picked up the most important haplogroup on their way to the Maytkop/the Steppes? Not very logical and doesn't make any sense to me!

----------


## Maciamo

> You're talking about the most peripheral parts of Europe where Indo-Europeans arrived pretty late and already evolved into somehow different people. The places you're talking about are *NOT* really traditional Kurgan areas, right!? Indo-Europeans migrated to the peripheral parts of Europe in STAGES. Before that they lived in Central Europe, where they gained more other haplogroups. In Ukraine and Northern Caucasus around the places where the Maykop culture and proto-Yamna was there's a lot J2a. Also J2a is arguably the most important haplogroup in the northern Middle East. It was part of all civilizations in that part of the world. If R1b is also from the Middle East how is it then possible that they haven't picked up the most important haplogroup on their way to the Maytkop/the Steppes? Not very logical and doesn't make any sense to me!


How are Russia and Belarus peripheral parts of the Steppe culture where PIE arrived very late ?

----------


## Alan

> 'It has been proven that the Maykop folks came from Northwest Iranian Plateau.'
> Where did you get this information? What proof do you have?
> IMO the originals Pontic Steppe population was R1a and R1b came from the Northwest Iranian Plateau. The Maykop were mainly G2a and they came from the Balkans/Carpaths.


There was once a study which showed a link between Southwest of the Caspian and Maykop.

----------


## Alan

> I very much doubt it. J2a could have been picked up by the Indo-Aryans in southern Central Asia (Bactria, Margiana) before entering the Indian subcontinent. But J2a isn't found at comparably high levels proportionally to R1a and R1b in North Asia or most of northern and western Europe. For example in Denmark, Sweden, Belarus and Russia there is only about 2.5% of J2 and half of it J2b2. In Latvia, Lithuania, Norway and Iceland there is close to 0% of J2. I don't see how J2 could have been a significant lineage of the PIE Steppe people.


Well for now there isn't any prove but I think there are in general only three real explanations for the spread of J2a.

1. either with Indo Europeans.
2. Or with late Bronze and Iron Age cultures. (Etruscans, Minoans etc.)
3. Or with both scenarios.

----------


## Maciamo

I have started a page summarising all the ancient mtDNA and Y-DNA results from Bronze Age Proto-Indo-European cultures. I have only added Yamna at present, but will add other cultures soon.

I have also created a map of the Yamna + Maykop cultures.

----------


## ElHorsto

> Exactly, As we know ANE was partly ancestral to Gedrosia-Caucasus/North Euro/Amerindian/ASI. So what if the ANE component among the Indo Europeans was more "Gedrosia_Caucasus like" (note the "like", because Caucasus_Gedrosia as component arose with farmer adfmixture) earlier and drifted through time into a "North European like" component.


Whereas this drift was caused by WHG and probably again once more by ANE admixture (ANE-WHG is a spectrum). The onset of this admixture is evidenced by the significant percentage of mesolithic mtDNA lineages like U5a, U4 and even U5b. I think these IEans became quite similar to modern europeans over time.

----------


## Angela

> it's not that they were afraid of the evil eye, the evil eye was protecting them and threatening their ennemies
> 
> Attachment 6288


You have this the wrong way around. The whole point is that people are afraid of the effects of the evil eye, or of people who have the power of the evil eye more precisely, and so therefore they wear an amulet shaped and colored like it to ward off its evil...to stare back at it, sort of like a boomerang effect. 

This is the Wiki article on it...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_eye#cite_note-1

"The *evil eye* is a malevolent look that many cultures believe able to cause injury or misfortune for the person at whom it is directed for reasons of envy or dislike. Talismans created to *protect* against the evil eye are also frequently called "evil eyes."

The talismans work through what is called sympathetic magic.

The "blue eye" is only one of the talismans against it...southern Italians still wear the "mano cornuto" for example, related to the hamsa hand.

As to the association of the evil eye with blue eyes...
Cora Lynn Daniels, The Encyclopedia of Superstitions, Folklore, and the Occult Sciences, page 1273:
"The evil eye is supposed to be caused by a certain potent liquid which is more common in blue eyes than in other eyes. It may be in the eye of a friend as well as an enemy, and may be cast unconsciously."

The world has changed...because of the media, because for the last couple of hundred years the dominant world powers have been light haired and eyed, and yet these beliefs do linger on. As a young girl, I was told by a very old Neapolitan woman to wear an amulet, especially if I was going to be around a lot of light eyed people. Ironically, she had aqua blue eyes herself. 

The all seeing eye is a different although related concept solely due, I think, to the fact that the eye was always associated with power.

----------


## Nobody1

I have looked through the sources again; 

Loschbour [Mesolithic Hunter-Gatherer]: rs16891982 (*C*/*C*) dark-skin / rs1426654 (*G*/*G*) dark-skin
Stuttgart [Neolithic Farmer]: rs16891982 (*C*/*C*) dark-skin / rs1426654 (*A*/*A*) light-skin

Neither in Mesolithic nor in Neolithic Europe was rs16891982 tested to be *G*/*G* light-skin;
Only in the ancient (Yamna/Cat1) samples from the steppes there are 7 corpses with rs16891982 *G*/*G*; This could mean that neither the Mesolithic nor the Neolithic but indeed the Indo-Europeans spread the rs16891982 *G*/*G* light-skin mutation;With theNeolithic previously only introducing the rs1426654 *A*/*A* light-skin mutation (as attested with both Ötziand Stuttgart having it); Unfortunately the study does not also include results (prob. no testing) of the corpses for rs1426654; Maybe the corpses were also all rs1426654 *A*/*A* just like the Neolithic Europeans i.e. akin/identical to Neolithic folks; 

What i want to say is that what is known is that;
Mesolithic rs16891982 (*C*/*C*) / rs1426654 (*G*/*G*) 
Neolithic rs16891982 (*C*/*C*) / rs1426654 (*A*/*A*) 
Steppes (Indo-European) rs16891982 (*G*/*G*) ~40% of cases / rs1426654 *not* tested (my guess A/A)
Steppes (Indo-European) rs16891982 (*C*/*C*-*C*/*G*) ~60% of cases / rs1426654 *not* tested (my guess A/A)

----------


## Goga

> How are Russia and Belarus peripheral parts of the Steppe culture where PIE arrived very late ?


Actually the history is teaching us that pre-Slavic people were very late Indo-Europized in Northeastern Europe...

----------


## Angela

> I have looked through the sources again; 
> 
> Loschbour [Mesolithic Hunter-Gatherer]: rs16891982 (*C*/*C*) dark-skin / rs1426654 (*G*/*G*) dark-skin
> Stuttgart [Neolithic Farmer]: rs16891982 (*C*/*C*) dark-skin / rs1426654 (*A*/*A*) light-skin
> 
> Neither in Mesolithic nor in Neolithic Europe was rs16891982 tested to be *G*/*G* light-skin;
> Only in the ancient (Yamna/Cat1) samples from the steppes there are 7 corpses with rs16891982 *G*/*G*; This could mean that neither the Mesolithic nor the Neolithic but indeed the Indo-Europeans spread the rs16891982 *G*/*G* light-skin mutation;With theNeolithic previously only introducing the rs1426654 *A*/*A* light-skin mutation (as attested with both Ötziand Stuttgart having it); Unfortunately the study does not also include results (prob. no testing) of the corpses for rs1426654; Maybe the corpses were also all rs1426654 *A*/*A* just like the Neolithic Europeans i.e. akin/identical to Neolithic folks; 
> 
> What i want to say is that what is known is that;
> ...


I would agree that they were probably AA for rs1426654. (Why on earth didn't they test for it?)

The question remains...how did the steppe peoples get the rs16891982 "G" mutation, or more precisely, from whom and when? I don't see anything that would suggest the mechanism was different, and so it must have entered the steppe with agriculturalists. From Maykop? From the Balkan "Old Europeans"? 

The only way we'll know is from ancient DNA samples from those areas.

----------


## kamani

> From the Balkan "Old Europeans"? 
> 
> The only way we'll know is from ancient DNA samples from those areas.


Could be from Balkans but maybe also from the Neolithic Agriculturalists of Anatolia (they're closer to the Caucasus).

----------


## Tabaccus Maximus

The main point of the Wilde paper argues for "rapid selection" of these complexion genes. (Which follows on the heels of a paper batting down the 'rapid selection' of lactase persistance rates in modern Europeans)

Of course, this rapid selection simply doesn't jive with the historical record and mathematically doens't work.

Whether it's artistic depictions of the Tassili Ladies, Thracians, Gutians, Tocharians...Or actual bodies of "Ginger" Naqada II, Scytho-Tocharians, Ramses II, Steppe Scythians and Bog People of the Chalcolithic/Bronze Age...

It is very clear that fixation, as mentioned above, was already present in a donor population at least 5000 years ago. As one example, the Tassili ladies (2900 B.C.) aren't one white woman and four brown ladies. They are quite clearly uniformly lucoderm and generally rufous. Same true for the Tarim Mummies. Same true for the bog bodies who are mostly red heads.

So rather than beginning with an arbitrary starting point from which rapid selection started and trying to crunch numbers to make selection work, that starting point couldn't happen at any point since at least the mid-Neolithic since certain populations are already bleach white by the Chalcolithic (Tassili ladies again). 

If Chalcolithic Steppe people were significantly darker and brown eyed than the modern inhabitants, then maybe that should be a hint!

In other words, the Pontic Steppe was colonized by people who already, uniformly had these traits.

----------


## Sile

> I have started a page summarising all the ancient mtDNA and Y-DNA results from Bronze Age Proto-Indo-European cultures. I have only added Yamna at present, but will add other cultures soon.
> 
> I have also created a map of the Yamna + Maykop cultures.


in the link you would mean, I guess, T1a or T1a2 but not T1a1 ............is it a misprint?

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## Sile

Isn't the pigmentation based on this report now?
http://www.unz.com/gnxp/pigmentation...nd-adaptation/

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## Maciamo

> in the link you would mean, I guess, T1a or T1a2 but not T1a1 ............is it a misprint?


Actually it should be *T1a2 (L131)* and *T1a1a1a (P77).*

----------


## Alan

Just a question

these are my results for the aforementioned SNP's 

HERC2 rs12913832 AG

SLC45A2 rs16891982 CC

TYR rs1042602 AC

What does that say about my hair, eye or skin color.

----------


## Angela

> Just a question
> 
> these are my results for the aforementioned SNP's 
> 
> HERC2 rs12913832 AG
> 
> SLC45A2 rs16891982 CC
> 
> TYR rs1042602 AC
> ...


Well, SLC45A2 derived allele "G" is strongly associated with fair skin, although it also affects hair and eyes. You are homozygous for the ancestral allele. To give you a point of comparison, that's rare for Europe. Do you know if you are derived for SLC24A5? I would assume you are derived for those snps. 

TYR "A" allele is likewise associated with light skin and eye pigmentation, although it also affects hair color. It also indicates absence of freckling, or, in another words, the pigmentation is even throughout the skin, even after exposure to sunlight. Here you are heterozygous. 

You are also heterozygous for the HERC 2 snp which is heavily associated with iris color, with GG indicating a higher likelihood of light eyes. It also affects hair and skin color, however.

So, my guess would be dark brown hair, olive toned skin within the Near Eastern spectrum, and brown eyes with perhaps some lighter flecks, i.e. green or gold?

How'd I do?  :Smile:

----------


## Alan

> Well, SLC45A2 derived allele "G" is strongly associated with fair skin, although it also affects hair and eyes. You are homozygous for the ancestral allele. To give you a point of comparison, that's rare for Europe. Do you know if you are derived for SLC24A5? I would assume you are derived for those snps. 
> 
> TYR "A" allele is likewise associated with light skin and eye pigmentation, although it also affects hair color. It also indicates absence of freckling, or, in another words, the pigmentation is even throughout the skin, even after exposure to sunlight. Here you are heterozygous. 
> 
> You are also heterozygous for the HERC 2 snp which is heavily associated with iris color, with GG indicating a higher likelihood of light eyes. It also affects hair and skin color, however.
> 
> So, my guess would be dark brown hair, olive toned skin within the Near Eastern spectrum, and brown eyes with perhaps some lighter flecks, i.e. green or gold?
> 
> How'd I do?


These are my SLC24a5 results.



Thats interesting that you mention lighter flecks of green, because according to GEDmatch too I should actually ended up with Green eyes. But as you said, I have brown eyes (Must have been more of coincidence than). Since my mother has blue and my father brown eyes, the G must have been from maternal and A from paternal side I assume. I have (light) Olive skin with some weird reddish/rosy tone in it. My hair color is Dark Brown. So you were right :) good guessed.

----------


## Sile

> These are my SLC24a5 results.
> 
> 
> 
> Thats interesting that you mention lighter flecks of green, because according to GEDmatch too I should actually ended up with Green eyes. But as you said, I have brown eyes (Must have been more of coincidence than). Since my mother has blue and my father brown eyes, the G must have been from maternal and A from paternal side I assume. I have Olive/light Olive skin with some weird reddish tone in it. My hair color is Dark Brown/Black. So you were right :) good guessed.


Mine...............we only match with your AA lines 

 Uploaded with ImageShack.us

----------


## Alan

> Mine...............we only match with your AA lines 
> 
>  Uploaded with ImageShack.us


And one CC line (rs2433354) :)

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## kamani

So to recapitulate: The Indo-Europeans had predominantly brown hair and eyes, 60% olive skin, and Neolithic farmer mtdna.
And according to the paper their appearance changed considerably towards "blondism" in Northern Europe due to extremely fast selection in the last 5000 years. It is hard to refute their experimental data; the only thing that I don't quite buy is their conclusion about "fast selection in the last 5000 yrs". It just seems that the early Indo-European pioneers were more of a Near-Eastern/Anatolian/(Neolithic Farmer) package that only culturally and linguistically dominated Northwest Eurasia. The current genetic map of Europe is more of the most recent migrations of the "Barbarian" tribes from extreme and isolated Northern areas.

----------


## Knovas

My results are the same as yours, Sile.

HERC2 rs12913832 GG

SLC45A2 rs16891982 GG

TYR rs1042602 AC

I guess this matches my pigmentation quite well: Blue eyes, very light skin, and dark brown hair. There are lots of SNPs to consider though, the ones listed by 23andme regarding hair colour say rather the oppostie for me: 

rs1805007 CC (Typical odds of having red hair) - T is the mutation which seems responsible of red hair

rs1667394 TT (Typical odds of having blond hair) - C means decreased odds

Actually they should revise their research and give more info. It is tedious to look for community threads to get a better idea.

----------


## Nobody1

> I would agree that they were probably AA for rs1426654. (Why on earth didn't they test for it?)
> 
> The question remains...how did the steppe peoples get the rs16891982 "G" mutation, or more precisely, from whom and when? I don't see anything that would suggest the mechanism was different, and so it must have entered the steppe with agriculturalists. From Maykop? From the Balkan "Old Europeans"? 
> 
> The only way we'll know is from ancient DNA samples from those areas.


I agree that only more data (testing/results) can answer that question; Before Yamna [Pit Grave] there was the Sredny-Stog/Khvalynsk complex contemporary with Cucuteni-Tripolye of East Europe and Yamna was contemporary to Maykop/Kura-Araxes (South Caucasus) and Baden (Central Europe) i.e. results from those culture zones could reveal a lot;

Also more data from Europe itself; All those Scandinavian (hunter-gatherer) samples of Motala (1/2/3/4/6/9/12) and Gotland (Ajv52/Ajv70/Ire8) and the farmers lady from Gökhem (Gök4); Ötzi (as far as i know) was also just tested for rs1426654 but not also rs16891982; Maybe however the current data remains representative in that only the Neolithic Farmers had rs1426654 *A*/*A* light-skin (as is the case Ötzi and Stuttgart) and remains absent in Hunter-Gatherers (as is the case Loschbour and La Brana); And if rs16891982 *G*/*G* light-skin remains absent in all Mesolithic/Neolithic Europe samples (as is the case so far La Brana/Loschbour/Stuttgart) than it could only have come from the Steppes (Yamna [Pit Grave] folks) for so far only the Steppe peoples (Yamna) have been results for rs16891982 *G*/*G*;

----------


## Aberdeen

> So to recapitulate: The Indo-Europeans had predominantly brown hair and eyes, 60% olive skin, and Neolithic farmer mtdna.
> And according to the paper their appearance changed considerably towards "blondism" in Northern Europe due to extremely fast selection in the last 5000 years. It is hard to refute their experimental data; the only thing that I don't quite buy is their conclusion about "fast selection in the last 5000 yrs". It just seems that the early Indo-European pioneers were more of a Near-Eastern/Anatolian/(Neolithic Farmer) package that only culturally and linguistically dominated Northwest Eurasia. The current genetic map of Europe is more of the most recent migrations of the "Barbarian" tribes from extreme and isolated Northern areas.


This seems likely to me. The Germanic migrations must have had a huge impact, I think.

----------


## Wilhelm

Edit......

----------


## Nobody1

> So to recapitulate: The Indo-Europeans had predominantly brown hair and eyes, 60% olive skin, and Neolithic farmer mtdna.
> And according to the paper their appearance changed considerably towards "blondism" in Northern Europe due to extremely fast selection in the last 5000 years. It is hard to refute their experimental data; the only thing that I don't quite buy is their conclusion about "fast selection in the last 5000 yrs". It just seems that the early Indo-European pioneers were more of a Near-Eastern/Anatolian/(Neolithic Farmer) package that only culturally and linguistically dominated Northwest Eurasia. The current genetic map of Europe is more of the most recent migrations of the "Barbarian" tribes from extreme and isolated Northern areas.


Where exactly did the study mention Northern Europe? Unless i missed something it does not mention Northern Europe at all; The selection process described is for the Steppes/Eastern Europe itself;

'_Dietary change during the Neolithization process may have reinforced selection pressure favoring depigmented skin. The individuals analyzed in this study lived ∼500–2,000 y after the arrival of farming in the region north of the Black Sea (42, 43).'_

'_In sum, a combination of selective pressures associated with living in northern latitudes, the adoption of an agriculturalist diet, and assortative mating may sufficiently explain the observed change from a darker phenotype during the Eneolithic/Early Bronze age to a generally lighter one in modern Eastern Europeans, although other selective factors cannot be discounted._'

Again - unless i have missed something than this study is not talking about a selection process from the Steppes into Northern Europe but solely for (within) the Steppes itself; For the rest i agree the majority (in the steppes) was still Neolithic stock;

----------


## kamani

> Where exactly did the study mention Northern Europe? Unless i missed something it does not mention Northern Europe at all; The selection process described is for the Steppes/Eastern Europe itself;


I cannot find Northern Europe specifically mentioned either, but they say things such as:
_Our results indicate that strong selection has been operating on pigmentation-related genes within western Eurasia for the past 5,000 y...
Conversely, continuity between early central European farmers
and modern Europeans has been rejected in a previous study
(33). However, the Eneolithic and Bronze Age sequences presented
here are ∼500–2,000 y younger than the early Neolithic
and belong to lineages identified both in early farmers and late
hunter–gatherers from central Europe (33). A plausible explanation
for this is that the prehistoric populations sampled in this
study are a product of admixture between in situ hunter–gatherers
and immigrant early farmers during the centuries after the arrival
of farming, and that this admixture was a major process
shaping modern patterns of mtDNA variation (34) and possibly also the variability observed in European hair, eye, and skin color..._

So it seems they try to draw conclusions about the whole Europe, in places. I agree thou that their samples are only from Bronze Age Pontic-Caspian Steppe; supposedly the center of Proto-Indo-Europeans. Which comes back to what I said that Northern Europeans are more of a product of Iron Age and later Southern expansion of Germanic tribes and not direct descendants of Proto-Indo-Europeans. Now, who did these Germanic tribes descend from and how did they become "blonde" in the last 5000 years, it is still open for debate. So far I can deduce they descend from other tribes within Europe, because blue eyes are exclusive to Western Eurasia. Simply put, there must have been a tribe somewhere in North/Central Europe with blue eyes that got conquered by a minority of Bronze Age proto-Indo-Europeans.

----------


## Angela

> I agree that only more data (testing/results) can answer that question; Before Yamna [Pit Grave] there was the Sredny-Stog/Khvalynsk complex contemporary with Cucuteni-Tripolye of East Europe and Yamna was contemporary to Maykop/Kura-Araxes (South Caucasus) and Baden (Central Europe) i.e. results from those culture zones could reveal a lot;
> 
> Also more data from Europe itself; All those Scandinavian (hunter-gatherer) samples of Motala (1/2/3/4/6/9/12) and Gotland (Ajv52/Ajv70/Ire8) and the farmers lady from Gökhem (Gök4); Ötzi (as far as i know) was also just tested for rs1426654 but not also rs16891982; Maybe however the current data remains representative in that only the Neolithic Farmers had rs1426654 *A*/*A* light-skin (as is the case Ötzi and Stuttgart) and remains absent in Hunter-Gatherers (as is the case Loschbour and La Brana); And if rs16891982 *G*/*G* light-skin remains absent in all Mesolithic/Neolithic Europe samples (as is the case so far La Brana/Loschbour/Stuttgart) than it could only have come from the Steppes (Yamna [Pit Grave] folks) for so far only the Steppe peoples (Yamna) have been results for rs16891982 *G*/*G*;


If I am reading this correctly, Oetzi was "G" or derived for SLC45A2 or rs16891982. See Table S6 of the Supplementary Information of Keller et al. That, and his other pigmentation snps, is undoubtedly why he was described as "very fair skinned".
http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal...ry-information

So, if this is correct, rs16891982, or SLC45A2 was already in a yDNA "G2a" member of a central European Neolithic/Chalcolithic culture in 3300 B.C.

----------


## Nobody1

> I cannot find Northern Europe specifically mentioned either, but they say things such as:
> _Our results indicate that strong selection has been operating on pigmentation-related genes within western Eurasia for the past 5,000 y...
> Conversely, continuity between early central European farmers
> and modern Europeans has been rejected in a previous study
> (33). However, the Eneolithic and Bronze Age sequences presented
> here are ∼500–2,000 y younger than the early Neolithic
> and belong to lineages identified both in early farmers and late
> hunter–gatherers from central Europe (33). A plausible explanation
> for this is that the prehistoric populations sampled in this
> ...


What was before the Corded-ware/Bronze-age (_proto-Germanic/Germanic_) peoples was the Neolithic complexes of LBK (+ successors) and later TBK [Funnel Beaker];
Sample of LBK is Stuttgart (mtDNA T2) and samples of TBK are Gök4 (mtDNA H) and Ste7 (mtDNA T2);
Both Stuttgart and Gök4 (Lazaridis et al 2013) are akin to each other and cluster together along with Ötzi (mtDNA K1) from the Neolithic Alps; The same scenario that the new study describes in the steppes i.e. '_A plausible explanation for this is that the prehistoric populations sampled in this study are a product of admixture between in situ hunter–gatherers and immigrant early farmers during the centuries after the arrival of farming,_' could also have occurred during Neolithic Europe in LBK and TBK with the admixed steppe folks further admixing when they appeared during the Chalcolithic/Bronze-age; For what they found in the steppes was both light-eyes [rs12913832 *G*/*G*] as well as light-skin [rs16891982 *G*/*G*]; Ultimately it could all result from the admixture of all these three movements (+ ANE _Afontova_) as is also the case for modern Europeans;

If a tribe existed in Europe that had all that in combination on its own than future data will reveal it; As of now the current data of Mesolithic and Neolithic doesnt suggest it at all;

----------


## Angela

> These are my SLC24a5 results.
> 
> 
> 
> Thats interesting that you mention lighter flecks of green, because according to GEDmatch too I should actually ended up with Green eyes. But as you said, I have brown eyes (Must have been more of coincidence than). Since my mother has blue and my father brown eyes, the G must have been from maternal and A from paternal side I assume. I have Olive skin with some weird reddish/rosy tone in it. My hair color is Dark Brown/Black. So you were right :) good guessed.


This is only a very rough analysis, of course. Last time I looked, there were over 120 snps that affected pigmentation, although SLC24A5, and SLC45A2 account for up to 80% of the variation. I don't know if there is a thread here devoted to results for pigmentation snps, but if there isn't and some people are interested in comparisons, someone could probably start one.

----------


## Nobody1

> If I am reading this correctly, Oetzi was "G" or derived for SLC45A2 or rs16891982. See Table S6 of the Supplementary Information of Keller et al. That, and his other pigmentation snps, is undoubtedly why he was described as "very fair skinned".
> http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal...ry-information
> 
> So, if this is correct, rs16891982, or SLC45A2 was already in a yDNA "G2a" member of a central European Neolithic/Chalcolithic culture in 3300 B.C.


Excellent find Angela;
So Ötzi was rs16891982 G/G and rs1426654 A/A where as Stuttgart was rs16891982 C/C and rs1426654 A/A; Was Stuttgart admixed (more) with Hunter-gatherers?

----------


## Angela

Does anyone have the most up to date figures from archaeology for when the Yamnaya people are estimated to have arrived in, say, Hungary? I may be mistaken, but I thought the dates were more recent than Oetzi's 3300 B.C.

I realize this has nothing to do with where or when these "Indo-Europeans" got the SLC45A2 "G" marker themselves; I'm just trying to think through whether the marker arose solely in Neolithicized populations around the Black Sea, or if it occurred in a wider Neolithic context.

----------


## kamani

anyone can figure out the eye color of Neolithic Europeans right before the Bronze Age?

----------


## Wilhelm

> anyone can figure out the eye color of Neolithic Europeans right before the Bronze Age?


Suttgart, Gok and Iceman were more likely brown eyed.

----------


## Angela

> Excellent find Angela;
> So Ötzi was rs16891982 G/G and rs1426654 A/A where as Stuttgart was rs16891982 C/C and rs1426654 A/A; Was Stuttgart admixed (more) with Hunter-gatherers?





I haven't had time to dig into the supplementary tables again, which are a lot more informative and precise, but just going by the PCA graphic from Lazaridis et al that Dienekes highlighted on his thread about that paper, it seems as if Oetzi is drifting slightly more toward the Hunter -Gatherers than Stuttgart? It's hard to tell because the colors are so small, but that's what it seems like...
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2013/12...esolithic.html

Anyway, there doesn't seem to be very much difference between them in that regard. 

Are you thinking that Stuttgart, if she has less HG than Oetzi, should be lighter? And the fact that she isn't implies that the SLC42A5 present in Oetzi came from steppe migrations? That's why I asked if anyone has the latest dates for when the "Indo-Europeans" reached Central Europe. I think I remember reading on Anthrogenica that there's been some waffling on the dates, but I don't remember the most recent date assigned to that event. 

I know that the SLC24A5 gene mutation which was present in the Stuttgart woman has been proposed to have occurred somewhere between the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent, but I don't think anyone has yet done the same kind of analysis for SLC42A5. Regardless, SLC24A5 was in the Stuttgart farmer, and SLC42A5 was in Oetzi, and in some of these steppe people as well. 

As to the discussion that went on above about selection versus migration, I may be simplifying this too much, but it seemed as if the authors were considering a selection in place as opposed to a migration changing the range of these alleles on the steppe, and came down in favor of selection in place. I think that's how you see it as well, correct? Well, not personally, :) I mean that's how you read the paper's assertions? 

The difficulty with making judgments like this about the steppe is that there's been a documented migration of Slavic peoples in really recent times (early Middle Ages) into the area, yes? So, couldn't the change to the levels seen in modern inhabitants of the Ukraine be explained in that way? Of course, given that there is mtDNA continuity, the DNA of the Slavs had to be pretty similar.

I think it's more than interesting that ideas that were universally held even a few years ago are getting totally overturned. Based on the perceived discontinuity of the mtDNA in central Europe between very early LBK and later eras, all the talk was of complete population replacement with the coming of the steppe peoples. Well, not quite, and not even in terms of mtDNA.

----------


## Nobody1

> I haven't had time to dig into the supplementary tables again, which are a lot more informative and precise, but just going by the PCA graphic from Lazaridis et al that Dienekes highlighted on his thread about that paper, it seems as if Oetzi is drifting slightly more toward the Hunter -Gatherers than Stuttgart? It's hard to tell because the colors are so small, but that's what it seems like...
> http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2013/12...esolithic.html
> 
> Anyway, there doesn't seem to be very much difference between them in that regard.
> 
> Are you thinking that Stuttgart, if she has less HG than Oetzi, should be lighter? And the fact that she isn't implies that the SLC42A5 present in Oetzi came from steppe migrations? That's why I asked if anyone has the latest dates for when the "Indo-Europeans" reached Central Europe. I think I remember reading on Anthrogenica that there's been some waffling on the dates, but I don't remember the most recent date assigned to that event.


Yes; It looks that there is not much difference at all; One difference is that Stuttgart is at least 1500 years older than Ötzi; I dont think Ötzi was from the steppes simply just like the other Neolithic folks from Anatolia/Near-East (maybe South Caucasus); Def. a common 'immigrant' origin for the Neolithic farmers and their cultures as thus illustrated by Ötzi/Gök4(TBK)/Stuttgart(LBK) and _Bramanti et al 2009_ - 'these analyses provide persuasive evidence that the first farmers were not the descendants of local hunter-gatherers but immigrated into central Europe at the onset of the Neolithic'

The Steppe folks had strong contacts to the east Balkan (west Black Sea) area throughout the 5th mil BC with Sredny-Stog and Cucuteni-Tripolye; Also the destruction of Gumelnita-KaronovoVI in the late-5th/early-4th is associated with Indo-European steppe folks;

*David W. Anthony* - The Horse, the Wheel, and Language (2010) [Princeton Uni.]
_Between about 4200 and 3900 BCE more than six hundred tell settlements of the Gumelnita, Karanovo VI and varna cultures were burned and abandoned in the lower danube valley and eastern Bulgaria...."We are faced with the complete replacement of a culture" the foremost expert on Eneolithic metallurgy E. N. Chernykh said. It was "a catastrophe of colossal scope...a complete cultural caesura" according to the Bulgarian archaeologist H. Todorova_

In Central Europe the emergence of the hybrid Globular-Amphora (mid 4th mil BC) and the successor Corded-ware (early 3rd mil BC) signalizes the Indo-Europeans from the east (i.e. east to west);




> As to the discussion that went on above about selection versus migration, I may be simplifying this too much, but it seemed as if the authors were considering a selection in place as opposed to a migration changing the range of these alleles on the steppe, and came down in favor of selection in place. I think that's how you see it as well, correct? Well, not personally, :) I mean that's how you read the paper's assertions?


The way i understood it is that the Steppe society was a hybrid of local hunter-gatherers and immigrant farmers; With selection process taking place (within the Steppes) after farming was established;

'_A plausible explanation for this is that the prehistoric populations sampled in this study are a product of admixture between in situ hunter–gatherers and immigrant early farmers during the centuries after the arrival of farming_'

'_Dietary change during the Neolithization process may have reinforced selection pressure favoring depigmented skin. The individuals analyzed in this study lived ∼500–2,000 y after the arrival of farming in the region north of the Black Sea (42, 43)_'




> I think it's more than interesting that ideas that were universally held even a few years ago are getting totally overturned. Based on the perceived discontinuity of the mtDNA in central Europe between very early LBK and later eras, all the talk was of complete population replacement with the coming of the steppe peoples. Well, not quite, and not even in terms of mtDNA.


Absolutely; 
That the Indo-Europeans always intermixed with the pre-existing pops. is already evident from Archaeology and Linguistics; Especially all the *non*-Indo-European elements in the distinct linguistic branches manifest it; And Genetics has clearly proven it; The view of complete population replacements was always flawed; There seems a much stronger continuation with the female (mtDNA) lineages;

----------


## Sile

I don't see many who used to say otzi was "farmer" are still saying it today. Jean Mano now states he was a herder, but a herder is a farmer to her. Oetzi is classified as a farmer in the context of these studies because the archaeological culture he belonged to mainly relied on farming for subsistence.

*Here's an interesting fact, Ötzi the Iceman was actually fair skinned:

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal...ry-information

He was rs16891982-G/G which is what most modern Europeans are. This same sample dates back to around 5000 years ago (Similar to the study from this thread).

Besides pigmentation and mtDNA, did they do any further testing on these samples? The amount of rs16891982-C/C is quite overwhelming and certainly does not fit in that area.

*
* Exactly, he is the reason that I had put ' ' around farmers when I had mentioned to Jean - There is no evidence that I see that these 'farmers' were incoming. - as it is highly doubtful that he was either incoming or a farmer. 

**Of course Ötzi wasn't an early Neolithic farmer straight off the boat from the Near East. He lived thousands of years later.  

But genetically Ötzi clusters with early European farmers, who most closely resemble modern people from Anatolia. 

*
Mtdna results below .........HG mtdna = 100% U

----------


## Sile

> My results are the same as yours, Sile.
> 
> HERC2 rs12913832 GG
> 
> SLC45A2 rs16891982 GG
> 
> TYR rs1042602 AC
> 
> I guess this matches my pigmentation quite well: Blue eyes, very light skin, and dark brown hair. There are lots of SNPs to consider though, the ones listed by 23andme regarding hair colour say rather the oppostie for me: 
> ...


hehehe, "twins" we have also the same christian name!

but I have Green eyes and you Blue eyes.............the GG group covers both

----------


## Alan

> This is only a very rough analysis, of course. Last time I looked, there were over 120 snps that affected pigmentation, although SLC24A5, and SLC45A2 account for up to 80% of the variation. I don't know if there is a thread here devoted to results for pigmentation snps, but if there isn't and some people are interested in comparisons, someone could probably start one.


True GEDmatch checked dozens of SNP's alone for the Iris coloring.

----------


## Maciamo

> Excellent find Angela;
> So Ötzi was rs16891982 G/G and rs1426654 A/A where as Stuttgart was rs16891982 C/C and rs1426654 A/A; Was Stuttgart admixed (more) with Hunter-gatherers?


The Stuttgart sample had under 10% of HG admixture, far less than Ötzi, who was 43.1% "Atlantic_Baltic" in the Dodecad K7 calculator. 

Another important difference was their age. Stuttgart lived 2200 years before Ötzi. Many things can happen in such a time frame. Migration of new people, natural selection for some traits...

----------


## Alan

> I don't see many who used to say otzi was "farmer" are still saying it today. Jean Mano now states he was a herder, but a herder is a farmer to her. Oetzi is classified as a farmer in the context of these studies because the archaeological culture he belonged to mainly relied on farming for subsistence.
> 
> *Here's an interesting fact, Ötzi the Iceman was actually fair skinned:
> 
> http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal...ry-information
> 
> He was rs16891982-G/G which is what most modern Europeans are. This same sample dates back to around 5000 years ago (Similar to the study from this thread).
> 
> Besides pigmentation and mtDNA, did they do any further testing on these samples? The amount of rs16891982-C/C is quite overwhelming and certainly does not fit in that area.
> ...



What Angela and I said, is that animal domestication is a technique which developed through farming and is therefore usually considered as part of the "farmer complex". 


Also interesting the high frequency of HV in Bronze Age Kazakhstan (Andronovo), Pitted Ware culture (South Scandinavia) and Rössen Culture

----------


## Alan

> The Stuttgart sample had under 10% of HG admixture, far less than Ötzi, who was 43.1% "Atlantic_Baltic" in the Dodecad K7 calculator. 
> 
> Another important difference was their age. Stuttgart lived 2200 years before Ötzi. Many things can happen in such a time frame. Migration of new people, natural selection for some traits...



Atlantic_Baltic of K7b is not good choice for a H&G signal because it absorbs a significant percentage of proto-farmer genes. A better calculator for farmer and H&G signal would be Lazaridis new paper or Dodecad K10a .

But I got your point and agree that Ötzi was likely more H&G admixed than Stuttgart.

----------


## Knovas

> hehehe, "twins" we have also the same christian name!
> 
> but I have Green eyes and you Blue eyes.............the GG group covers both


Yes, but there are other SNPs which result (added to the previous GG mutation) gives more chance of having green instead of blue eyes. For instance:

rs12896399 - GG = increased odds of having green. I'm GT (Typical for blue eyes, even if TT is even stronger for that matter)
rs1393350 - GG = ingreased odds of having green. AG for me. Typical again.

I'm surely missing many others, but if you have double GG in both SNPs...that would make sense.




> Also interesting the high frequency of HV in Bronze Age Kazakhstan (Andronovo), Pitted Ware culture (South Scandinavia) and Rössen Culture


HV clades seem quite frequent among modern Kurds, right?

----------


## Angela

> hehehe, "twins" we have also the same christian name!
> 
> but I have Green eyes and you Blue eyes.............the GG group covers both



I tried to be subtle and polite, but subtle and polite doesn't seem to work very well on this site at times...so I will politely but more directly ask if you would please stay on topic. An occasional digression is understandable, and often very interesting on its own, and Alan's request for guidance as to what these snps mean in terms of pigmentation was certainly appropriate, but a protracted discussion of individual results is distracting. 

Would you please take your private discussion to a dedicated thread for personal results where it would be more appropriate? 

Thank you.

----------


## Alan

> HV clades seem quite frequent among modern Kurds, right?


Yes it seems so. I would even go that far to claim, HV is one of the few maternal Haplogroups which has a paleolithic, mesolithic, neolithic as well Bronze/Iron Age (Indo European, Etruscan) origin/distribution.

----------


## Angela

> Atlantic_Baltic of K7b is not good choice for a H&G signal because it absorbs a significant percentage of proto-farmer genes. A better calculator for farmer and H&G signal would be Lazaridis new paper or Dodecad K10a .
> 
> But I got your point and agree that Ötzi was likely more H&G admixed than Stuttgart.


Why do you think that Dodecad K10a would be any better than any of the other calculators for determining this? Don't they all suffer from the fact that they hide the farmer genes because they are showing post admixture signatures? 

Just trying to understand your reasoning.

----------


## Alan

> Why do you think that Dodecad K10a would be any better than any of the other calculators for determining this? Don't they all suffer from the fact that they hide the farmer genes because they are showing post admixture signatures? 
> 
> Just trying to understand your reasoning.


I said better, not perfect. It's because K10a actually takes into account a likely more recent Northeast African gene flow into the Near East (Red Sea). And the "Mediterranean" in this calculator reaches levels of 60% in some parts of the Levant and therefore come closer to the "Proto Farmer" component. But as I said even K10a results are not representative for the Proto_Farmer component because a significant part of it must have been eaten up by "West Asian" and to some lesser extend some other components.

----------


## Angela

> I don't see many who used to say otzi was "farmer" are still saying it today. Jean Mano now states he was a herder, but a herder is a farmer to her. Oetzi is classified as a farmer in the context of these studies because the archaeological culture he belonged to mainly relied on farming for subsistence.
> 
> *Here's an interesting fact, Ötzi the Iceman was actually fair skinned:
> 
> http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal...ry-information
> 
> He was rs16891982-G/G which is what most modern Europeans are. This same sample dates back to around 5000 years ago (Similar to the study from this thread).
> 
> Besides pigmentation and mtDNA, did they do any further testing on these samples? The amount of rs16891982-C/C is quite overwhelming and certainly does not fit in that area.
> ...



Well, I guess he read my post... :Smile: 

As to your own statement that: "Jean Manco *now* states he was a herder, but a herder is a farmer to her." (emphasis mine) 

Jean Manco is a respected academic. She has no doubt always known what seems to be news to some people, to wit, that herding is an outgrowth of the Neolithic Revolution.As I've said before, it took hundreds if not thousands of years for animals to be domesticated, and also for breeding and herding techniques to be developed. People take up herding because the land and/or climate aren't suitable to farming, perhaps because most of the good farming land has been taken, or because there never was any in their area in the first place, and/or the climate isn't suitable. Distinctions also have to be made between nomadic pastoral societies, sedentary pastoral societies, and mixed farming/pastoral societies. 

Regardless of how herding (pastoralism) originally developed, however, in Oetzi's case, the archaeology and the results from the analyses of his body are clear, and most of it has been known for years, whether or not some people have read the relevant papers. I provided the numerous references in the other thread in which this was discussed. 

Most importantly for this discussion, he had *domesticated* wheat in his stomach, and domesticated wheat is produced in farming communities; one such contemporary neolithic farming community is located in the valley where the results of his autopsy indicate he spent most of his life, and the settlement was on established trade routes. In addition to all of that, his possession of a copper ax, but more importantly, the presence of high levels of arsenic in his body indicate he was most probably a metal worker or at least involved in metal working. 

This is why you have papers stating that he was most likely a member of a farming community which practiced transhumant herding...i.e. a member of a community that practiced farming and herding, and in which the herds are moved to highland pastures in the summer. The only reason that we can't put a final imprimatur on him as to the precise Chalcolithic culture to which be belonged is because he inconveniently didn't carry a bit of pottery on him. The style of the ax, however, indicates ties to the metal working societies of the Po Valley, and perhaps also those of the Tyrol. 

As beginning medical students are told, if you hear hooves, think horses, not zebras. And as first year law students are told, "Look at the evidence." 

The clincher is, as you pointed out, his autosomal make-up. He is closely related to Gok 4 and Stuttgart, who are members of Neolithic farming cultures (and to present day Sardinians), and very far from the European Mesolithic hunter-gatherers so far examined.

----------


## Angela

> Nobody1;428116]Yes; It looks that there is not much difference at all; One difference is that Stuttgart is at least 1500 years older than Ötzi; I dont think Ötzi was from the steppes simply just like the other Neolithic folks from Anatolia/Near-East (maybe South Caucasus); Def. a common 'immigrant' origin for the Neolithic farmers and their cultures as thus illustrated by Ötzi/Gök4(TBK)/Stuttgart(LBK) and _Bramanti et al 2009_ - 'these analyses provide persuasive evidence that the first farmers were not the descendants of local hunter-gatherers but immigrated into central Europe at the onset of the Neolithic'


I would agree with the Bramanti formulation that the LBK farmers were not the descendants of local hunter-gatherers but immigrated into central Europe at the onset of the Neolithc. 

However, although all the evidence suggests that these early Neolithic farmers are genetically descended from the ancient peoples of Anatolia and surrounding areas who created the Neolithic Revolution, we have, as yet, no ancient sample for these people, and we also don't have a sample from mesolithic peoples of southeast Europe. 

It may be that the mesolithic hunter-gatherers of the Aegean and the southern Balkans, and the mesolithic hunter-gatherers of the Zagros mountains who invented agriculture and animal husbandry were pretty similar autosomally. The Bean project should provide some clarity. If his turns out to be true, the EEF people, while they might be immigrants to Central Europe, and Scandinavia, would not be immigrants to Europe, or at least they're immigrants in the same way as were the hunter-gatherers north of them. We're all immigrants everywhere except in Africa. 





> *David W. Anthony* - The Horse, the Wheel, and Language (2010) [Princeton Uni.]
> _Between about 4200 and 3900 BCE more than six hundred tell settlements of the Gumelnita, Karanovo VI and varna cultures were burned and abandoned in the lower danube valley and eastern Bulgaria...."We are faced with the complete replacement of a culture" the foremost expert on Eneolithic metallurgy E. N. Chernykh said. It was "a catastrophe of colossal scope...a complete cultural caesura" according to the Bulgarian archaeologist H. Todorova_
> 
> In Central Europe the emergence of the hybrid Globular-Amphora (mid 4th mil BC) and the successor Corded-ware (early 3rd mil BC) signalizes the Indo-Europeans from the east (i.e. east to west);


I have no idea if the Wiki article on the Globular Amphora culture is correct, but the entry says that the general dates for the culture are 3400–2800 BC. Oetzi is 3350 B.C. That's cutting it awfully close in terms of whether it's possible that he got his SLC42A5 from steppe peoples. On balance I would say probably not, although more samples should clarify the issue. (I certainly don't see how he got his metal working technology from them, as Remedello precedes this time period, and the ax is fashioned in Remedello style.)





> The way i understood it is that the Steppe society was a hybrid of local hunter-gatherers and immigrant farmers; With selection process taking place (within the Steppes) after farming was established;
> 
> '_A plausible explanation for this is that the prehistoric populations sampled in this study are a product of admixture between in situ hunter–gatherers and immigrant early farmers during the centuries after the arrival of farming_'


That's what I understood them to say as well. 




> '_Dietary change during the Neolithization process may have reinforced selection pressure favoring depigmented skin. The individuals analyzed in this study lived ∼500–2,000 y after the arrival of farming in the region north of the Black Sea (42, 43)_'


Yes, that's definitely their position as to the presence of these color draining snps in these steppe peoples, but I don't understand why they dismiss the effects of the Slavic migrations on the percentages for these snps in the modern Ukraine. 

This is wild speculation on my part, but perhaps the people involved in this study already have access to, or are in the preliminary stages of testing the yDNA of these groups. These are, after all, academicians...they have a lot of masters and doctors candidates who have to publish. They have to squeeze out as many papers as they can...they can't dump all the data at once. Look at Zink and company and the analysis of Oetzi. Perhaps the yDNA of these steppe Kurgan people was "R1a" or "R1b" already.

----------


## MOESAN

> Once again according to me you're misinterpreting some facts. Who's saying that those Bronze Age Steppe people were *Proto*-Indo-European at the first place and are not just Indo-Europized natives? If original R1b came from the Eastern Anatolia they could have Indo-Europized the natives of the Steppes. If that was the case you can also count on Y-DNA hg. J2a. Once again you're ignoring this haplogroup in your PIE story. According to me the Maykop folks Indo-Europized the Yamna folks and then all other Pontic-Caspian Steppes natives. It has been proven that the Maykop folks came from Northwest Iranian Plateau. So the ORIGINAL Maykop folks were according to me R1b & *J2a*. So, original PIE that Indo-Europized peoples of the Steppes belonged mostly to R1b & *J2a*! *J2a* was a very imporant haplogroup among the Maykop folks, maybe part of their elite!


I dont load my back with all the question here - just concerning Y-HGs: former I-Eans Y-J2(a) and Y-R1b? possible at this stage of knowledge - but the very broad ditch between today Y-R1b / Y-J2 distributions could signify a huge number of Y-R1b were not I-Ean speakers at first OR this Y-HG had a survival very great advantage on Y-J2 in Western Europe? a question!

----------


## MOESAN

> Mine...............we only match with your AA lines 
> 
>  Uploaded with ImageShack.us


in fact I ask here the all:
could somebody (a patient one) explain me how does all this work? I see on these tables a lot of lines under the same SLC24A5 'hat': how can they produce an unique result resumed like: SLC24A5 pair of alleles ? - and is the right column the phenotypic waited result by dominance? thanks beforehand - I need some solid basis before try to understand - good week-end

----------


## Angela

> in fact I ask here the all:
> could somebody (a patient one) explain me how does all this work? I see on these tables a lot of lines under the same SLC24A5 'hat': how can they produce an unique result resumed like: SLC24A5 pair of alleles ? - and is the right column the phenotypic waited result by dominance? thanks beforehand - I need some solid basis before try to understand - good week-end


It's my understanding that the rs numbers refer to snps. SLC24A5 is the name of the gene on which this snp is found. They don't provide the info, but the SLC24A5 gene is found on Chromosome 15.

For example, 

 SNP rs1426654Gene SLC24A5Location Chr.15: 48426484 


You can have either an "A" or a "G" allele for this snp. "G" is ancestral or "dark" for this snp. "A" is derived or "light". You have two alleles, one from your mother and one from your father.

The last column shows Sile's results for this snp. He is AA, which is saying both his alleles for this snp are derived or "light". 

As the authors in this paper discuss, they're not yet sure whether these are co-dominant, dominant, or recessive. (I didn't go back and check this, so this is from memory.) 

People in this hobby, including me, are sloppy, and will say SLC24A5, when they should say, for example, rs1426654 on SLC24A5.

The results from the steppe for light pigmentation which we have been discussing include gene SLC45A2 on which is found SNP rs16891982 and the "light" derived allele is "G". Oetzi was GG.

Ed. I know I am sometimes lacking in patience...which is why I never became a teacher, but I hope I have here redeemed myself somewhat. :)

----------


## polako

> The sample size is small, but that could mean that blue eyes were not present in the Pontic Steppe before the Early Bronze Age, and that there was therefore a migration of people from outside the steppes, or a dramatic expansion from one small part of the steppes.


There's no reason to assume that these samples are representative of the Proto-Indo-Europeans (PIE). They might well be a mixed population with only minor mtDNA and autosomal PIE components from the generally accepted PIE zone to the northeast. See here (I can't post full links):

upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Kurgan_map.png

Incidentally, this is more or less where the Andronovo people came from, not from the east Balkans or southern steppe, where most of the Wilde et al. samples are from, and they were pretty fair. So an extreme founder effect, and/or more intense selection for light eyes and hair in the more temperate Kurgan areas, which eventually encompassed much wider areas as the Indo-European expansion gained strength, is a possibility.

So I wouldn't jump to any conclusions based on such a southerly sampling strategy. I'd wait for complete genomes from across time and space of the Kurgan cultural horizon, including the Khvalynsk culture.

In any case, we're missing a lot of territory in Eastern Europe as things stand...

mapsengine.google.com/map/edit?mid=zm0B1VqcS1ZE.kixFYqDlP5v8

----------


## Greying Wanderer

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8570542.stm

If skeletons show signs of rickets do ancient skeletons from Europe show those signs?

----------


## Angela

> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/8570542.stm
> 
> If skeletons show signs of rickets do ancient skeletons from Europe show those signs?


I thought this was an interesting question, and one I hadn't seen explored, so I did a little digging, but couldn't find very much.

This is an article on prehistoric medicine:
http://www.healthguidance.org/entry/...-Medicine.html

The author states that in prehistoric skeletons, "Bone wasting (osteomalacia) has been interpreted by some as a sign of poornutrition, but true rickets appears to have been rare, probably because living outdoors most of the time would have been preventive. Even the specimens claimed to be rickets were uncovered only in northern climes."

Unfortunately, he doesn't provide a citation to the study where this incidence of rickets in northern skeletons was found.

We do know that a rickets like disease was described in classical times, but whether it was true rickets or not, we don't know. Also, we don't know where these children were living. I wonder if they might have been poverty stricken residents of inland, lightless urban centers, sort of like the situation in industrialized Britain.

I did find this one reference to rickets in Bronze Age skeletons, but as they were found in Jordan, one would think they would have gotten enough sunlight, although perhaps they were not native to the region.
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+Ea...n.-a0226668383


In terms of modern populations, there does seem to be a higher incidence of rickets in African Americans, especially African American children, in more temperate climates, as compared to children of European descent:
http://jn.nutrition.org/content/135/2/332.full#ref-28
Common to almost all of these cases of vitamin D deficient rickets in young children is dark pigmented skin (23–28), little exposure to sunlight (23–25), little or no vitamin D supplementation in mother or child (23–27), and exclusive breast-feeding (23,25–28). Although areas of higher latitude seem to be at higher risk for vitamin D deficient rickets (23–25,28), even in lower latitudes with areas of abundant sunlight, vitamin D deficient rickets has been reported (26,27). 

I'm interested in the topic, so I'll keep looking.

Oh, here is that connection to fish again, as a preventative. Cod liver oil was the treatment of choice for rickets.

Also, don't take Tums for your acid indigestion. Apparently, calcium carbonate destroys all the Vitamin D in your body.

----------


## MOESAN

> It's my understanding that the rs numbers refer to snps. SLC24A5 is the name of the gene on which this snp is found. They don't provide the info, but the SLC24A5 gene is found on Chromosome 15.
> 
> For example, 
> 
>  SNP rs1426654Gene SLC24A5Location Chr.15: 48426484 
> 
> 
> You can have either an "A" or a "G" allele for this snp. "G" is ancestral or "dark" for this snp. "A" is derived or "light". You have two alleles, one from your mother and one from your father.
> 
> ...


_THANK YOU VERY WELL (as I learned in school)
I was aware we get a copy (good or bad executed) from every parent, of a gene (autosomals)- but I was confused by all these names not very synonymous - 
what you call a SNP would be a pair of alleles on the gene (a nucleotid?), with a numero indicating its position in it? the mutation would be named "SNP"? if you are not pedagogic then the net sites of vulgarization are not better!
What would please me would be the answer to: are all the pigmentation regulating genes on the same chromosome, or even on the same portion of chromosome (what seems evident for the most of them?)
good evening - buona sera - noswezh vad deoc'h - 

_

----------


## Greying Wanderer

@Angela
"I thought this was an interesting question, and one I hadn't seen explored, so I did a little digging, but couldn't find very much."

Ty, yes hard to find much. It does seem to require more than one factor, light skin can still get it, dark skin doesn't necessarily get it but it seems (until recently) to have mostly disappeared before it got much research.


"Oh, here is that connection to fish again, as a preventative."

Yes, fish seems key, dairy works as an alternative but that only comes later.

(On a separate but related note the importance of fish reinforces the idea of the importance of coastal migrations.)

----------


## Angela

> @Angela
> "I thought this was an interesting question, and one I hadn't seen explored, so I did a little digging, but couldn't find very much."
> 
> Ty, yes hard to find much. It does seem to require more than one factor, light skin can still get it, dark skin doesn't necessarily get it but it seems (until recently) to have mostly disappeared before it got much research.
> 
> 
> "Oh, here is that connection to fish again, as a preventative."
> 
> Yes, fish seems key, dairy works as an alternative but that only comes later.
> ...




Dairy wasn't a solution until milk products were artificially fortified with Vitamin D in the very recent past.

This is a good resource about foods containing Vitamin D, although I don't endorse the Marshall Protocol.
http://mpkb.org/home/food/vitamind/n...amin_d_in_food

The only Vitamin D in milk that is present is in the fat, because Vitamin D is stored in the fat of all mammals. However, the amount of Vitamin D in milk fat products, such as cheese made from unfortified milk, as in all other animal fat products, is very low. 

These are the foods with high Vitamin D levels:
Attachment 6324

I'm not even sure if that 6 IU units for 1 slice of cheese is accurate, because I don't know if the milk from which it was made was fortified. 

Also, although organ meats and animal fat obviously provide some Vitamin A, herders aren't going to be slaughtering large numbers of their animals to feed their families, and neither are farmers, otherwise they're going to wind up starving to death within a very short time.

----------


## LeBrok

> The only Vitamin D in milk that is present is in the fat, because Vitamin D is stored in the fat of all mammals. However, the amount of Vitamin D in milk fat products, such as cheese made from unfortified milk, as in all other animal fat products, is very low.


True, however in our past, and say in poor northern village, if consumption of milk reached 1 liter a day (from lack of other foods), it might have been enough to supply few hundred IU of vitamin D a day. Perhaps just enough not to get rickets, just to survive.
I don't remember accurate numbers for D3 in natural full milk at the moment, but I remember that it was at lower level of human needs to survive, to supplement through winter.

----------


## Nobody1

Rickets (Rachitis) was also common in Germany during the industrialization in the industrial areas; Children would often get it especially those designated as Kellerkinder (Factory/Basement kids) i.e. those who hardly saw daylight; In Germany it was thus combated with Lebertran (all kids had to drink it) in English its the 'Cod-liver oil' which is very rich in Vitamin D; Especially after each world war Lebertran became a stable nutrition for children in Germany;

----------


## LeBrok

> Rickets (Rachitis) was also common in Germany during the industrialization in the industrial areas; Children would often get it especially those designated as Kellerkinder (Factory/Basement kids) i.e. those who hardly saw daylight; In Germany it was thus combated with Lebertran (all kids had to drink it) in English its the 'Cod-liver oil' which is very rich in Vitamin D; Especially after each world war Lebertran became a stable nutrition for children in Germany;


Same in Poland, my parents had to take cod oil daily after the war.
Perhaps for us it is hard to appreciate importance of vitamin D, when we have so many products fortified with it, and easily get the minimum without even realizing it. Stories from not so far past are telling us huge importance of it for human health.

----------


## Aberdeen

It was the same in Canada while I was growing up - even though we lived in the country and had eggs and milk, cod liver oil was considered necessary for one's health. And I still take fish oil each day - it's more essential in a northern climate.

----------


## LeBrok

> It was the same in Canada while I was growing up - even though we lived in the country and had eggs and milk, cod liver oil was considered necessary for one's health. And I still take fish oil each day - it's more essential in a northern climate.


I take supplements for most of the year till I suntan in sommer. 4,000 IU a day through winter. There still no agreement amongst experts how much IU adult needs daily. By some experts' educated guesses about 5,000 IU.

----------


## Angela

> True, however in our past, and say in poor northern village, if consumption of milk reached 1 liter a day (from lack of other foods), it might have been enough to supply few hundred IU of vitamin D a day. Perhaps just enough not to get rickets, just to survive.
> I don't remember accurate numbers for D3 in natural full milk at the moment, but I remember that it was at lower level of human needs to survive, to supplement through winter.



If this is correct, you would have to drink a great deal of milk indeed as a supplement did you not get enough Vitamin D from sun exposure..."A significant amount of vitamin A and some vitamin D are naturally present in whole milk -- an 8-ounce glass of unfortified whole milk provides about 8 percent and 1 percent of the daily values for vitamins A and D, respectively, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture." 

I believe the recommended daily value is 400 I.U. A slice of cheese, which is usually made from unfortified milk, contains 6 I.U. according to the table above, so this makes sense. 

However, I think scientists are going to discover we need a whole lot more than that for optimal health.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20053937
*Abstract*Cutaneous cholecalciferol synthesis has not been considered in making recommendations for vitamin D intake. Our objective was to model the effects of sun exposure, vitamin D intake, and skin reflectance (pigmentation) on serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25[OH]D) in young adults with a wide range of skin reflectance and sun exposure. Four cohorts of participants (n = 72 total) were studied for 7-8 wk in the fall, winter, spring, and summer in Davis, CA [38.5 degrees N, 121.7 degrees W, Elev. 49 ft (15 m)]. Skin reflectance was measured using a spectrophotometer, vitamin D intake using food records, and sun exposure using polysulfone dosimeter badges. A multiple regression model (R(2) = 0.55; P < 0.0001) was developed and used to predict the serum 25(OH)D concentration for participants with low [median for African ancestry (AA)] and high [median for European ancestry (EA)] skin reflectance and with low [20th percentile, approximately 20 min/d, approximately 18% body surface area (BSA) exposed] and high (80th percentile, approximately 90 min/d, approximately 35% BSA exposed) sun exposure, assuming an intake of 200 iu/d (5 ug/d). Predicted serum 25(OH)D concentrations for AA individuals with low and high sun exposure in the winter were 24 and 42 nmol/L and in the summer were 40 and 60 nmol/L. Corresponding values for EA individuals were 35 and 60 nmol/L in the winter and in the summer were 58 and 85 nmol/L. To achieve 25(OH)D > or =75 nmol/L, we estimate that EA individuals with high sun exposure need 1300 iu/d vitamin D intake in the winter and AA individuals with low sun exposure need 2100-3100 iu/d year-round.




In my digging I also found this, which supports the point of the importance of enough Vitamin D intake:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17909164#
*Abstract*Individuals are capable of producing vitamin D with proper exposure to sunlight. However, several factors can interfere with the effectiveness of this process. Most sunscreens filter out UVB light, thus inhibiting vitamin D production. Individuals with more darkly pigmented skin have greater difficulty producing vitamin D because melanin acts as an effective natural sunscreen, requiring longer sun exposure to produce an adequate daily allotment of vitamin D. Additionally, solely breastfed infants whose mothers suffered from vitamin D deficiency or insufficiency when pregnant have smaller reserves of the nutrient and are at greater risk of developing nutritional rickets. Vitamin D deficiency leads to rickets, osteomalacia, and osteoporosis. Long-term vitamin D insufficiency can lead to paracrine effects such as type 1 diabetes, cancer, and multiple sclerosis. This article reviews the current literature on vitamin D deficiency and insufficiency and their relation to different disease states. Potential areas for research are discussed.

I also saw a study by Danish scientists that linked Vitamin D deficiency to depression and schizophrenia. I wonder if that might be one cause of the elevated suicide levels in northern countries?

Just another factoid I came across...from Harvard Medical School...
And researchers at Boston 's Children's Hospital recently reported that 24% of Boston-area adolescents, especially African Americans, are vitamin D deficient.

----------


## LeBrok

> If this is correct, you would have to drink a great deal of milk indeed as a supplement did you not get enough Vitamin D from sun exposure..."A significant amount of vitamin A and some vitamin D are naturally present in whole milk -- an 8-ounce glass of unfortified whole milk provides about 8 percent and 1 percent of the daily values for vitamins A and D, respectively, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture." 
> 
> I believe the recommended daily value is 400 I.U. A slice of cheese, which is usually made from unfortified milk, contains 6 I.U. according to the table above, so this makes sense. 
> 
> However, I think scientists are going to discover we need a whole lot more than that for optimal health.
> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20053937


IIRC a glass of raw milk contains 40 IU, so liter will be 160 IU, nine eggs (another staple of poor villagers) that's another 160 IU, plus some extra from tanning in the summer, and probably this was a bare minimum to survive.




> *Abstract*
> 
> Cutaneous cholecalciferol synthesis has not been considered in making recommendations for vitamin D intake. Our objective was to model the effects of sun exposure, vitamin D intake, and skin reflectance (pigmentation) on serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25[OH]D) in young adults with a wide range of skin reflectance and sun exposure. Four cohorts of participants (n = 72 total) were studied for 7-8 wk in the fall, winter, spring, and summer in Davis, CA [38.5 degrees N, 121.7 degrees W, Elev. 49 ft (15 m)]. Skin reflectance was measured using a spectrophotometer, vitamin D intake using food records, and sun exposure using polysulfone dosimeter badges. A multiple regression model (R(2) = 0.55; P < 0.0001) was developed and used to predict the serum 25(OH)D concentration for participants with low [median for African ancestry (AA)] and high [median for European ancestry (EA)] skin reflectance and with low [20th percentile, approximately 20 min/d, approximately 18% body surface area (BSA) exposed] and high (80th percentile, approximately 90 min/d, approximately 35% BSA exposed) sun exposure, assuming an intake of 200 iu/d (5 ug/d). Predicted serum 25(OH)D concentrations for AA individuals with low and high sun exposure in the winter were 24 and 42 nmol/L and in the summer were 40 and 60 nmol/L. Corresponding values for EA individuals were 35 and 60 nmol/L in the winter and in the summer were 58 and 85 nmol/L. To achieve 25(OH)D > or =75 nmol/L, we estimate that EA individuals with high sun exposure need 1300 iu/d vitamin D intake in the winter and AA individuals with low sun exposure need 2100-3100 iu/d year-round.


Nice experiment. What is hard to find, and I was searching already few times, is what is the healthy level of vitamin D3? There is more information about bare minimum (400 IU a day), but almost nothing about a healthy level. At least this research points to sort of normal level of 1300 IU for white people. Of course, if summer dose was adequate to start with. Perhaps experiment should have been done on farmers who spend more time outside in summer (more than city folks), and farming was the norm for our ancestors. After all we are their genetic copies. What was good for them should be good for us. Generally speaking of course.

IIRC, new guidelines from Health Canada set 2,000 IU daily as recommended supplement during winter and 4,000 IU for people over 50 years old. However they don't incorporate body mas in these guidelines.

----------


## Theodorik

But samples from the Andronovo Culture, who were Indo-Europeans who lived in Kazakhstan and were ancestors of the Aryans and Iranians who invaded Iran and India, showed that most of them had blue eyes.

----------


## Eldritch

> But samples from the Andronovo Culture, who were Indo-Europeans who lived in Kazakhstan and were ancestors of the Aryans and Iranians who invaded Iran and India, showed that most of them had blue eyes.


Pseudoscience too much?

----------


## Aberdeen

> Pseudoscience too much?


Make assumptions without knowing the facts much?

http://link.springer.com/article/10....439-009-0683-0

----------


## Fire Haired14

Their low percentage of light eyes probably means they had a small amount of Mesolithic European ancestry since Motala12, Loschbour, and La Brana-1 had light eyes while Otzi and Stuttgart had brown eyes. I really doubt they had alot of common ancestry with the north European-like pigmented bronze and iron age Indo Iranians from south Siberia.

----------


## Tomenable

http://www.scientificfund.kz/index.p...-their-genesis



Bronze Age Andronovo Culture in the area of modern Southern Russia and Kazakhstan were mostly light-haired (brown or blond) and blue- or green-eyed people:

Individuals with probably blond hair were identified at archaeological sites of Oust-Abakansty (Khakassia Republic, Russia) and Solenoozernaïa IV (Krasnoyarsk Region, Russia). They died around 1800 BC - 1400 BC and belonged to Andronovo Culture. Their skin pigmentation was identified as fair or medium and their eyes as blue or green. Their hair was blond. Two other individuals from the same burial site at Solenoozernaïa IV were identified as having brown hair - one of them had brown eyes and fair or medium skin. Another individual from Andronovo Culture - found at Tatarka cemetery (Charypovsky Region, Russia) - was identified as fair or medium skin, dark brown hair and brown eyes. Two individuals of Karasuk Culture, 1400 BC - 800 BC (Oust-Abakansty and Bogratsky, both in Khakassia) were blue or green eyed:

http://www.ancestraljourneys.org/aut...l#pigmentation

This guy died around 1010 BC:

http://www.ancestraljourneys.org/ancientdna.shtml




> Mongolia - Takhilgat Uzuur-5 [TU34] - Dark blond/brown hair; brown eyes - Male - R1a1a1b2-Z93


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Androno...re#Ancient_DNA




> Out of 10 human male remains assigned to the Andronovo horizon from the Krasnoyarsk region, 9 possessed the R1a Y-chromosome haplogroup and one the haplogroup C-M130 (xC3). mtDNA haplogroups of nine individuals assigned to the same Andronovo horizon and region were as follows: U4 (2 individuals), U2e, U5a1, Z, T1, T4, H, and K2b.
> 
> 90% of the Bronze Age period mtDNA haplogroups were of west Eurasian origin and the study determined that at least 60% of the individuals overall (out of the 26 Bronze and Iron Age human remains' samples of the study that could be tested) had light hair and blue or green eyes.[19]
> 
> A 2004 study also established that, during the Bronze/Iron Age period, the majority of the population of Kazakhstan (part of the Andronovo culture during Bronze Age), was of west Eurasian origin (with mtDNA haplogroups such as U, H, HV, T, I and W), and that prior to the thirteenth to seventh century BC, all Kazakh samples belonged to European lineages.[20]


So were their R1a haplogroup IE Scythian descendants from Tuva Republic, Western Mongolia, during the Bronze Age and the Iron Age.

Some of IE Tocharians (Tarim mummies), on the other hand, appear to be red-haired.

Caucasoids extended as far east as Mongolia and Xinjiang (China) during the Bronze Age, as evidenced by Tocharian and Scythian remains.

Yellow = Eurasian steppe, red is area of Tocharians and north of them lived Bronze Age and Iron Age (Pazyryk Culture) Scythians:



Photos of Bronze Age IE mummies from Kazakh-Russian-Mongolian-Chinese borderlands:

Burial of an individual with Caucasoid features, dark blond hair and R1a haplogroup was discovered at Takhilgat Uzuur-5, Mongolia.

Also in Tuva Republic, near Russian-Mongolian border, there were kurgan burials of Scythians, including this one:





Red-haired Tocharian mummies from Xinjiang:





Two other Tocharian mummies from Xinjiang, Takla Makan Desert, Western China:





Blond Scythian guy from Arzhan, Afghanistan, near the Russian border (near Tuva Republic):



Indo-European Caucasoid mummy, buried in Issyk Kul Province of Kyrgyzstan (capital city is Karakol):



Red-haired Indo-European and Caucasoid mummy from Cherchen region in Western China:



Reconstruction of that female mummy from Cherchen:



Cherchen, Xinjiang province of China - face from painted clothes of one of Indo-European mummies:



Scythian art from Ukok Plateau - Pazyryk Culture:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pazyryk_burials



Scythian Ukok Princess - she was buried together with two men, in the Ukok Plateau (border between Russia-China-Mongolia):

http://artislimited.wordpress.com/20...he-first-time/

PDF article to download about Scythians of Pazyryk Culture: http://www.google.pl/url?sa=t&rct=j&...74115972,d.d2s

Western Mongolia was the area of a melting pot between Western Eurasian and East Asian populations during the Bronze Age:

http://forwhattheywereweare.blogspot...ian-altai.html

http://www.fsigenetics.com/article/S...116-1/abstract




> *West-East admixture in Mongolian Altai in the Bronze Age* 
> 
> (...)
> 
> In the same way, the patrilineal gene pool revealed the presence of different haplogroups (Q1a2a1-L54, R1a1a1b2-Z93 and C), probably marking different origins for the male paternal lineages. *To go further in the search of the origin of these ancient specimens, phenotypical characters (i.e. hair and eye color) were determined.* For this purpose, we adapted the HIrisPlex assay recently described to MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry. In addition, some ancestry informative markers were analyzed with this assay. *The results revealed mixed phenotypes among this group confirming the probable admixed ancestry of the studied Altaian population at the Middle Bronze Age.*


Scythians of Tuva Republic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History...#Early_history

Iron Age Satem Indo-European Pazyryk Culture:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pazyryk_culture

============================================

Map: http://s29.postimg.org/fbpcibyef/Bro..._IE_extent.png

----------


## Tomenable

> the north European-like pigmented bronze and iron age Indo Iranians from south Siberia.


Indo-Iranians from Siberia (my post above is basically about them, as well as about Tocharians) were not north European-like pigmented.

That's because Northern Europeans of that time (and earlier times) were rather not pigmented the same way.

Unlike those IE folks from Siberia, so far no hunter-gatherer pre-Indo-European remains from Scandinavia were identified as having blond hair.

Two hunter-gatherer individuals from Sweden - one from Gotland (Pitted Ware Culture) and one from Motala (Mesolithic) were identified as having blue eyes. The one from Gotland - despite blue eyes - had dark skin, while the one from Motala had probably fair skin, but it wasn't determined for sure (and hair colour also couldn't be established). Another Mesolithic individual with blue eyes was discovered at Loschbour in Luxembourg, but skin was dark and hair was dark brown or black. Yet another Mesolithic individual with blue eyes was discovered at La Braña-Arintero in Spain, but hair was dark and skin was dark. All in all, so far there is no evidence that blond hair was in Scandinavia earlier than it was in Russia.

There were Indo-European individuals with blond hair who lived in what is now steppe of Southern Russia, around the same time as Indo-European expansion into Scandinavia. So it seems more likely that blond hair spread together with Indo-Europeans.

Another likely possibility is that blond hair emerged in several places of Eurasia separately.

Red hair also most probably emerged in several places of Western Eurasia eparately.

----------


## Fire Haired14

> Indo-Iranians from Siberia (my post above is basically about them, as well as about Tocharians) were not north European-like pigmented.
> 
> That's because Northern Europeans of that time (and earlier times) were rather not pigmented the same way.
> 
> Unlike those IE folks from Siberia, so far no hunter-gatherer pre-Indo-European remains from Scandinavia were identified as having blond hair.
> 
> Two hunter-gatherer individuals from Sweden - one from Gotland (Pitted Ware Culture) and one from Motala (Mesolithic) were identified as having blue eyes. The one from Gotland - despite blue eyes - had dark skin, while the one from Motala had probably fair skin, but it wasn't determined for sure (and hair colour also couldn't be established). Another Mesolithic individual with blue eyes was discovered at Loschbour in Luxembourg, but skin was dark and hair was dark brown or black. Yet another Mesolithic individual with blue eyes was discovered at La Braña-Arintero in Spain, but hair was dark and skin was dark. All in all, so far there is no evidence that blond hair was in Scandinavia earlier than it was in Russia.
> 
> There were Indo-European individuals with blond hair who lived in what is now steppe of Southern Russia, around the same time as Indo-European expansion into Scandinavia. So it seems more likely that blond hair spread together with Indo-Europeans.
> ...


This is all now established knowledge. I haven't researched any history stuff for months and months so I don't have a fresh mind about it. It's a very interesting mystery because Ancient DNA has shown the color of our ancestors was radically differnt from ourselves and changed recently. In my opinion north Euro-type pigmentation(very light skin, high amounts of blonde hair, and majority light eyes) is very young, and probably originated after the Neolithic age. Neither of Europe's two ancestral populations had it. Then we look at copper age Steppe people and find they were darker than west Asians. A source hasn't been discovered yet. The oldest instance of it in ancient DNA is in those bronze age Siberians, and they were apart of the Indo European expansion east of the Caspian are not the ancestors of any Europeans(if they are it's very minor). 

If you think about it the north Euro-type pigmentation is very differnt from the type Neolithic farmers and Mesolithic hunters had. The light skin ultimately derives from the farmers, the light eyes from the hunters. The blonde hair is really what sets it apart, because both the hunters and farmers were uniformly dark haired. For some reason blonde hair became connected with light eyes(it's a proven fact there's a correlation), and both rose like crazy in frequencies. The light skin went to a new extreme. 

I have no idea how the north Euro-type became so popular in north Europe within the last 6,000 years. Was it population movement or natural selection? My guess is that Indo Europeans are the common source, and natural selection was the main reason it became popular. Who knows though.

We'll probably learn in the next month what pigmentation Corded ware(proto-Balto-Slavic) culture had, and Neolithic central Europeans. 

http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/

----------


## Robert6

Scythian culture is Iron age culture, and we don't have any Y-Dna from Scythians yet.
And Pazyryk people are Scytho-Siberians not exactly Scythians, ancient authors named them Arimaspeans, and we don't have any Y-Dna from Pazyryk(Arimaspeans) yet.

----------


## Robert6

> Scythian culture is Iron age culture, and we don't have any Y-Dna from Scythians yet.
> And Pazyryk people are Scytho-Siberians not exactly Scythians, ancient authors named them Arimaspeans, and we don't have any Y-Dna from Pazyryk(Arimaspeans) yet.


*Mtdna of Pazyryk is N1a*
http://www.researchgate.net/publicat...ian_migrations


*Befor the Pazyryk people there were no N1a in Bronze age Altay*
http://dienekes.blogspot.gr/2014/06/...age-altai.html

----------


## Alan

> Indo-Iranians from Siberia (my post above is basically about them, as well as about Tocharians) were not north European-like pigmented.
> 
> That's because Northern Europeans of that time (and earlier times) were rather not pigmented the same way.
> 
> Unlike those IE folks from Siberia, so far no hunter-gatherer pre-Indo-European remains from Scandinavia were identified as having blond hair.
> 
> Two hunter-gatherer individuals from Sweden - one from Gotland (Pitted Ware Culture) and one from Motala (Mesolithic) were identified as having blue eyes. The one from Gotland - despite blue eyes - had dark skin, while the one from Motala had probably fair skin, but it wasn't determined for sure (and hair colour also couldn't be established). Another Mesolithic individual with blue eyes was discovered at Loschbour in Luxembourg, but skin was dark and hair was dark brown or black. Yet another Mesolithic individual with blue eyes was discovered at La Braña-Arintero in Spain, but hair was dark and skin was dark. All in all, so far there is no evidence that blond hair was in Scandinavia earlier than it was in Russia.
> 
> There were Indo-European individuals with blond hair who lived in what is now steppe of Southern Russia, around the same time as Indo-European expansion into Scandinavia. So it seems more likely that blond hair spread together with Indo-Europeans.
> ...


The Yamnaya people were significantly darker and just within the process of getting lighter. So when the Indo_Iranians evolved they were already lighter and had more Black/Brown and Blonde mixed individuals. I even assume that it was the Proto_Indo Iranians who introduced higher frequency of light hair. Maybe Corded Ware people were also just a extension of Proto Indo Iranians.

----------


## MOESAN

Sorry
I put here an abstract I found again by hazard - its metric classical anthropology but can be useful - it concerns Bronze Age in Tarim Bassin and surroundings and Indo-European formation (perhaps) - I regreat the umprecision of terms and their "mysterious" unkown type they did not compare to anyone else what is curious - it confirms other studies concerning a Caspian or South-caspian area influences upon these regions along the southern Steppes belt, at least at some time (late bronze-Iron)-
so the autosomals ANE could have been old enough East the Caspian and more southernly and maybe not a signal of N-E Europe introgression everytime? it could have been common as a minor element among populations of North India-Pakistan or Iran, Afghanistan and so on... as well as among older steppic populations of Russia Ukraina?
or this ANE in South come from later osmosis between all tribes of this vaste area? whatever reality, the former population of tarim bassin is intriguing: Were they partly linked to the so called "Tokharians" before the Indo-Iranians reached these lands?
what types had they if not asiatic ??? I wait to assimilate other things before to give a thought on this intricated question - 
*Affiliation(s) du ou des auteurs / Author(s) Affiliation(s)*

*(1) Department of Sociology and Anthropology, California State University at Bakers field, Bakersfield, California 93311-1099, ETATS-UNIS
(2) School of Archaeology and Palaeoecology, Queen's University, Belfast, Northern Ireland BT7 1NN, ROYAUME-UNI*
*Résumé / Abstract*

*Numerous Bronze Age cemeteries in the oases surrounding the Täklamakan Desert of the Tarim Basin in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, western China, have yielded both mummified and skeletal human remains. A dearth of local antecedents, coupled with woolen textiles and the apparent Western physical appearance of the population, raised questions as to where these people came from. Two hypotheses have been offered by archaeologists to account for the origins of Bronze Age populations of the Tarim Basin. These are the steppe hypothesis and the Bactrian oasis hypothesis. Eight craniometric variables from 25 Aeneolithic and Bronze Age samples, comprising 1,353 adults from the Tarim Basin, the Russo-Kazakh steppe, southern China, Central Asia, Iran, and the Indus Valley, are compared to test which, if either, of these hypotheses are supported by the pattern of phenetic affinities possessed by Bronze Age inhabitants of the Tarim Basin. Craniometric differences between samples are compared with Mahalanobis generalized distance (d2), and patterns of phenetic affinity are assessed with two types of cluster analysis (the weighted pair average linkage method and the neighbor-joining method), multidimensional scaling, and principal coordinates analysis. Results obtained by this analysis provide little support for either the steppe hypothesis or the Bactrian oasis hypothesis. Rather, the pattern of phenetic affinities manifested by Bronze Age inhabitants of the Tarim Basin suggests the presence of a population of unknown origin within the Tarim Basin during the early Bronze Age. After 1200 B.C., this population experienced significant gene flow from highland populations of the Pamirs and Ferghana Valley. These highland populations may include those who later became known as the Saka and who may have served as middlemen facilitating contacts between East (Tarim Basin, China) and West (Bactria, Uzbekistan) along what later became known as the Great Silk Road. Am J Phy*
*Revue / Journal Title*

*American journal of physical anthropology ISSN 0002-9483* 
*Source / Source*

*2004, vol. 124, no3, pp. 199-222 [24 page(s) (article)] (3 p.3/4)*

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## MOESAN

concerning pigmentation, I foind very counterintuitive these publications about ancient people -
linking a phenotype, with gradual effects like pigmentation, to genotype is a sport!!! unprecise phenotypes assignations explained by very precise genotypings is a bit confusing for me - 
It's hard to me to imagine old "Europeans" living in cold climate for 40000 or 30000 for some of them, having a dark complexion and hairs - at least I believe it was already not a completely dark complexion - 
many factors are confusing: the today evident links between, NOT RUFOSITY, but rather between ligh pigmentation in eyes and hairs - the fact these traits are common among North/Northeastern populations the ones which show the more of "hunter-gatherer" autosomals -
I repeat the major mutation affecting skin colour among Europoids (Caucasoids) is not the only one, and it is almost independant from the eye/hair colour or poorly lonked to it -but we find other correlations: a set of traits linking LIGHTER SKIN to LIGH HAIR AND LIGHT EYES + a set of traits linking VERY LIGHTER SKIN to VERY LIGHTER HAIR AND VERY LIGHTER EYES - these 2 last "kits" of depigmentation don't seem to me linked to neolithical agriculture nor southeastern caspian populations - 
the 2 blondisms associated to 2 kinds of eyes colour and of skin colour (without speaking about vascularization, different in each case) ask for some answers - 
can we figure out a first mutation (not already identified) affecting HGs linking skin/eye/hair (very slight lightening for skin): brownish skin, middle brown hair, dark green eyes?
and a later mutation on a close segment of DNA with some effect: the 2 having a cumulative effect:
this late mutation could produce dark blond upon blackish background and light blond upon brownish background.? it only a school hypothesis but a think a cumulative effect of different mutations upon pigmentation is to imagine to explain the current situation -by the way, the more HG population in Europe are the one with NOT THE MORE OFTEN LIGHT PIGMENTATION as a whole BUT WITH THE LESS RARE VERY LIGHT PIGMENTATION (Finnland, Balts, Estonians, Czechs, Poles, Russians, Belarussians...
maybe its more complicated yet? I think some of the ligtening mutations became common in the Russian Steppes, affecting almost all the Europeans later, by Indo-European impact - the lighter hues obtained only when the HG factors were present... Just a bet - 
the principal skin mutation had already touched Neolithical people even in Near Eastern and, far more specific to skin and far more effective in decoloration, gained ground all over Europe with mixing, with possible positive effects upon vitamin D fixation??? (here I'm on a foreign ground to me)

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