# Population Genetics > Paleogenetics > Paleolithic & Mesolithic >  First modern Britons had 'dark to black' skin, Cheddar Man DNA analysis reveals

## Pax Augusta

> The genome of Cheddar Man, who lived 10,000 years ago, suggests that he had blue eyes, dark skin and dark curly hair
> 
> The first modern Britons, who lived about 10,000 years ago, had “dark to black” skin, a groundbreaking DNA analysis of Britain’s oldest complete skeleton has revealed.
> 
> The fossil, known as Cheddar Man, was unearthed more than a century ago in Gough’s Cave in Somerset. Intense speculation has built up around Cheddar Man’s origins and appearance because he lived shortly after the first settlers crossed from continental Europe to Britain at the end of the last ice age. People of white British ancestry alive today are descendants of this population.
> 
> (...)
> 
> 
> ...






Source: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/07/first-modern-britons-dark-black-skin-cheddar-man-dna-analysis-reveals

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## Pax Augusta



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## Angela

I think there's some exaggeration going on here. Black skin? 

I'd have to see all the snps, but he might have typical WHG like snps.

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## Pax Augusta

> *I think there's some exaggeration going on here*. Black skin? 
> 
> I'd have to see all the snps, but he might have typical WHG like snps.



Yes, absolutely possible. Moreover, these findings seem not based on a peer-reviewed paper but on a Channel 4 documentary.

Cheddar man may have been no different from other WHG found and analyzed.

I'm still looking for any paper out, but so far I have not found anything.

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## IronSide

> The *results pointed to a Middle Eastern origin for Cheddar Man, suggesting that his ancestors would have left Africa, moved into the Middle East and later headed west into Europe*, before eventually crossing the ancient land bridge called Doggerland which connected Britain to continental Europe. Today, about 10% of white British ancestry can be linked to this ancient population.


How did they determine that WHG came from the Middle East ? is there any evidence of that ?

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## Daniel D

Any word on the Cheddar Man's Haplogroups?

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## Salento

> Any word on the Cheddar Man's Haplogroups?


The mtDNA of Cheddar Man is U5a

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## kingjohn

> How did they determine that WHG came from the Middle East ? is there any evidence of that ?


he was probably *i-m170 ....*

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## Daniel D

> The mtDNA of Cheddar Man is U5a


I've read that there were concerns that that result was from contamination caused by a researcher. Have they re-tested and confirmed that Cheddar Man's mtDNA is U5a? And what about his yDNA?

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## Salento

> I've read that there were concerns that that result was from contamination caused by a researcher. Have they re-tested and confirmed that Cheddar Man's mtDNA is U5a? And what about his yDNA?


Got that from Eupedia:
The Cheddar Man (subclade U5a): the remains of a Mesolithic man found in Gough's Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, England. It is Britain's oldest complete human skeleton.
I don’t know about the Y.
https://www.eupedia.com/europe/Haplo...U5_mtDNA.shtml

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## bicicleur

> I think there's some exaggeration going on here. Black skin? 
> 
> I'd have to see all the snps, but he might have typical WHG like snps.


so do I
they painted him a lot darker than the La Brana WHG reconstruction
WHG did have straight hair too

and if they checked all this phenotype DNA, why didn't they check autosomal to see if he clusterd with Villabruna, and his uniparental DNA?

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## bicicleur

'The results pointed to a Middle Eastern origin for Cheddar Man, suggesting that his ancestors would have left Africa, moved into the Middle East and later headed west into Europe, before eventually crossing the ancient land bridge called Doggerland which connected Britain to continental Europe.'

I wonder how they figured this out.
The whole thing seems more a show off on TV than a scientific expedition to me.

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## Angela

Yes, this is a "re-do". They've re-sequenced everything. The paper won't be out for a while. It's Chris Stringer in the video, so I don't think this is some botched up job.

I don't think it should be a surprise that "Cheddar Man" was a WHG and, as such, would lack the derived versions of pigmentation snps which seem to lighten the skin color in modern West Eurasians, and particularly in Europeans. 

As a result, unless by some chance WHG carried some sort of convergent de-pigmentation snps so far unidentified, he would indeed have been darker than any modern West Eurasians.

Even if that's the case, though, saying he had "black" skin seems to me to be going a bit far. There was progressive de-pigmentation with the movement out of Africa. KITLG, for example, seems to have been a major factor only out of Africa. However, if it isn't reporter mis-speak, they seem to have the full genome, so I don't know what they found. Maybe he lacks any of the de-pigmentation varieties. We'll have to wait and see. 

As to coming from the "Middle East", this may be a reference to how WHG came into Europe. We'll have to see about that too, unless more happens to be released before the paper.

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## Sile

> 'The results pointed to a Middle Eastern origin for Cheddar Man, suggesting that his ancestors would have left Africa, moved into the Middle East and later headed west into Europe, before eventually crossing the ancient land bridge called Doggerland which connected Britain to continental Europe.'
> 
> I wonder how they figured this out.
> The whole thing seems more a show off on TV than a scientific expedition to me.


Is there not only 2 basic eye colours ! , african brown and caucasus blue ( everything else comes from these 2 mixing ) ...........if he has blue eyes , he ( or ancestors ) could have moved south into the middle east before heading to the british isles

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## Angela

> Yes, this is a "re-do". They've re-sequenced everything. The paper won't be out for a while. It's Chris Stringer in the video, so I don't think this is some botched up job.
> 
> I don't think it should be a surprise that "Cheddar Man" was a WHG and, as such, would lack the derived versions of pigmentation snps which seem to lighten the skin color in modern West Eurasians, and particularly in Europeans. 
> 
> As a result, unless by some chance WHG carried some sort of convergent de-pigmentation snps so far unidentified, he would indeed have been darker than any modern West Eurasians.
> 
> Even if that's the case, though, saying he had "black" skin seems to me to be going a bit far. There was progressive de-pigmentation with the movement out of Africa. KITLG, for example, seems to have been a major factor only out of Africa. However, if it isn't reporter mis-speak, they seem to have the full genome, so I don't know what they found. Maybe he lacks any of the de-pigmentation varieties. We'll have to wait and see. 
> 
> As to coming from the "Middle East", this may be a reference to how WHG came into Europe. We'll have to see about that too, unless more happens to be released before the paper.


Oh, forgot...since it's a re-do it's definitely some form of mtDna U5. I guess we're looking at "I" or "C" in terms of y-Dna.

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## AdeoF

I do see the WHG on him, but I do agree that black skin is a bit exaggerated

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## Pax Augusta

> Oh, forgot...since it's a re-do it's definitely some form of mtDna U5. I guess we're looking at "I" or "C" in terms of y-Dna.




C. G. Seligman and F. G. Parsons; _The Cheddar Man: A Skeleton of Late Palaeolithic Date_. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 
Vol. 44 (Jul. - Dec., 1914), pp. 241-263 


https://www.jstor.org/stable/2843352...n_tab_contents



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheddar_Man





E. K. 1975. _Problems of "The Cheddar Man_", _Gough's Cave_, _Somerset_. Proc. Unfa Bristol Spelaeol. Soc, 14(1), 7-23.

http://www.ubss.org.uk/resources/pro..._14_1_7-23.pdf

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## Pax Augusta

Another "Cheddar Man" reconstruction, this model was created at the University of Manchester.




> Reconstruction of the head of Cheddar Man from a complete male skeleton found in Gough’s Cave of Cheddar Gorge, Somerset and dates to about 9,000 years ago. The skeleton was discovered in 1903 and is the oldest complete human skeleton from the United Kingdom. This model was created at the University of Manchester.


source: http://www.sciencephoto.com/media/476884/view

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## davef

That one doesn't resemble the other all that much

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## Pax Augusta

In this 2011 article, BBC says that previous reconstruction was created at the National History Museum.



http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/somerset...00/9392086.stm

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## davef

I guess that would be how he'd look after adding some "cheddar" around the waistline ;)

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## Angela

> In this 2011 article, BBC says that previous reconstruction was created at the National History Museum.
> 
> 
> 
> http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/somerset...00/9392086.stm


They made them all fair skinned and often blue-eyed as well. Otzi too. They gave him blue eyes when we now know his were brown. He did have all the modern European de-pigmentation snps, so that part they inadvertently got right. Unweathered and tanned perpetually, he would have had fair skin. Face shape is wrong, though, and nose. With Otzi we can be more sure of a lot of things, because the body was so well preserved.

I think we can safely say this probably isn't what a "Sardinian like" Neolithic farmer looked like...

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## Ygorcs

I think there is a bit of wishful thinking or sensationalist claims in the way they're reporting this reconstruction and the findings of this research. The reports were telling of a "black man with curly hair", but this reconstruction to me shows no curly hair at all, but just a "dried out" long wavy hair as was expected. 

As for his skin color, as Razib Khan said in his post about this matter, we really need to make it totally clear if we do understand the architecture of skin pigmentation of these ancient populations like WHG, instead of just assuming that if they don't have the derived alleles now present to the point of fixation among Europeans then they were totally dark, the exact opposite of the pale European skin. 

I mean that because the recent study on African skin color variation clearly demonstrated that, as a polygenic trait, the skin pigmentation can also be significantly altered by other variants of genes (not to the point that the "famous" derived alleles lightened Europeans and West Asians, of course). They demonstrated clearly that there was selection for lighter or darker skin within Africa, giving a scientific explanation to what we already can see with our own eyes, which is that Khoisan Africans are evidently much lighter than Nilotic Sudanese, for example. And all that significant variation came with other genes. 

Heck, even East Asians managed to become light-skinned without those alleles that are always invariably analyzed - in some cases veeeeeery light skinned (some Northern Chinese and Koreans aren't any less pale than an average European).

If I had to guess, considering that the WHG plausibly came from the Northern Near East, which is at an even higher latitude than South African Khoisans historically lived, I'd say that they probably had adapted to the environment by lightening their skin color at least to the same ammount of pigmentation of the lighter samples of Khoisans that we can see, that is, a mid-brown, "milk chocolate" color. The WHG were probably "dark-skinned" in this way, not like the reconstruction:


IMO the WHG were certainly not as black as that reconstruction, whose black skin looks much more adapted to tropical regions, like the Melanesians and West Africans. Even in subtropical Africa you can find lighter-skinned black people than that reconstruction, especially the notorious case of the Igbo in tropical Nigeria. I really doubt the WHG would've managed to live for thousands of years around Turkey and later Europe and be darker than some tropical Africans.



_Igbo women_

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## Angela

> I think there is a bit of wishful thinking or sensationalist claims in the way they're reporting this reconstruction and the findings of this research. The reports were telling of a "black man with curly hair", but this reconstruction to me shows no curly hair at all, but just a "dried out" long wavy hair as was expected. 
> 
> As for his skin color, as Razib Khan said in his post about this matter, we really need to make it totally clear if we do understand the architecture of skin pigmentation of these ancient populations like WHG, instead of just assuming that if they don't have the derived alleles now present to the point of fixation among Europeans then they were totally dark, the exact opposite of the pale European skin. 
> 
> I mean that because the recent study on African skin color variation clearly demonstrated that, as a polygenic trait, the skin pigmentation can also be significantly altered by other variants of genes (not to the point that the "famous" derived alleles lightened Europeans and West Asians, of course). They demonstrated clearly that there was selection for lighter or darker skin within Africa, giving a scientific explanation to what we already can see with our own eyes, which is that Khoisan Africans are evidently much lighter than Nilotic Sudanese, for example. And all that significant variation came with other genes. 
> 
> Heck, even East Asians managed to become light-skinned without those alleles that are always invariably analyzed - in some cases veeeeeery light skinned (some Northern Chinese and Koreans aren't any less pale than an average European).
> 
> If I had to guess, considering that the WHG plausibly came from the Northern Near East, which is at an even higher latitude than South African Khoisans historically lived, I'd say that they probably had adapted to the environment by lightening their skin color at least to the same ammount of pigmentation of the lighter samples of Khoisans that we can see, that is, a mid-brown, "milk chocolate" color. The WHG were probably "dark-skinned" in this way, not like the reconstruction:
> ...


The Igbo woman in the center actually looks a bit like the reconstruction to me.

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## ThirdTerm

I assume that Cheddar Man was a close genetic relative of La Brana 1, a 7,000-year-old individual from the La Brana-Arintero site in Valdelugueros (Leon, Spain). Bryan Sykes' DNA analysis previously concluded that Cheddar Man had mtDNA haplogroup U5. La Brana 1 carried Y-DNA haplogroup C6-V20, a low-frequency European clade of haplogroup C found in less than 0.1% of Europeans today, and mtDNA haplogroup U5b2c1 (Olalde et al. 2014). Cheddar Man may also have carried Y-DNA haplogroup C6, which explains his darker skin pigmentation compared to modern Europeans. But given his maternal DNA ancestry typical in northern Europe, his skin color may have been light brown rather than black.








> The mean coverage obtained for the Y chromosome (1.4x) prevented us from recovering phylogenetically relevant SNPs at high coverage. However, using unfiltered data, we were able to narrow down the paternal lineage affiliation of La Braña 1 individual (Table S9). The presence of the derived allele in many different mutations defining haplogroups A1, A1b, BT, CT and CF suggests La Braña 1 sample belongs to either haplogroup C or F. When mutations defining those haplogroups were checked, only ancestral alleles were found in the haplogroup F-defining mutations, whereas four C-defining mutations (M130, M216, P255 and P260) showed only derived alleles. Thus, La Braña 1 most likely belonged to haplogroup C. 
> 
> The actual distribution of haplogroupC is thought to be a consequence of a single out of Africa migration through Southern Asia, followed by a northward migration that eventually reached Siberia and the Americas 32. The fact that we found ancestral alleles in mutations defining C1, C2, C3 and C4 (Table S9), together with their actual phylogeographic distribution restricted to Asia, Oceania and the Americas suggests that our individual does not belong to any of these branches. Rather, a new branch within haplogroup C (C6, originally named C7) has recently been identified in several men from Southern Europe, suggesting this could be an ancient European clade33. Importantly, mutation V20 showed one read with the derived allele (A), which points to C6 as the most probable sub-clade for La Braña 1 sample. It could also be possible that this G to A mutation is a result of DNA damage. Other less likely haplogroup affiliations are C* and C5 (no read covered SNP M356), both found mainly in present-day India.
> 
> Besides the V20 mutation, four other positions could have potentially been assigned wrongly due to the presence of DNA damage. However, their allele state is phylogenetically coherent with the rest of the SNPs studied. The precise affiliation of La Braña 1 in the Y-chromosome phylogeny could be better determined in the future with more data and increased genomic coverage.
> 
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4269527/

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## bicicleur

> Got that from Eupedia:
> The Cheddar Man (subclade U5a): the remains of a Mesolithic man found in Gough's Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, England. It is Britain's oldest complete human skeleton.
> I don’t know about the Y.
> https://www.eupedia.com/europe/Haplo...U5_mtDNA.shtml


the U5 mtDNA is not sure

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

England, UK	Gough's Cave, Cheddar [Cheddar Man]	M	8000 BC Unreliable; U5	16192T, 16270T, reported as U5a. Never properly published. Contamination likely. Due to be re-tested.	ISOGG; personal communication Chris Stringer re contamination

'To perform the DNA analysis, museum scientists drilled a 2mm-diameter hole into the ancient skull to obtain a few milligrams of bone powder. From this, they were able to extract a full genome, which held clues about this ancient relative’s appearance and lifestyle.'

I hope they did a better job now, and that the results will be published soon.

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## halfalp

The reconstruction looks a lot like this Neanderthal reconstruction in the face shapes. Attachment 9721

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## twójstary

That's just typical for modern PoC culture. Same with "Black Britons" of Roman Era and "Black Anglo-Saxons" that BBC was eager to show everyone.

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## Angela

Everything is not a PC conspiracy, and I say that as someone who is very anti-PC thinking generally speaking, at least in an American context. I believe in strictly going by the facts, and letting the chips fall where they may. Even if there were one, I highly doubt Chris Stringer would be part of it. 

The facts are that these WHG generally do not have the de-pigmentation snps of West Eurasians. The SHG do, and so do the few EHG samples, and so do the Early Farmers.

Now, there's an outside chance they had some convergent evolution de-pigmentation snp, but we have a lot of WHG samples now, and nothing has shown up. If and until one is discovered, they would seem to be darker than modern West Eurasians, and darker than the other ancient people listed above.

That said, I don't know why they made the bust so "black". 

This is apparently just one sample in a group that's being analyzed, and it seems as if they got a lot of dna, so maybe the paper will clarify things.

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## Joustos

Good news, even though the claims may be inaccurate. How can one tell the color of the skin from bones and DNA??? Anyway, while doing some etymological work, I saw some parallels between the language of the Britons and the language of some Osci in southern Italy, namely the Bruzi or Bruttii [Bryts] of Calabria who co-exist with the colonizing Greeks. So, I called for a continued investigation of those two peoples and their languages. Now I can only call for selective DNA studies of the Italic Bruzi (rather than southern Italians collectively). Knowing them personally, I can say that they have no shades of brown or negroid color;they are Mediterranids, grayish with wavy black hair. Like some Greek derivatives, they may have blue or green eyes from hybridation with either Longobard or Norman (Norse) people during the Middle Ages. Some living Bruzi and living Britons look alike to me.

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## Angela

Years ago, I had a conversation with Kristina, where I said I thought the WHG might have looked something like Mait Metspalu of the Estonian Research Center. That was after the Loschbour reconstruction came out.

I think it's even more true with this reconstruction. It makes sense we'd find people who still carry some of those "appearance" genes in the far northeast of Europe, since there is so much WHG there, the most in Europe. 





I can't believe people on some of these forums are trying to distance themselves from poor Cheddar Man, i.e. he's not really an ancestor of modern people of the British Isles.

Where have they been? We know that WHG people didn't look like modern Europeans. Cheddar man is just WHG, which should have been expected, and Britain has a good slice of WHG, picked up in the passage across Europe if not in a direct line from the Neolithic people who might have mated with people like Cheddar Man. 

Gosh, it used to be all the rage with certain people to want to have lots of WHG, but that all goes away when there's a lot of publicity about the fact that they were probably darker skinned than modern West Eurasians?

I guess some people don't like the irony of the fact that the ancestry which is a part of plotting "north" (and west) on PCAs is actually from quite dark-skinned people.

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## matadworf

> Years ago, I had a conversation with Kristina, where I said I thought the WHG might have looked something like Mait Metspalu of the Estonian Research Center. That was after the Loschbour reconstruction came out.
> 
> I think it's even more true with this reconstruction. It makes sense we'd find people who still carry some of those "appearance" genes in the far northeast of Europe, since there is so much WHG there, the most in Europe. 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> I can't believe people on some of these forums are trying to distance themselves from poor Cheddar Man, i.e. he's not really an ancestor of modern people of the British Isles.
> ...


I agree but isn't there speculation about the introduction of "light/fair skinned" allele into Europe? May it have been Neolithic farmers?

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## Angela

> Good news, even though the claims may be inaccurate. How can one tell the color of the skin from bones and DNA??? Anyway, while doing some etymological work, I saw some parallels between the language of the Britons and the language of some Osci in southern Italy, namely the Bruzi or Bruttii [Bryts] of Calabria who co-exist with the colonizing Greeks. So, I called for a continued investigation of those two peoples and their languages. Now I can only call for selective DNA studies of the Italic Bruzi (rather than southern Italians collectively). Knowing them personally, I can say that they have no shades of brown or negroid color;they are Mediterranids, grayish with wavy black hair. Like some Greek derivatives, they may have blue or green eyes from hybridation with either Longobard or Norman (Norse) people during the Middle Ages. Some living Bruzi and living Britons look alike to me.


What on earth are you talking about? 

Please read all the papers on this thread. Southern Italians have very little WHG. The people in Europe with the most WHG are Finns, Estonians, and other northeast Europeans. Take a look at Mait Metspalu in the thread above. Then go to the search engine and put in pigmentation and read the threads to find out how Dna influences pigmentation. What did you think influenced it if not DNA? A magic wand?

https://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...ation-Genetics

If this is not ignorance and is in effect a lame attempt at t-rolling, be aware you got a pass because I'm not sure. If it happens again, you're out of here.

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## Angela

> I agree but isn't there speculation about the introduction of "light/fair skinned" allele into Europe? May it have been Neolithic farmers?


There's still a lot to learn. We do know that the Anatolian farmers, and then the EEF, their descendants, by and large, who migrated to Europe, were virtually all derived for SLC24A5, while the WHG were ancestral. A lot of the farmers were also derived for SLC42A5, which is another of the major skin lightening snps in its derived state, while again the WHG were ancestral. The SHG who lived in Scandinavia, a mixture, perhaps, of WHG and EHG, had high proportions of the skin lightening snps, perhaps from the EHG of the eastern periphery of Europe, and blue eyes, from the WHG. The few EHG samples we have so far have the skin lightening genes but were predicted to have mostly been brown haired and brown eyed, like most of the farmers. 

We know some of this is probably tied to selection based on latitude and the availability of Vitamin D from sunshine. World wide, the further you get from the equator the less "dark" your skin, generally speaking, although there are exceptions. The thinking is that perhaps at higher latitudes selection favors lighter skin so you can get more Vitamin D. One of the latest papers shows that the SHG over time had more of the skin lightening snps than the EHG from whom they draw part of their ancestry, and they live very far north indeed, and so the researchers posit that selection was going on. 

Other researchers in the past had also posited that perhaps the Mesolithic WHG who tended to live mostly sedentary lives around bodies of water and got a lot of their calories from fish high in Vitamin D might have been less subject to pressure to "lighten up". The EHG may have had a different diet being so far from the sea. Farmers, who didn't consume very much fish at all, and mostly grains with no Vitamin D, might have been targeted strongly by selection for fair skin.

Where the derived mutations first took place, in which group, I don't know, but there was a suggestion in one of the papers that it might have been on a hunter-gatherer background. Perhaps it happened in the Middle East among the UHG in Anatolia and spread outward from there. I don't know. I don't know that it's so important. I also don't know exactly how and why the selection works for fair skin in more northern latitudes. There may be selection going on with regard to those snps which is tied to something besides pigmentation. There's still a lot to learn.

We're also pretty sure that skin pigmentation is a polygenic trait, and these two major snps don't account for all of the variation. If the Cheddar Man sample is really good, someone should run all the snps through Hirisplex, the forensic science predictor for pigmentation. Two snps aren't enough to make a determination. 

It's clear however, that selection has been going on, and that it's relatively recent as these things go. Look at this WHG. It's not all that long ago in the history of mankind. Indeed, some of the studies show that it has changed even in the last millennium.

That's certainly the case with lactase persistence or the ability to digest lactose as an adult. 

I think people just have to accept, even if it's a little disorienting at first, the fact that this image they had in their minds that we're exactly like our ancestors from ten, fifteen thousand years ago in terms of appearance and even in terms of other body functions may not be not true.

We have survived because we have adapted and adaptation means change.

Sandra Wilde et al is a good paper to read about pigmentation, because she lists a lot of the previous research and authors, and you can take it from there.

Sandra Wilde et al:

"Direct evidence for positive selection of skin, hair, and eye pigmentation in the last 5000 years."

http://www.pnas.org/content/111/13/4832

See also:
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/...ved-white-skin

Iain Mathiesen et al
"8000 years of natural selection in Europe"

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/bior...16477.full.pdf

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## MOESAN

> Yes, absolutely possible. Moreover, these findings seem not based on a peer-reviewed paper but on a Channel 4 documentary.
> 
> Cheddar man may have been no different from other WHG found and analyzed.
> 
> I'm still looking for any paper out, but so far I have not found anything.



I agree with Angela but I'll go farther: in France, newspapers and TV as a rule don't understand the matter they are talking about (in human sciences), without any specific intention for the most. In Britain and anglo-saxon world, I fear they had the habits to exaggerate, making "scoops" of every human science new, even the BBC: kind of electroshock everytime it's possible. And some scientists, as Sykes by instance, are specialists of the "scoop". Maybe I go too far, do I?
I rather think this man had a veddoid-like skin at the most and was close physically to his time HG's of West Europe. Concerning the supposed Near-Eastern origin, I'm without clue: N-E origin, yes, but when exactly?

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## MOESAN

Concerning skin pigmentation, I recall some new mutated SNP's have been discovered in SSAfrica which seem responsible for darkening of the skin, what changes the perspective; before the mainstream ones thought the basic modern human skin colour was a very blackish one, now it's no more sure. The farthest in past, the least need to have a determined colour of skin, because of the body hair (look at Champs: they had everykind of it: white with freckles or blackish, but a solid hair protection against sunbeams.

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## davef

I find it fascinating and cool that he had black skin. Im not ashamed to be related to him through my 1/4 Irish ancestry.

BTW I'm sure a lot (but not all) of those who are upset over this are upset bc they're racist and don't like black people.

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## alexfritz

the article does mention the cheddar man '_had “ancestral” versions of all these genes_' concerning pigmentation, yet since labrana and loschbour were homozygous derived at rs6119471 thus maybe also the cheddar man; other than that a typical WHG profile, old news; just last year gonzales-fortes et al published several more from iberia and danube/carpathian yet that obv did not reach the broad news; maybe the media will invite experts to explain it all as when ballynahatty/rathlin was published a few years ago;
https://www.pri.org/stories/2015-12-...ncient-ireland

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## matadworf

> There's still a lot to learn. We do know that the Anatolian farmers, and then the EEF, their descendants, by and large, who migrated to Europe, were virtually all derived for SLC24A5, while the WHG were ancestral. A lot of the farmers were also derived for SLC42A5, which is another of the major skin lightening snps in its derived state, while again the WHG were ancestral. The SHG who lived in Scandinavia, a mixture, perhaps, of WHG and EHG, had high proportions of the skin lightening snps, perhaps from the EHG of the eastern periphery of Europe, and blue eyes, from the WHG. The few EHG samples we have so far have the skin lightening genes but were predicted to have mostly been brown haired and brown eyed, like most of the farmers. 
> We know some of this is probably tied to selection based on latitude and the availability of Vitamin D from sunshine. World wide, the further you get from the equator the less "dark" your skin, generally speaking, although there are exceptions. The thinking is that perhaps at higher latitudes selection favors lighter skin so you can get more Vitamin D. One of the latest papers shows that the SHG over time had more of the skin lightening snps than the EHG from whom they draw part of their ancestry, and they live very far north indeed, and so the researchers posit that selection was going on. 
> Other researchers in the past had also posited that perhaps the Mesolithic WHG who tended to live mostly sedentary lives around bodies of water and got a lot of their calories from fish high in Vitamin D might have been less subject to pressure to "lighten up". The EHG may have had a different diet being so far from the sea. Farmers, who didn't consume very much fish at all, and mostly grains with no Vitamin D, might have been targeted strongly by selection for fair skin.
> Where the derived mutations first took place, in which group, I don't know, but there was a suggestion in one of the papers that it might have been on a hunter-gatherer background. Perhaps it happened in the Middle East among the UHG in Anatolia and spread outward from there. I don't know. I don't know that it's so important. I also don't know exactly how and why the selection works for fair skin in more northern latitudes. There may be selection going on with regard to those snps which is tied to something besides pigmentation. There's still a lot to learn.
> We're also pretty sure that skin pigmentation is a polygenic trait, and these two major snps don't account for all of the variation. If the Cheddar Man sample is really good, someone should run all the snps through Hirisplex, the forensic science predictor for pigmentation. Two snps aren't enough to make a determination. 
> It's clear however, that selection has been going on, and that it's relatively recent as these things go. Look at this WHG. It's not all that long ago in the history of mankind. Indeed, some of the studies show that it has changed even in the last millennium.
> That's certainly the case with lactase persistence or the ability to digest lactose as an adult. 
> I think people just have to accept, even if it's a little disorienting at first, the fact that this image they had in their minds that we're exactly like our ancestors from ten, fifteen thousand years ago in terms of appearance and even in terms of other body functions may not be not true.
> We have survived because we have adapted and adaptation means change.
> ...


Thanks so much Angela for your insights!

----------


## IronSide

An insightful remark from Razib Khan https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2018/...-be-published/




> East Asians, for example, lack both the derived variants of SLC24A5 and SLC45A2 common in Europeans but are often quite light-skinned. A deeper analysis of the pigmentation architecture of WHG might lead us to conclude that they were an olive or light brown-skinned people. This is my suspicion because modern Arctic peoples are neither pale white nor dark brown, but of various shades of olive.

----------


## MOESAN

Personally, I'm not upset, but doubtful concerning the reality of a total blackness of Cheddar man skin, but who knows at this stage?

Maybe I red too quickly and misundertood something, maybe it was not the same paper!
ATW the presence since maybe a long time in Africa of diverse states of genes responsible for pigmentation seems possible, and is the cause of the variability among "Blacks". Interesting is the fact that some traits unifying Africans and South-East Asians seem produced by the same genetic basis, and not by convergence, at the contrary of the similituies for pigmentation between East Asians and Europeans.
So the link; I 'll read it again, slowly.

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-...uman-skin.html

People intrested could discuss this in Anthropology -pigmentation.

----------


## MOESAN

abstract of report
Ann GIBBONS, 'Science' review journalist (so a second hand report!)
[...The team also found variants of two neighboring genes, _HERC2_ and _OCA2_, which are associated with light skin, eyes, and hair in Europeans but arose in Africa; these variants are ancient and common in the light-skinned San people. The team proposes that the variants arose in Africa as early as 1 million years ago and spread later to Europeans and Asians. “Many of the gene variants that cause light skin in Europe have origins in Africa,” Tishkoff says.

The most dramatic discovery concerned a gene known as _MFSD12_. Two mutations that decrease expression of this gene were found in high frequencies in people with the darkest skin. These variants arose about a half-million years ago, suggesting that human ancestors before that time may have had moderately dark skin, rather than the deep black hue created today by these mutations.

These same two variants are found in Melanesians, Australian Aborigines, and some Indians. These people may have inherited the variants from ancient migrants from Africa who followed a “southern route” out of East Africa, along the southern coast of India to Melanesia and Australia, Tishkoff says. That idea, however, counters three genetic studies that concluded last year that Australians, Melanesians, and Eurasians all descend from a single migration out of Africa. Alternatively, this great migration may have included people carrying variants for both light and dark skin, but the dark variants later were lost in Eurasians. ...]

----------


## halfalp

I feel even after the neolithic and indo-european expansions, if most of the european HG's were very dark skinned, that feature would still exist in today's time. It is a dominant traits and even if europe is very mixed now, there is here and there some pockets, especially in mountainous area were those features could survive. I feel that a lot of country still have some darkish features that clearly aren't sun related, like for exemple Romania ( even if it can be related with Roms ). 
Attachment 9728 Romanian young woman.

----------


## halfalp

I think at the end of the day, in this community at least, nobody is fascinating by a whatever racial agenda, like it change nothing to europe, it doesn't condemn, doesn't justify anything. I remember at the time of the La Brana reconstruction some people on the internet tried to push a libertarian agenda about it, but the argument are always a non-sens, like for exemple what would a 10'000 BC individual skin color have to do with a political acceptance ? nothing. Edit: Btw, the article is very surprising they act like this is something new, of course we all know here about the La Brana individual, they also state that this is the first and oldest individual discovered in England, i supposed, but what about the Red Lady of Paviland ( that is in Wales i know ) but they state Britons so they mean all the Great-Britain i guess... Idk they are researcher but i feel they dont really know a lot about the settlement of Europe.

----------


## bicicleur

> I think at the end of the day, in this community at least, nobody is fascinating by a whatever racial agenda, like it change nothing to europe, it doesn't condemn, doesn't justify anything. I remember at the time of the La Brana reconstruction some people on the internet tried to push a libertarian agenda about it, but the argument are always a non-sens, like for exemple what would a 10'000 BC individual skin color have to do with a political acceptance ? nothing. Edit: Btw, the article is very surprising they act like this is something new, of course we all know here about the La Brana individual, they also state that this is the first and oldest individual discovered in England, i supposed, but what about the Red Lady of Paviland ( that is in Wales i know ) but they state Britons so they mean all the Great-Britain i guess... Idk they are researcher but i feel they dont really know a lot about the settlement of Europe.


yes, it is TV
they want to make it credible and interesting and spectacular for the spectators but not necessary truthfull
their title 'first modern Britons' is already wrong

----------


## davef

> yes, it is TV
> they want to make it credible and interesting and spectacular for the spectators but not necessary truthfull
> their title 'first modern Britons' is already wrong


Yes, Mr Cheddar is not very "*modern*" ;)

----------


## holderlin

Lol

Why don't they really make this interesting and publish "First white person discovered in ancient Russia" next week.

Evil white Russian men are conspiring to undermine the democracy of the black Britons.

----------


## noman

This does not make any sense. How come Early Europeans were black, but Africans are still black? What made Europeans turn white, and stopped Africans from changing the skin color?

----------


## Angela

^^Please read post number 34 and go to the papers in the links.

----------


## Angela

Moesan mentioned a "Veddoid" look in terms of skin color. I think it may apply to features as well.



Or, how about him?


I think he's from Sri Lanka.

----------


## Sile

> This does not make any sense. How come Early Europeans were black, but Africans are still black? What made Europeans turn white, and stopped Africans from changing the skin color?


It is most likely an error ...........If he was that Black he would most likely got rickets disease in those ancient times .............he was probably a brownish colour and not sub-saharan black as drawn

----------


## Messier 67

A closer color of the Cheddar Man than black sub-saharan african photo. These Cheddar men are made of real cheese.

A visit to any county or state fair will have butter or cheddar sculptures closer to the real complexion of the man from Cheddar than photo provided in the original post.

----------


## Angela

Fascinating. He was ORANGE?  :Rolleyes: 

We've known that the WHG were probably darker than any modern West Eurasians for years. What did you people expect? 

Responses like this almost make me wish he was as black as the ace of spades. However, I'll keep it objective. If he was derived at least for KITLG he probably wasn't.

----------


## davef

> Fascinating. He was ORANGE? 
> 
> We've known that the WHG were probably darker than any modern West Eurasians for years. What did you people expect? 
> 
> Responses like this almost make me wish he was as black as the ace of spades. However, I'll keep it objective. If he was derived at least for KITLG he probably wasn't.


i think Messier_67 was being sarcastic, saying how someone called "Cheddar Man" should have cheddar colored skin.

That sculpture looks yummy btw

----------


## Angela

I know exactly what Messier is about, and if I need your assistance in moderating, I'll let you know.

----------


## Weidocu

WHGs being darker doesn't bother me, it might even explain me not being the whitest-looking white person, but the way I've seen this used so far does (i.e. a black woman on the news saying how nice it was that "black" people were in Britain before "English" were). Darker skin doesn't = black African, but that's the way it's being treated.

----------


## Angela

^^Believe me, I get it. Most people are completely ignorant when it comes to ancient dna, or modern dna, for that matter, and that includes reporters.

The researchers should try to be more clear in explaining their findings, pointing out, for example, that this is strictly about skin color, and not at all about "ethnic" identification. The WHG don't plot anywhere near Sub-Saharan Africans, and so there is no closer autosomal relationship between WHG and Africans than there is between the lighter Anatolian Neolithic people and the SSA.

----------


## bicicleur

> ^^Believe me, I get it. Most people are completely ignorant when it comes to ancient dna, or modern dna, for that matter, and that includes reporters.
> 
> The researchers should try to be more clear in explaining their findings, pointing out, for example, that this is strictly about skin color, and not at all about "ethnic" identification. The WHG don't plot anywhere near Sub-Saharan Africans, and so there is no closer autosomal relationship between WHG and Africans than there is between the lighter Anatolian Neolithic people and the SSA.


if they are unable to explain this, they'd better not made and presented the reconstruction on TV because it augments the ignorance and misunderstanding, the opposit of what a reconstruction is meant to do

but that is not the aim of the TV makers, it is to attract viewers, and the title is only about the skin colour

----------


## halfalp

> if they are unable to explain this, they'd better not made and presented the reconstruction on TV because it augments the ignorance and misunderstanding, the opposit of what a reconstruction is meant to do
> but that is not the aim of the TV makers, it is to attract viewers, and the title is only about the skin colour


If you saw the video about the presentation it was like the Top Gear of the Archaeology, pretty funny.

----------


## Ed the Red

I would like to laugh but it is representative of the times we live in today. Seems like a typical report with an ulterior motive to take the identity of Caucasians away and replace it with some pseudo scientific logic by trying to make British ancestry "black". Imagine the racist labelling that heading would get if it had the word " white" in the heading. 10,000 years ago isn't modern either, most British ancestry dates from very recent Invasions of Celtic and Germanic tribes from the Steppes. Also skin tone can change dramatically with sun exposure can you get that accurate of a skin type through bone? And if you can then aren't those the types of reports that this day and age are trying to avoid, with classification of completely different skin types! Haha I change my mind I'm laughing now, what a joke.

----------


## Messier 67

If they released the Y-DNA haplogroup we would not be having this discussion. An I black European is nearly laughable. IJK were most likely whitish before Y-DNA I entered into Europe. I doubt there would be any scholars depicting Y-DNA I as black, even 8000 BCE. Indonesians (from K2) have light colored skin and have never generationally been in Northern Latitudes. If we are talking about a C in Europe that is a completely different story. The Aborigines are C and if they depicted the specimen from Cheddar... dark, but not as dark as some Aborigines, then there would be some plausibility to it. 

And it has been said in other places they only looked at two genes for whiteness that Europeans have. Can this be verified. Do the Indonesians have these two "white genes". If not, there are other determining DNA factors to not have near black or black skin.

----------


## Ygorcs

> If they released the Y-DNA haplogroup we would not be having this discussion. An I black European is nearly laughable. IJK were most likely whitish before Y-DNA I entered into Europe. I doubt there would be any scholars depicting Y-DNA I as black, even 8000 BCE. Indonesians (from K2) have light colored skin and have never generationally been in Northern Latitudes. If we are talking about a C in Europe that is a completely different story. The Aborigines are C and if they depicted the specimen from Cheddar... dark, but not as dark as some Aborigines, then there would be some plausibility to it. 
> 
> And it has been said in other places they only looked at two genes for whiteness that Europeans have. Can this be verified. Do the Indonesians have these two "white genes". If not, there are other determining DNA factors to not have near black or black skin.


This does not make sense. Y-DNA haplogroups do not have a skin color. They're just a marker of one chromosome that has nothing to do with the pigmentation alleles that do influence the skin color of individuals. Many R1b people are so white that they can't even tan, and many other R1b people (Central Africa) are extremely dark-skinned. To talk about "IJK people" having this or that skin color is a clear misunderstanding of how genetics work, especially when you're talking about the skin color of modern people that we can see and using them as a reference to how people looked 10,000 years ago or even much earlier if you are referring to IJK people when its descendant haplogroups did not even exist (certainly more than 30,000 years ago). Such a strategy can't reach a credible conclusion.

----------


## Pax Augusta

> I think there's some exaggeration going on here. Black skin?
> 
> I'd have to see all the snps, but he might have typical WHG like snps.





> I agree with Angela but I'll go farther: in France, newspapers and TV as a rule don't understand the matter they are talking about (in human sciences), without any specific intention for the most. In Britain and anglo-saxon world, I fear they had the habits to exaggerate, making "scoops" of every human science new, even the BBC: kind of electroshock everytime it's possible. And some scientists, as Sykes by instance, are specialists of the "scoop". Maybe I go too far, do I?
> I rather think this man had a veddoid-like skin at the most and was close physically to his time HG's of West Europe. Concerning the supposed Near-Eastern origin, I'm without clue: N-E origin, yes, but when exactly?



French paleo-geneticist Céline Bon at the Musée de l'Homme in Paris in a recent interview with France's Le Figaro.



"Si ce n'est pas impossible, pour Céline Bon, paléogénéticienne au Musée de l'Homme, le nouveau buste de ce chasseur-cueilleur dévoilé la semaine dernière ressemble plus «*à une opération de communication, qu'à un travail scientifique*».

(...)

*Ces résultats ne surprennent pas forcément la communauté mais des chercheurs s'interrogent néanmoins sur la méthode utilisée. «Chris Stringer et son équipe sont des gens sérieux, mais objectivement, ça ressemble plus à une opération de communication qu'à autre chose.» Aucune publication scientifique n'est en effet associé à cette annonce fracassante. Le Musée d'Histoire Naturelle de Londres a dévoilé le nouveau buste et annoncé un documentaire diffusé sur Channel 4 (voir ci-dessous), mais aucune publication ne vient détailler les travaux effectués pour arriver à ces conclusions*."

Source: Le Figaro


Vincent Bordenave, «Cheddar Man» : l'ancêtre des Britanniques avait-il la peau noire ?; le 13/02/2018 à 20:00

http://www.lefigaro.fr/sciences/2018...peau-noire.php

----------


## Jovialis

> French paleo-geneticist Céline Bon at the Musée de l'Homme in Paris in a recent interview with France's Le Figaro.
> 
> 
> 
> "Si ce n'est pas impossible, pour Céline Bon, paléogénéticienne au Musée de l'Homme, le nouveau buste de ce chasseur-cueilleur dévoilé la semaine dernière ressemble plus «*à une opération de communication, qu'à un travail scientifique*».
> 
> (...)
> 
> *Ces résultats ne surprennent pas forcément la communauté mais des chercheurs s'interrogent néanmoins sur la méthode utilisée. «Chris Stringer et son équipe sont des gens sérieux, mais objectivement, ça ressemble plus à une opération de communication qu'à autre chose.» Aucune publication scientifique n'est en effet associé à cette annonce fracassante. Le Musée d'Histoire Naturelle de Londres a dévoilé le nouveau buste et annoncé un documentaire diffusé sur Channel 4 (voir ci-dessous), mais aucune publication ne vient détailler les travaux effectués pour arriver à ces conclusions*."
> ...


Indeed, it's not a surprise to researchers, who have known about the phenotype of WHGs for sometime now. As the quote you have posted states.

This whole media storm demonstrates how superficial reporters can be in presenting a story. Moreover, how solely relying on generic news sources, and not reading the peer-reviewed academic papers on the matter can be misleading. All of the news outlets have failed to address the nuances of genetics, and are hyper-focused on the phenotype of the WHG. Indeed WHGs had a dark skin complexion, but genetically Cheddar man is far from a sub-Saharan African. It makes me cringe to see the reactions of both news outlets behaving like trashy tabloids, and conspiracy-theorist commentators that don’t accept the fact that WHGs had a dark complexion. For the news outlets to say he was _Black-skinned_ is a loaded statement, nevertheless he was indeed dark-skinned.

----------


## Angela

Some commentary from around the web:

"Leftist will put Europeans to an unfair standard of if everyone who lived on your land in the last 40,000 years wasn't exactly like you then you have no real claim to your land. Or if some of your ancestors lived in exotic lands (Middle East) then you're not actually European."

Everyone in Europe has ancestry from the Middle East, most from very ancient times, some relatively more recently. 

I guess no one in Europe is "*actually*" European.

Unbelievable.

Ed. Sorry, the quotation mark was in the wrong place. It's now corrected.

----------


## Jovialis

> Some commentary from around the web:
> 
> "Leftist will put Europeans to an unfair standard of if everyone who lived on your land in the last 40,000 years wasn't exactly like you then you have no real claim to your land. Or if some of your ancestors lived in exotic lands (Middle East) then you're not actually European."
> 
> Everyone in Europe has ancestry from the Middle East, most from very ancient times, some relatively more recently.
> 
> I guess no one in Europe is "*actually*" European.
> 
> Unbelievable.


It's a real shame that people don't bother reading the peer-reviewed academic papers. The person that wrote that must have completely no understanding of genetics, if they think they don't have ancestors from the middle east from ancient populations. This is what happens when people mix racism, science, and fringe-political rhetoric; they have these woefully ignorant conclusions that are a projection of their own inferiority complex.

----------


## davef

There's a 45 page thread already on anthrogenica surrounding this finding, lol. Imagine the posts that make up those pages...

Yes and saying that early farmers from the Middle East aren't European would make most Europeans roughly 1/2 European. Let's throw in the Steppe people with their Caucasus hunter and gatherer background, and Europeans north to south are even less European. This is the new "logic".

----------


## Alcuin

> Everything is not a PC conspiracy, and I say that as someone who is very anti-PC thinking generally speaking..........That said, I don't know why they made the bust so "black"


In my opinion, precisely because they are influenced by their political beliefs. As you know, 'black' is not an accurate term at all, genetically-speaking, hence why Australian Aborigines are considered 'black' by many, despite being more distantly related to sub-Saharan Africans than the latter are to Europeans, Amerindians or Han Chinese.I expected Cheddar Man to be brown, perhaps akin to a darker Arab or maybe a Veddoid Indian. It should not look like a Congolose with blue contacts in.

----------


## Angela

There's some internet chat that he is yDna "C" of some sort, which wouldn't be at all surprising.

Again, I can't confirm that.

@Alcuin,
I can't imagine Chris Stringer doing anything at all underhanded. Let's wait and see the paper. Maybe this sample lacks even some of the derived snps that other WHG possessed. Or maybe their calls were faulty somehow. We just don't know yet. 

Don't go believing everything you see on internet sites. A lot of it is authored by paranoid, delusional, agenda driven idiots on the internet who often are also just liars trying to cover up their own less than estimable behavior. I saw some things posted about me today that were just ludicrous. Of course, the posters didn't have the guts to come on here and say it to my "virtual" face. :) They're better at sending scurrilous, sexist, foul, disgusting pms full of gross anatomical terms. That way no one knows what they're really like.

----------


## davef

> There's some internet chat that he is yDna "C" of some sort, which wouldn't be at all surprising.
> 
> Again, I can't confirm that.
> 
> @Alcuin,
> I can't imagine Chris Stringer doing anything at all underhanded. Let's wait and see the paper. Maybe this sample lacks even some of the derived snps that other WHG possessed. Or maybe their calls were faulty somehow. We just don't know yet. 
> 
> Don't go believing everything you see on internet sites. A lot of it is authored by paranoid, delusional, agenda driven idiots on the internet who often are also just liars trying to cover up their own less than estimable behavior. I saw some things posted about me today that were just ludicrous. Of course, the posters didn't have the guts to come on here and say it to my "virtual" face. :) They're better at sending scurrilous, sexist, foul, disgusting pms full of gross anatomical terms. That way no one knows what they're really like.


They're sore losers and nothing more; like those who want to play 52 pick up after losing a poker game

----------


## Salento

My favorite bs story is the Cheddar Man was just visiting. 
Obviously he was a Lost Tourist and somehow he end up crocking in that cave. lol

----------


## davef

> My favorite bs story is the Cheddar Man was just visiting. 
> Obviously he was a Lost Tourist and somehow he end up crocking in that cave. lol


A LOST TOURIST?? A TOURIST during the STONE AGE?? When people moved around and there was no concept of country, nation etc and had no idea where they were going or where they were geographically and maps weren't invented until thousands of years later?? Lol

Cheddar man gets a brochure rock saying "Visit the Mavelous British Isles" translated from animal shape carvings lol

----------


## Angela

I honest to God don't get this. Didn't they hear about Loschbour and all the other WHG probably being darker than the incoming Anatolian farmers?

Anyone following population genetics even in a cursory fashion would have heard about it.



Is it because he wasn't portrayed as being quite as dark? Do a few shades make so much difference as to get hysterical about it?



This has turned out to be such a depressing thread, depressing and sad. I'll never understand people like this if I live to be a hundred. I remember people on all the sites, this one, dna-forums, then anthrogenica, even the ones populated by out and out racists all fighting over how much WHG they had, and that WHG ancestry made you indigenous, and "actually", "really", European. 

The Spanish Stormfront members who used to post here were celebrating that they had more WHG than other Southern Europeans, and that's why they plotted so far "north" in Europe.

Now, all of a sudden, he's toast. They only want to be descended from the SHG or the EHG. Well, I have news for them, those hunter-gatherers were part WHG, so there's no getting away from that ancestry, and the other part, well, calling it "European" is a bit of a stretch even geographically. It was also in the MN farmer populations. People, you're stuck with him and his genes, even if he turns out to have been quite dark.

----------


## berun

Till not so many years I heard that white skin was developed by Euro HG to allow Sun transform certain molecules into vitamins, I'm just amazed by the failure of such logics, but not so much amazed as white supremacists seeing that their blue eyes are from dark HG, their white skin from Anatolians, and their weaving blondish hair from Siberian HG... lol

----------


## davef

Sorry Angela, but as far as this thread is concerned...I ENJOY EVERY MINUTE!!! After all the horrendous posts from these nordicist scumbags attacking my ancestry it's karma time for these pigs!! I would readily pay to watch a clip of these low lifes turning pale in response to this as if they're children looking down in horror at an F grade marked on their report cards! I swear I would almost die laughing! Revenge is fun!

Yes it is depressing in some ways, but the cackling hyena that I am, there's so much I can mock and poke fun at in this world and seeing the mindless reactions of these idiots in a panicked frenzy is a great example!

----------


## Jovialis

> Sorry Angela, but as far as this thread is concerned...I ENJOY EVERY MINUTE!!! After all the horrendous posts from these nordicist scumbags attacking my ancestry it's karma time for these pigs!! I would readily pay to watch a clip of these low lifes turning pale in response to this as if they're children looking down in horror at an F grade marked on their report cards! I swear I would almost die laughing! Revenge is fun!
> 
> Yes it is depressing in some ways, but the cackling hyena that I am, there's so much I can mock and poke fun at in this world and seeing the mindless reactions of these idiots in a panicked frenzy is a great example!


You've received an infraction, don't use inappropriate language! Also, I already warned you about galvanizing conflict. Cheddar man had dark skin, WHO CARES?! Do you consider dark-skin to be something people should be ashamed of? WHG ancestry is not something to use against people. Provocations like that only serve to thrust people into hateful resentment. You're acting no better than those nordicists you dislike; shaming others for their ancestry.

EDIT:

I am also opposed to noridicism, and racial supremacy of any kind, from any group. But vulgarity will not be used in this forum. This is an academic setting, it isn't the street or a flop-house.

----------


## Alcuin

> I can't imagine Chris Stringer doing anything at all underhanded. Let's wait and see the paper. Maybe this sample lacks even some of the derived snps that other WHG possessed. Or maybe their calls were faulty somehow. We just don't know yet. 
> 
> Don't go believing everything you see on internet sites. A lot of it is authored by paranoid, delusional, agenda driven idiots on the internet who often are also just liars trying to cover up their own less than estimable behavior. I saw some things posted about me today that were just ludicrous. Of course, the posters didn't have the guts to come on here and say it to my "virtual" face. :) They're better at sending scurrilous, sexist, foul, disgusting pms full of gross anatomical terms. That way no one knows what they're really like.


Chris Stringer is the man who first piqued my interest in prehistoric Britain and its ancient inhabitants, so I have nothing but respect for him

I don't want to accuse anyone involved in the reconstruction of being deliberately deceitful, nor political. The media who have the responsibility of conveying this story to the public are a different story, and it wouldn't be unfair to say that here in Britain they've spun this story into something it isn't. I'm thinking mainly of their interviews on the streets with people of recent African and Asian origin, asking how it affects their notions of their own Britishness, rather than simply explaining how people like Cheddar Man melded with later arrivals in the Neolithic and Metal Ages and how those groups become the 'White British'

It's sad that people are shunning WHG because of this one reconstruction, making statements such as "well, we only draw 10% of our genetic make-up from people like Cheddar Man", as if to say they're glad they're only 1/10th WHG now they're aware they weren't as fair as we are today in England.

I personally consider it a wonderful thing to know at least some of my ancestors have been here, continuously, for over 10,000 years.

----------


## O Neill

https://www.theguardian.com/science/...s-cheddar-cave

Reading through this i find the science laughable. To me those cut marks look as though the bones were used as tools or maybe tied up and displayed, like the head on stake guys in sweden ?
The cut marks look nothing like bones that had been stripped for consumption and these guys would have been highly skilled at butchery and would have left no trace what so ever.
To read that they killed and ate him for an offer to a god and they must have boiled him because theres no evidence of fire. I mean come on lol.
Do they have Enid blyton on there payroll.

----------


## bicicleur

> There's some internet chat that he is yDna "C" of some sort, which wouldn't be at all surprising.
> 
> Again, I can't confirm that.
> 
> @Alcuin,
> I can't imagine Chris Stringer doing anything at all underhanded. Let's wait and see the paper. Maybe this sample lacks even some of the derived snps that other WHG possessed. Or maybe their calls were faulty somehow. We just don't know yet. 
> 
> Don't go believing everything you see on internet sites. A lot of it is authored by paranoid, delusional, agenda driven idiots on the internet who often are also just liars trying to cover up their own less than estimable behavior. I saw some things posted about me today that were just ludicrous. Of course, the posters didn't have the guts to come on here and say it to my "virtual" face. :) They're better at sending scurrilous, sexist, foul, disgusting pms full of gross anatomical terms. That way no one knows what they're really like.


if it were not for Chris Stringer, I'd say this whole presentation is made by a bunch of sensationalist TV makers
it is certainly made in such style, and it worked, they get a lot of attention
let's await the scientific paper to see if this very dark, almost black skin is realistic and how they come to their claim that these people came from Africa via the Middle East
any idea when this paper will be published?

----------


## davef

Not arguing against the infraction (yes i understand I was acting out and I deserve it) but no, I don't see dark skin as something to be ashamed of (I found it cool he had dark skin in an earlier post in this thread). I was laughing at their reactions after realizing that their ancestors were darker than they wanted them to be and felt that their sense of shame was justified punishment. 

And I have WHG ancestry myself which I'm totally cool with, whether they resembled Nigerians or pale as ghosts. 

I do apologize for galvanizing conflict, I'll be more careful next time.

Yes I did stir up conflict regardless of where I was going with that last post and I'll accept punishment, but I'll be happy if everyone is now convinced that I wasn't shaming anyone of having ancestry I have myself in that post, though I can see how it can be interpreted that way.

----------


## Salento

When the occasion arise it feels really good to "Stick it to the Man". 
Some people deserve to be humiliated.
Most Academics think of themselves as always been more civil than the “People”, and we should take the High Road, and take the abuse.
We must respond to the “Wrong”.
Let the chips fall where they may!

----------


## Angela

Unbelievable there's been such outrage that scientists have been forced to release a FACTS page ahead of the airing of the show, and way in advance of any paper that will ultimately be published.

See:
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/our...r-man-faq.html

"We were able to extract enough information from Cheddar Man’s DNA to run it through a forensic tool that predicts differences in the level of skin pigmentation in modern world populations3. The results indicated that Cheddar Man’s skin pigmentation was most likely in one of the two most highly-pigmented of five categories ('dark' or 'dark to black'), and definitely not in the lightest categories."

"*Is Cheddar Man actually an escaped slave or a tourist from Africa?*No! The bones of Cheddar Man have been radiocarbon dated twice, and on both occasions the results indicate that he died around 10,000 years ago7."

Un-freaking believable.

Yes, we can get dna, no, this pigmentation is not unusual for a WHG, and yes, you have WHG in you, even if not directly from "Cheddar Man". As we already said, "Therefore the majority of western European Mesolithic hunter-gatherers ancestry that we see in modern British people probably originates from populations who lived all over Europe during the Mesolithic, which was carried into Britain by these later migrations.."

They even posted a link to the raw pigmentation data. Now some obsessed racist will run it through some other forensic test and announce that Cheddar Man's skin color was dark intermediate instead of very dark, which will enable him to finally sleep, given that he's spent years boasting about how much WHG his people have...

Can't make it up folks.

----------


## Angela

> Unbelievable there's been such outrage that scientists have been forced to release a FACTS page ahead of the airing of the show, and way in advance of any paper that will ultimately be published.
> 
> See:
> http://www.nhm.ac.uk/our-science/our...r-man-faq.html
> 
> "We were able to extract enough information from Cheddar Man’s DNA to run it through a forensic tool that predicts differences in the level of skin pigmentation in modern world populations3. The results indicated that Cheddar Man’s skin pigmentation was most likely in one of the two most highly-pigmented of five categories ('dark' or 'dark to black'), and definitely not in the lightest categories."
> 
> "*Is Cheddar Man actually an escaped slave or a tourist from Africa?*
> 
> ...


Can I call it or can I call it? :)

Despite not having access to the latest 36 snp algorithm used to make the prediction, it must be wrong. It's not a good test. I like my three years older algorithm better. Could it be because in that one my ancestors come out light brown to medium brown instead of dark brown?

There's no conspiracy here, folks. They used the latest forensic algorithm, with the most number of snps I've ever seen. It predicts dark brown skin. 

Whatever use has been made of their work, the researchers didn't do anything wrong here.

It's time to think of more important things, imo.

----------


## Promenade

Did anyone really think he would not have dark skin? When was La Brana released, 2013? WHG pigmentation has been known for a long time now.

----------


## Salento

We should assume that the Algorithms use on Cheddar Man is correct.
But sometimes Algorithms can be wrong: The Eyes Predictions on Gedmatch has my eyes Blue/Grayish, but my eyes are Brown. (Maybe because my mother has Green Eyes).

----------


## holderlin

OK this is me just bullshitting.

We've all known for awhile that WHG was genetically determined to be dark skinned with blue eyes. This recent article was just a sensationalized PC industrial complexed, dumbed down, misleading reminder as many on here obviously realize. I think even when we read the papers and discussed them on here the first time most of us found it hard to believe that WHG in paleolithic Europe would look like a Tamil. Given Europeans today it seemed like such an extreme shift, but it seems to be the case, and this should actually fascinate people. As far as we now know the sort of light features that we see in modern Europeans didn't appear until at the latest (earliest evidence) 7000 BP in NE Europe/steppe (Samara HG being the first light hair/white skin combination found), so WHG and older paleo euros being very dark shouldn't be a shock. 

Y DNA C lines appear to be among the earliest Non-basal Eurasian lines to spread into Eurasia. We see them in paleoeuropeans and surviving in large percentages among present day Australoids/South Asians and Siberians/East Asians. 

Kostenki comes to mind. Many said that his Skull resembled Ancestral south Indian/Australoids more than anything and he was also determined to be very dark with Y HG C. So keeping with these findings I think it's reasonable to imagine that WHG looked the most like ASI/Australoids with blue eyes. I'm also pretty sure that Australoids have slippery depigmentation phenotypes pop up from time to time.

----------


## Ygorcs

> Not arguing against the infraction (yes i understand I was acting out and I deserve it) but no, I don't see dark skin as something to be ashamed of (I found it cool he had dark skin in an earlier post in this thread). I was laughing at their reactions after realizing that their ancestors were darker than they wanted them to be and felt that their sense of shame was justified punishment. 
> 
> And I have WHG ancestry myself which I'm totally cool with, whether they resembled Nigerians or pale as ghosts. 
> 
> I do apologize for galvanizing conflict, I'll be more careful next time.
> 
> Yes I did stir up conflict regardless of where I was going with that last post and I'll accept punishment, but I'll be happy if everyone is now convinced that I wasn't shaming anyone of having ancestry I have myself in that post, though I can see how it can be interpreted that way.


I definitely understood what you were saying, there was nothing even remotely racist in your posts, and if it is somehow wrong or inappropriate to laughi at Nordicists having to grudgingly reconcile themselves and their outdated and fanciful pseudo-science with modern real science... well, then I'm in a big trouble now. LOL

----------


## halfalp

The color of the skin of paleolithic europeans should be completely irrelevent in modern political discussions. In who's mind saying Late Paleololithic European Sapiens were Black, legitimize modern african immigration into Europe ? Also, in who's mind, being conservative or in the political right, means being a Pure Race or a Master Race ? Sometimes, i dont understand how some people think, this is so much against common sens, and filled with emotions of guilty. I was thinking for a time, that it was just the far-left Antifascists than was making rambling for nothing, but i also notice some far right guys or conservative, thinking some bullshit things about history and feel if those guys were aware of the truth, they would change their mind by guilty, and it's sad, it's sad how people cant just put their emotions away in serious topics like mass immigration and multiculturalism being a complete destruction.

----------


## davef

> I definitely understood what you were saying, there was nothing even remotely racist in your posts, and if it is somehow wrong or inappropriate to laughi at Nordicists having to grudgingly reconcile themselves and their outdated and fanciful pseudo-science with modern real science... well, then I'm in a big trouble now. LOL


Just to make everything clear, the issue wasn't about poking fun at nordicists, it was how I did it. I was using sloppy words which aren't allowed in a thread like this. Whether I was poking fun at neo nazis or a group of charitable nuns, the outcome would've been the same.

----------


## Salento

> Just to make everything clear, the issue wasn't about poking fun at nordicists, it was how I did it. I was using sloppy words which aren't allowed in a thread like this. Whether I was poking fun at neo nazis or a group of charitable nuns, the outcome would've been the same.


You said what so many of us Thinks, but don’t say it. We Filter the Thought. It was Refreshing if you ask Me.

----------


## FIREYWOTAN

The facts still remind us that there's more than one truth to what came before. The fact that we may be exaggerating is testament to how supremacy"s black, white, or yellow is still alive and well and this wasn't there first encounter. The funny part is that someone's sitting in their ivory tower preaching against what the new truths challenge. Thanks for sharing hopefully it adds to a more positive reflection in everyone's mirrors.

----------


## Ed the Red

> Sorry Angela, but as far as this thread is concerned...I ENJOY EVERY MINUTE!!! After all the horrendous posts from these nordicist scumbags attacking my ancestry it's karma time for these pigs!! I would readily pay to watch a clip of these low lifes turning pale in response to this as if they're children looking down in horror at an F grade marked on their report cards! I swear I would almost die laughing! Revenge is fun!
> 
> Yes it is depressing in some ways, but the cackling hyena that I am, there's so much I can mock and poke fun at in this world and seeing the mindless reactions of these idiots in a panicked frenzy is a great example!


That statement speaks for itself, I don't even have to reply. But I will say as a "Nordic" which is just the French word for North, why would you automatically relate it to neo-nazi? I will freely use that word as it has no original connotation to "neo-nazism" and I will freely call myself "Nordic"

----------


## Salento

> That statement speaks for itself, I don't even have to reply. But I will say as a "Nordic" which is just the French word for North, why would you automatically relate it to neo-nazi? I will freely use that word as it has no original connotation to "neo-nazism" and I will freely call myself "Nordic"


Neo-Nazis and others, somehow have appropriated the word Nordic for themselves.
So there you go.

----------


## davef

> That statement speaks for itself, I don't even have to reply. But I will say as a "Nordic" which is just the French word for North, why would you automatically relate it to neo-nazi? I will freely use that word as it has no original connotation to "neo-nazism" and I will freely call myself "Nordic"


No worries, that post wasn't an attack on any ethnic group whatsoever as i respect every ethnicity. I was talking about "nordicists" (not Nordics) aka people who find other ethnic backgrounds and races inferior to Northern Europeans. 

I respect every ethnicity, including those that fall under the Nordic category.

----------


## Salento

> No worries, that post wasn't an attack on any ethnic group whatsoever as i respect every ethnicity. I was talking about "nordicists" (not Nordics) aka people who find other ethnic backgrounds and races inferior to Northern Europeans. 
> 
> I respect every ethnicity, including those that fall under the Nordic category.


Stop Apologizing. I assure you that the majority “Think” exactly what you said. We just Don’t say it, because of the Rules.

----------


## bicicleur

> Stop Apologizing. I assure you that the majority “Think” exactly what you said. We just Don’t say it, because of the Rules.


what is it that you don't dare to say?
anything can be said here, as long as it is something meaningfull and it is said in a polite and respectful way

----------


## Angela

You don't need to use foul language to express yourself. It's particularly inappropriate in a setting like this. 

It's also inappropriate to be challenging moderation in this way. The rules are the rules. If people don't want to abide by them, if they feel they are stifling their "real" selves, perhaps they should consider expressing their "real" selves elsewhere, with people with the same kind of standards, or lack of them, perhaps. 

Now I think we've had enough of milking the sympathy.

Please get back on topic.

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## Salento

> what is it that you don't dare to say?
> anything can be said here, as long as it is something meaningfull and it is said in a polite and respectful way


Do you speak the words exactly as you Think them?
Do any of You do That?
Do You Filter your sentence as you wright or speak?
The Answers are Obvious.
Dare this, and dare that.
Should I dare you to tell me exactly what you think about me right now? No Filter.
And by the way I broke no rules.
I agreed with a member Post. That’s it.

----------


## Jovialis

> Do you speak the words exactly as you Think them?
> Do any of You do That?
> Do You Filter your sentence as you wright or speak?
> The Answers are Obvious.
> Dare this, and dare that.
> Should I dare you to tell me exactly what you think about me right now? No Filter.
> And by the way I broke no rules.
> I agreed with a member Post. That’s it.


It would be considered breaking the rules if you continue to go off topic. Now, let's get back to discussing Cheddar man.

----------


## holderlin

A fairly tame discussion on the development of light features in NE Europe can be found in this thread about some Baltic and Ukrainian samples. Among these samples (and Samara HG) we're probably seeing the very first individuals with depigmented traits approaching what we see in Europe today, which seem to have been spread through Corded Ware->LMBA Steppe and Bell Beaker. 

https://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...-Early-Europea

I'm sure most of you recall this thread. 

Won't derail with IE comments but I'm tempted.

----------


## A. Papadimitriou

> That statement speaks for itself, I don't even have to reply. But I will say as a "Nordic" which is just the French word for North, why would you automatically relate it to neo-nazi? I will freely use that word as it has no original connotation to "neo-nazism" and I will freely call myself "Nordic"


The people who say the belong to a 'Nordic *race*' are more likely to believe in racial hierarchy and racial supremacist pseudo-scientific theories. 

The word 'northern' is less loaded.

----------


## Ygorcs

> That statement speaks for itself, I don't even have to reply. But I will say as a "Nordic" which is just the French word for North, why would you automatically relate it to neo-nazi? I will freely use that word as it has no original connotation to "neo-nazism" and I will freely call myself "Nordic"


Well, there is a very clear suffix distinguishing Nordic from Nordicist. A Nordicist, much like an Afrocentrist, belongs to a particular ideology that strives to demonstrate the superiority of Nordic people and has a view of history and genetics mostly as centered around the Nordic peoples (most often without any reliable scientific evidence). So, unless you identify with that, you probably shouldn't feel harmed by people making fun of Nordicists.

----------


## Jovialis

> It would be considered breaking the rules if you continue to go off topic. Now, let's get back to discussing Cheddar man.


The very next person to derail this thread with a post relating to davef's comment is getting a 4 point infraction for not respecting a moderator's warning.

Get back to cheddar man.

----------


## Jovialis

> Well, there is a very clear suffix distinguishing Nordic from Nordicist. A Nordicist, much like an Afrocentrist, belongs to a particular ideology that strives to demonstrate the superiority of Nordic people and has a view of history and genetics mostly as centered around the Nordic peoples (most often without any reliable scientific evidence). So, unless you identify with that, you probably shouldn't feel harmed by people making fun of Nordicists.


Correct.

Also, you can make fun of nordicism, and racism, just as long as it is not done in a vulgar manner.

However, it will no longer be discussed here. Again, let's please get back to cheddar man.

----------


## Carlos

I think it's a joke, a circus. I think this has been done by the English prince's girlfriend, the second of Lady Di's children, this one is like a redhead who has taken a girlfriend who looks African-American, I think the shots go around, what I would think even worse because giving an identity or false characteristics to anyone even a body of the Neolithic would seem to me cultural fascism, and that is what is currently happening in Europe, it seems that we have to understand everything and accept everything is going to produce the opposite effect, finally going against ourselves while at the same time claiming to be the most understanding and tolerant in the world. A tremendous mental cocoa of concepts that will finally end Europe for that reason I believe that if that reconstruction is false it is a serious crime against the truth and against our ancestors, if the reconstruction is true they have to prove it and then it will be accepted. The big problem is the lie, not the skin color, if not the lie, it would be intolerable.

----------


## Ed the Red

Honestly though I would say from dark skin to black is a big jump seriously. I'm a pale white European and if I was to hear dark skin I would say southern Europeans have dark skin, especially most of their ability to tan. I obviously wouldn't call them black. Do you understand the interpretation that I'm sure many of us are experiencing.

----------


## FIREYWOTAN

Thanks for your series of remarks and the potential for a dialogue long overdue.
Why is so much of life all or nothing? What had started as a contradiction adds a further truth. The flood tide of new ideas is one of the reasons that having this conversation or any at this level of cognition is more frightening than it's been in a long, long, time. I'm thankful to be here this morning and to be allowed a chance to listen and at the right moment attempt to share an idea.

----------


## Carlos

[QUOTE = Ed the Red; 532839] Honestamente, yo diría que de piel oscura a negra es un gran salto en serio. Soy un europeo blanco pálido y, si tuviera que oír la piel oscura, diría que los europeos del sur tienen la piel oscura, especialmente la mayor parte de su capacidad para broncearse. Obviamente no los llamaría negros. ¿Entiende la interpretación que estoy seguro que muchos de nosotros estamos experimentando? [/ QUOTE]


​Southern Europeans have the ability to tan after a lot of sacrifice and indiscriminately sunbathe, especially when the fashion of tanning emerges as a sign of being a healthy person, athlete or living a life of leisure and entertainment abroad enjoying every moment abroad. It is not overnight, it is years of effort to peel in the sun, not to use sunscreen with protection, and finally after just touching the sun you are already tanned. In the 70s and 80s, many construction workers saw their faces and arms with the marked brown shirt, now they have not seen each other again because in their spare time they were already going to the beach to sunbathe. integral way On the other hand in the southern countries you can see the skin too pale as a sign of the opposite that represents the brown skin bone of the Nordic skin is seen as a sign of disease, weakness, boredom, lack of life abroad. There are Moroccans in Spain who are whiter than the Spaniards, they go to the beach at night.

----------


## Angela

This is supposed to be at least vaguely about science. Scientists use agreed upon scales of pigmentation. In this particular case the researchers specifically stated that the probability was that his pigmentation was within the last two categories.

----------


## MOESAN

(polite) debate to be send to 'pigmentation' in 'anthropo'!
new skin lightening mutations could be discovered, which did not affect the most of modern 'europoids' or 'east-asians' (the reasons they could not have been discovered for statistical and lack ancient skins reasons) - that said, if the case, they would not strengthen the psychologic links between "modern whites" and "ancient white or not-black WHG's" because the mutations would not be the same ones for a lot of us! but it is still an hypothesis.
&: 'nordic' is not quite 'northern' but none of both words, like other specific words, deserves affective or political prejudices, open or concealed. It's boring.

----------


## Salento

I wonder what “Cheddy” would think about all the Controversy about his Appearances.
He would probably say: “ and, Who’s the Caveman again ? “

----------


## Angela

Since people in other forums can't seem to get it right: this is NOT based on an algorithm which uses eight snps. It uses THIRTY-SIX snps. Could we get the facts straight before we discuss interpretation and outside probabilities? Also, sorry to disabuse, but it's not based on an "American" view of skin pigementation. The testing was based on this paper:

See: Susan Walsh et al
"Global Skin Color Prediction From DNA"

https://link.springer.com/article/10...439-017-1808-5


"Here,* we investigate the skin colour predictive value of 77 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) from 37 genetic loci previously associated with human pigmentation using 2025 individuals from 31 global populations.* We identified a* minimal set of 36* highly informative skin colour predictive SNPs and developed a statistical prediction model capable of skin colour prediction on a global scale. *Average* cross-validated* prediction accuracies* expressed as area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve (AUC) ± standard deviation were 0.97 ± 0.02 for Light, 0.83 ± 0.11 for Dark, and *0.96 ± 0.03 for Dark-Black*. When using a* 5-category*, this resulted in 0.74 ± 0.05 for Very Pale, 0.72 ± 0.03 for Pale, 0.73 ± 0.03 for Intermediate, 0.87±0.1 for Dark, and* 0.97 ± 0.03 for Dark-Black.* "

Also, for the hundredth time, the possession of a single derived snp for, say, red hair is IRRELEVANT. The science is clear: these derived snps work TOGETHER. They affect different parts of the chain. You need a combination of them for a trait to be expressed.

----------


## bicicleur

> This is supposed to be at least vaguely about science. Scientists use agreed upon scales of pigmentation. In this particular case the researchers specifically stated that the probability was that his pigmentation was within the last two categories.


and so there would be a correlation between these categories and certain genes

oddly enough, 1 & 2 are depicted with blue eyes, while 3-6 are depicted wiht ever darker eyes

----------


## AdeoF

> I wonder what “Cheddy” would think about all the Controversy about his Appearances.
> He would probably say: “ and, Who’s the Caveman again ? “


He would think like. "Why are these people making a big fuss about my skin colour, I look the same just like everyone else"

----------


## FIREYWOTAN

FIFTY SHADES OF BLACK or is it FIFTY SHADES OF GRAY? 

*Global skin colour prediction from DNA*

AuthorsAuthors and affiliations

Susan WalshEmail authorLakshmi ChaitanyaKrystal BreslinCharanya MuralidharanAgnieszka BronikowskaEwelina PospiechJulia KollerLeda KovatsiAndreas WollsteinWojciech BranickiFan LiuManfred KayserEmail author



Predicting phenotypes from genotypes is a component of complex genetics that has etched its way into many disciplines including personalized medicine, forensic genetics, anthropological genetics, and consumer genetics, depending on the particular phenotype that is predicted from DNA information. The ability to predict human phenotypes with genetic markers has been of continual interest and significant progress has been made, not only in these applied disciplines, but also to more fundamental genetics researchers as it paves the way to find out why certain DNA markers are found to be associated with certain phenotypic traits.
Thinking about the explosive conversations that still exist within all of us it's a bit confusing.

----------


## Angela

> and so there would be a correlation between these categories and certain genes
> 
> oddly enough, 1 & 2 are depicted with blue eyes, while 3-6 are depicted wiht ever darker eyes


That color chart is just one of those that are used normally in forensics. It's based on probabilities. Most "very fair" skinned people in modern populations are blue eyed. However, not all. I'm in category one and have brown eyes. It's not common, but it happens.



If you go to the text of the paper and scroll down you'll see the color chart the authors of that paper were using. The actual test based on that probably has a shortened chart. Regardless, the strong probability based on 36 snps was dark brown-black. Based on current knowledge of pigmentation that's as much as they can say. 

It would be interesting to see the prediction for samples like Loschbour, LaBrana, Bichon, Villabruna, etc., to see if there was some variation among the WHG. This test wasn't available when those studies and predictions were published.

----------


## TopLobster

screenshot of email of skin pigmentation results
edit: from documentary

Screenshot (33).jpg

Screenshot (35).jpg

To: Yoan Diekmann
Cc: Thomas, Mark
Ok Yoan,
Sorry for the delay on this.
I have done the below individual (in this email) as their coverage was much better. I only had 3 snps ... [text cut off screen] ... heterozygote at the sites did not alter the prediction below significantly. It was still around the ... [text cut off screen] ... Second issue was assuming 0 for two sites that you were missing rs12896399 (genotype GG) and ... [text cut off screen] ...

SKIN
Prob

Very Pale
0.000

Pale
0.000

Int.
0.035

Dark
0.199

Dark-Black
0.766



Adjusting for the extremes, if rs12896399 had one or two T alleles present, this raised dark to ... [text cut off screen] ...
Also, adjusting for the BNC2 rs10756819, which also wasn't available, if it had the G allele present ... [text cut off screen] ...

So all in all, it is a dark to black skin colour individual. Interestingly with intermediate eye colour ... [text cut off screen] ... can't say for sure. Though certainly I would doubt he was dark brown.

As for hair, I'm missing too many MC1R mutations that impact red, and therefore more brown ... [text cut off screen] ... would be a dark brown to black haired individual, certainly not the true black of an Asian ... [text cut off screen] ...

I've attached a little image that reflects the range of these values (.7-.8), I didn't go to 0.9 ... [text cut off screen] ... can give really.

As for the lesser coverage individual, missing 10 varients make this too difficult to call, ... [text cut off screen] ... would be the same as the above individual at all.

... [text cut off screen]


Tom Booth - surrogate analysis.png

----------


## Angela

^^If those are hacked, remove them right away.

----------


## TopLobster

> ^^If those are hacked, remove them right away.


They are shown on the documentary.

----------


## Ygorcs

> I think it's a joke, a circus. I think this has been done by the English prince's girlfriend, the second of Lady Di's children, this one is like a redhead who has taken a girlfriend who looks African-American, I think the shots go around, what I would think even worse because giving an identity or false characteristics to anyone even a body of the Neolithic would seem to me cultural fascism, and that is what is currently happening in Europe, it seems that we have to understand everything and accept everything is going to produce the opposite effect, finally going against ourselves while at the same time claiming to be the most understanding and tolerant in the world. A tremendous mental cocoa of concepts that will finally end Europe for that reason I believe that if that reconstruction is false it is a serious crime against the truth and against our ancestors, if the reconstruction is true they have to prove it and then it will be accepted. The big problem is the lie, not the skin color, if not the lie, it would be intolerable.


How at all can you say that the reconstruction is a sign of cultural fascism, a joke, a circus, and so on, if you immediately afterwards say that you don't know if the reconstruction is a lie or not? They have made serious research on the ancient remains, analyzed the DNA, and have already announed that they are going to publish a study about their analyses. On the other hand, what do those who cry "joke, circus, lie!" have to say? Their own opinion, nothing else?

----------


## Angela

> They are shown on the documentary.


OK, I see that now. Sorry for the suspicion. A lot of questionable stuff is put on the internet. 

It's good to have the actual color chart as well. 

I was skeptical he was quite this dark, but as I said, given the information we have now, and the latest test running 36 snps, he was dark brown to black.

----------


## Ygorcs

> So all in all, it is a dark to black skin colour individual. Interestingly with intermediate eye colour ... [text cut off screen] ... can't say for sure. Though certainly I would doubt he was dark brown.
> 
> As for hair, I'm missing too many MC1R mutations that impact red, and therefore more brown ... [text cut off screen] ... would be a dark brown to black haired individual, certainly not the true black of an Asian ... [text cut off screen] ...
> 
> I've attached a little image that reflects the range of these values (.7-.8), I didn't go to 0.9 ... [text cut off screen] ... can give really.
> 
> As for the lesser coverage individual, missing 10 varients make this too difficult to call, ... [text cut off screen] ... would be the same as the above individual at all.
> 
> ... [text cut off screen]
> ...


Objectively, what do they mean by "dark-black" in comparison to simply "dark"? I'd like to know what degree of pigmentation is assigned to those categories. Would a typical Khoisan (which is my personal "intuitive" stance about the real skin color of the WHG) be "dark-black" or just "dark" according to their analyses? I'm supposing that, since the category implies a wide range of phenotypes from dark to really very dark (black), then there is still a discussion on whether Cheddar Man was as dark, almost Australian Melanesian-like, as the reconstruction they did, or more dark "chocolate" like many dark-skinned Africans such as the Igbo, Eritreans or Khoi-Sans.

----------


## Angela

Sorry to interject, but from the color chart shown in the documentary, I think the Khoisan would be "dark", not "dark-black".

[IMG][/IMG]

----------


## O Neill

On the show they spoke about the 5000 years older remains that they found and that they tested those and they didnt match chedder mans.
They said they all must have turned around and left. lol That was it. They made a massive point about the first britain being black and seemed
to forget the fact that there might be others around. After all he did have a tennis ball sized hole in his head and i doubt it was done by his mates.

I was wanting to hear there story of why man was at chedder gorge in the first place and they didnt disappoint, it started with the old herding animals into a gully to trap them, onto the rich and teaming surroundings and finished up with the old ritual chestnut lol. what nonsense.
Why make a silly story when they havent got a clue ?
Not one mention of mining or do they think the gods gave them there weapons after the ritual ?

I would be interested to see were native americans fall on the 5 group chart, if they fall inside the second to last aswell it would be clear the model makers went over the top.

----------


## bicicleur

nothing has been said yet, but I suppose the 10 ka Cheddar man matches inside the Villabruna cluster, who replaced the Magdalenian El Miron cluster 15 ka
I suspect the 15 ka Cheddar man is Magdalenian

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## Carlos

His mother was very dark then, almost black in skin?

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## FIREYWOTAN

Thank you all for helping me to reflect on the thread and to draw an deeper appreciation for the provess of discovery yhay was happening.
Thinking beyond what color CHEDDAR MAN was I've stated to search for how we've come to this point. What and who was the first modern Briton? I've been following the thread and I even went backward as well as forward. Thats when I stoped trying todigest 

*Cheddar Man: DNA shows early Briton had dark skin*

By Paul RinconScience editor, BBC News website






_A cutting-edge scientific analysis shows that a Briton from 10,000 years ago had dark brown skin and blue eyes._
_Researchers from London's Natural History Museum extracted DNA from Cheddar Man, Britain's oldest complete skeleton, which was discovered in 1903._
_University College London researchers then used the subsequent genome analysis for a facial reconstruction._
_It underlines the fact that the lighter skin characteristic of modern Europeans is a relatively recent phenomenon._
_No prehistoric Briton of this age had previously had their genome analysed._
_As such, the analysis provides valuable new insights into the first people to resettle Britain after the last Ice Age._
_The analysis of Cheddar Man's genome - the "blueprint" for a human, contained in the nuclei of our cells - will be published in a journal, and will also feature in the upcoming Channel 4 documentary The First Brit, Secrets Of The 10,000-year-old Man._
_Cheddar Man's remains had been unearthed 115 years ago in Gough's Cave, located in Somerset's Cheddar Gorge. Subsequent examination has shown that the man was short by today's standards - about 5ft 5in - and probably died in his early 20s._
_Prof Chris Stringer, the museum's research leader in human origins, said: "I've been studying the skeleton of Cheddar Man for about 40 years_
_"So to come face-to-face with what this guy could have looked like - and that striking combination of the hair, the face, the eye colour and that dark skin: something a few years ago we couldn't have imagined and yet that's what the scientific data show."_
_Fractures on the surface of the skull suggest he may even have met his demise in a violent manner. It's not known how he came to lie in the cave, but it's possible he was placed there by others in his tribe._
_The Natural History Museum researchers extracted the DNA from part of the skull near the ear known as the petrous. At first, project scientists Prof Ian Barnes and Dr Selina Brace weren't sure if they'd get any DNA at all from the remains._
_But they were in luck: not only was DNA preserved, but Cheddar Man has since yielded the highest coverage (a measure of the sequencing accuracy) for a genome from this period of European prehistory - known as the Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age._
_They teamed up with researchers at University College London (UCL) to analyse the results, including gene variants associated with hair, eye and skin colour._
*Extra mature Cheddar*

_They found the Stone Age Briton had dark hair - with a small probability that it was curlier than average - blue eyes and skin that was probably dark brown or black in tone._
_This combination might appear striking to us today, but it was a common appearance in western Europe during this period._
_Steven Clarke, director of the Channel Four documentary, said: "I think we all know we live in times where we are unusually preoccupied with skin pigmentation."_
_Prof Mark Thomas, a geneticist from UCL, said: "It becomes a part of our understanding, I think that would be a much, much better thing. I think it would be good if people lodge it in their heads, and it becomes a little part of their knowledge."_
_Unsurprisingly, the findings have generated lots of interest on social media._
_Cheddar Man's genome reveals he was closely related to other Mesolithic individuals - so-called Western Hunter-Gatherers - who have been analysed from Spain, Luxembourg and Hungary._
_Dutch artists Alfons and Adrie Kennis, specialists in palaeontological model-making, took the genetic findings and combined them with physical measurements from scans of the skull. The result was a strikingly lifelike reconstruction of a face from our distant past._
_Pale skin probably arrived in Britain with a migration of people from the Middle East around 6,000 years ago. This population had pale skin and brown eyes and absorbed populations like the ones Cheddar Man belonged to._
_No-one's entirely sure why pale skin evolved in these farmers, but their cereal-based diet was probably deficient in Vitamin D. This would have required agriculturalists to absorb this essential nutrient from sunlight through their skin._
_"There may be other factors that are causing lower skin pigmentation over time in the last 10,000 years. But that's the big explanation that most scientists turn to," said Prof Thomas._
*Boom and bust*

_The genomic results also suggest Cheddar Man could not drink milk as an adult. This ability only spread much later, after the onset of the Bronze Age._
_Present-day Europeans owe on average 10% of their ancestry to Mesolithic hunters like Cheddar Man._
_Britain has been something of a boom-and-bust story for humans over the last million-or-so years. Modern humans were here as early as 40,000 years ago, but a period of extreme cold known as the Last Glacial Maximum drove them out some 10,000 years later._
_There's evidence from Gough's Cave that hunter-gatherers ventured back around 15,000 years ago, establishing a temporary presence when the climate briefly improved. However, they were soon sent packing by another cold snap. Cut marks on the bones suggest these people cannibalised their dead - perhaps as part of ritual practices._
_Britain was once again settled 11,000 years ago; and has been inhabited ever since. Cheddar Man was part of this wave of migrants, who walked across a landmass called Doggerland that, in those days, connected Britain to mainland Europe. This makes him the oldest known Briton with a direct connection to people living here today._
_This is not the first attempt to analyse DNA from the Cheddar Man. In the late 1990s, Oxford University geneticist Brian Sykes sequenced mitochondrial DNA from one of Cheddar Man's molars._
_Mitochondrial DNA comes from the biological "batteries" within our cells and is passed down exclusively from a mother to her children._
_Prof Sykes compared the ancient genetic information with DNA from 20 living residents of Cheddar village and found two matches - including history teacher Adrian Targett, who became closely connected with the discovery. The result is consistent with the approximately 10% of Europeans who share the same mitochondrial DNA type._







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## Sile

> nothing has been said yet, but I suppose the 10 ka Cheddar man matches inside the Villabruna cluster, who replaced the Magdalenian El Miron cluster 15 ka
> I suspect the 15 ka Cheddar man is Magdalenian


this french site does not see that

http://secher.bernard.free.fr/blog/i...s-Britanniques

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## TopLobster

> When we look at genetic variation in modern British people today, we find that – for those who do not have a recent history of migration – around 10% of their ancestry can be attributed to the ancient European population to which Cheddar Man belonged. This group is referred to as the western European Mesolithic hunter-gatherers.


Can someone help me understand this? I thought British people had about 35-40% ancestry from WHGs, according to the Eurogenes EEF-WHG-ANE. Is that test now outdated due to new research?

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## davef

Not sure about the Eurogenes but ten percent is way too low

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## Angela

> Can someone help me understand this? I thought British people had about 35-40% ancestry from WHGs, according to the Eurogenes EEF-WHG-ANE. Is that test now outdated due to new research?


That's an amateur made analysis, not an academic one.



Haak et al based on actual ancient samples: 



Most of the WHG survival was in the far north-east, which was not suitable to the Neolithic farming package.

If you wanted to know the total hunter-gatherer, you'd have to take from 50 to 60% of the Yamnaya figure, which would be EHG.

Anyone know of a more recent simple break down of modern populations?

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## davef

> That's an amateur made analysis, not an academic one.
> 
> 
> 
> Haak et al based on actual ancient samples: 
> 
> 
> 
> Most of the WHG survival was in the far north-east, which was not suitable to the Neolithic farming package.
> ...


oops, yeah ten percent sounds about right

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## Jovialis

@Thirdterm

There is already a thread dedicated to this study. I will delete the post.
_
Population Replacement in Early Neolithic Britain-inc. Cheddar Man:_

https://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...nc-Cheddar-Man

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## TopLobster

What about this one? I think it's from Lazaridis et al..

Attachment 9746

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## TopLobster

@Angela

What about this data? I think it's from Lazaridis et al..

Table_S14.10 - Averaged admixture proportions for European populations.jpg

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## Angela

> @Angela
> 
> What about this data? I think it's from Lazaridis et al..
> 
> Table_S14.10 - Averaged admixture proportions for European populations.jpg


It is: it's from the Supplement to Lazaridis et al 2014.

The prior graphic I showed is from Haak et al 2015, which is also by Lazaridis, in a sense, because he was co-author and equal contributor on that paper, and probably primarily responsible for the statistical analysis.

The difference is in the three mixing populations, I think. In the 2014 analysis, they don't use Yamnaya samples. They're using an ancient sample, Mal'ta, representing the Ancient North Eurasians, ANE.

All of the more recent hunter-gatherer ancestry from Europe, including what is now labeled EHG, gets swept up into the WHG category. 

The 2015 analysis now has Yamnaya samples. Those samples are 50-60% EHG, so what remains in WHG is actual "western" hunter-gatherer ancestry.

This all makes sense because we now know that EHG are a mix of WHG and something ANE like. 

Does that make sense?

You should take a look at our thread for newbies. All the papers are there and you can see the progression in knowledge. 

https://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...ation-Genetics

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## TopLobster

@Angela
Thanks, it is clear to me now. I have read some the recommended papers and Maciamo's Yamna history already and I knew the general ideas but I was unsure about some of the details.

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## Carlos

Now they will say that he came from the Iberian Peninsula.

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## Ygorcs

> Sorry to interject, but from the color chart shown in the documentary, I think the Khoisan would be "dark", not "dark-black".
> 
> [IMG][/IMG]


Ops, I didn't saw the color chart (what a clever zoom btw, hahaha!). Yes, Khoisan definitely look more "dark" than "dark-black". I saw part of the results of the study they released yesterday (thanks for posting a link to it here, Angela) and they say that the other Mesolithic individual was more intermediate-to-dark. From intermediate-to-dark to dark-to-black there is a very visible difference. Does that mean that the WHG populations, even those closely related, had a wider range of skin pigmentation levels than we see in most modern populations? I know that many black Africans say that it is a mistake to take one individual from their populations and use them as a proxy for the entire people, because there is often a wide variation between people, especially if you compare the lightest woman to the darkest man.

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## Angela

> Ops, I didn't saw the color chart (what a clever zoom btw, hahaha!). Yes, Khoisan definitely look more "dark" than "dark-black". I saw part of the results of the study they released yesterday (thanks for posting a link to it here, Angela) and they say that the other Mesolithic individual was more intermediate-to-dark. From intermediate-to-dark to dark-to-black there is a very visible difference. Does that mean that the WHG populations, even those closely related, had a wider range of skin pigmentation levels than we see in most modern populations? I know that many black Africans say that it is a mistake to take one individual from their populations and use them as a proxy for the entire people, because there is often a wide variation between people, especially if you compare the lightest woman to the darkest man.


I think that might be correct. On the other hand, there's been damage to this ancient genetic material, which is why for some few snps they couldn't get calls. 

Now that the dust has settled, my "hunch" is that they, as a group, looked like South Indian "Veddoids", with some variation among them, as indeed is true for those populations, and also for Africans. I don't get why it's important which "tone" or "shade" of "dark" is so important. 

San children: in America today they'd still be "black".




East African


South Indians:







So, some part of the differences are probably normal variation. Some is continuing evolution. Loschbour is two thousand years younger than Cheddar Man. Or, he may have gotten a bit of ANF. 

What I also find interesting is that even the eye color was continuing to lighten, from perhaps a hazel to a blue-green, but according to the latest algorithm not light blue. 

Perhaps they should have stuck with the fact that both these populations were darker than modern Europeans, but that the ANF were lighter than the WHG. Instead, I think they ran the newest test, with the most snps (36), but when they got all this flak they waffled a bit. 

The bottom line is that they didn't look like us. There's been admixture and evolution in terms of de-pigmentation. It is what it is.

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## davef

They waffled a bit? You mean they tweaked things bc people were whining about their findings? 

Waffled..I'll have to google that! It can't have anything to do with those tasty eggos I used to drown in almost half a bottle of syrup as a kid

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## ROS

> Now they will say that he came from the Iberian Peninsula.


No wonder, we will pass the Iberians from having nothing of WHG (according to Haak's graph) to be the origin of this component.

If it is true that this WHG has been painted too dark.


The WHG of Braa was dark but not so much.

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## BGD

............

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## Carlos

[QUOTE = ThirdTerm; 531824] Supongo que Cheddar Man era un pariente genético cercano de La Brana 1, una persona de 7.000 años de edad del sitio La Brana-Arintero en Valdelugueros (León, España). El análisis de ADN de Bryan Sykes concluyó previamente que Cheddar Man tenía ADNmt haplogrupo U5. La Brana 1 llevó el haplogrupo C6-V20 de Y-DNA, un clado europeo de haplogrupo C de baja frecuencia encontrado en menos del 0.1% de los europeos en la actualidad, y el haplogrupo de mtDNA U5b2c1 (Olalde et al., 2014). Cheddar Man también puede haber portado Y-DNA haplogroup C6, lo que explica su pigmentación de piel más oscura en comparación con los europeos modernos. Pero dado su ascendencia materna del ADN típica en el norte de Europa, el color de su piel puede haber sido de color marrón claro en lugar de negro. 


[/CITAR]

Really in Spain did not cause so much commotion the news. Leon has been given a European appearance, blue eyes, skin that seems tanned, those contrasts have always been liked in Spain, light eyes, dark skin, light skin, dark eyes; Although today we find contrasts, maybe they are the originals. I do not know if the facial reconstruction of Leon's man will be well done seeing the result of English. The result of Leon's man seems to me like Heidi's grandfather, and in the English result I see a cannibal. I think a good facial reconstruction of the remains of Spain should be done to compare them with the other one from England. By the way the English man has remembered Brad Pitt, I have seen Brad Pitt after observing him for a while.

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## Angela

Yes, indeed, the resemblance between Brad Pitt and Cheddar Man is overwhelming, apart, of course, from the nose, the cheek bones, the shape of the face, and the cheekbones, leaving aside the pigmentation. :) The only similarity I see is the eyes and maybe the jaw.






People, the WHG are outside of modern variation, in appearance as well as general genomics.

As for the route of their entrance into Britain, I don't know. Obviously they came from the continent over the land bridge. All the WHG form a cluster so I don't see how it matters. How times have changed, though. Our ex-Spanish Stormfront members were constantly bragging about how much WHG they had, which made them more authocthonous, and which was why they plotted further "north" than other Southern Europeans. Who knew dark skin would make the WHG pariahs all of a sudden?

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## Carlos

^^ To Ángela

Obviously they are not going to be a tracing, but I have seen in addition to a certain physical resemblance a deeper essence. It is as if you draw a picture of a European-looking man or woman drinking coffee, for example for the illustration of an article, you can make silhouettes in black, white, red, blue or orange, you will continue to see and recognize that they are a couple of The same thing is true if you make an Afro couple of green color still wearing the European one, you will recognize that they are two black people. And seeing that Englishman from the past to my mind has come Brad Pitt instantly, it's like that, I can not give him an explanation, and if he has come for something he is.
To myself in one of those forums I got the correspondence with the actor and producer Kim Coates.

What happens with the stormform Spaniards (I did not know what it was but I looked for it) would be a socio-cultural question, which would have its origin in a wealth of historical circumstances where the breeding ground was created in the era of the Legend black, too many enemies, much anger and hatred saved against Spain, the wick would be all those romantic European travelers who suddenly become fond of the Arab world, travel to Spain and look for Arab characteristics in any corner and where they had not, and in their stories they tell fantasies giving Spain an identity that it does not possess. They come to relate that the peasants of Almeria have appearance and dress like those of the Maghreb, they also see Arab vestiges in Barcelona, ​​and so they invent and create an idea of ​​Spain where the Europeans of the time form an erroneous opinion about Spain, then comes the isolation of 40 years of dictatorship where some European countries take off and Spain left behind all the past demos over Spain, too many enemies in the past, one less competition, the black legend, the invented stories of European travelers that showed Spain and the paralysis of the country in the dictatorship give us the coup de grace to ensure that Spain is different, Africa starts in the Pyrenees and all that.

And even happens with the discovery and colonization of Europe, possibly we did better than the English and yet it seems that now we must also excuse ourselves, in the somewhat recent age the corrupt Latin American governments blamed colonial Spain for its Dantesque situation, to cover their corrupt gestures before their populations, and the certain thing is that once enmancipados the people in charge are themselves not us. After the Jewish expulsions and Muslims, especially by the Jews or Isrrael we get greater signs of discontent for that past. In short it is the payment for having been a great world power and should be the reasons why these Spaniards try to recover their rightful place as just another European, which is the continent where Spain is, no less than Europe.

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## Ailchu

> That's an amateur made analysis, not an academic one.
> 
> 
> 
> Haak et al based on actual ancient samples: 
> 
> 
> 
> Most of the WHG survival was in the far north-east, which was not suitable to the Neolithic farming package.
> ...


so that would actually mean that northern europeans, scots scandinavians have the highest amount of hunter gatherer admixture. take in the fact that there is quite a lot of admixture missing in this graphic like north african or west asian and the difference in this admixture would be even higher. i'm 75% southern european myself and i think its kinda sad that this HG admixture gets diluted even further by me. well i guess ill have to go back to italy or spain. 

what about this graphic:
http://pichoster.net/images/2014/06/22/europe.png
here it looks almost as if EEF were something in between modern middle eastern people and WHG. 

also about the eye colour part. when i wiki blue eye colour the earlies hunter gatherer with blues eyes was la brana. now its this guy. estimates for the age of the mutation are 6000-10000 years. since the cheddar is estimated to be 9200 years old it now should be 9000-10000 years. or maybe more than 10000.

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## halfalp

> That color chart is just one of those that are used normally in forensics. It's based on probabilities. Most "very fair" skinned people in modern populations are blue eyed. However, not all. I'm in category one and have brown eyes. It's not common, but it happens.
> 
> 
> 
> If you go to the text of the paper and scroll down you'll see the color chart the authors of that paper were using. The actual test based on that probably has a shortened chart. Regardless, the strong probability based on 36 snps was dark brown-black. Based on current knowledge of pigmentation that's as much as they can say. 
> 
> It would be interesting to see the prediction for samples like Loschbour, LaBrana, Bichon, Villabruna, etc., to see if there was some variation among the WHG. This test wasn't available when those studies and predictions were published.


Hum, isn't the second woman looking very similar to that one mesolithic reconstructed woman ?

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## Ailchu

> Can someone help me understand this? I thought British people had about 35-40% ancestry from WHGs, according to the Eurogenes EEF-WHG-ANE. Is that test now outdated due to new research?


isn't that test also including baltic, eastern hunter gatherers in this % number? then it would be correct. they may have even more than that. scots seem to have almost 50%. baltics even more. looks almost like 60-70%. 
now it makes sense why baltics are so strong weight lifters. also why italians and other southern europeans are more gracile than northerners.

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## Angela

> so that would actually mean that northern europeans, scots scandinavians have the highest amount of hunter gatherer admixture. take in the fact that there is quite a lot of admixture missing in this graphic like north african or west asian and the difference in this admixture would be even higher. i'm 75% southern european myself and i think its kinda sad that this HG admixture gets diluted even further by me. well i guess ill have to go back to italy or spain. 
> 
> what about this graphic:
> http://pichoster.net/images/2014/06/22/europe.png
> here it looks almost as if EEF were something in between modern middle eastern people and WHG. 
> 
> also about the eye colour part. when i wiki blue eye colour the earlies hunter gatherer with blues eyes was la brana. now its this guy. estimates for the age of the mutation are 6000-10000 years. since the cheddar is estimated to be 9200 years old it now should be 9000-10000 years. or maybe more than 10000.


Cheddar Man, who is estimated to be 2,000 years older, is predicted to be hazel-eyed, so evolution continued. 

No, the WHG wouldn't be higher. Those other "clusters" are probably in EEF and ANE.

As for being "sad" that your WHG has been diluted, I find that a rather bizarre attitude, I'm sorry to say. How about being proud of what you are? 

In terms of the PCA, we've known for a couple of years that the earliest Neolithic people in Europe picked up about 10% WHG pretty soon. After that the EEF weren't in any hurry to mix, but after about 2,000 years the European farmers (M and LN) were about 25% WHG. 

You might want to read the papers in the thread for newbies. 
https://i.pinimg.com/236x/19/c5/87/1...a57eabe016.jpg


See:

@Half-Alp,

That was the Greek Mesolithic sample, to the best of my recollection. 


Yes, she does a bit, imo. I think I said when it first came out that I thought that was the most "modern" looking Mesolithic hunter-gatherer I'd seen, in face shape, length, nose etc., and I wondered if she had a bit of ANF.


The modern women are both actresses: Sandra Bullock first and then the English actress Michele Dockery of Downtown Abbey fame.

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## davef

> He would think like. "Why are these people making a big fuss about my skin colour, I look the same just like everyone else"


Or he might perceive the internet connected computer/phone as a means of communicating with the gods and erect a shrine devoted to it ;).

But yes, if he were to say what you have in quotes, he'd be right!

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## Parafarne

In my view the Neareastern immigrants to old europe had light skin not dark skin one group in southern iberia is responsible for darker skin in old europeans this trend continued until IE immigrants in 2700 bc tiped the balance in favour of light skin. Even then the number of haplogroup E carriers in iberia were little yet they had big impact on skin colour when mixed with Native europeans somehow. So genetically the Cheddar man is more than 90% European in my view for his Mtdna and in all probability his ydna is Caucasian. Having this in mind his skin color should be brown or light brown not dark.

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## Angela

> In my view the Neareastern immigrants to old europe had light skin not dark skin one group in southern iberia is responsible for darker skin in old europeans this trend continued until IE immigrants in 2700 bc tiped the balance in favour of light skin. Even then the number of haplogroup E carriers in iberia were little yet they had big impact on skin colour when mixed with Native europeans somehow. So genetically the Cheddar man is more than 90% European in my view for his Mtdna and in all probability his ydna is Caucasian. Having this in mind his skin color should be brown or light brown not dark.


I have no idea what you're talking about when you say " one group in southern iberia is responsible for darker skin in old europeans". If you mean the WHG they were all over western Europe. WHG were probably darker skinned than the first farmers to arrive in Europe, but SHG and EHG also had lighter pigmentation.

"Native Europeans", at least in western Europe, were the darkest skinned of the ancient groups. Y dna "E" has nothing to do with any of this. The WHG carried either yDna "C" or "I2". The farmers carried predominantly "G2a". 

At any rate, natural selection is the "cause", and it increased the proportions of light skinned alleles over time. 

You might want to read all the genetics papers in this list, and the latest pigmentation paper as well. 

https://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...204#post534204

https://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...t=pigmentation

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## Carlos

^^ to Parafarne

The Iberian peninsula was long in coming to the fore as responsible for the 7 plagues of Egypt. I do not know what group he refers to in southern Iberia that was responsible for dark skin in Europe, anyway it would have been a feat. Chaddman's mother thought that it should be almost black because if it were clearer the boy would have left more mulatto, not so chocolate.

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## Parafarne

I was pointing to almagra culture in extreme southern iberia that came from morocco to iberia and were then replaced by dominant WHG culture, so I thought in this time HG I2 were mixed with old form of HG E in Iberia refuge when Northwest europe were very cold and got little darker than other groups of hunter gatherers before migrating to Northwest europe , its just theory yet to be proven of course.yes Cheddar's ydna is either I or C. Think if EHG, SHG were only light brown then why WHG were darker they came from one source.

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## Carlos

[QUOTE = Parafarne; 534338] Estaba apuntando a la cultura almagra en el extremo sur de iberia que vino de Marruecos a iberia y luego fue reemplazada por la cultura WHG dominante, así que pensé en este momento que HG I2 se mezcló con la forma antigua de HG E en Iberia refugio cuando la Europa noroccidental hacía mucho frío y se oscurecía un poco más que otros grupos de cazadores recolectores antes de emigrar a la Europa noroccidental, su teoría es aún no probada, por supuesto. Si ydna de Cheddar es I o C. Piensa si EHG, SHG eran solo luz marrón, por qué WHG eran más oscuros, provenían de una fuente. [/ QUOTE]


​It is a hypothesis that has been retaken; although it could also be the other way around, an export from southern Spain to North Africa. The fashions or methods in the manufacture of ceramics can be adopted, exported or imported without necessarily having an ethnic group located in the place, issue that could solve the genetics but I see that it does not know how to solve it either.

A current simile would be like in the current Spanish society or from the age of maybe 70 onward American culture influences the population, through the t.v. with series like "Eight Is Enough" where young people of the popular mass learn that you have to brush your teeth after every meal. Or series like Colombo where we saw that they asked for Chinese food, Pizzas or spaghetti, we did not know what it was, they also took it home, decades later that way of life is the order of the day in Spain, you could say that America in that sense reculturized in advances to Spain more than the rest of rich European countries that only came and saw Spain by the sun and the beach. Currently in the huge amount of television channels that exist in Spain are broadcast TV series and movies 24 hours a day of American origin, many Spaniards of the populace feel more Americans than Europeans, have more American mental patterns than Europeans. And all that without having a single American group, without an American genetic fingerprint in Spain, what do you think?

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## Night

Seems counteractive that a person with blue eyes, would be climatically adapted with "dark to black skin."
I suspect politicization of this issue.

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## Parafarne

The almagra numbers were very little in iberia and in extreme south so they were likely immgrants from N.africa having in mind that E-81 is more in N.africa than in Iberia.

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## MOESAN

> [QUOTE = Parafarne; 534338] ...
> ..., many Spaniards of the populace feel more Americans than Europeans, have more American mental patterns than Europeans. And all that without having a single American group, without an American genetic fingerprint in Spain, what do you think?


I think that TV and cellulars was not already very present in those times. Not to erase completely your way of thinking, but to relativize things

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## Carlos

^^ Evidentemente.

l 0 l

Referring to the great mass, the working class, there would probably be a minimal upper or upper middle class that would be more modernized but did not share their customs with the lower classes; I mean that people showered, then more bathing, to fill the bathtub with water once a week at the most, there were many mouths with tartar on the teeth and many flaps of coats full of dandruff, and with the culture American television and film people learned to take showers every day or at least more than once a week along with other everyday customs that were worthwhile, but of the Europeans we learned only to sunbathe excessively and perhaps the first steps towards sexual freedom with hundreds of Spaniards moving to Perpignan to see Emmanuelle.

In the past there were no mobile phones or movies or TVs. but the fashions would arrive later but they would extend in the same way at the end.

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## Carlos

[QUOTE = Parafarne; 534409] Las cantidades de almagra eran muy pequeñas en iberia y en el extremo sur, por lo que probablemente eran inmigrantes de África, teniendo en cuenta que el E-81 está más en África que en Iberia. [/ QUOTE]

I just found this news that may interest you about it. I have opened an thread on the subject.

http://cordopolis.es/2018/03/13/el-p...ce-7-245-anos/

"The fact that the representatives of the Ancient Andalusian Neolithic correspond to the same population flow of individuals associated with the Cardinal culture, has important implications, ruling out for the moment the African way in the arrival of the Neolithic to the Andalusian coast. of a material culture of great personality, differentiated from the typical ceramics of the cardial world of Southern France, Catalonia and Valencian Country, such as that of ceramic to Almagra, must have been generated in a few generations. Evidence recently cleared, in studies in which some scientists are responsible for this work, in which the direct influence of the first Iberian farmers on the dissemination of the Neolithic, agriculture and agriculture is demonstrated. reverse thesis, "says Rafael M. Martinez, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Granada participating in the work

Intuitively or call it what you want the current Spaniards in the forums usually deny what has just been demonstrated and it is not a question of racism, but it is something that you feel is not so. And look that I am E-V22, but I am mixed who knows since when with the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula and nevertheless I have not had interference in feeling that it was not like that; Even if the African coast is near, I would not know how to explain it, but it's something that says no, that's not how it was. It is shown that it was the other way around, the Almagra culture went from the south of Iberia to the north of Africa, I do not know if it left a genetic trace or it was a cultural adoption, that's what the scientists will say.

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## MOESAN

> ^^ Evidentemente.
> 
> l 0 l
> 
> Referring to the great mass, the working class, there would probably be a minimal upper or upper middle class that would be more modernized but did not share their customs with the lower classes; I mean that people showered, then more bathing, to fill the bathtub with water once a week at the most, there were many mouths with tartar on the teeth and many flaps of coats full of dandruff, and with the culture American television and film people learned to take showers every day or at least more than once a week along with other everyday customs that were worthwhile, but of the Europeans we learned only to sunbathe excessively and perhaps the first steps towards sexual freedom with hundreds of Spaniards moving to Perpignan to see Emmanuelle.
> 
> In the past there were no mobile phones or movies or TVs. but the fashions would arrive later but they would extend in the same way at the end.


beside the speed of propagation, my point was that at those times, some physical contacts were needed, at least for "delivery", when today NO contact is needed.

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## Elaishousse

Genetic analysis showed that it was Y DNA I2a2b-S10750

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## Elaishousse

hi Carlos
Genetic analysis showed that it was Y DNA I2a2b-S10750 Not Y DNA EM81

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## Carlos

[QUOTE = Elaishousse; 567940] hola Carlos 
El análisis genético mostró que era Y DNA I2a2b-S10750 Not Y DNA EM81 [/ QUOTE]

Hi. He has appointed me. What does it mean?

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## Elaishousse

Carlos
Cheddar Man Genetic analysis showed that it was Y DNA I2a2b-S10750 Or I-L38*
Cheddar Man is a "partial" I-L38*, a line ancestral to all I-L38s today as follows:
Y11324/FGC29600+
Y11319/FGC29553+
S2524/SK1263/V2774+
S2519+
Y13463/FGC29582+
S2592+
S8646 (2/3 reads derived)
The other SNPs are ancestral
https://yfull.com/tree/I-L38/
https://www.facebook.com/17675282970...4167090297630/

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## Tomenable

If you are interested, I have uploaded the newly sequenced Cheddar Man to GEDmatch:

https://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...Dmatch-results

I did not process his Y (only 1-22 and X), so I won't participate in the argument above.

But I2a2b-S10750 sounds more probable IMO. Maybe later I will process Y chromosome.

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## Tomenable

I checked some of his pigmentation SNPs, but it is possible that I missed some other:*

Cheddar Man's skin pigmentation SNPs:*

rs1426654(G;G) ---> G is darker skin, modern Northern Europeans have A;A here
rs16891982(C;C) ---> C allele is darker skin, also 7x more likely to have black hair
rs1408799(C;C) ---> C is lighter pigmentation & higher skin cancer risk in Europeans (per SNPedia)
rs1834640(A;A) --> associated with skin pigmentation (modern Europeans have A;A too)
rs1800414(A;A) ---> G associated with East Asian type light skin, Non-Asians have A
rs885479(G;G) ---> A associated with East Asian type light skin, Non-Asians have G
rs12203592(T;T) ---> T associated with less tanning ability, common in Irish people
rs1015362(G;G) ---> G associated with less tanning ability, Sub-Saharans have A;A

*Cheddar Man's hair & eye pigmentation:*

rs1667394(A;A) ---> A;A is blond hair and blue eyes 4x more likely
rs12896399(G;G) ---> G;G genotype associated with lighter hair color
rs12913832(G;G) ---> people with G;G blue eye color 99% of the time
rs12203592(T;T) ---> T causes lighter hair & eyes, less tanning ability
rs1800401(C;C) ---> C associated with blue/gray eyes possibility
rs1800407(G;G) ---> G associated with blue/gray eyes possibility
rs7495174(A;A) ---> A associated with blue/gray eyes more likely

He lacked the first 2 listed skin depigmentation mutations that modern Europeans have. But he had some other depigmentation mutations, so I don't think that he was "black". Maybe he had a skin tone similar to what you can find today in North India, Pakistan, etc. I also don't think he was blond-haired. He had some genes which increase the likelihood of blond hair, but he also had others which increase the likelihood of black hair, I suppose they cancelled each other and produced something intermediate.

=====

In GEDmatch K36, for example, he scores a whopping 37% of Fennoscandian:

https://www.eupedia.com/forum/thread...Dmatch-results

And today in Fennoscandia you still have many quite dark-pigmented people:

Dark Finn:




Here is a good article:

https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2018/...-be-published/

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## halfalp

> I checked some of his pigmentation SNPs, but it is possible that I missed some other:*
> 
> Cheddar Man's skin pigmentation SNPs:*
> 
> rs1426654(G;G) ---> G is darker skin, modern Northern Europeans have A;A here
> rs16891982(C;C) ---> C allele is darker skin, also 7x more likely to have black hair
> rs1408799(C;C) ---> C is lighter pigmentation & higher skin cancer risk in Europeans (per SNPedia)
> rs1834640(A;A) --> associated with skin pigmentation (modern Europeans have A;A too)
> rs1800414(A;A) ---> G associated with East Asian type light skin, Non-Asians have A
> ...


I dont want to be harsh but, if this guy in the video is dark-pigmented so most of Europe is.

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## PaleoRevenge

> Genetic analysis showed that it was Y DNA I2a2b-S10750


And it is well known that I2 folks look black and pakistani because "scientist" that get a paycheck from people that are flooding Europe with God knows what, will never lie. Science is backed by God, God would intervene if foul play was occurring.

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## Gnarl

> Seems counteractive that a person with blue eyes, would be climatically adapted with "dark to black skin."
> I suspect politicization of this issue.


Skin color seems slow to respond to environmental pressure, and I suspect changes are generally associated with dietary changes. Blue eyes however, seem to respond quickly and heavily to latitude, showing a detectable north-south cline even into historic times. If a population harvests a good bit of their food from marine resources such as fish, seals etc there is no reason why they should not have dark skin.

Also remember that even during the peak ice age, insolation was the same as today. The dark-skinned WHGs only made it up to Scandinavian latitudes briefly. Most of their span was spent at Mediterranean to mid-European latitudes.

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

> Skin color seems slow to respond to environmental pressure, and I suspect changes are generally associated with dietary changes. Blue eyes however, seem to respond quickly and heavily to latitude, showing a detectable north-south cline even into historic times. If a population harvests a good bit of their food from marine resources such as fish, seals etc there is no reason why they should not have dark skin.
> 
> Also remember that even during the peak ice age, insolation was the same as today. The dark-skinned WHGs only made it up to Scandinavian latitudes briefly. Most of their span was spent at Mediterranean to mid-European latitudes.


Blue eyes likely has nothing to do with latitude. It makes more sense that the only reason blue eyes are more common in the North is because of less Med admixture.

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## Gnarl

> Blue eyes likely has nothing to do with latitude. It makes more sense that the only reason blue eyes are more common in the North is because of less Med admixture.


That does not seem to be entirely so. "Eight thousand	years	of	natural	selection	in	Europe" by Mathieson, Lazardis et al note that blue eyes do seem to be subject to what appears to be high selective pressure in northern latitudes. 

_"our data shows that an extreme north-south gradient in allele frequencies [for blue eyes] has been maintained in Europe for the last 8,000 years"

_To the best of my knowledge we don't know why, but there does seem to be pressure and quite a bit of it.

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## ToBeOrNotToBe

> That does not seem to be entirely so. "Eight thousand years of natural selection in Europe" by Mathieson, Lazardis et al note that blue eyes do seem to be subject to what appears to be high selective pressure in northern latitudes. 
> 
> _"our data shows that an extreme north-south gradient in allele frequencies [for blue eyes] has been maintained in Europe for the last 8,000 years"
> 
> _To the best of my knowledge we don't know why, but there does seem to be pressure and quite a bit of it.


Nothing plausible explains it to my knowledge, selection based on latitude would have to be *ridiculously* intense to explain this. I think it's more likely, if the increase in Southern brown eyes isn't due to Meds, that another different HG group further South just happened to have browner eyes.

Also, 8000 ybp is the approximate date of the Neolithic in Europe so that could be what's being referred to (i.e. the increase in brown eyes is from Meds).

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## Ygorcs

> Seems counteractive that a person with blue eyes, would be climatically adapted with "dark to black skin."
> I suspect politicization of this issue.


People sometimes seem to forget how natural evolution works. We're well ahead of Lamarck now, aren't we? It is not like people's DNA thinks _hey this skin color is now no longer properly adapted to this new climate I'm living in, so let's lighten it a lot, because that's what I need to become totally fit for this environment_. Mutations are random - and they may simply not happen at all or, if they happen, they may not have the chance to spread for many natural/social reasons or even (bad) chance, and that's the end of the story: no adaptation and no natural evolution will happen. We can't take for granted that effective and reproductively sucessful genetic mutations for light skin would happen anywhere in high latitudes and in all populations living there. It may be that WHG developed other less well known ways to lighten their skin a bit, as the skin pigmentation is a very polygenic and increasingly complex (as we understand it better) trait... but they probably just lacked those specific mutations that have a really big effect in skin depigmentation. People do not "get adapted to their environment", it is their genetic variations that get selected positively or negatively by the environment (but those variations have to exist for starters).

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## Ygorcs

> I dont want to be harsh but, if this guy in the video is dark-pigmented so most of Europe is.


That's what I was thinking. If that man is quite dark-pigmented, then most Europeans are dark and many Southern Europeans are outright black. :-O

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## Tomenable

*DNA Land Coffee Consumption Trait Prediction Report for Cheddar Man:*

Your inferred trait is: 2.9 cups per day (Higher Than Average Consumption)

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## Archetype0ne



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## Gnarl

As a Norwegian I feel I should point out that the amount of UV radiation you get exposed to is not just dependent on the infalling UV due to latitude. How much snow there is reflecting the UV is a major contributor. A flat snow plain will reflect quite a bit of the UV at you, and a sloping snowcovered valley can blast you with UV from every direction. If you spend half the year operating in snow at near mediterranean latitudes I would guess the UV would be even worse than it is this far north. 

Retaining melanin protection might have made a lot of biological sense during the ice age.




> Nothing plausible explains it to my knowledge, selection based on latitude would have to be *ridiculously* intense to explain this. I think it's more likely, if the increase in Southern brown eyes isn't due to Meds, that another different HG group further South just happened to have browner eyes.
> 
> Also, 8000 ybp is the approximate date of the Neolithic in Europe so that could be what's being referred to (i.e. the increase in brown eyes is from Meds).


An extreme cline maintained through 8000 years of people moving and mixing cannot be explained by one group just happens to have brown eyes. There is some pressure going on there. But its unknown what it is.

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## Archetype0ne

https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-...lor-perception

Which gives me a hunch that light refraction off environment might have something to do with eye color.

De-pigmented eyes reflect more light, hence the blue perception. 



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue

https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news...lue-eyes_N.htm

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## L.D.Brousse

I absolutely do not believe Cheddar man was that dark. In England they have also done facial reconstructions on ancient remains and of coarse one of the females is done up in dark skin. What I see in ancient DNA is an opportunity for political gain I believe it's being used to show native populations that the new wave of immigration has a dog in the fight and belong. I am very uncertain of the science that has the ability for detecting skin and eye color from ancient bones. Gedmatch predicted I had light blue eyes only I have brown and that is from living tissue. Just IMO

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## MOESAN

Statistically I think science will approach more and more to prediction of the pigmentation, even if some unknown secondary genes can blur the results; to date even science doesn't know all, evidently. And I doubt in a political try to use false scientific works for political purposes, in these matters. I fear mor the journalists love for sensation and even more the titles they choose...
aside: the states produced by the extract provided by ArchetypeOne doesn't seem to scientific for me: the notion of "blue" eye is a bit unprecise concerning pigmentation, I prefer the notion of light eye; there are more than a sort of "blue"; I doubt absolutely that Estonia has so much true blue (light) eyes; the maximum is in Scandinavia, more exactly Iceland (before immigration to come?).

concerning selection, it's not a straightforward phenomenon, because organisms can answer to selective pression with more than a "weapon" and some other metabolic conditions can reduce or reinforce the pression on a precise phenotypic response. It's why we have globally evidence of selection, but that in details it doesn't coincid to what we are waiting.
Concerning eyes colour, I think that other genes are responsible of the selection, not only the specifi ones. Linkage effects?

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