Light skin allele of SLC24A5 gene was spread by the Indo-Europeans (R1a + R1b)

Sile said:
Let "nationalistic" Drac say the nationalistic lies that all nations teach their populace .........his agenda is to be included as a catalan into "northern Europe", but his issue is that he wants to bring the rest of Spain with him ( the Castilian and others lower south). He cannot distinguish that north Spain is different from south Spain same as Italy, Germany, Britain, France and many many more nations. His main problem is his Nationalistic views are to be ignored............you can never have a decent discussion with a nationalistic person.
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You are lying...I follow most of Drac's posts and nowhere it can be proved or deduced he pretends that catalans be "northern european" , ..
 
Wilhelm said:
You are lying...I follow most of Drac's posts and nowhere it can be proved or deduced he pretends that catalans be "northern european" , ..
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It not a lie, its my opinion and facts gather over years.........he has nationalistic ideas which must be ignored in forums like this.

is france north or south european ...............either answer proves the stupidity of nationalistic terms used for north or south when regional terms are more appropriate.

IMO, facts are catalans have greater affinity with southern french than castilians over history. How much celtic are catalans...i am unsure, but galicians seem to have more
 
Sile said:
It not a lie, its my opinion and facts gather over years.........he has nationalistic ideas which must be ignored in forums like this.

is france north or south european ...............either answer proves the stupidity of nationalistic terms used for north or south when regional terms are more appropriate.

IMO, facts are catalans have greater affinity with southern french than castilians over history. How much celtic are catalans...i am unsure, but galicians seem to have more
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But, when did he said that catalans are "northern Euroepan" ?
 
ElHorsto said:
Seriously, I (and others) once issued suspicion that european whiteness necessarly was modal in mesolithic europeans because the glaciers stretched farther south in europe than in asia and because the Saami are much darker in average than south Scandinavians, despite the latter show considerable EEF admixture. There you go, the Saami are the last hunter-gatherers of europe. But honestly I was surprised that the one hunter-gatherer turned out to be even darker than neolithic farmers. I rather expected light skin mutation to have come from central asia to europe. But we'll see, additional samples will come and prove or disprove.
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I must admit that latest findings took me by surprise. I was expecting the whitest skin selections happened right after Ice Age when HGs started to move farther north. Right now we know that EEF were lighter skinned than WHG. Granted the samples are few at the moment, but all confirm same trends. I knew that modern Northern Hunter-Gatherers supplement their D3 from consumption of fresh liver and mainly animal diet and can live far North with not so light skin, but I failed to extrapolate it on WHG and their similar lifestyle. The very light skin wasn't obviously the prerequisite for them to live North. I'm still curious to see if HGs of Balkans and north of Black Sea turn to be darker than farmers too. Perhaps there was an enclave of lighter HGs from whom EEF "borrowed" the lighter gene. Otherwise the whitening of farmers, based on dietary changes with prevalence of starch consumption, therefore losing vitamin D3 source, was the underlying forcing to push them to be more white, on their journey farther North. It makes sense.
 
LeBrok said:
I must admit that latest findings took me by surprise. I was expecting the whitest skin selections happened right after Ice Age when HGs started to move farther north. Right now we know that EEF were lighter skinned than WHG. Granted the samples are few at the moment, but all confirm same trends. I knew that modern Northern Hunter-Gatherers supplement their D3 from consumption of fresh liver and mainly animal diet and can live far North with not so light skin, but I failed to extrapolate it on WHG and their similar lifestyle. The very light skin wasn't obviously the prerequisite for them to live North. I'm still curious to see if HGs of Balkans and north of Black Sea turn to be darker than farmers too. Perhaps there was an enclave of lighter HGs from whom EEF "borrowed" the lighter gene. Otherwise the whitening of farmers, based on dietary changes with prevalence of starch consumption, therefore losing vitamin D3 source, was the underlying forcing to push them to be more white, on their journey farther North. It makes sense.
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It might turn out that the south Balkan Mesolithic hunter-gatherers were not all that different from the first farmers in, say, north west Anatolia, who were hunter-gatherers first as well. In this talk, the researcher claims not to have found a single "U" mtDNA in Greek Mesolithic samples.
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2012/12/talk-by-christina-papageorgopoulou-on.html

I don't know what's taking so long in terms of the Bean project. Look at the turnaround time between the Mal'ta paper and the Lazaridis et al one. They'd better get a move on!
 
Angela said:
It might turn out that the south Balkan Mesolithic hunter-gatherers were not all that different from the first farmers in, say, north west Anatolia, who were hunter-gatherers first as well. In this talk, the researcher claims not to have found a single "U" mtDNA in Greek Mesolithic samples.
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True, considering the fact that till 8,000 BCE (before Black Sea deluge) Black Sea was smaller with unobscured wide land bridge between it and Mediterranean Sea. An easy access to Balkans and from Anatolia and vice versa for local HGs.
 
Angela said:
It might turn out that the south Balkan Mesolithic hunter-gatherers were not all that different from the first farmers in, say, north west Anatolia, who were hunter-gatherers first as well. In this talk, the researcher claims not to have found a single "U" mtDNA in Greek Mesolithic samples.
http://dienekes.blogspot.com/2012/12/talk-by-christina-papageorgopoulou-on.html

I don't know what's taking so long in terms of the Bean project. Look at the turnaround time between the Mal'ta paper and the Lazaridis et al one. They'd better get a move on!
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Thanks. I remember we both were already speculating about Atlantic_Med Hunter-Gatherers in Europe and mtDNA H, Angela.
 
LeBrok said:
I must admit that latest findings took me by surprise. I was expecting the whitest skin selections happened right after Ice Age when HGs started to move farther north. Right now we know that EEF were lighter skinned than WHG. Granted the samples are few at the moment, but all confirm same trends. I knew that modern Northern Hunter-Gatherers supplement their D3 from consumption of fresh liver and mainly animal diet and can live far North with not so light skin, but I failed to extrapolate it on WHG and their similar lifestyle. The very light skin wasn't obviously the prerequisite for them to live North. I'm still curious to see if HGs of Balkans and north of Black Sea turn to be darker than farmers too. Perhaps there was an enclave of lighter HGs from whom EEF "borrowed" the lighter gene. Otherwise the whitening of farmers, based on dietary changes with prevalence of starch consumption, therefore losing vitamin D3 source, was the underlying forcing to push them to be more white, on their journey farther North. It makes sense.
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I'm also very cautious to claim WHG to have been all dark only. The fact that also east asians turned basically white skinned (even if by different genes and rather yellowish) indicates that the ability of a population to whiten is not so rare when necessary. Evolution can catch up much quicker if certain individuals already carry the necessary heritage, so possibly some few WHG could have been white already before EEF arrival. Maybe today many north Euros turned white just by changing their nutrition to grain and crop. If environment changes, then this one individual will be the seed of quick population transformation. The diversity of mesolithic skulls from western europe also suggests a not so uniform phenotype (big cranium of the 8000 years old Combe-Capelle from France vs. the small crania of La Brana and Loschbourg).
 
LeBrok said:
I knew that modern Northern Hunter-Gatherers supplement their D3 from consumption of fresh liver and mainly animal diet and can live far North with not so light skin, but I failed to extrapolate it on WHG and their similar lifestyle.
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On a lighter note: Where I live cod liver still has its small band of aficionados. Me for instance. Served on toast with a slight pinch of salt its taste is near fois gras. Really lovely.

http://golocal-media.de/8c19bb169b0fa730a6ad9609db62c679/700/e54bb0f40dee563d.JPG
 
LeBrok said:
I don't believe I've ever had a fresh one, but I'm a big fan of fried liver of any kind, especially with onions.
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It comes mostly canned, even if I saw it offered fresh on the local market only once. My children don't like liver - I do like all liver and kidneys - but love cod liver. Apparently it has the highest vitamin D content known. Cod roe has also quite high vitamin D content, and is lovely too.

http://www.thefishsociety.co.uk/binary_data/13691_smoked_cods_roe.jpg
 
ElHorsto said:
I'm also very cautious to claim WHG to have been all dark only. The fact that also east asians turned basically white skinned (even if by different genes and rather yellowish) indicates that the ability of a population to whiten is not so rare when necessary. Evolution can catch up much quicker if certain individuals already carry the necessary heritage, so possibly some few WHG could have been white already before EEF arrival. Maybe today many north Euros turned white just by changing their nutrition to grain and crop. If environment changes, then this one individual will be the seed of quick population transformation. The diversity of mesolithic skulls from western europe also suggests a not so uniform phenotype (big cranium of the 8000 years old Combe-Capelle from France vs. the small crania of La Brana and Loschbourg).
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The comparative list of genes involved is in the supplementary information of the paper:

http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/suppl/2013/12/23/001552.DC1/001552-3.pdf

It basically shows that the mutations involved in the explicit whiteness of Europeans aren't present in Loschbourg. That does not mean they were black or even swarthy, but does indicate that current day mutations that cause "whiteness" weren't present among hunter-gatherers. The document explicitly states that no firm conclusions can be derived from this. Indeed the sample is very small, far to low a number of samples for final conclusions, so let us call all that has been said here preliminary conclusions at best.
 
Razib Khan has a this to say on Vitamin D and skin color:

http://scienceblogs.com/gnxp/2007/07/08/skin-color-vitamin-d-1/

The interesting part is that UV may aid to the synthesis of vitamin D, it supposedly hinders the synthesis of folic acid. That is very interesting. Everybody that has children knows both vitamins: Health authorities advice taking folic acid before and during pregnancy as it seems to prevent neural problems and I recall reading its deficiency seems related to miscarriages in general. Vitamin D is given to newborns as newborns tend to be vulnerable to its deficiency: Apparently mothers milk is not a very high source of vitamin D. In the article Razib dismisses a sexual selection component in the quick spread of whiteness, but I am not so sure.

http://pages.globetrotter.net/peter_frost61z/European-skin-color.htm
 
nordicquarreler said:
I can live with this too. It explains the "various hues of whiteness" that we see in Northern Europe today. Many Nordics have kept the ability to tan (we see this in Norway, Sweden, parts of Denmark) and then we have the British Islanders (especially Irish and Scottish) who skip the suntan and go right into sunburn. Seperate alleles would account for these differences.

**EDIT** I am speaking in gross generalities here. Certainly not every Swede or Irishman would fit neatly in these boxes, but overall I do see a trend that matches this conclusion.
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A lot of people here can tan very well to be honest, but we probably have one of the largest percentages of people who can't. A lot of people here tan quite a bit, but then burn if they stay too long, like myself.
 
epoch said:
The comparative list of genes involved is in the supplementary information of the paper:

http://biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv/suppl/2013/12/23/001552.DC1/001552-3.pdf

It basically shows that the mutations involved in the explicit whiteness of Europeans aren't present in Loschbourg. That does not mean they were black or even swarthy, but does indicate that current day mutations that cause "whiteness" weren't present among hunter-gatherers. The document explicitly states that no firm conclusions can be derived from this. Indeed the sample is very small, far to low a number of samples for final conclusions, so let us call all that has been said here preliminary conclusions at best.
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This is the main point. It looks like they were dark, but even if they were quite light in actual fact, this study shows that modern northern Euros (and Euros in general) didn't inherit their light skin from them.
 
Jackson said:
This is the main point. It looks like they were dark, but even if they were quite light in actual fact, this study shows that modern northern Euros (and Euros in general) didn't inherit their light skin from them.
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One of my great-grandfathers came over from Ireland-- my version of tanning consists of me turning a brilliant shade of deep red, then a few days later my skin falls off. Good times.

Looks like I have other relatives that were also from the British Isles that I'm learning about only now. I guess I inherited my tanning abilities (or lack thereof) from them.

But concerning the thread topic... this hunter-gatherer skin tone thing seems very sketchy to me. I'm thinking there was an enormous variety of tribal phenotypes wondering around Europe this far back... skull shape alone tells us that much. Some groups probably mixed more with Neanderthal, some less, some not at all. Plus major mutations would remain hyper-specific to each "pod" due to the insular nature of the times. Regarding the continental population... we are talking about a very small number of people--divided into roving bands, probably not all that concerned with trade-- with no formal long-term settlements. Some probably weren't all that friendly. I bet they didn't even have cultural appreciation day in elementary school...

A modern day model that might offer helpful hints would be the islands in Melanasia... the coastal populations look very different from the interior groups. You can see this even in the Philippines (I will provide the name of their specific interior group in an edit).

In short, I wouldn't hitch my horse to these hunter-gatherer findings. Not at this point anyway. I don't see it as all encompassing.

**EDIT** Name of the native group mentioned above is the Aeta. Found mainly in the mountainous regions of the Philippines.. and yes I know the Philippines aren't in Melanasia. Same situation can be found there though... with their coastal tribes having a higher Asian admixture versus the interior mountainous groups. It's no surprise that these coastal peoples were much more involved in sea-faring trade and this almost certainly gave them a cultural advantage. (Exposure to foreign technology, belief systems, more dispersed sexual selection, etc.)
 
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The lack of tanning ability in the British Isles can be attributed to the lack of need for it there. With all the rain and fog there, the sun barely comes out. But Southern Europeans also get sunburn in the beginning of summer, even the dark ones, usually they "bake" after that first one thou. It's a pretty strange phenomenon.
 
IMO, the lack of tanning ability is found among the very frequent British and Irish folk who have the "red hair" gene. They burn to a crisp if they spend any time under a hot sun. But the darker looking Brits and Irish don't seem to burn nearly as easily, not surprisingly. I don't know if they have SLC24A5, but I suspect they do, since they're still quite caucasian. I suspect it's a different allele or allele that is responsible for those Brits and Irish who can't tan. Actually, I think Maciamo already mentioned something about the allele or alleles associated with red hair and very pale skin.
 
I think that environment / cold climate activates SLC24A5 gene . I mean if people from West Asia with pigmented skin tone migrate up to North America or Northern EurAsia, their new born children are almost always lighter than their parents.
 
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