What Europeans may have looked like 7000 years ago

[wrightway]

http://news.yahoo.com/what-humans-may-have-looked-like-7-000-years-ago-153941503.html

Dark skin. Blue eyes. Beard. Thin and borderline lactose-intolerant.

That's what scientists say man may have looked like 7,000 years ago, after studying DNA from bones discovered in a Spanish cave. The Mesolithic skeleton found at the La Brana-Arintero site in Leon in 2006 is thought to be the first recovered genome of a European from that period.

According to a study published on Sunday in the journal Nature, pigmentation genes extracted from a tooth of the man — dubbed La Brana 1 — reveal he had dark skin like an African-American but the blue eyes of a Scandanavian, "suggesting the light skin of modern Europeans was not yet ubiquitous in Mesolithic times."

The comments section is predictably racist, but the article is fascinating.

[Zygarde]

You hear that sound? That's the beautiful sound of thousands of racist fucktard's heads exploding. On a more serious note this is rather intresting I read about it on BBC reminds me of when I was still doing bio last semester.

[Flying Mint Bunny!]

It's an interesting article, but I find it weird that they use African-American to describe the skin colour.

[Art Vandelay]

It's an interesting article, but I find it weird that they use African-American to describe the skin colour.

Maybe they chose it because it's actually more comparable to the average African-American, rather than the considerably darker average sub-Saharan African. Though it's probably just good old fashioned Americans being America-centric about everything.

[Flying Mint Bunny!]

It's an interesting article, but I find it weird that they use African-American to describe the skin colour.

Maybe they chose it because it's actually more comparable to the average African-American, rather than the considerably darker average sub-Saharan African. Though it's probably just good old fashioned Americans being America-centric about everything.

I guess it makes sense in as much that on average African-Americans are lighter, but I don't really think of African-Americans as having a particular skin tone in the same way that someone from a specific African country does.

[Askold]

There are several different skin tones in Africa as well.

[Ultimate Paragon]

This'll take the wind out of Stormfront's sails.

[wrightway]

I was highly amused by the almost 4,000 comments on the article when I saw it last night. Though I don't understand how Europeans starting out with darker skin affects these jackasses in the least.

[Sigmaleph]

This'll take the wind out of Stormfront's sails.

No, it won't. Racists care very little about scientific justification for their racism.

[mellenORL]

All the scientists working the DNA data are Zionist Lizards, anyway. As are ALL scientists. Doncha know. (pukes)

[Ironchew]

It's an interesting article, but I find it weird that they use African-American to describe the skin colour.

The abstract doesn't make any mention of the term "African American". It can be hard separating studies from shitty science journalism, but not in this instance.

The genome was only sampled from one individual, "an approximately 7,000-year-old Mesolithic skeleton discovered at the La Braña-Arintero site in León, Spain"), which isn't very distant from the African continent. It's best to take a skeptical stance on these studies until they can find a larger population sample.

[JohnE]

I thought it was common knowledge that the human race started in Africa and migrated out from there, so I don't see why it should be a surprise to anyone (even racists) that early Europeans were probably dark skinned (or at least, darker than modern Europeans).

What's interesting to me is the blue eyes, for two reasons. First: Because I always just assumed light skin and blue eye developed together. Second: Because blue eyes with dark skin looks awesome.

[mellenORL]

You'll see blue and green eyes occasionally amongst the ancient Bushmen tribes, who have the oldest mitochondrial DNA lineage. And they have differing hair textures, eye lid folds and a wide variance in skin tones amongst them, too. They really do look like the heirloom seed stock for all of humanity.

[Barbarella]

It's an interesting article, but I find it weird that they use African-American to describe the skin colour.

Maybe they chose it because it's actually more comparable to the average African-American, rather than the considerably darker average sub-Saharan African. Though it's probably just good old fashioned Americans being America-centric about everything.

I guess it makes sense in as much that on average African-Americans are lighter, but I don't really think of African-Americans as having a particular skin tone in the same way that someone from a specific African country does.

This is why I just use the term "black".

Considering the "butthurt" in the comments, there's only one thing I gotta say:

[rookie]

I gotta say I'm not surprised. Coming across the Straits of Gibraltar and migrating northwards, that really makes sense.

The comments remind me of that article in Time or some magazine like that. Anyways they were talking about The Real Face of Jesus. I remember I was deployed to Iraq at the time. And an ignorant fuckwad looked at it and examined "They made him look like a (common slur for Arab)!?!"