Dark skin, blue eyes: Genes paint a picture of 7,000-year-old European
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A 7,000-year-old man whose bones were left behind in a Spanish cave had the dark skin of an African, but the blue eyes of a Scandinavian. He was a hunter-gatherer who ate a low-starch diet and couldn't digest milk well — which meshes with the lifestyle that predated the rise of agriculture. But his immune system was already starting to adapt to a new lifestyle.
Researchers found all this out not from medical records, or from a study of the man's actual skin or eyes, but from an analysis of the DNA extracted from his tooth.
The study, published online Sunday by the journal Nature, lays out what's said to be the first recovered genome of a European hunter-gatherer from a transitional time known as the Mesolithic Period, which lasted from 10,000 to 5,000 years ago. It's a time when the hunter-gatherer lifestyle was starting to give way to a more settled existence, with farms, livestock and urban settlements.
The remains of the Mesolithic male, dubbed La Braña 1, were found in 2006 in the La Braña-Arintero cave complex in northwest Spain. In the Nature paper, the researchers describe how they isolated the ancient DNA, sequenced the genome and looked at key regions linked to physical traits — including lactose intolerance, starch digestion and immune response.
The biggest surprise was that the genes linked to skin pigmentation reflected African rather than modern European variations. That indicates that the man had dark skin, "although we cannot know the exact shade," Carles Lalueza-Fox, a member of the research team from the Spanish National Research Council, said in a news release. At the same time, the man possessed the genetic variations that produce blue eyes in current Europeans.
That combination makes for a rare genetic profile, but perhaps it was more typical of the Mesolithic Period. To find out, the researchers say they'll need to analyze more genomes from that time — starting with La Braña 2, another male whose skeleton was found in the Spanish cave.
Researchers found all this out not from medical records, or from a study of the man's actual skin or eyes, but from an analysis of the DNA extracted from his tooth.
The study, published online Sunday by the journal Nature, lays out what's said to be the first recovered genome of a European hunter-gatherer from a transitional time known as the Mesolithic Period, which lasted from 10,000 to 5,000 years ago. It's a time when the hunter-gatherer lifestyle was starting to give way to a more settled existence, with farms, livestock and urban settlements.
The remains of the Mesolithic male, dubbed La Braña 1, were found in 2006 in the La Braña-Arintero cave complex in northwest Spain. In the Nature paper, the researchers describe how they isolated the ancient DNA, sequenced the genome and looked at key regions linked to physical traits — including lactose intolerance, starch digestion and immune response.
The biggest surprise was that the genes linked to skin pigmentation reflected African rather than modern European variations. That indicates that the man had dark skin, "although we cannot know the exact shade," Carles Lalueza-Fox, a member of the research team from the Spanish National Research Council, said in a news release. At the same time, the man possessed the genetic variations that produce blue eyes in current Europeans.
That combination makes for a rare genetic profile, but perhaps it was more typical of the Mesolithic Period. To find out, the researchers say they'll need to analyze more genomes from that time — starting with La Braña 2, another male whose skeleton was found in the Spanish cave.
Comments
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Looks like russell Crowe wi
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lmao at dark skinned like a AFrican that painting looks like your average white person
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Interesting.
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lol this some ? ....lol..I love all people but yo white people always wanna pop up somewhere.
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Doubt the DNA told them he had straight CAC hair
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The user and all related content has been deleted.
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They always make a ? reconstruction that looks nothing like the original
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White ppl wanna be black sooo bad
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They can't stand their ancestors being negros.
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There may be some truth to this.
The man looks like a regular cave man.....and the Original Man was never a cave man, so it seems plausible.
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LOL
[img]https://scontent-a-dfw.? .fbcdn.net/hphotos-frc3/1724402_1417778965132177_1917056669_n.jpg[/img] -
They just drew that cracka from the hangover
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Get that ? outta here
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The first Europeans were Africans.
"White features" predate White people. -
Girl boo
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Supposedly this is how people in atlantis used to look like, supposedly. -
should be alittle bit darker than that.
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Supposedly this is how people in atlantis used to look like, supposedly.
I was thinking Italian or Polish maybe.. but, meh. -
dark skin blue eyes.......sounds like the retired white people that live by the beach in south Fl
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Cabana_Da_Don wrote: »lol this some ? ....lol..I love all people but yo white people always wanna pop up somewhere.
Did you actually read the post? This isn't about white people popping up anywhere.
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The Lonious Monk wrote: »Cabana_Da_Don wrote: »lol this some ? ....lol..I love all people but yo white people always wanna pop up somewhere.
Did you actually read the post? This isn't about white people popping up anywhere.
Funny how he got straight hair though.I love white people though real talk. -
Cabana_Da_Don wrote: »The Lonious Monk wrote: »Cabana_Da_Don wrote: »lol this some ? ....lol..I love all people but yo white people always wanna pop up somewhere.
Did you actually read the post? This isn't about white people popping up anywhere.
Funny how he got straight hair though.I love white people though real talk.
Aboriginal Australians have straight hair also..
And then there's
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Man whay I´m saying is this...I KNOW OUR BODY ADAPTED TO THE COLD BY OUR HAIR BEING STRAIGHT TO PROTECT OUR BACK OF THE HEAD.I KNOW THIS...BUT THIS ? PIC JUST LOOKS LIKE A WHITE FLORIDA DUDE.
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Meh....what's the point?