Europeans’ white skin may have developed as recently as 8,000 years ago

A new report presented at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists suggests that Europeans’ light skin and height may be genetic traits that developed much more recently than scientists previously thought.

Dr. Iain Mathieson from Harvard University led the research, which included the study of 83 samples from Holocene Europe. The researchers discovered that for most of the time humans inhabited Europe, they had dark skin, and genes carrying light skin traits only appeared in Europe in the last 8,000 years. The study is published in the journal BioRxiv.

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:)

That’s a very short time for natural selection to make such a change. Presumably other factors were involved.

Bubblecar said:

That’s a very short time for natural selection to make such a change. Presumably other factors were involved.

must be other things in natural selection that happen in a short amount of time and things that happen in natural selection over longer periods of time

CrazyNeutrino said:

Bubblecar said:

That’s a very short time for natural selection to make such a change. Presumably other factors were involved.

must be other things in natural selection that happen in a short amount of time and things that happen in natural selection over longer periods of time

Bigger the advantage the faster it spreads

CrazyNeutrino said:

Bubblecar said:

That’s a very short time for natural selection to make such a change. Presumably other factors were involved.

must be other things in natural selection that happen in a short amount of time and things that happen in natural selection over longer periods of time

how many generations of people fit into 8000 years

be interesting to see how long it does take to change human variables in a lab

It probably didn’t take many generations for a very dark skinned person who breed with a less dark skinned person to have lighter coloured offspring and so on.

one of things I read is that people with red hair will slowly over time become black hair

Gingers face extinction due to climate change, scientists warn

Gene is thought to be a response to cloudy weather

The red hair gene could be on the way out as it is thought to be a response to cloudy weather in Scotland, something which the country could see less and less of.

A gene mutation that yields red hair and pale skin which is more sensitive to light leaves DNA in skill cells more prone to sun damage and cancer, and if predictions of rising temperatures are correct evolution might cause it to regress.

more…

CrazyNeutrino said:

one of things I read is that people with red hair will slowly over time become black hair

Gingers face extinction due to climate change, scientists warn

Gene is thought to be a response to cloudy weather

The red hair gene could be on the way out as it is thought to be a response to cloudy weather in Scotland, something which the country could see less and less of.

A gene mutation that yields red hair and pale skin which is more sensitive to light leaves DNA in skill cells more prone to sun damage and cancer, and if predictions of rising temperatures are correct evolution might cause it to regress.

more…

so its these genes that can make a quick change responding to the environment

CrazyNeutrino said:

Europeans’ white skin may have developed as recently as 8,000 years ago

A new report presented at the annual meeting of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists suggests that Europeans’ light skin and height may be genetic traits that developed much more recently than scientists previously thought.

Dr. Iain Mathieson from Harvard University led the research, which included the study of 83 samples from Holocene Europe. The researchers discovered that for most of the time humans inhabited Europe, they had dark skin, and genes carrying light skin traits only appeared in Europe in the last 8,000 years. The study is published in the journal BioRxiv.

more..

Horrifying, if true. It would imply racial genocide on a massive scale.

After a few hundred thousand years of European occupation I’d expect that Neanderthals would have consisted of a lot of blonds and rangas.