Quote:Neanderthal-human sex bred light skins and infertility

29 January 2014 by Michael Marshall

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IT IS surprising what a little hanky-panky can do. A handful of sexual encounters between humans and Neanderthals made many of us what we are today, affecting both our appearance and our vulnerability to disease. But the genetic legacy left by the Neanderthals also highlights just how different we are from our sister species.



Neanderthals lived in Europe and Asia between about 200,000 and 30,000 years ago. Our species – sometimes dubbed "modern humans" – made it to Eurasia about 65,000 years ago, and so the two species had plenty of time to cosy up. In 2010, geneticists discovered that they had been very close neighbours indeed. They sequenced a Neanderthal genome and discovered it carried genes that also appear in the genomes of people of European and Asian descent: our species must have interbred with Neanderthals.



Now, by studying Neanderthal genes in people alive today, researchers are beginning to appreciate how that interbreeding influenced our species.



In one new study of 1000 human genomes, Sriram Sankararaman and David Reich of Harvard Medical School and colleagues found that Neanderthal DNA is most common in regions of the genome with the greatest genetic variability, making them a prime target for natural selection. While Neanderthal DNA may make up only 1.6 to 1.8 per cent of the Eurasian genome, it punches above its weight in terms of biological impact, says Reich (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature12961).



Joshua Akey and Ben Vernot of the University of Washington in Seattle have analysed the Neanderthal DNA in a further 665 humans (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1245938). Both their study and the Harvard one found a hotspot of Neanderthal ancestry in genes relating to keratin, a fibrous protein found in our hair, skin and nails.



One of the genes, BNC2, is involved in skin pigmentation. That implies that Eurasians owe their paler skins partly to Neanderthals. Light skin is an advantage at higher latitudes because it is more efficient at generating vitamin D from sunlight, so Neanderthal DNA may have helped modern humans to adapt to life outside Africa.



If so, the adaptation took thousands of years to become universal. A third study published this week describes a DNA analysis of one person who lived in Stone Age Europe about 7000 years ago – 40,000 years after any Neanderthal interbreeding. His genes suggest his skin was dark (Nature, doi.org/q74). It may be that the Neanderthal keratin affected early Eurasians' hair instead, perhaps straightening it.





Not all of the Neanderthal genes are beneficial. Sankararaman and Reich found that our Neanderthal inheritance includes several genes that make us susceptible to diseases including type 2 diabetes, lupus and Crohn's disease.



Some of the genes, meanwhile, appear to have led to fertility problems. For instance, Sankararaman found that the X chromosome is almost devoid of Neanderthal DNA. This suggests that most Neanderthal DNA that wound up on the X chromosome made the bearer less fertile – a common occurrence when related but distinct species interbreed – and so it quickly disappeared from the human gene pool. "Neanderthal alleles were swept away," says Sankararaman.



"This underlines that modern humans and Neanderthals are indeed different species," says Fred Spoor of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, who was not involved in any of the studies.



The genetic evidence further backs this up. Neanderthal DNA is irregularly spaced through the modern human genome rather than being fully mixed. That implies that interbreeding occurred very rarely. Sankararaman estimates it may have happened just four times.



"But these relatively few matings obviously were an important event in the history of non-Africans," says Reich.



This article appeared in print under the headline "Neanderthal sex, the aftermath"

Quote:Human evolution

Kissing cousins

[color="#0000FF"]The genetic contribution Neanderthal man made to modern humanity is clearer[/color]

Feb 1st 2014 | From the print edition



HOW Neanderthal are you? That question sounds vaguely insulting. But unless you are African, or of recent African ancestry, the answer is likely to be 1-3%.



Though Homo sapiens is the only type of human around at the moment, that was not true until recently. Sixty thousand years ago, when modern humans first left Africa, they encountered other species of humanity, such as Neanderthals (imagined above, in an artist’s interpretation), in Europe and Asia. In some cases, they interbred with them. The genetic traces of those encounters remain in modern human genomes. And two studies, one just published in Nature, and one in Science, have now looked in detail at this miscegenation, and tried to understand its consequences.





The Nature study, conducted by Sriram Sankararaman of Harvard Medical School and his colleagues, looked at the genomes of 1,004 living people of European and Asian descent and compared them with Neanderthal DNA from a 50,000-year-old toe bone found in a Siberian cave, and also with the genomes of 176 west Africans. This latter group, Dr Sankararaman assumed, could have little Neanderthal DNA in them because Neanderthals, as far as can be determined from the fossil record, lived only in Europe and western Asia.



Dr Sankararaman and his colleagues certainly did find plenty of DNA which seems to have come from Neanderthals in their Eurasians. Tellingly, it was not sprinkled evenly throughout the modern human genome. That let them make educated guesses about the effects it is having on those who carry it. For instance, genes affecting the production of keratin—an important component of hair and skin—showed more Neanderthal influence than most. Neanderthals, whose homeland was much colder then than it is now because of the ice age, were hairier (and thus better insulated) than Homo sapiens. Retaining Neanderthal traits of this sort, in an African species that was trying to make good in sub-Arctic conditions, would thus be encouraged by natural selection.



More surprisingly, Dr Sankararaman also found Neanderthal DNA in genes associated with diabetes, Crohn’s disease, lupus and even the propensity to smoke. This does not necessarily mean such DNA was bad for those who inherited it. A gene which increases the risk of diabetes in modern circumstances of abundant food might, for example, have had benefits in a more austere environment.



Indeed, truly deleterious DNA would be expected to be noticeable by its absence, because natural selection would have worked to eliminate it in the 30,000 years since Neanderthals died out. And Dr Sankararaman found evidence for exactly that, as well.

(So any Neanderthal interbreeding with homo sapiens who had moved out of Africa would have had to take place 30,000 years ago at latest?)



There is, for example, little Neanderthal DNA on the X chromosome (which, along with the Y chromosome, determines an individual’s sex). Nor is there much in genes that are expressed in the testicles. Studies from other hybrid animals, which are frequently sterile, suggest genes which reduce male fertility are often found on the X chromosome. Since few things are a bigger evolutionary no-no than being unable to produce children, tremendous selective pressure would have existed to remove the offending DNA from the hybrid descendants of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.



The study published in Science, by Benjamin Vernot and Joshua Akey of the University of Washington, in Seattle, reaches similar conclusions to Dr Sankararaman’s. Dr Vernot and Dr Akey hunted down Neanderthal DNA in the genomes of 665 Europeans and East Asians. They, too, found evidence of its having inserted itself into genes associated with the skin, and that not all of the newly arrived genetic material is helpful to its current bearers.



They made other discoveries, too. With the help of computer models, they concluded that there were probably several pulses of interbreeding over the millennia, rather than a steady stream of it. Both they and Dr Sankararaman also found that, on average, East Asians have more Neanderthal DNA than Europeans do—which is odd, because Neanderthals are not known to have lived in East Asia.



The ghost in the machine



Dr Vernot and Dr Akey also used their data to try to improve understanding of the Neanderthal genome itself, by combining the bits and bobs scattered among modern humans. Though both their study and Dr Sankararaman’s depended on being able to identify what was Neanderthal by comparing modern human genomes with fossil DNA, the fossil material available is imperfect. Looking at the exact sequence of DNA “letters” (the chemical bases which carry the genetic message) in areas identified as Neanderthal in modern genomes can therefore improve understanding of the Neanderthal original.



Crucially, though the amount of Neanderthal DNA in any individual is small, the exact bits vary a lot from person to person. Look at enough people, then, and it becomes possible to rebuild quite large swathes of the Neanderthal genome. Dr Vernot and Dr Akey reckon that from their sample of 665 they have recovered around 20% of it.



This is an impressive figure for an extinct species. It shows just how much the concept of a “species” is a construct of human thinking rather than a truly natural category. Technically, Neanderthals may be gone. But their DNA ghosts linger on.



From the print edition: Science and technology

Quote:1. "The study published in Science, by Benjamin Vernot and Joshua Akey of the University of Washington, in Seattle, reaches similar conclusions to Dr Sankararaman’s. Dr Vernot and Dr Akey hunted down Neanderthal DNA in the genomes of 665 Europeans and East Asians. They, too, found evidence of its having inserted itself into genes associated with the skin, and that not all of the newly arrived genetic material is helpful to its current bearers."



2. "They made other discoveries, too. With the help of computer models, they concluded that there were probably several pulses of interbreeding over the millennia, rather than a steady stream of it. Both they and Dr Sankararaman also found that, on average, East Asians have more Neanderthal DNA than Europeans do—which is odd, because Neanderthals are not known to have lived in East Asia."



(The fact that they find this odd - does it mean they know for certain that ancestors of E Asian populations could not have had Neanderthal input before they moved into E Asian regions? Alternatively, maybe a cluster of Neanderthals did live in their vicinity but no evidence of Neanderthals' historical presence has yet been found in the fossil record there?

Why is my suspicious mind thinking they will namedrop the Ainu of Japan or the Kennewick Man of North America next?

And there's another suspicion. It's probably an irrational fear.)

Quote:1. "In one new study of 1000 human genomes, Sriram Sankararaman and David Reich of Harvard Medical School and colleagues found that Neanderthal DNA is most common in regions of the genome with the greatest genetic variability, making them a prime target for natural selection. While Neanderthal DNA may make up only 1.6 to 1.8 per cent of the Eurasian genome, it punches above its weight in terms of biological impact, says Reich (Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature12961)."



2. "Joshua Akey and Ben Vernot of the University of Washington in Seattle have analysed the Neanderthal DNA in a further 665 humans (Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1245938). Both their study and the Harvard one found a hotspot of Neanderthal ancestry in genes relating to keratin, a fibrous protein found in our hair, skin and nails."



3. "A third study published this week describes a DNA analysis of one person who lived in Stone Age Europe about 7000 years ago – 40,000 years after any Neanderthal interbreeding. His genes suggest his skin was dark (Nature, doi.org/q74). It may be that the Neanderthal keratin affected early Eurasians' hair instead, perhaps straightening it."

Quote:From archaeological excavations in Southern Russia it appears that widows were already climbing the funeral pyres of their deceased husbands in the fourth millennium before our chronology, in the so-called Kurgan-culture, an apparantly proto-Scythian and definitely Indo-European culture.

Quote:Those scholars who follow Gimbutas identify a "Kurgan culture" as reflecting an early Indo-European ethnicity which existed in the steppes and southeastern Europe from the 5th to 3rd millennia BC.

Quote:Derived immune and ancestral pigmentation alleles in a 7,000-year-old Mesolithic European



Iñigo Olalde,1, 18 Morten E. Allentoft,2, 18 Federico Sánchez-Quinto,1 Gabriel Santpere,1 Charleston W. K. Chiang,3 Michael DeGiorgio,4, 5 Javier Prado-Martinez,1 Juan Antonio Rodríguez,1 Simon Rasmussen,6 Javier Quilez,1 Oscar Ramírez,1 Urko M. Marigorta,1 Marcos Fernández-Callejo,1 María Encina Prada,7 Julio Manuel Vidal Encinas,8 Rasmus Nielsen,9 Mihai G. Netea,10 John Novembre,11 Richard A. Sturm,12 Pardis Sabeti,13, 14 Tomàs Marquès-Bonet,1, 15 Arcadi Navarro,1, 15, 16, 17 Eske Willerslev2 & Carles Lalueza-Fox



Ancient genomic sequences have started to reveal the origin and the demographic impact of farmers from the Neolithic period spreading into Europe1, 2, 3. The adoption of farming, stock breeding and sedentary societies during the Neolithic may have resulted in adaptive changes in genes associated with immunity and diet4. However, the limited data available from earlier hunter-gatherers preclude an understanding of the selective processes associated with this crucial transition to agriculture in recent human evolution. Here we sequence an approximately 7,000-year-old Mesolithic skeleton discovered at the La Braña-Arintero site in León, Spain], to retrieve a complete pre-agricultural European human genome. Analysis of this genome in the context of other ancient samples suggests the existence of a common ancient genomic signature across western and central Eurasia from the Upper Paleolithic to the Mesolithic. The La Braña individual carries ancestral alleles in several skin pigmentation genes, suggesting that the light skin of modern Europeans was not yet ubiquitous in Mesolithic times. Moreover, we provide evidence that a significant number of derived, putatively adaptive variants associated with pathogen resistance in modern Europeans were already present in this hunter-gatherer.

Quote:His genes suggest his skin was dark (Nature, doi.org/q74). It may be that the Neanderthal keratin affected early Eurasians' hair instead, perhaps straightening it.

Quote:non-carborundum said...

[...]

Recently I read that the first blue eyed human may have been as recent as 7,000 years old.



independent.co.uk/news/science/revealed-first-ol-blue-eyes-is-7000-years-old-and-lived-in-a-cave-9086310.html

[...]

Quote:Revealed: First Ol’ Blue Eyes is 7,000 years old and was a caveman living in Spain



DNA analysis of the man’s tooth has also disclosed that he had the dark-skinned genes of an African



A Stone Age man who lived about 7,000 years ago and whose buried bones were discovered in 2006 has turned out to be the earliest known person with blue eyes, a physical trait that evolved relatively recently in human history, a study has found.



A DNA analysis of the man’s tooth has also revealed that although he was more closely related to modern-day Scandinavians that to any other European group, he had the dark-skinned genes of an African, though scientists do not know his precise skin tone.

(Everything about that statement is fascinating. Read and read and read again.)



The man, who was about 1.7m (5ft 7in) tall and aged 30-35, was a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer rather than a farmer. He did not have the “lactose-tolerance” genes that allowed him to digest milk as an adult – a key sign that he had little or no contact with domesticated livestock.

(Come by me again? Another fascinating statement, when read with the previous one. Does that mean he's not one of the "pastoralist nomads" [yet]? And no sign of this man being part of the IE dispersal of neolithic farming from Anatolia outward - as per the Anatolian PIE hypothesis of Renfrew? Intriguing.)



His well-preserved skeleton was one of two discovered in 2006 in a deep cave system called La Braña-Arintero near León in north-west Spain, which is 1,500m above sea level and cold enough to limit the bacterial decay of DNA.



Dating has placed the skeletons in the middle of the Mesolithic period, which lasted between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago and represents the interlude between the older Palaeolithic and the more recent Neolithic, when agriculture and livestock farming spread from the Middle East and became widespread across Europe



Artist's impression of the 7,000 year-old man (independent.co.uk/news/science/artists-impression-of-the-7000-yearold-man-9086359.html)



The study, published in the journal Nature, sequenced fragments of DNA extracted from the man’s tooth, revealing that he carried an unusual combination of genes for blue eyes and dark skin – as well as for slightly curly, dark-brown hair and lactose intolerance.



“The biggest surprise was to discover that this individual possessed African versions of the genes that determine the light pigmentation of the current Europeans, which indicates that he had dark skin,” said Carles Lalueza-Fox of the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona.



“Even more surprising was to find that he possessed the genetic variations that produce blue eyes in current Europeans, resulting in a unique phenotype [physical type] in a genome that is otherwise clearly northern European,” Dr Lalueza-Fox said.



“Blue eyes in modern humans are related to the same mutation in a gene called HERC2. If you have this mutation in both copies of the chromosome, you will have blue eyes for sure. This was the case with this man, who is so far the oldest known individual with blue eyes,” he said.



Previous research published in 2008 found that the earliest mutations in the eye-colour genes that led to the evolution of blue eyes probably occurred about 10,000 years ago in individuals living in around the Black Sea.



This study suggested that everyone with blue eyes today can trace their ancestry back to the same family in which this mutation first arose – and that the gene had travelled across Europe before the shift from hunting to farming, which is known to have spread from the east to the west.



It is not clear why blue eyes spread among ancient Europeans. One theory is that the gene could have helped to prevent eye disorders due to low light levels found in European winters, or that the trait spread because it was deemed sexually attractive.

Quote:1. "A DNA analysis of the man’s tooth has also revealed that although he was more closely related to modern-day Scandinavians that to any other European group, he had the dark-skinned genes of an African, though scientists do not know his precise skin tone."



2. "he possessed the genetic variations that produce blue eyes in current Europeans, resulting in a unique phenotype [physical type] in a genome that is otherwise clearly northern European."



3. "this individual possessed African versions of the genes that determine the light pigmentation of the current Europeans, which indicates that he had dark skin,”



4. "If you have this mutation in both copies of the chromosome, you will have blue eyes for sure. This was the case with this man, who is so far the oldest known individual with blue eyes,”



5. "Previous research published in 2008 found that the earliest mutations in the eye-colour genes that led to the evolution of blue eyes probably occurred about 10,000 years ago in individuals living in around the Black Sea. This [2008] study suggested that everyone with blue eyes today can trace their ancestry back to the same family in which this mutation first arose – and that the gene had travelled across Europe before the shift from hunting to farming, which is known to have spread from the east to the west."



6. "The man, who was about 1.7m (5ft 7in) tall and aged 30-35, was a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer rather than a farmer."



7. "He did not have the “lactose-tolerance” genes that allowed him to digest milk as an adult – a key sign that he had little or no contact with domesticated livestock."

Quote:An Evolutionary Whodunit: How Did Humans Develop Lactose Tolerance?

by Helen Thompson, December 28, 2012 9:56 AM

[...]

It's hard to tell how prevalent lactose tolerance has been over time. But so far scientists have found evidence of adult lactase persistence in ancient skeletons in Northern Europe, Scandinavia, southern France and elsewhere. Thomas and his colleague Oddný Sverrisdóttir of Uppsala University in Sweden recently discovered lactase persistence in Spanish remains from about 5,000 years ago and hope to publish their research next year.

Quote:Lactose intolerance

Lactose intolerance, also called lactase deficiency and hypolactasia, is the inability to digest lactose, a sugar found in milk and to a lesser extent milk-derived dairy products. It is not a disorder as such, but a genetically-determined characteristic.

[...]

Most mammals normally cease to produce lactase, becoming lactose intolerant, after weaning,[4] but some human populations have developed lactase persistence, in which lactase production continues into adulthood. It is estimated that 75% of adults worldwide show some decrease in lactase activity during adulthood.[5] The frequency of decreased lactase activity ranges from 5% in northern Europe through 71% for Sicily to more than 90% in some African and Asian countries.[6] This distribution is now thought to have been caused by recent natural selection favoring lactase-persistent individuals in cultures in which dairy products are available as a food source.[7] While it was first thought that this would mean that populations in Europe, India, Arabia and Africa had high frequencies of lactase persistence because of a particular mutation, it was later shown that lactase persistence is caused by several independently occurring mutations.[8]

[...]

Lactase persistence

Lactase persistence is the phenotype associated with various autosomal dominant alleles prolonging the activity of lactase beyond infancy; conversely, lactase non-persistence is the phenotype associated with primary lactase deficiency (see above). Among mammals, lactase persistence is unique to humans — it evolved relatively recently (in the last 10,000 years) among some populations, and the majority of people worldwide remain lactase non-persistent.[11] For this reason lactase persistence is of some interest to the fields of anthropology and human genetics, which typically use the genetically derived persistence/non-persistence terminology.



Genetic analysis shows that lactase persistence has developed multiple times in different places independently in an example of convergent evolution.[52]

Quote:In Dr. Oppenheimer’s reconstruction of events, the principal ancestors of today’s British and Irish populations arrived from Spain about 16,000 years ago, speaking a language related to Basque.



The British Isles were unpopulated then, wiped clean of people by glaciers that had smothered northern Europe for about 4,000 years and forced the former inhabitants into southern refuges in Spain and Italy. When the climate warmed and the glaciers retreated, people moved back north. The new arrivals in the British Isles would have found an empty territory, which they could have reached just by walking along the Atlantic coastline, since the English Channel and the Irish Sea were still land.



This new population, who lived by hunting and gathering, survived a sharp cold spell called the Younger Dryas that lasted from 12,300 to 11,000 years ago. Much later, some 6,000 years ago, agriculture finally reached the British Isles from its birthplace in the Near East. Agriculture may have been introduced by people speaking Celtic, in Dr. Oppenheimer’s view. Although the Celtic immigrants may have been few in number, they spread their farming techniques and their language throughout Ireland and the western coast of Britain. Later immigrants arrived from northern Europe had more influence on the eastern and southern coasts. They too spread their language, a branch of German, but these invaders’ numbers were also small compared with the local population.



In all, about three-quarters of the ancestors of today’s British and Irish populations arrived between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago, when rising sea levels split Britain and Ireland from the Continent and from each other, Dr. Oppenheimer calculates in a new book, “The Origins of the British: A Genetic Detective Story” (Carroll & Graf, 2006).



[...]

A different view of the Anglo-Saxon invasions has been developed by Mark Thomas of University College, London. Dr. Thomas and colleagues say the invaders wiped out substantial numbers of the indigenous population, replacing 50 percent to 100 percent of those in central England. Their argument is that the Y chromosomes of English men seem identical to those of people in Norway and the Friesland area of the Netherlands, two regions from which the invaders may have originated.



Dr. Oppenheimer disputes this, saying the similarity between the English and northern European Y chromosomes arises because both regions were repopulated by people from the Iberian refuges after the glaciers retreated.

Quote:Most estimates from Indo-Europeanists date PIE between 4500 and 2500 BC, with the most probable date falling right around 3700 BC. It is unlikely that late PIE (even after the separation of the Anatolian branch) post-dates 2500 BC, since Proto-Indo-Iranian is usually dated to just before 2000 BC. On the other hand, it is not very likely that early PIE predates 4500 BC, because the reconstructed vocabulary strongly suggests a culture of the terminal phase of the Neolithic bordering on the early Bronze Age.

Quote:The PCT posits that the advent of Indo-European languages should be linked to the arrival of Homo sapiens in Europe and Asia from Africa in the Upper Paleolithic.[2] Employing "lexical periodization", Alinei arrives at a timeline deeper than even that of Colin Renfrew's Anatolian hypothesis.[3]

Quote:dates to between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago, roughly coinciding with the appearance of behavioral modernity and before the advent of agriculture.

Quote:The Paleolithic Continuity Theory, with an origin before the 10th millennium BCE.

Quote:the gene [for blue eyes] had travelled across Europe before the shift from hunting to farming, which is known to have spread from the east [Black Sea] to the west.

Quote:The Paleolithic Continuity Theory, with an origin [presumably of PIE] before the 10th millennium BCE.

Quote:General lines

The framework of PCT is laid out by Alinei in four main assumptions:[2]



1.Continuity is the basic pattern of European prehistory and the basic working hypothesis on the origins of IE languages.

2.Stability and antiquity are general features of languages.

3.The lexicon of natural languages, due to its antiquity, may be "periodized" along the entire course of human evolution.

4.Archaeological frontiers coincide with linguistic frontiers.



The continuity theory draws on a Continuity Model (CM), positing the presence of IE and non-IE peoples and languages in Europe from Paleolithic times and allowing for minor invasions and infiltrations of local scope, mainly during the last three millennia.[6]



Arguing that continuity is "the archeologist's easiest pursuit," Alinei deems this "the easiest working hypothesis," putting the burden of proof on competing hypotheses as long as none provide irrefutable counter-evidence. Alinei also claims linguistic coherence, rigor and productivity in the pursuit of this approach.[2]



Historical reconstruction

Associated with the Paleolithic Continuity Theory (PCT) is the historical reconstruction proposed by Alinei, which suggests that Indo-European speakers were native in Europe since the paleolithic. According to this reconstruction, the differentiation process of languages would have taken an extremely long time; by the end of the Ice Age the Indo-European language family had differentiated into proto Celtic/Italic/Germanic/Slavic/Baltic speakers occupying territories within or close to their traditional homelands. The rate of change accelerated when (Neolithic) social stratification and colonial wars began. Summarizing:[2]



1.The colonial expansion of the Celts started much earlier than La Tene and proceeded (generally) from West to East, not vice versa.

2.The Mesolithic cultures of Northern Europe are identified with already differentiated Celtic, Germanic, Baltic and Uralic groups.

3.Scandinavia was colonized by Germanic groups "only" after deglaciation, and was better able to preserve its original character in isolation. Germany, in contrast, suffered fragmentation as a result of the Neolithic appearance of the Linear Pottery culture, and developed a wealth of dialects.

4.The prehistoric distribution of proto-languages akin to Italic was an important factor underlying the current distribution of Romance languages throughout Europe.

5.The Slavic languages originated in the Balkans and became linked with the Neolithic expansion. This group would be especially identified by the Baden culture.[7]



The Paleolithic Continuity hypothesis reverses the Kurgan hypothesis and largely identifies the Indo-Europeans with Gimbutas's "Old Europe."[8] PCT reassigns the Kurgan culture (traditionally considered early Indo-European) to a people of predominantly mixed Uralic and Turkic stock. This hypothesis is supported by the tentative linguistic identification of Etruscans as a Uralic, proto-Hungarian people that had already undergone strong proto-Turkic influence in the third millennium BC,[7] when Pontic invasions would have brought this people to the Carpathian Basin. A subsequent migration of Urnfield culture signature around 1250 BC caused this ethnic group to expand south in a general movement of people, attested by the upheaval of the Sea Peoples and the overthrow of an earlier Italic substrate at the onset of the "Etruscan" Villanovan culture.[7]



Genetics

In introduction to PCT Mario Alinei argues, following Cavalli Sforza, that the distribution of genetic markers largely corresponds to that of languages. He further contends that 80% of Europe's human genetic material dates back to the Paleolithic, and cites Bryan Sykes in claiming that only a fifth of European DNA can be traced back to neolithic incomers.[2]



A 2009 study comparing mitochondrial DNA lineages of late hunter-gatherers, early farmers, and modern Europeans found large differences between the three groups. In particular, 82% of hunter-gatherers had maternal lineages that are rare in modern central Europeans.[9]



The origin of paternal lineages remains difficult to prove because modern science is unable to extract Y-DNA haplogroups from Paleolithic samples. However, the recent analysis of Arredi, Poloni and Tyler-Smith (2007) suggests that R1b-M269, the most common western European haplogroup, may have entered Europe only in the Neolithic.[10]



Reception

Alinei's Origini delle Lingue d’Europa was reviewed favourably in 1996 by Jonathan Morris in Mother Tongue, a journal dedicated to the reconstruction of Paleolithic language, judging Alinei's theory as being

Quote:"both simpler than its rivals and more powerful in terms of the insights it provides into language in the Meso- and Palaeolithic. While his book contains some flaws I believe that it deserves to be regarded as one of the seminal texts on linguistic archaeology, although given its lamentable lack of citation in English-language circles, it appears that recognition will have to wait until a translation of the original Italian appears."

Morris's review was reprinted as the foreword to the 2000 edition of Alinei's book.[11]



Renzi (1997) sharply criticized Alinei's book, refuting in particular the claim of the presence of Latin and of its different territorial forms in Italy in the 2nd millennium BC. Renzi argues that this theory would subvert firmly established concepts of Romance philology and dialectology, such as the concepts of substratum, vulgar Latin and so on.[12]



Alinei's theory was again critically reviewed by Adiego Lajara (2002):[13]

Quote:Although some of Alinei's reflections on linguistic change are very interesting, it should be said that certain conceptions in his work -- such as the excessive immobility of languages or the relationship between types of language and progress in the prehistoric lithic industry -- are very debatable. Alinei's core theory -- continuity from the Palaeolithic --, runs into a serious difficulty: it obliges us to deal with words traditionally reconstructed for Indo-European, referring to notions that did not exist in the Palaeolithic as loans, when from the formal standpoint they are indistinguishable from those Alinei sees as being Indo-European in the Palaeolithic period.

[color="#800080"]("Ja, hoe zit dat nou?")[/color]

Quote:Asian IE languages

This page is noticeably missing a PCT explanation for the placement of the Indo-Iranian and Tocharian languages. Does the "continuity" logic apply to them too, or are they explained away as a result of more recent migrations away from Europe? --86.135.181.234 (talk) 00:14, 25 April 2008 (UTC)



No, Alinei is silent on this point and when I asked him about it, he just said that he didn't have time to deal with everything.



Evidently, I think that this is a serious sin of omission (as is his failure to deal with Iberia, Greece, Iran and only cursory treatment of Turkey).



My own view, FWIW (and NOT Alinei's) - is that while I tend to support his premise about IE being present in Europe by the Mesolithic, there is no a priori reason for assuming that the same holds for India. This, however, is a logical consequence of his theory, since evidently, one of his key arguments is the absence of convincing evidence for a pre-IE substrate in Scandinavia. It must thus logically follow that if you find a substrate then PCT doesn't apply, and there's been some very good work done by Frank Southworth & Michael Witzel to demonstrate Munda and Dravidian substrates in the Rg Veda. In any case, you have an instant clue to suggest that an IE PCT in India is unlikely, simply because there's only one big IE family, Indo-Aryan - if IE had a palaeolithic time-depth, you would expect to find several.Jonathan Morris2 (talk) 03:31, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Quote:status of PCT

thanks for the 'review' link (more properly 'self-promotion' I suppose, since it is hosted on their own site and does not appear to have been published elsewhere (?)). Looking it over, I am now quite convinced that PCT can be dismissed as fringy nonsense. It appears to propose linguistic change with geological slowness miley: no matter what your take on glottochronology (error margin of 50% or 200%?), I don't think any self-respecting historical linguist would endorse anything like this: Renfrew's timeframe is already borderline acceptable, but this is completely bat-shit beyond the pale. PCT appears, after all, to be the European answer to "Paleolithic Aryan" nonsense in India. It is at least reassuring to see that crackpottery knows no boundaries <smiley in original> dab (ᛏ) 09:35, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Quote:How do you derive the age of a proto language? How old is spoken language and how is the date arrived at? Is there any reading material available for non-linguist? --UB 10:59, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

try (the references at) historical linguistics and glottochronology. The accuracy of such estimates depends decisively on the age of the earliest sources. For PIE in particular, see Proto-Indo-European language and Proto-Indo-Europeans. The error margin is frequently admitted to be as high as 100% (i.e. a factor of 2). For PIE, dates between 8000 BC and 2500 BC are possible (10000-4500 BP, i.e. a factor of 2.2): 8000 BC is extremely early and 2500 is extremely late, most people will agree that a 6000-3000 BC range (factor of 1.6) still has a very high confidence. [color="#FF0000"]All we know with dead certainty is that the proto-language must have split up by 2000 BC, since our earliest text fragments date to shortly thereafter.[/color] [color="#800080"](= "PIE must have existed, since an 'IE' language has been attested afterwards." Well, uh, 'IE' languages have indeed been attested, duh.)[/color] Claiming paleolithic age of PIE simply amounts to rejecting wholesale all efforts at dating language change and taking an agnostic position of "prove that it isn't paleolithic". It would entail that languages stayed essentially unchanged for at least 10,000 years, over vast areas of Eurasia. All known language histories show that a language usually changes beyond comprehensibility (meaning it doesn't just 'change', it becomes a wholly different language) over 1,000 years, in rare cases of stability maybe over 2,000 years. Note that in this case, evidence for dating is not restricted to pure glottochronology. For example, since there is a very good reconstruction of PIE terms for "wheel", it seems evident that (late) PIE must post-date the invention of the wheel in around 4500 BC. The evidence for "metal" (Bronze) is less clear, it is possible that some branches had already separated before Bronze became known (after around 3300 BC): these dates dovetail perfectly with a 5000-3500 range of early to late PIE fully consistent with the (wider) glottochronological estimate. dab (ᛏ) 11:35, 23 August 2006 (UTC)

[color="#0000FF"]-It must be remembered that he is a distinguished academic at the end of his life (he's over 80), so age is a major factor in explaining why he has failed to discuss with certain key areas of IE (like Iberia, Persia, India). It also explains why he finds it difficult to get to grips with the intricacies of mtDNA.

- At the same time, I think that the advances so far in mt/YDNA tend to bear him out. If you read Sykes book (good but lamentable for its lack of bibliography), he describes very clearly that Cavalli-Sforza violently opposed mtDNA and then seeing he was defeated, decided to start supporting it and claim the idea as his own. This marks a major change in favour of the PCT, in that if the mesolithic hunter gatherers were a tiny majority overwhelmed by a massive influx of farmers, the idea of IE speakers in Europe prior to the Neolithic would have been hard to believe. The consensus in genetics is now fairly solid that 80% of the population is pre-farming and if you study the models of diffusion advanced e.g. by Zvelebil, then you come to the clear conclusion that it was very much a piecemeal process. Hence, as Alinei points out, Renfrew has a real problem in explaining why there's no substrate in the last areas to be neolithicised e.g. Norway, why there's a long-standing linguistic boundary in N Latvia (i.e. why don't the farmers manage to impose IE on the "Estonians", etc. Furthermore, the theory is actually starting to creep in via the back door - a specific prediction of PCT is the presence of Germanic speakers in Neolithic Britain, and I see that Stephen Oppenheimer has mentioned this in his new book (unfortunately without citation). What you have to remember is that the world is Anglophone, IE studies is a sleepy field, so that anyone writing in a language other than English gets no "air time", with the possible exception of the Russians. There are some Spanish linguists doing excellent work, notably Francisco Vilar who has shown that the oldest toponyms even in Andalusia are IE[/color] [color="#800080"](:oooohhh: Je meent 't?)[/color] - but because he doesn't write in English, no-one is even aware of his work. For those people interested in PCT, the figure to watch, and the "heir" to Alinei seems to be Xaverio Ballester.

- Secondly, Alinei has a problem in that his method of linguistic archaeology only really works where you have peoples with defined territories, hence you have a paradox of someone proposing conjectures about the languages spoken during the Palaeolithic with a methodology which only really works from the Mesolithic onwards. As a result, when discussing pre-LGM, he tends to rely on other people's ideas and frankly hasn't chosen very wisely, appearing to be bogged down in a tool making equals syntactic structure equation which leads him to view Chinese as a kind of ur-language. This is the old Schlegelian bear-trap of the Monosyllabic/Agglutinative/Inflectional classification which captivated mid-19th century figures such as Haeckel and Schleicher, but had already been dismissed by e.g. Trombetti/Jespersen/Saussure in the early 20th century who realised that Chinese was the result of a long-process of simplifying an inflected language (see Classical Tibetan). Alinei seems to be obsessed by the stability of lithics in E Asia since Homo Erectus and imho is assuming without foundation that the original inhabitants of S China were Sino-Tibetan speakers. People who want to dismiss him seize on this older stuff and his claims that IE had differentiated 100,000 years ago. Indeed, the response to my Mother Tongue article was that most of the readers are interested in deep prehistory and Asia, so they assumed that what is actually a fairly marginal part of Alinei's work was the main part and dismissed all his extremely detailed linguistic archaeology relating to the mesolithic and neolithic.



[color="#0000FF"]In other words, I think that Renfrew and Gimbutas theories don't stand up at all, but if you modify PCT to take into account modern advances in genetics, you actually come up with a plausible theory.[/color]



Also: - I am not aware of Alinei ever suggesting that the PCT applied to India. I asked him about this and his comment was that he wasn't a Sanskritist and someone else should take up the torch. The PCT is purely about whether or not IE languages had differentiated and spread into Europe by the end of the ice age. - The comment above that the Thracians were Slavs is entirely inaccurate and I refer the person in question to pp. 222-223 of vol. 2 of Origini. What he actually says is that he thinks that Herodotus probably used the term 'Thracians' as a blanket term to refer to Slavs. He actually regards it as a third differentiated branch of a proto-Balto-Slavic family subject to influence from an Altaic elite. (20:39, 16 January 2007 (UTC)) - Jonathan Morris.

Quote:Linguist Mario Alinei - University of Utrecht.

Quote:In Dr. Oppenheimer’s reconstruction of events, the principal ancestors of today’s British and Irish populations arrived from Spain about 16,000 years ago, speaking a language related to Basque.

[...]

Dr. Oppenheimer [says] the similarity between the English and northern European Y chromosomes [color="#800080"][of Norse and Fries of NL][/color] arises because both regions were repopulated by people from the Iberian refuges after the glaciers retreated.

Quote:“Once you have an established population, it is quite difficult to change it very radically,” said Daniel G. Bradley, a geneticist at Trinity College, Dublin. But he said he was “quite agnostic” as to whether the original population became established in Britain and Ireland immediately after the glaciers retreated 16,000 years ago, as Dr. Oppenheimer argues, or more recently, in the Neolithic Age, which began 10,000 years ago.



Dr. Oppenheimer has relied on work by Peter Forster, a geneticist at Anglia Ruskin University, to argue that Celtic is a much more ancient language than supposed, and that Celtic speakers could have brought knowledge of agriculture to Ireland, where it first appeared. He also adopts Dr. Forster’s argument, based on a statistical analysis of vocabulary, that English is an ancient, fourth branch of the Germanic language tree, and was spoken in England before the Roman invasion.



English is usually assumed to have developed in England, from the language of the Angles and Saxons, about 1,500 years ago. But Dr. Forster argues that the Angles and the Saxons were both really Viking peoples who began raiding Britain ahead of the accepted historical schedule. They did not bring their language to England because English, in his view, was already spoken there, probably introduced before the arrival of the Romans by tribes such as the Belgae, whom Caesar describes as being present on both sides of the Channel.

Quote:Furthermore, the [PCT] theory is actually starting to creep in via the back door - a specific prediction of PCT is the presence of Germanic speakers in Neolithic Britain, and I see that Stephen Oppenheimer has mentioned this in his new book (unfortunately without citation).

Quote:My own view, FWIW (and NOT Alinei's) - is that while I tend to support his premise about IE being present in Europe by the Mesolithic, there is no a priori reason for assuming that the same holds for India. This, however, is a logical consequence of his theory, since evidently, one of his key arguments is the absence of convincing evidence for a pre-IE substrate in Scandinavia.

It must thus logically follow that if you find a substrate then PCT doesn't apply, and there's been some very good work done by Frank Southworth & Michael Witzel to demonstrate Munda and Dravidian substrates in the Rg Veda. In any case, you have an instant clue to suggest that an IE PCT in India is unlikely, simply because there's only one big IE family, Indo-Aryan - if IE had a palaeolithic time-depth, you would expect to find several.

Quote:one of his key arguments is the absence of convincing evidence for a pre-IE substrate in Scandinavia.

Quote:Annie Mouse said...

I think we should be cautious with these La Brana folk. They may not be typical of the area. I have long felt that our view of mesolithic Europeans is possibly being distorted by imported burial practices (as opposed to air, fire and water rituals as mentioned in our oldest oral European literature). Burials and entombment (as in La Brana) create more durable remains.



La Brana could represent nomadic folk following game back and forth across Europe and Asia.



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fileistribution_of_Haplogroup_C-M217_Y-DNA_-_worldwide.png



In my opinion that still makes them mesolithic Europeans or accurately Eurasians, but they may not have been typical, or even resident. Just part of the rich milieu.



Sunday, January 26, 2014 11:49:00 pm

Quote:Kurgan barrows were characteristic of Bronze Age peoples, from the Altay Mountains to the Caucasus, Ukraine, Romania, and Bulgaria. Burial mounds are complex structures with internal chambers. Within the burial chamber at the heart of the kurgan, elite individuals were buried with grave goods and sacrificial offerings, sometimes including horses and chariots. Kurgans were used in the Ukrainian and Russian Steppes but spread into eastern, central, and northern Europe in the 3rd millennium BC.

Quote:A kurgan burial site at Łubna-Jakusy and a kurgan cremation near Guciów are examples of Trzciniec culture of c. 1500 BC.

Quote:Kurgan

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Jump to: navigation, search For other uses, see Kurgan (disambiguation).



Sarmatian Kurgan 4th century BC, Fillipovka, South Urals, Russia. This kurgan was excavated in a dig led by Russian Academy of Sciences Archeology Institute Prof. L. Yablonsky in the summer of 2006. It is the first kurgan known to be completely destroyed and then rebuilt to its original appearance.Kurgan is the Turkic term for a tumulus. These are mounds of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Originating with its use in Soviet archaeology, the word is now widely used for tumuli in the context of Eastern European and Central Asian archaeology.



The word kurgan ‘funerary mound’, is, as well as Central Asia and Anatolia used in Russia and Ukraine, but throughout South-Eastern Europe (Ru. kurgán, ORu. kurganu, Ukr. kurhán, BRu. kurhan, Pol. kurhan, kurchan, kuran ‘mound’; Rumanian gurgan, dial. Hung. korhány), from Tatar, Tat., Osm., Kum. kurgan, Old Turkic kurgan "fortification", Kirg. and Jagat. korgan, Karakirg. korgon, all from Turkotat. kurgamak "fortify", kurmak "erect".[citation needed][1]



The distribution of such tumuli in Eastern Europe corresponds closely to the area of the Pit Grave or Kurgan culture in South-Eastern Europe.[2]



[...]

[color="#800080"](At the bottom of the page, the footnote to that last finally mentions Alinei, the promulgator of the PCT/Palaeolithic Continuity Theory of P/IE in Europe - that was brought up in some posts above[/color]

2.Jump up ^ Mario Alinei 'Interdisciplinary and linguistic evidence for Paleolithic continuity of Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic populations in Eurasia', 2003

Quote:Kurgan

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Hirabutor (talk | contribs) at 17:43, 1 March 2014. It may differ significantly from the current revision.



Revision as of 17:43, 1 March 2014 by Hirabutor (talk | contribs)



(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)

Jump to: navigation, search For other uses, see Kurgan (disambiguation).



Sarmatian Kurgan 4th century BC, Fillipovka, South Urals, Russia. This kurgan was excavated in a dig led by Russian Academy of Sciences Archeology Institute Prof. L. Yablonsky in the summer of 2006. It is the first kurgan known to be completely destroyed and then rebuilt to its original appearance.Kurgan is the Turkic term for a tumulus. These are mounds of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Originating with its use in Soviet archaeology, the word is now widely used for tumuli in the context of Eastern European and Central Asian archaeology.



According to Mario Alinei's [color="#FF0000"]Paleolithic Continuity Theory[/color] the distribution of such tumuli in Eastern Europe corresponds closely to the area of the Pit Grave or Kurgan culture in South-Eastern Europe. [color="#FF0000"]PTC reassigns the Kurgan culture (traditionally considered early Indo-European) to a people of predominantly mixed Uralic and Turkic stock.[1][/color]



Kurgans were built in the Eneolithic, Bronze, Iron, Antiquity and Middle Ages, with old traditions still active in Southern Siberia and Central Asia. Kurgan cultures are divided archeologically into different sub-cultures, such as Timber Grave, Pit Grave, Scythian, Sarmatian, Hunnish and Kuman-Kipchak.



A plethora of placenames that include the word "kurgan" appear from Lake Baikal to the Black Sea.

Quote:The distribution of such tumuli in [[Eastern Europe]] corresponds closely to the area of the [[Pit Grave]] or [[Kurgan culture]] in [[South-Eastern Europe]].<ref>[[Mario Alinei]] 'Interdisciplinary and linguistic evidence for Paleolithic continuity of Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic populations in Eurasia', 2003</ref>

Quote:Revision as of 17:43, 1 March 2014 (edit) (undo)

Hirabutor (talk | contribs)

[color="#FF0000"](improving style of writing (feel free to move this part to other sections))[/color]

Next edit →



According to [[Mario Alinei]]'s [[Paleolithic Continuity Theory#Historical_reconstruction|Paleolithic Continuity Theory]] the distribution of such tumuli in [[Eastern Europe]] corresponds closely to the area of the [[Pit Grave]] or [[Kurgan culture]] in [[South-Eastern Europe]]. PTC reassigns the Kurgan culture (traditionally considered early [[Indo-European]]) to a people of predominantly mixed [[Uralic]] and [[Turkic languages|Turkic]] stock.<ref>[[Mario Alinei]] '[http://www.continuitas.org/texts/alinei_interdisciplinary.pdf Interdisciplinary and linguistic evidence for Paleolithic continuity of Indo-European, Uralic and Altaic populations in Eurasia, with an excursus on Slavic ethnogenesis]', 2003</ref>

Quote:Personally, I think the time is now ripe for Hindoos to use the current genetic and archaeological etc data to work on re-defining a logically-consistent (internally logically consistent) Palaeolithic Continuity Theory for Skt in India. Don't leave it too late and end up letting aliens inundate the field and fill in the gap on the Indian side with their storytelling. [color="#0000FF"]If you see any tendency toward general acceptance of PCT among the larger set of PIE-ists - either covertly or overtly starting to propound it - you need to be ready with a case for the Indian situation.[/color]

Quote:History[edit]

Background[edit]

[IMG: Map of Indo European migrations from circa 4000 to 1000 BC according to the Kurgan model. The Anatolian migration (indicated with a dotted arrow) could have taken place either across the Caucasus or across the Balkans. The magenta area corresponds to the assumed Urheimat (Samara culture, Sredny Stog culture). The red area corresponds to the area that may have been settled by Indo-European-speaking peoples up to circa 2500 BC, and the orange area by 1000 BC.]



Around 5000 BC, the region centered in Hattusa, that would later become the core of the Hittite kingdom, was inhabited by people with a distinct culture who spoke a non-Indo-European language. The name "Hattic" is used by Anatolianists to distinguish this language from the Indo-European Hittite language that appeared on the scene at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC and became the administrative language of the Hittite kingdom over the next six or seven centuries.



The early Hittites, whose prior whereabouts are unknown, borrowed heavily from the pre-existing Hattian and Hurrian cultures, and also from that of the Assyrian colonisers — in particular, the cuneiform writing and the use of cylindrical seals.[citation needed]



Since Hattic continued to be used in the Hittite kingdom for religious purposes, and there is substantial continuity between the two cultures, it is not known whether the Hattic speakers — the Hattians— were displaced by the speakers of Hittite, were absorbed by them, or just adopted their language.[citation needed]



Origins[edit]It is generally assumed that the Hittites came into Anatolia some time before 2000 BC.[citation needed] While their earlier location is disputed, there has been strong evidence for more than a century that the home of the Indo-Europeans in the fourth and third millennia was in the Pontic Steppe, present day Ukraine around the Sea of Azov.[citation needed] This is known as the Kurgan Hypothesis.



The arrival of the Hittites in Anatolia in prehistoric times was one of a superstrate imposing itself on a native culture, either by means of conquest[8] or by gradual assimilation.[9] In archaeological terms, relationships of the Hittites to the Ezero culture of the Balkans and Maikop culture of the Caucasus have been considered within the migration framework.[10] The Indo-European element at least establishes Hittite culture as intrusive to Anatolia in scholarly mainstream[9] (excepting the opinion of Colin Renfrew, whose Anatolian hypothesis assumes that Indo-European is indigenous to Anatolia[11][12]).



The Hittites and other members of the Anatolian family then came from the north, possibly along the Caspian Sea. Their movement into the region may have set off a Near East mass migration sometime around 1900 BC.[citation needed] The dominant inhabitants in central Anatolia at the time were Hurrians and Hattians who spoke non-Indo-European languages (some have argued that Hattic was a Northwest Caucasian language, but its affiliation remains uncertain). There were also Assyrian colonies in the country; it was from the Assyrians that the Hittites adopted the cuneiform script. It took some time before the Hittites established themselves, as is clear from some of the texts included here. For several centuries there were separate Hittite groups, usually centered on various cities. But then strong rulers with their center in Boğazköy succeeded in bringing these together and conquering large parts of central Anatolia to establish the Hittite kingdom.[13]



Early period[edit]

Hittite chariot, from an Egyptian reliefThe early history of the Hittite kingdom is known through tablets that may first have been written in the 17th century BC, possibly in Hittite;[14] but survived only as Akkadian copies made in the 14th and 13th centuries BC. These reveal a rivalry within two branches of the royal family up to the Middle Kingdom; a northern branch first based in Zalpa and secondarily Hattusa, and a southern branch based in Kussara (still not found) and Kanesh. These are distinguishable by their names; the northerners retained Hattian names, and the southerners adopted Hittite and Luwiyan names.[15]

Quote:[color="#0000FF"]"Gobekli Tepe" - located in what's now Turkey - "contains some of the oldest buildings in the world" (btw, with intricately carved animal figurines on pillars) "dating to nearly three times the age of the first Egyptian pyramids": Gobekli Tepe buildings are dated to "12000 years before present". The people farmed wheat, already ushering in the Neolithic. The wheat had a mutation which became widespread owing to human dispersal/artificial selection.[/color]

(HTGAP-3)

Quote:"Haircolor Changes After You Die

By Anne Marie Helmenstine, Ph.D.

February 27, 2013

If you've ever seen a mummy in a museum, you might have thought the ancients went a little overboard with henna and other red dyes. While people have colored their hair practically forever, it's more likely what you're seeing is the change in haircolor that occurs after a person dies. The color of hair comes from the mixture of two melanin pigments: eumelanin (yellow-brown-black) and pheomelanin (red). Pheomelanin is more stable, so over time the eumelanin oxidizes while most of the pheomelanin remains. This is reason most [color="#0000FF"]Egypian mummies[/color] appear to have reddish hair. The change occurs more slowly under dry oxidizing conditions, such as burials in ice or sand, than under wet reducing conditions, such as burials in wooden coffins or damp caves. Therefore, you would expect to see a more faster or more dramatic haircolor change in a body from the jungle, for example, than a corpse from the desert."



Photo: [color="#0000FF"]Pre-Columbian Peruvian mummy.[/color]

Quote:Hemphill's biodistance analysis of cranial metrics, however, provides compelling evidence that the ancestry of the Tarim Basin groups was non-European (Hemphill, 2000). Rather, his analysis reveals a biological affinity with the Indus Valley population of northern India for the earlier groups, whereas the later groups show affinity to populations of the Oxus River valley in south-central Asia."

(Clark Spencer Larsen's "Bioarchaeology: The Lives and Lifestyles of Past People", from "Journal of Archaeological Research". June 2002, Vol. 10, No. 2. [color="#0000FF"]www.clas.ufl.edu/users/davidson/Arch%20of%20Death/Week%2007/Larson%202002%20bioarchaeology.pdf )[/color]

Quote:Human evolution

The skinny on skin colour

[color="#0000FF"]Homo sapiens became black to beat cancer[/color]

Mar 1st 2014 | From the print edition Tweet..



Protect and survive

[color="#0000FF"]SHAVE a chimpanzee and you will find that beneath its hairy coat its skin is white.[/color]

Quote:Annie Mouse said...

I think we should be cautious with these La Brana folk. They may not be typical of the area. I have long felt that our view of mesolithic Europeans is possibly being distorted by imported burial practices (as opposed to air, fire and water rituals as mentioned in our oldest oral European literature). Burials and entombment (as in La Brana) create more durable remains.



La Brana could represent nomadic folk following game back and forth across Europe and Asia.



en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fileistribution_of_Haplogroup_C-M217_Y-DNA_-_worldwide.png



In my opinion that still makes them mesolithic Europeans or accurately Eurasians, but they may not have been typical, or even resident. Just part of the rich milieu.



Sunday, January 26, 2014 11:49:00 pm

Quote:Around 1250 BC traces of change in the archaelogical material indicate the development of a Celtic-speaking branch of Indo-European. The so-called Urnefelt-Culture is considered a continuation of the Unetice-Culture. [color="#FF0000"]The most striking change is the introduction of a new burial practice - cremation.[/color] The cinerary urns were placed in special graveyards.** Most linguists are of the opinion that these people must have spoken an early form of Celtic - proto Celtic.

Quote:Archeology

Archeologists revise image of ancient Celts

The Celts were long considered a barbaric and violent society. But new findings from a 2,600-year-old grave in Germany suggest the ancient people were much more sophisticated than previously thought.

Quote:Hallstat culture (800-250 BCE), named after a type-site at Hallstatt, Austria, is the name given to the material culture of the early Iron Age Celts. Their range spanned from the Paris basin to valley of Morava in Eastern Europe and from the Alps to the north European plain. During early Hallstat (800-600 BCE) there is little evidence of great distinctions of wealth in burials. A few people are buried with wagons and horse gear, rather more are warriors (both genders) buried with their swords, most people are buried with personal ornaments and pots containing food. Cemeteries are small and associated with small settlements, perhaps one family or a group of related families.



Then between 600-450 BCE things begin to change as Mediterranean luxury goods begin to appear. Hilltop forts and a hierarchy of rich graves begins to appear. These aristocratic burials are associated with much larger residences inspired by Greek architectural styles. Archaeologists have suggested that paramount chief burial is accompanied by inhumation in a wooden chamber with wagon and horse trappings as before, but now there would also be a wide range of imported goods including bronze wine drinking vessels, silk, gold, amber, glass and coral. A vassal chief would be similar but the goods are more of local manufacture without the wide range of imports. Sub-chiefs are again similar but less elaborately furnished with totally local manufacture. Below this status wagon burials are not present. This type of burial and the prestige goods economic system it represents was spread from Burgundy to the middle Rhine. The economy was based on conspicuous consumption and potlatch-style distribution of goods. This is an unstable system relying on a continuing stream of imports and exports. Around this core, warrior societies arose whose wealth came from raiding the settled traders. This was an unstable equilibrium which was unbalanced by political changes in the Mediterranean and population growth among the Celtic tribes. After the collapse, the Celtic migrations began (circa 400 BCE).

Quote:Certain passages in Irish texts also describe burials, and tell how [color="#FF0000"]the dead were interred[/color] with ornaments and weapons, while it was a common custom to bury the dead warrior in his armour, fully armed, and facing the region whence enemies might be expected. Thus he was a perpetual menace to them and prevented their attack. 1 Possibly this belief may account for the elevated position of many [color="#FF0000"]tumuli[/color]. Animals were also sacrificed. Hostages were buried alive with Fiachra, according to one text, and the wives of heroes sometimes express their desire to be buried along with their dead husbands. 2



[...]



The idea that the body as well as the soul was immortal was probably linked on to a very primitive belief regarding the dead, and one shared by many peoples, that they lived on in the grave. This conception was never forgotten, even in regions where the theory of a distant land of the dead was evolved, or where the body was consumed by fire before burial.

Quote:Animals were also sacrificed. Hostages were buried alive with Fiachra

Quote:"Gobekli Tepe"* - located in what's now Turkey - "contains some of the oldest buildings in the world" (btw, with intricately carved animal figurines on pillars) "dating to nearly three times the age of the first Egyptian pyramids": Gobekli Tepe buildings are dated to "12000 years before present". The people farmed wheat, already ushering in the Neolithic. The wheat had a mutation which became widespread owing to human dispersal/artificial selection.

(HTGAP-3)

Quote:For PIE, dates between 8000 BC and 2500 BC are possible (10000-4500 BP, i.e. a factor of 2.2): 8000 BC is extremely early and 2500 is extremely late, most people will agree that a 6000-3000 BC range (factor of 1.6) still has a very high confidence.

Quote:A Stone Age man who lived about 7,000 years ago and whose buried bones were discovered in 2006 has turned out to be the earliest known person with blue eyes, a physical trait that evolved relatively recently in human history, a study has found.



A DNA analysis of the man’s tooth has also revealed that although he was more closely related to modern-day Scandinavians that to any other European group, he had the dark-skinned genes of an African, though scientists do not know his precise skin tone.



[...]

Previous research published in 2008 found that the earliest mutations in the eye-colour genes that led to the evolution of blue eyes probably occurred about 10,000 years ago in individuals living in around the Black Sea.

Quote:(In case anyone didn't yet know: Anatolia is now ~Turkey.

And IIRC Turkey is not even included in the countries of the "Fertile Crescent", wherefrom farming is to have emanated in at least non-Anatolian Hypotheses.)

Quote:Fertile Crescent, the region in the Middle East where the civilizations of the Middle East and the Mediterranean basin began. The term was popularized by the American Orientalist James Henry Breasted.



The Fertile Crescent includes a roughly crescent-shaped area of relatively fertile land which probably had a more moderate, agriculturally productive climate in the past than today, especially in Mesopotamia and the Nile valley. Situated between the Arabian Desert to the south and the mountains of Armenia to the north, it extends from Babylonia and adjacent Susiana (the southwestern province of Persia) up the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to Assyria.

Quote:Myths of British ancestry

by Stephen Oppenheimer / October 21, 2006 / 288 Comments

[...]

[color="#0000FF"]The genetic evidence shows that three quarters of our ancestors came to this corner of Europe as hunter-gatherers, between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago[/color], after the melting of the ice caps but before the land broke away from the mainland and divided into islands. Our subsequent separation from Europe has preserved a genetic time capsule of southwestern Europe during the ice age, which we share most closely with the former ice-age refuge in the Basque country. The first settlers were unlikely to have spoken a Celtic language but possibly a tongue related to the unique Basque language.



Another wave of immigration arrived during the Neolithic period, when farming developed about 6,500 years ago. But the English still derive most of their current gene pool from the same early Basque source as the Irish, Welsh and Scots. These figures are at odds with the modern perceptions of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon ethnicity based on more recent invasions. There were many later invasions, as well as less violent immigrations, and each left a genetic signal, but no individual event contributed much more than 5 per cent to our modern genetic mix.

Quote:There's just so many ways that the whole "white" thing can be lampooned. Some crazy comments at that western blog page alluded to in Kaushika's post further above showed that the La Brana discovery turned into some deeply existential crisis for Whitists (=the subset of Europeans obsessed with self-perceptions of "white race"/civilisation as some entity separate from the rest of the human species). [color="#0000FF"]I mean, their desperate excuses to explain away La Brana and the genes for lightening that became fixed in Europeans is just ... wow.[/color] I can't even believe these are adults - being, presumably, over 18.

Quote:In Hindu mythology, Sarama (Sanskrit: सरमा, Saramā; Tamil: Carapai; Thai: Trichada; Malay: Marcu Dewi) is a mythological being referred to as the bitch of the gods, or Deva-shuni (देव-शुनी, devashunī). She first appears in one of Hinduism's earliest texts, the Rig Veda, in which she helps the god-king Indra to recover divine cows stolen by the Panis, a class of demons. This legend is alluded to in many later texts, and Sarama is often associated with Indra. The epic Mahabharata, and some Puranas, also make brief reference to Sarama.



Early Rig-Vedic works do not depict Sarama as canine, but later Vedic mythologies and interpretations usually show her as a bitch. She is described as the mother of all dogs, in particular of the two four-eyed brindle dogs of the god Yama, and dogs are given the matronymic Sarameya ("offspring of Sarama"). One scripture further describes Sarama as the mother of all wild animals.



....

Quote:Tobus said...

@Eurologist:

> Of course - but not in the European context, as I have stated numerous times



I'm not sure what you mean by "in the European context" here... do you mean skin colour differences between "white" Europeans? Nearly all of the difference in European skin colour is environmental - studies of unexposed skin show very similar melanin levels from Ireland to Spain. It's tanning ability that largely produces the North/South difference, although both TYR and SLC45A2 show a slight cline (from 100-80% frequency) as you move south, which may explain what you are talking about.



There is no way these alleles come even close to being responsible to extant Central or N/ NW European skin color.



What do you base this on? Those populations are fixed for the light skin SLC24A5 and SLC45A2 variants and most of them have the TYR allele as well... every study on these alleles has confirmed that they are directly responsible light skin, so on what basis do you claim the opposite?



> there are populations in NE Asia that rival the lightest in the world and don't harbor those mutations.



Which populations are you talking about? Jablonski (2000) took skin reflectance measurements from all over the world and found the darkest Europeans are lighter than the lightest East Asians. Is this just a subjective observation you've made yourself or do you have some evidence to support it?



In any case, East Asian populations evolved a separate genetic mechanism for light skin (proven in OCA2 and possibly in MC1R and DCT) so phenotype comparisons between East Asians and Europeans doesn't contradict the role of the SLCs and TYR in Europeans - you'd need to find a dark-skinned population that has the European alleles to do that.



> It is mind-bogglingly ridiculous to assert that Mesolithic Europeans at the common 50 to 60+ degree (i.e., easily-habitable Northern-most PNW and Alaska-like)latitudes had anything else but light skin color



Why do you say it's ridiculous? It'd be much more mind-bogglingly ridiculous to ignore the facts just because they don't agree with our preconceived notions... all the evidence I've seen says that La Brana and Loschbour had dark skin - do you have any actual facts that show they had light skin, or is it just a personal theory of yours?



For the record I'll also point out that the two "dark-skinned" mesolithics found were in Spain (43 degrees) and Luxembourg (49 degrees), so (just) outside your 50-60+ range, and that people don't immediately change colour when they enter a new enviroment - it takes a random mutation plus scores of generations to spread it. People could retain dark skin in high UV enviroments for thousands of years before experiencing depigmentation on a population-wide scale.



Thursday, February 06, 2014 2:34:00 pm





Tobus said...

@Grey:

Which ancient writers are you talking about? Since farming came first then writing, I suspect the references to "red hair, light skin, grey/green eyes" are relatively recent, thousands of years after the depigmentation. There are several variants of MC1R are responsible for red hair and non-tanning (pale) skin but none of them are widespread and none show signs of positive selection.



The Neanderthal MC1R variant that suggests they had red hair/pale skin is not one that is found in Sapiens.



The East Asian alleles for light skin are different to the Europeans - light skin evolved separately via different genetic pathways in those two populations, European skin colour isn't due to East Asian admixture.





Tobus said...

> @eurologist: Nothing could be further from the truth. We know that extant Northern Europeans are much, much lighter in skin color than N Africans, SW Asians, or S Asians that share their SLC24A5 allele. Ergo, we know that the SLC24A5 allele is not responsible for the light pigmentation of N Europeans.



There have been a number of papers directly associating SLC24A5 (along with SLC45A2 and TYR) with melanin levels in a number of admixed** populations with a range of skin pigmentations (such as Stokowski 2007 on South Asians) - there is simply no question that each derived allele of these genes will lighten the carrier's skin colour to some degree. I note that all the populations you refer to as "sharing SLC24A5" show a range of skin colours as well as a range of SLC24A5 frequencies - and you can be 100% sure that those individuals with derived SLC24A5 (and/or SLC45A2/TYR) alleles directly coincide with those individuals exhibiting lighter pigmentation, since that's how the connection between these alleles and skin colour was determined in the first place. Given that each allele acts differently, independently and additively and that any individual can have one of 3 configurations of each of the 3 genes (both dark, both light or one of each), this gives us 27 possible pigmentation phenotypes - Europeans are at one extreme with all derived, Sub-saharan Africans, Sri Lankans and Melanesians are at the other with all ancestral, and populations in North Africa, West Asia, South Asia etc are in between with various combinations of ancestral/derived, typically becoming more derived as you move towards Europe. Most studies attribute the bulk of the African/European melanin difference to these 3 genes however one study (Belaza 2012 on Cape Verdeans) suggested the combined effect was less than half.



It's certainly possible (probable even) that further genes will discovered in the future that will give us a better picture of La Brana's skin colour than we do now, but given what we know at this point we have to accept the possibility (and perhaps I should stress possibility) that La Brana had the same skin colour as modern Papuans and Australian Aborigines - he certainly has the same genetic profile as these populations in terms of skin colour alleles known to science today. If this DNA was from a murder weapon recovered in NY this morning, the police would definitely be looking for a black man, it's only our presupposed notion of Europeans being "white" that makes us question these results in regard to La Brana.



I'm happy to post links to the papers that confirm what I'm saying but you should be able to find most of them with Google/Pubmed - the "Human Skin Color" page on Wikipedia cites most of them in it's Genetics section as well.



Tuesday, February 04, 2014 9:30:00 am



[color="#800080"](** Isn't 'admixed' when used concerning Indians in such a context [such as for skin-lightening mutations, which Europe seems to claim exclusively for themselves] a euphemism for miscegenation, i.e. specifically an allusion to AIT? Has the final/conclusive genetic data already come in, did I just miss it, or are they just still assuming that it is the case? But there can have been no oryan invasions in 1800 BCE or later, and I doubt they've looked for anything in much earlier periods, since they have never thought of looking there: if there had been any oryan migration or invasion - but telepathic knowledge transfer for the telepathic super-oryans leaves no trail of course - they'd have to be looking for such things at a much earlier timeframe. But they won't, since they're oh-so-certain that AIT happened and moreover happened in 1800 BCE+, because they've been indoctrinated into this. Sigh.)[/color]





Tobus said...

> @Grey: If SLC24A5 is 100% fixed in Europeans then you're just assuming that the underlying color was brown and these alleles lightened it.



I suggest you read some scientific papers on the topic - SLC24A5 (as well as SLC45A2 and TYR) has been conclusively associated with light skin multiple times in multiple admixed populations (African-Americans, South Asians and Melanesians). There is simply no doubt that each ancestral allele you have will lighten your skin to a noticable degree - it's a fact, not an assumption. The assumption is to what degree, not if it has an effect. Given what we know at this point in time, La Brana and Loschbour share the same skin pigmentation alleles as Australian Aboriginals, Sri Lankans and Papuans. We may undercover futherer contributors in the future, but at present we have to accept the possibility that Mesolithic inhabitants in Europe had very dark skin.



Freckle/tanning genes like EFR1 and MCR1 variants are also found in dark-skin populations - freckling is not a "white" person phenomenon and neither is tanning, although both are obviously more visible on depigmented skin.



Sunday, February 02, 2014 3:52:00 am





Tobus said...

Typo: You say "SLC45A5" in the text but but I think you mean SLC24A5 judging by the link... The other "SLC" gene associated with European light skin is SLC45A2 and these results show La Brana had the ancestral allele at this site too.



Monday, January 27, 2014 3:06:00 am





Mark D said...

As the article is behind a pay wall, can someone verify what the authors mean by carrying "ancestral alleles" in what I assume are, as Dienekes mentions them, the SLC24A5 and SLC24A2 genes. SNPedia has this regarding the SNP rs1426654(A)on the SLC24A5 gene:



[color="#0000FF"]"It appears as if this SNP is a relatively new one in human evolution; one estimate [PMID 17182896] is that the rs1426654(A) allele, in other words, light skin pigmentation, spread through the European population around 6,000 - 12,000 years ago. Prior to that, "European ancestors" were most likely relatively brown-skinned. Another study ([PMID 24048645OA-icon.png]) has concluded that almost individuals carrying the A111T variant can trace ancestry back to a single person who most likely lived at least 10,000 years ago."[/color]



Is the "ancestral alleles" A,G or G,G rather than A,A?



SNpedia's chart on allele frequency shows Europeans as having practically no A,G or G,G.



The answer begs the question, did those with the A,G or G,G alleles simply die off and were replaced by, as "barackobama" suggests, Near Easterners, or did the SNP originate with this individual's descendants, or someone similar, who spread throughout Europe?





Monday, January 27, 2014 6:57:00 pm







Tuesday, January 28, 2014 1:30:00 am

Tobus said...

@Terry: It's not just SLC24A5, La Brana also has the ancestral alleles of SLC45A2 and TYR as well. There may well be other undiscovered factors to European light skin, but based on what we know about the genetics of skin pigmentation at this point in time we'd expect him to have dark skin. He has the same genetic skin pigmentation profile that we see in Australian Aboriginals, Papuans and Sri Lankans.



Tuesday, January 28, 2014 2:02:00 am





Tobus said...

@Grey:

Loschbour has pretty much the same pigmentation genetics as La Brana, dark skin, blue/light eyes. Stuttgart has one and a half of the light skin alleles so was probably a bit lighter. SLC24A5 is fixed in Ireland and Scotland, but I agree the 8 plex system isn't particularly comprehensive.



Friday, January 31, 2014 1:08:00 am

Quote:Amazingly, through their DNA, it might be possible to trace that first great journey through Malaysia.



Genetics expert Stephen Oppenheimer has flown in from Oxford. His work is helping revolutionise the story of our human journey.

[Dr Stephen Oppenheimer, University of Oxford:] "I guess it's something tile a detective story where you've got a very specific trail that you can measure, just like traditional trackers will follow a trail no one else can see."



Combining genes and geography, Stephen has mapped out a route from Africa, across the Red Sea and around the edge of the Indian Ocean.

By looking at the DNA of the Semang [ancient natives of Malaysia], Stephen hopes to find evidence of that early migration towards Australia.



[color="#0000FF"]SO: "The new genetics is extraordinarily powerful for looking at ancient migrations, because not only can you trace very specific migrations, but you can actually attempt to date them as well."[/color]

[color="#800080"](Again, I can't work out the degree of precision with the dating. How far off can they be, max? For such early migrations, being off by a few 1000 years is not a terrible deal. E.g. "60,000 years +/- 5000". But in proving or disproving post/neolithic migrations at a certain date, such large margins can hardly be helpful.)[/color]



Stephen has been looking for unique genetic markers that will tell him when the ancestors of the Semang first arrived here.



AR: "What about dates?* Because they certainly think they've been here forever. You know**, they think they're ancient."

SO: *"Well..."

SO: **"Yes, well, I agree with them."

AR: "You do?"

SO: "Yes." [SO laughs good-naturedly.]

[color="#800080"](Comments after this blockquote.)[/color]



AR: "So they've been here 60,000 years? Their ancestors have been here..."

SO: "At least 60,000. I suspect it was much much more."

AR: "I mean that's amazing, because if their uniqueness goes back that far and if they, you know, if we can say that they have probably been here in this sort of area for 60,000 years, that means they were very close to the wave of colonisation, doesn't it?"

SO: "They were part. They were part of it. They were the vanguard. They were just a colony dropped along the way as the vanguard advanced (*) towards New Guinea and Australia.

[color="#800080"][* Can't make out the (1 or 2) words here, because she interrupts him with a "yeah" and he therefore takes down the volume of what he is saying to allow for her interjection. The missing word may be "then", but sounded like 2 syllables. (?)][/color]



AR: It's incredibly frustrating that the first family groups pushing through these new lands left so little for us to find. But genetics has come to the rescue.



Stephen's research tells us that the ancestors of the Semang were probably amongst the first Modern Humans to come through here. And not only that: the genetics suggests that that vanguard

moved surprisingly rapidly, getting all the way from Africa to Malaysia in a space of just a few thousand years.

[color="#800080"][Map showing arrow incoming from African direction into India into the SE coast where 3 sites (of early settlement) are marked in Red (one labelled Jwalapuram). Another site in red in Sri-Lanka and then Red dots in SE Asia incl. Malaysia.][/color]



There are other tribes thought to have ancient roots as well. Together, they're the distant echoes of that first migration, a journey that began in Africa, continued through India* and round the coast to Malaysia.

[color="#800080"][*Map shows Modern Humans/ancient Africans' entry from NW into SE coast of India - where the original settlements were marked in red - with subsequent movement up India's E coast, into the coastal areas of neighbouring SE Asian lands (what was human movement via I think Burma and S Thailand, in the direction of Malaysia).][/color]

Quote:The consensus in genetics is now fairly solid that 80% of the population is pre-farming and if you study the models of diffusion advanced e.g. by Zvelebil, then you come to the clear conclusion that it was very much a piecemeal process. Hence, as Alinei points out, Renfrew has a real problem in explaining why there's no substrate in the last areas to be neolithicised e.g. Norway, why there's a long-standing linguistic boundary in N Latvia (i.e. why don't the farmers manage to impose IE on the "Estonians", etc.

Quote:Tobus said...

[...]

It's certainly possible (probable even) that further genes will discovered in the future that will give us a better picture of La Brana's skin colour than we do now, but given what we know at this point we have to accept the possibility (and perhaps I should stress possibility) that La Brana had the same skin colour as modern Papuans and Australian Aborigines - he certainly has the same genetic profile as these populations in terms of skin colour alleles known to science today. If this DNA was from a murder weapon recovered in NY this morning, the police would definitely be looking for a black man, it's only our presupposed notion of Europeans being "white" that makes us question these results in regard to La Brana.



Tobus said...

@Terry: It's not just SLC24A5, La Brana also has the ancestral alleles of SLC45A2 and TYR as well. There may well be other undiscovered factors to European light skin, but based on what we know about the genetics of skin pigmentation at this point in time we'd expect him to have dark skin. He has the same genetic skin pigmentation profile that we see in Australian Aboriginals, Papuans and Sri Lankans.

Quote:DNA Reveals Hair, Eye Color Of Centuries-Old Human Remains, Researchers Say

Posted: 01/15/2013 8:22 am EST



By analyzing genes from a tooth of Polish Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski, researchers confirmed he had the blue eyes and blond hair seen in portraits painted many years after his death in 1943.



By: Charles Choi, LiveScience Contributor

Published: 01/14/2013 03:58 PM EST on LiveScience



The color of the eyes and hair of ancestors dead for hundreds of years can now be revealed from their DNA alone, researchers say.



These findings suggest investigators not only can uncover new details from centuries-old human remains, but can also help identify crime victims, scientists added.



By comparing genomes across thousands of people, researchers identified genetic variations at 24 different points in the human genome that are linked with eye and hair colors, which past studies used to help determine the appearance of people who had died relatively recently. Now a team of researchers from Poland and the Netherlands have developed this system further to reveal the appearance of people long dead.



"We were able to look at the appearance of people who died several hundred years ago," researcher Wojciech Branicki, a geneticist at the Institute of Forensic Research and Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, told LiveScience.



For instance, the researchers analyzed DNA from Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski, who was born in 1881 and died in 1943. During World War II, Sikorski was commander-in-chief of the Polish Armed Forces and was also prime minister of the Polish government in exile. He died in an airplane crash at Gibraltar. By analyzing genes from one of his teeth, the researchers confirmed he had the blue eyesand blond hair seen in portraits painted many years after his death.



"This system can be used to solve historical controversies where color photographs or other records are missing," Branicki said.



The researchers say their system, called HIrisPlex, can predict either blue or brown eye colors with about 94 percent accuracy. When it comes to hair color, it has accuracies of 69.5 percent for blond, 78.5 percent for brown, 80 percent for red and 87.5 percent for black.



For medieval samples, where DNA is relatively degraded, [color="#0000FF"]this system was still capable of predicting eye and hair color from remains about 800 years old.[/color] For instance, the researchers identified one mysterious woman from between the 12th and 14th centuries A.D. who was buried in a crypt of the Benedictine Abbey in Tyniec near Kraków, where only remains of male monks were expected. The results hint that she had dark blond or brown hair and brown eyes. [Science of Death: 10 Tales from the Crypt & Beyond]

[color="#800080"](So, is it merely that the above method has not yet been tried out on 7000+ year old remains such as La Brana - or even various mummies - or that its accuracy goes to below a point where it ceases to be useful when applied to earlier and/or more degraded samples?)[/color]



Although this research can help reveal what ancient human ancestors might have looked like based on their DNA alone, Branicki thinks the most practical aspect of their work is how it can help identify corpses for forensic analysis. For instance, "some of our samples were from unknown inmates of a World War II prison," he said. "In these cases, HIrisPlex helped to put physical features to the other DNA evidence."



In the future, the system may look at more than 24 points in the human genome — "from research carried out on the mouse, we estimate that 127 genes may be involved in human pigmentation," Branicki said. Still, "although research on eye and hair color prediction is ongoing, and we may expect some new predictors, it seems that the main predictors have been already identified, and especially in case of eye color, we should not expect any breakthrough in prediction in the near future."



The scientists detailed their findings online Jan. 13 in the journal Investigative Genetics.