[color="#0000FF"]Ramana, see Dhu's post 597.[/color]
Post 2/2
Sorry, seems I wasn't finished rambling just yet. To explain what I actually meant to say in the following from the above and to expand on it:
It should read more like:
'Desperate excuses to explain away La Brana man's "African genes for skin colour" by trying to argue that the genes [or rather alleles] for lightening that became fixed in modern Europeans were at least known to not be fixed in the 7000 year old La Brana Stone Ager, the way they are in modern Europeans. (And which consequently are known to have made La Brana "dark" to whatever extent - uncharacteristically for a modern European.'
Will track down stuff I think I read in that blog. [I think that I read that these skin lightening mutations - the ones that became fixed in Europeans - were said to be missing altogether in La Brana (?)]
<So deleting a lot of the rest of this post, since I don't want to make vast claims based on something without properly remembering what I think I had read. (Since that's usually the sort of thing I make fun of in other people. Then again, everyone else always makes vast claims and usually runs away with it.)>
The desperate at that western blog were arguing that "But but but, can't he have been white in some other way" - such as "the E Asian way". Except that E Asians turned light owing to *other* (non-European) lightening mutations, as per more learned comments at that very blog.
And other desperate excuses followed. "He was not representative of Europeans". (Except there's mention in the very opening blog post there of some other find from around that timeframe that also turned out to be an example of what was phenotypically a "dark" European. And I can't make out that there have been any finds so far for that time period that were fair/on the way to being fair like modern Europeans.***)
And the other excuse "Maybe the 7000 year old European was 'white' with freckled skin already, so that when lightening genes did finally appear/did get turned on, then they merely lightened away the freckles". Good grief.
One of the commenters had to repeatedly explain that La Brana either didn't possess the necessary mutations for skin lightening (or these were not turned on or whatever) that made Europeans light.
But that didn't stop pleadings of: "Please please please, can't it be that we don't know *all* the genes that lighten Europeans and hence it may be that La Brana may have had exactly any/all the other potential genes that could exist that lighten Europeans - but not any of the particular ones that have so far been discovered as lightening Europeans." Except that no such genes were known and the present lightening genes identified account for most of the lightening seen in Europeans.
I don't get why these people are so hung up**. Everyone knew that Europeans were merely Modern Humans who had turned fairer. But it really bothers them - and surprising how much - that this was quite so recently. As recently as some time around/post 7000 years ago. (Was it Stuttgart man or someone who was to have lived 5300 years back who was said to be lighter/more European looking in terms of complexion/qua skincolour?)
** Actually, it's their lame identification with "whiteness". They've built entire castles in the air about "white civilisation" and the "white race" being the only creative population and civilisational force etc etc etc that, you know, when the entire edifice they've built up is called into question by such inconvenient things like timing, it's really affecting their psyche.
Don't know why these people can't just wait for data instead of starting to make up stories and excuses about it already.
*** I agree that they only found some 2 individuals from this early time frame/stone age era - and not sure whether these 2 are to have been representative of all areas of what's now considered Europe, e.g. has anything in E Europe from around about that time been looked at so far? - and so there's no reason to jump to conclusions IMO about what all the rest of the European population looked like. (Unless they've definitely dated the appearance of the lightening mutation genes to such a late time. Otherwise
All that can be said at most - with some degree of high likelihood/certainty even - is that the population (of inhabitants of Europe) certainly wasn't homogenously fair or rather "white" at that point in time/in the stone age. Plus that La Brana's ancestors must likely trace to the Black Sea because La Brana possessed the blue eye mutation which was estimated to have first showed up among humans in the Black Sea area 3000 years before him, which also says something about the (im)possibility of a homogenously "white" population in that ancestral Black Sea population, since La Brana himself was dark/didn't have the lightening mutations.
[color="#0000FF"]Ramana, see Dhu's post 597.[/color]
Post 2/2
Sorry, seems I wasn't finished rambling just yet. To explain what I actually meant to say in the following from the above and to expand on it:
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.
It should read more like:
'Desperate excuses to explain away La Brana man's "African genes for skin colour" by trying to argue that the genes [or rather alleles] for lightening that became fixed in modern Europeans were at least known to not be fixed in the 7000 year old La Brana Stone Ager, the way they are in modern Europeans. (And which consequently are known to have made La Brana "dark" to whatever extent - uncharacteristically for a modern European.'
Will track down stuff I think I read in that blog. [I think that I read that these skin lightening mutations - the ones that became fixed in Europeans - were said to be missing altogether in La Brana (?)]
<So deleting a lot of the rest of this post, since I don't want to make vast claims based on something without properly remembering what I think I had read. (Since that's usually the sort of thing I make fun of in other people. Then again, everyone else always makes vast claims and usually runs away with it.)>
The desperate at that western blog were arguing that "But but but, can't he have been white in some other way" - such as "the E Asian way". Except that E Asians turned light owing to *other* (non-European) lightening mutations, as per more learned comments at that very blog.
And other desperate excuses followed. "He was not representative of Europeans". (Except there's mention in the very opening blog post there of some other find from around that timeframe that also turned out to be an example of what was phenotypically a "dark" European. And I can't make out that there have been any finds so far for that time period that were fair/on the way to being fair like modern Europeans.***)
And the other excuse "Maybe the 7000 year old European was 'white' with freckled skin already, so that when lightening genes did finally appear/did get turned on, then they merely lightened away the freckles". Good grief.
One of the commenters had to repeatedly explain that La Brana either didn't possess the necessary mutations for skin lightening (or these were not turned on or whatever) that made Europeans light.
But that didn't stop pleadings of: "Please please please, can't it be that we don't know *all* the genes that lighten Europeans and hence it may be that La Brana may have had exactly any/all the other potential genes that could exist that lighten Europeans - but not any of the particular ones that have so far been discovered as lightening Europeans." Except that no such genes were known and the present lightening genes identified account for most of the lightening seen in Europeans.
I don't get why these people are so hung up**. Everyone knew that Europeans were merely Modern Humans who had turned fairer. But it really bothers them - and surprising how much - that this was quite so recently. As recently as some time around/post 7000 years ago. (Was it Stuttgart man or someone who was to have lived 5300 years back who was said to be lighter/more European looking in terms of complexion/qua skincolour?)
** Actually, it's their lame identification with "whiteness". They've built entire castles in the air about "white civilisation" and the "white race" being the only creative population and civilisational force etc etc etc that, you know, when the entire edifice they've built up is called into question by such inconvenient things like timing, it's really affecting their psyche.
Don't know why these people can't just wait for data instead of starting to make up stories and excuses about it already.
*** I agree that they only found some 2 individuals from this early time frame/stone age era - and not sure whether these 2 are to have been representative of all areas of what's now considered Europe, e.g. has anything in E Europe from around about that time been looked at so far? - and so there's no reason to jump to conclusions IMO about what all the rest of the European population looked like. (Unless they've definitely dated the appearance of the lightening mutation genes to such a late time. Otherwise
All that can be said at most - with some degree of high likelihood/certainty even - is that the population (of inhabitants of Europe) certainly wasn't homogenously fair or rather "white" at that point in time/in the stone age. Plus that La Brana's ancestors must likely trace to the Black Sea because La Brana possessed the blue eye mutation which was estimated to have first showed up among humans in the Black Sea area 3000 years before him, which also says something about the (im)possibility of a homogenously "white" population in that ancestral Black Sea population, since La Brana himself was dark/didn't have the lightening mutations.[color="#0000FF"]Ramana, see Dhu's post 597.[/color]