Many thanks for the excerpt on Sarama. [Yama's dogs sadly tend to be pounced on by aliens for PIE-ism, since they choose to draw a straight line to Kerberos dwelling in Hades. Kerberos BTW is where Tolkien obviously plagiarised his Carcharoth from.]
It's not that there are no ancient references to dogs (hence domesticated) among Hindus, it's that research has not (yet) found any ancient founding lineages of domesticated dogs in India. So that was the source of my disappointment. I don't know why it should matter, why I should be so petty about it. But on the bright side, India and Nepal natively have the Lesser Pandas aka Red Panda.
core: The Hindu variants have a browner coat than their redder Daoist counterparts in China.
There were some very good documentaries on the domestication of the dog - it's a fascinating story, on the extent that dogs contributed to (and instigated, and even controlled) the process of their domestication.
[color="#0000FF"]Concerning post 600[/color], here are some of the excerpts from that blog page that mention the relevant mutations that lightened Europeans (I searched for the gene name prefix and chose mostly comments by one Tobus since at least he sounds like this may be closer to his field - well, at least more than in the case of the others who mentioned the gene there - plus he sounded like he would let the data lead him on the matter of La Brana man's skintone):
It's not that there are no ancient references to dogs (hence domesticated) among Hindus, it's that research has not (yet) found any ancient founding lineages of domesticated dogs in India. So that was the source of my disappointment. I don't know why it should matter, why I should be so petty about it. But on the bright side, India and Nepal natively have the Lesser Pandas aka Red Panda.
core: The Hindu variants have a browner coat than their redder Daoist counterparts in China. There were some very good documentaries on the domestication of the dog - it's a fascinating story, on the extent that dogs contributed to (and instigated, and even controlled) the process of their domestication.
[color="#0000FF"]Concerning post 600[/color], here are some of the excerpts from that blog page that mention the relevant mutations that lightened Europeans (I searched for the gene name prefix and chose mostly comments by one Tobus since at least he sounds like this may be closer to his field - well, at least more than in the case of the others who mentioned the gene there - plus he sounded like he would let the data lead him on the matter of La Brana man's skintone):
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