265

submitted 4 months ago by Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net to c/science_memes@mander.xyz

26 comments fedilink hide all child comments

top 26 comments

sorted by: hot top new old

[-] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 49 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

This is a real question, I’m not trying to be racist, but why do they think Cheddar man’s skin tone would be that dark vs the lighter skin of modern Adrian Targett?

Was this something that came over after some migration? Or a more recent adaptation?

Also how cool is it that this man’s maternal line has lived in the same small area for 11,000 years!

Edit: that’s almost 400 generations of this man’s lineage all in one village.

[-] Barley_Man@sopuli.xyz 110 points 4 months ago

Modern native European genetics can be roughly said to derive from 3 main sources. One is western Hunter gatherer (WHG). These were not the first people in Europe but were the first to populate Europe after the latest ice age ended. By analysing their genome we think they were dark skinned, black haired and had blue eyes. The light skin adaptation didn't actually develop in Europe but in the middle east. Here is where the second group comes from.

Early European Farmer (EEF) originally came from Anatolia and were the ones spreading farming around Europe. Interestingly the spread of farming was not spread by knowledge transfer but by the migration and expansion of EEFs. The EEFs and the WHGs would coexist for hundreds of years with little admixture, living completely different lifestyles. The early European farmers, whose genetics derive from Neolithic Anatolia, were light skinned, brown eyed and relatively short. Modern groups with the most genetic similarity to EEFs are modern day Sicilians so you can imagine that. Overtime the EEFs and the WHGs would eventually mix however.

The third group are the yamnaya, also called steppe Ancestry. The yamnaya were a people group in modern day Romania and Ukraine who just so happened to invent the concept of riding a horse and after they did so they steamrolled about all of Europe in aggressive conquest. The Indo European languages derived from them and their expansion vastly changed the genetics of the continent. And all Europeans derive at least part of their genetics from them, of course in different amounts depending on the region. They were believed to be quite tall and have blond hair and are the "Aryans" that the Nazis talked about.

All modern Europeans are a mixture of these 3 groups, in different proportions. So returning to the pictures in the OP it makes sense for the cheddar man would be dark skinned as he would be 100% WHG as he lives way before any of these groups moved in. This does not mean however that the guy on the right is not a direct ancestor, he very well may be. But since he is also a result of the later migrants, the EEFs and the Indo European expansion, he will of course look vastly different.

[-] Mavvik@lemmy.ca 18 points 4 months ago

Where do European Neanderthals fit into this story?

[-] Barley_Man@sopuli.xyz 50 points 4 months ago

There was a time where both modern humans and Neanderthals lived together in Europe and it's likely they mixed. But this was before the last ice age. After the ice age the Neanderthals were already extinct globally and the first people to repopulate Europe were these WHGs who genetically had little to do with the pre ice age population. Therefore I would assume strictly European Neanderthals have little to no modern genetic impact in Europeans. The Neanderthals genes Europeans carry today would instead derive from middle eastern Neanderthals.

[-] Mavvik@lemmy.ca 17 points 4 months ago

Oh I see, thats very interesting thank you! Are you an archaeologist, or just someone very interested in stone-age history?

[-] Barley_Man@sopuli.xyz 26 points 4 months ago

Nah I'm just very interested in agricultural history (I work in agriculture ) and I learned this stuff as a byproduct of learning about the origins and spread of farming into Europe. If you are interested there are lots of good long-form history videos about the neolithic on YouTube, just search Neolithic. So far Neolithic youtube has not suffered the same AI slop-ageddon as medieval YouTube has.

[-] Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone 6 points 4 months ago

Shoutout to Miniminuteman/Milo Rossi, he’s an archaeologist and does a lot of debunking of ancient aliens-esque conspiracy theories, collaborative videos with other archaeologists about their work, and cool educational videos about things I’d never heard of before, like The Great Raft: a unique ecosystem made up of a log-jammed river that existed for ~600 years and supported multiple indigenous societies.

[-] Hadriscus@jlai.lu 5 points 4 months ago

This is so cool, thanks for sharing. I am reading Earth's Children book 4 right now and I know the author was well documented, but she wrote those books 30 years ago, so I assume modern findings would clash with some of her fiction. Anyway, thanks again

[-] pentastarm@piefed.ca 13 points 4 months ago

I want to thank you too, that was a very interesting read! Thanks for the knowledge! 💖

[-] FlowerFan@piefed.blahaj.zone 3 points 4 months ago

Fun fact: we're still in an kce age. What you're thinking of is technically a glacial maximum

[-] GalacticGrapefruit@lemmy.world 11 points 4 months ago

Are you an anthropologist, an archaeologist, or a geneticist?

I am really interested in hearing your take on the second human migration out of Africa.

[-] Barley_Man@sopuli.xyz 15 points 4 months ago

I'm neither of those three and I'm mostly interested in the neolithic so unfortunately I don't have a take on the second human migration out of Africa. Sorry

[-] espurr@sopuli.xyz 3 points 4 months ago

That was a cool read!!!!

[-] DragonTypeWyvern@midwest.social -1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

He was checking to see if you were a Nazi after your comment about Aryans which is definitely not what the Nazis meant by it, being fully up their own ass with pseudoscience.

Funnily enough, being massive racists, the almost-correct work behind the initial Kurgan hypothesis was rejected in Europe in the 1880's in favor of pretending it came from Northern Europe for reasons that are obvious to people who know their history of "scientific" racism.

Even funnier, it would be research conducted in the Soviet Union (having access to all the steppes in the question about steppe tribes) that would form the backbone of the modern understanding.

[-] Barley_Man@sopuli.xyz 4 points 4 months ago

Sorry then I'm mistaken. However modern Nazis, at least the Swedish ones, love going on about the Aryans and by saying Aryans, they mean the proto Indo Europeans. At least the ones in my country. They even made posters in the 90s with the typical horse chariots with text that says something similar to "your ancestors, the Aryans, conquered India and Europe" or something to that effect. I have limited knowledge of what the 1940s german Nazis thought so I trust what you say. However is it not true those OG Nazis at least connected the Aryans to proto Indo European and the actual historical Aryans of the hindu Vedas? In that case they still meant the proto Indo Europeans but were wrong about where they originated.

But don't worry I'm not a nazi. I have no belief that any ethnic origin is superior to another. I would even want to shame the proto Indo Europeans because they could not possibly have spread and conquered that far without insane amounts of rape and murder, which I don't condone.

[-] SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 4 months ago

According to the wiki article, it's determined from DNA samples.

The population was still relatively (in evolution sense) new to the area, so they still had the darker skin tone from their middle eastern ancestors

[-] roguetrick@lemmy.world 9 points 4 months ago

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/07/first-modern-britons-dark-black-skin-cheddar-man-dna-analysis-reveals

[-] poVoq@slrpnk.net 8 points 4 months ago

Was this something that came over after some migration?

This basically. Most of the European population descends from a more recent immigration wave from the middle east.

[-] nixfreak@sopuli.xyz -1 points 4 months ago

You do realize skin color just has to do with melanin to protect from the sun right? All of human history came from Africa.

[-] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 7 points 4 months ago

Yes, I’m asking what the timeline of this change was, and another commenter posted an incredibly thorough answer with major human migration in Europe since the last ice age.

Another commenter liked to a source with this info.

[-] Akasazh@lemmy.world 15 points 4 months ago

Quick reminder that the recreation of faces on the basis of skulls is not very scientific and it's making up a lot of the soft tissue that is lost to history.

So then looking alike is purely coincidental.

[-] Cytobit@piefed.social 9 points 4 months ago

Once you go back far enough, everyone is related. Everyone alive today with European ancestry is a direct descendant of Charlemagne, for example.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/commentisfree/2015/may/24/business-genetic-ancestry-charlemagne-adam-rutherford

[-] SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world 7 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Sure but that there still is a living relative of Cheddar man is still remarkable. The majority of bloodlines in the entire history of mankind have died out. Most people from that same era as cheddar man will have no living relatives today.