Re:DNA sequencing of Viking skeletons reveals they weren’t a...
by danans on Friday September 18, 2020 @12:53AM
(#24513123)
> What wasn't said was that they were black
> it seems quite a stretch to assume that they were as dark as African peoples.
Africans also aren't the color black. Nobody said the first Britons were SubSaharan African at all. They just said they had dark skin.
This is bolstered by the discovery that a widespread gene -
SLC24A5 - associated with fairer skin is a recent (8k years ago) phenomenon in Europe associated with the arrival of middle eastern farmers, in whom it developed due to their Vitamin-D poor cereal-based diet [1].
The same gene is present across Eurasia through to South Asia, and is partially responsible for pigmentation variation there also, even moreso than in Europe, where the gene is almost ubiquitous today. [2]
Of course it's not the only gene that controls depigmentation. Depigmentation in East Asia is not related to that gene at all - though it could be similarly influenced by cereal-based diets.
> it seems quite a stretch to assume that they were as dark as African peoples.
Africans also aren't the color black. Nobody said the first Britons were SubSaharan African at all. They just said they had dark skin.
This is bolstered by the discovery that a widespread gene - SLC24A5 - associated with fairer skin is a recent (8k years ago) phenomenon in Europe associated with the arrival of middle eastern farmers, in whom it developed due to their Vitamin-D poor cereal-based diet [1].
The same gene is present across Eurasia through to South Asia, and is partially responsible for pigmentation variation there also, even moreso than in Europe, where the gene is almost ubiquitous today. [2]
Of course it's not the only gene that controls depigmentation. Depigmentation in East Asia is not related to that gene at all - though it could be similarly influenced by cereal-based diets.
1. https://www.livescience.com/42838-european-hunter-gatherer-g...
2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3820762/