quote:Originally posted by BrandonP: Makes sense. All these populations must have undergone their own trajectories of evolution since diverging (e.g. the whole thing about Negritos having short stature might be an adaptation to the rainforest environments that would have expanded in Southeast Asia after the LGM), but I can see Andamanese peoples like the Onge somewhat resembling the immediate ancestors of East Asians.
The term 'Negrito' is a racialized catchphrase for small statured blacks of the Asian region in general. It's just like the term 'Pygmies' of Africa. Yet genetics has shown that just as African Pygmies were actually genetically heterogeneous populations of different origins, so too were the 'Negritos' as proven by the 2017 Jinam et al. paper.
Ironically the Andamanese are genetically closest to the ancestors of 'Mongoloids' or modern East Asians than all other 'Negrito' populations though Andamanese are also highest in ASI whereas East Asians show more affinity to ANI. So there are still gaps in our autosomal knowledge as shown in the map.
By the way, Larena at al. 2021 paper shows Philippine Ayta possess the highest level of Denisovan ancestry in the world. Before this discovery, the highest Denisovan ancestry known was in Papuans followed by Australian Aborigines so there was clearly a north-south gradient in Denisovan ancestry.
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: The term 'Negrito' is a racialized catchphrase for small statured blacks of the Asian region in general. It's just like the term 'Pygmies' of Africa. Yet genetics has shown that just as African Pygmies were actually genetically heterogeneous populations of different origins, so too were the 'Negritos' as proven by the 2017 Jinam et al. paper.
Understood. I admit, the term "Negrito" doesn't make me 100% comfortable (same with "Pygmy"), but there aren't a lot of better terms out there for these disparate populations.
By the way, I am a bit confused as to where you and Doug disagree. It reads to me like he's disputing the scenario that "Mongoloid" Asian traits (e.g. lighter skin, thick straight hair, epicanthic eyefolds, etc.) evolved further north and spread to Southeast Asia later by migrants who almost replaced the aboriginal populations, but he just told me he doesn't actually argue that. So what are you two arguing about?
That being said, I can see some so-called "Mongoloid" traits evolving in ancestral East Eurasians prior to lighter skin and cold-climate adaptations. I have read that some "Negrito" populations have a Sundadont dental pattern similar to most lighter-skinned Southeast Asians, for example.
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The problem I have with "Negrito" is what I said, all of the aboriginal populations of Asia were not short with kinky hair. Again, the Papuans aren't short but they do have kinky hair. While the Australian Aborigines are not short but they have straight hair. All these populations are directly tied to the original OOA migrations due to isolation, but they all look physically different. And all of them had to pass through Sundaland, so that means the original OOA populations passing through this area could not have all been little short people with kinky hair. You also see this across the Pacific in recent history as many of those populations were also dark skinned with straight hair while others had curly or kinky hair while others were lighter skinned with similar features.
I am not sure what is so hard to understand about that. Some were tall, some were short, some had round eyes, some had almond eyes, some had big noses, some had narrow noses, some had big lips, some had thin lips, some had straight hair, some had culry hair and some had kinky hair. That is what I mean by these populations were already diverse and over time under genetic selection pressure, these features evolved into those distributed across Asia today. The only thing these isolated populations tell us across the board is that all of those OOA groups were diverse.
Now, you see the same thing regarding Northern Asians in cases like the Ainu of Japan. This is what I mean by skin color not being relevant to my point. At some point in time there were Northern Asians with round eyes, alongside those with almond eyes, just like there were some with generalized Euarasian features (western/central Eurasian) and others with more pronounced "Mongoloid" features. But over time under selection pressure those so-called "Mongoloid" features won out over the others among light skinned Northern Asians.
Meaning that the original dispersed smaller clusters of populations in Asia would have been more diverse than they are today. And the diversity decreased due to bottlenecks, environmental and sexual selection. It is the same process that affected all of these groups whether the isolated aboriginal tribes or those "basal East Asians", except what happened in North Asia happened on a larger scale due to the population boom during the neolithic. That doesn't mean those so-called "mongoloid" features weren't present prior to that, but just that they were part of a much more diverse set of features across Asia and the "Negritoes" are subsets of that diversity not representative of all those groups.
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^ I've already shown how the 'Negrito' label is a catchphrase and has no actual ethnic much less genetic basis. Technically the word 'Negrito' simply means 'little black' and says nothing about hair texture. Short stature is an adaptation to islands with low protein sources and has nothing to do with skin color or hair. In regards to Australo-Melanesians you raise an interesting point (and one which I intend to discuss elsewhere) in that Australians and Melanesians despite being closest related to each other have different hair textures. Yet some people try to use difference in hair texture as evidence of distant genetic relation. Anyway, so-called 'Negrito' hair texture is not just kinky type but ranges to curly as well. There are aboriginal groups in Indonesia with loose wavy hair similar to those of the Veddah aboriginals of Sri-Lanka who are also short in stature. But then the Andamanese not only have tightly coiled hair but theirs is even of the same spiral tuft form as South African Khoisan which is the tightest coiled!
quote:Originally posted by BrandonP: Understood. I admit, the term "Negrito" doesn't make me 100% comfortable (same with "Pygmy"), but there aren't a lot of better terms out there for these disparate populations.
By the way, I am a bit confused as to where you and Doug disagree. It reads to me like he's disputing the scenario that "Mongoloid" Asian traits (e.g. lighter skin, thick straight hair, epicanthic eyefolds, etc.) evolved further north and spread to Southeast Asia later by migrants who almost replaced the aboriginal populations, but he just told me he doesn't actually argue that. So what are you two arguing about?
That being said, I can see some so-called "Mongoloid" traits evolving in ancestral East Eurasians prior to lighter skin and cold-climate adaptations. I have read that some "Negrito" populations have a Sundadont dental pattern similar to most lighter-skinned Southeast Asians, for example.
The question is how far north? Doug misunderstands when he keeps saying "northeast Asia". The graph I posted shows the range of basal or ancestral East Asian being in southern China just north of Sunda.
The one thing that all East Asians have in common is EDAR mutation which gives the course straight hair, small teeth, smaller breasts, reduced sweat glands etc. The mutation is expressed in the alleles at different degrees. For example, northeast Asians have greater epicanthic folding than Southeast Asians etc. Northeast Asians have fairer skin but that is due to another mutation for skin color which Southeast Asians also have but not expressed as greatly due to the obvious lower latitude. It's all about epigenetics.
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Interestingly enough some Scandinavian Hunter Gatherers from Motala in Sweden also had the derived EDAR gene. Seems the mutation found its way from Asia to Sweden sometime after the last Ice age.
quote:According to Mathieson, et al. (2015), 50% of Scandinavian Hunter Gatherers from Motala carried the derived variant of EDAR-V370A. This variant is typical of modern East Asian populations, and is known to affect dental morphology[15] and hair texture, and also chin protrusion and ear morphology,[16] as well as other facial features.[17] The authors did not detect East Asian ancestry in the Scandinavian Hunter Gatherers, and speculated that this gene might not have originated in East Asia, as is commonly believed.[18] However, more recent research incorporating ancient Northeast Asian samples has confirmed that EDAR-V370A originated in Northeast Asia, and spread to West Eurasian populations such as Motala in the Holocene period.[19]
Mathieson, et al 2015 Genome-wide patterns of selection in 230 ancient Eurasians. Nature. Nature Research 528 (7583): 499–503. Link to article
Günther et al 2018: Population genomics of Mesolithic Scandinavia: Investigating early postglacial migration routes and high-latitude adaptation. PLOS Biology 16 Link to article
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ I've already shown how the 'Negrito' label is a catchphrase and has no actual ethnic much less genetic basis.
As I mentioned from the very beginning of this thread, the term Negrito comes from European racial anthropology in the 1900s. And I literally posted some of these works as in this thread. I also said that modern papers still reference those works when using the term and examples with those references were also posted a while back....
I think the confusion here is between my critique of these papers and their usage of these terms and what you may be thinking I am debating you about which, as I said before, isn't really about you personally.
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: Doug misunderstands when he keeps saying "northeast Asia". The graph I posted shows the range of basal or ancestral East Asian being in southern China just north of Sunda.
No. I literally posted a couple recent papers saying this a page ago.
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quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: Interestingly enough some Scandinavian Hunter Gatherers from Motala in Sweden also had the derived EDAR gene. Seems the mutation found its way from Asia to Sweden sometime after the last Ice age.
quote:According to Mathieson, et al. (2015), 50% of Scandinavian Hunter Gatherers from Motala carried the derived variant of EDAR-V370A. This variant is typical of modern East Asian populations, and is known to affect dental morphology[15] and hair texture, and also chin protrusion and ear morphology,[16] as well as other facial features.[17] The authors did not detect East Asian ancestry in the Scandinavian Hunter Gatherers, and speculated that this gene might not have originated in East Asia, as is commonly believed.[18] However, more recent research incorporating ancient Northeast Asian samples has confirmed that EDAR-V370A originated in Northeast Asia, and spread to West Eurasian populations such as Motala in the Holocene period.[19]
Mathieson, et al 2015 Genome-wide patterns of selection in 230 ancient Eurasians. Nature. Nature Research 528 (7583): 499–503. Link to article
Günther et al 2018: Population genomics of Mesolithic Scandinavia: Investigating early postglacial migration routes and high-latitude adaptation. PLOS Biology 16 Link to article
Not to mention the fact that Y-haplogroup N also occurs in that region.
Hg N is has its highest frequency in Siberian populations of North Asia and is sibling to the East Asian hg O. Admixture with with eastern people likely explains the 'Eastern' features that occurs among some Scandinavians especially in Finland.
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Especially Finlanders and Samis have an eastern component both genetically, linguistically and also when concerns traditions and folklore. The traditional Sami culture (as we know it now) for example took form during the bronze age, influenced by eastern cultures.
The 8000 years old Scandinavian hunter gatherers from Motala had the paternal haplogroup I2 and the maternal haplogroups U5a1 and U4a2
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One can mention that questions about the ethnogenesis of the Sami people, their cultural origin, who was first in Northern Scandinavia and similar questions have been rather controversial and politicized here in Scandinavia. Samis have been subject to colonialism and race biological studies. Also there are several disputes over land rights with members of the majority population.
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quote:Originally posted by BrandonP: ^ You think it could have come from Ancient North Eurasians?
I don't know. From what I've read of ANE, there was no mention of EDAR mutation and the only Y lineages associated with them are of the QR clade. Hence both hg R in Europe and hg Q in the Americas are associated with ANE.
The population history of the European subcontinent is similar to that of the Indian subcontinent being comprised of multiple waves of immigration from inner Asia. Take for example the 30,000 year old Sungir folk of western Russia. Their paternal lineage was C1.
So the presence of both EDAR mutation and Y-hg N1 in Finno-Ugric folk indicates a relatively more recent immigration from Siberia, probably from Neolithic times.
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BTW, is it just me, or are East Asians another group of people who are widely uncomfortable with the idea of ultimately being descended from Black people? I had a guy on Twitter accuse me of "erasing non-Black POC" because I depicted certain prehistoric people from Asia (e.g. Tianyuan Man) as Black since they would have lived before East Asian features as we know them had evolved. He then messaged me this on Instagram:
Later in the exchange, he told me that he hoped a "disgusting negro" would kill me.
I know we give racist North Africans a hard time on these forums, but racist East Asians are not any nicer if he's typical of them.
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: One can mention that questions about the ethnogenesis of the Sami people, their cultural origin, who was first in Northern Scandinavia and similar questions have been rather controversial and politicized here in Scandinavia. Samis have been subject to colonialism and race biological studies. Also there are several disputes over land rights with members of the majority population.
Speaking of finland i was watching some eastern and northern european dna test results recently and before.
quote: @JaKommenterar quote- @lifeleaves1268 Interestingly some ancestry may not show up in these tests for groups originating in mixed regions like Middle Eastern - for example, most southern Europeans, Jews, Arabs and Iranians will have between 2-10% Black African ancestry on average (some more some less) but it often won’t show up unless its a detailed genetic research. Harvard Medical School published on this, you may find it interesting.
@lifeleaves1268 quote- @JaKommenterar you are absolutely right. To be totally honest with you my brother from the same parents had super shocking results compare to me. I am the last guy in the video by the way. He was more than 27 percent Jewish and less than 40 percent Iranian but also about 10 percent scottish. To me these tests are just where science meets the fun and entertainment. I personally believe we only know so much from the original DNA’s of our ancestors and it is not enough to be exact results.
@blackcoffeebeans6100 quote- Sami ppl is a different race and has a culture of their own. From all the Nordic countries Finland has The smallest number of them. Norway has 40 000 Samis. Sweden 15 000 -25 000. Finland 10 000.
@JaKommenterar quote- @diamondsarenotforever8542 Yes that’s what I’m saying, it isn’t ”eskimo” ancestry but they share genes with the Sami so the data confused the two. Many in Finland have Sami ancestry, more than Sweden and Norway, they have less of them because they got assimilated. Plus Fin’s language is close to Sami.
@blackcoffeebeans6100 quote- @JaKommenterar Not true. Sami ppl mostly have dark complexion and eyes. Also they are quite short. Finns are opposite. Sami ppl always wanted not to be mixed. They very rarely married ppl from different race. Of course swedish ppl think finns are mongolians. This is not true. Finland has got more blondies than Sweden.
@JaKommenterar quote- @blackcoffeebeans6100 What you are saying is entirely nonsensical, having a little bit of Sami ancestry will not make you dark, and genes do not lie. I know it makes you uncomfortable that Finns are not fully white. And yes Sweden has more immigrants than Finland so it therefore has fewer blonds. By the way, many Sami people are mixed race as you can tell by their appearance. Non-european blood is common amongst Europeans, southern Europeans are ca 2% Black. Nothing wrong with Sami blood.
Some updated info about east asian dna in europe.
Genetic history of Europe
quote: East Asian ancestry is found at low frequency among some Europeans. According to one study, Germans, French people and Britons carry anywhere from 1% to 3.8%. Russians and Finns were found to have significantly higher East Asian admixture, around 13%. East Asian ancestry was acquired around 1800 years ago in Finns (2nd century AD), while the admixture in Russians is traced back to around 1300 years ago (8th century AD). The Lipka Tatars, a Turkic minority in Belarus carry around ~30% East Eurasian ancestry. Source Wikipedia
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More about the earliest Europeans and their relatives
In a cave in Bulgaria human remains have been DNA sequenced. Their DNA links them to East Asia and even America
quote: An international research team has sequenced the genomes of the oldest securely dated modern humans in Europe who lived around 45,000 years ago in Bacho Kiro Cave, Bulgaria. By comparing their genomes to the genomes of people who lived later in Europe and in Asia the researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, show that this early human group in Europe contributed genes to later people, particularly present-day East Asians. The researchers also identified large stretches of Neandertal DNA in the genomes of the Bacho Kiro Cave people, showing that they had Neandertal ancestors about five to seven generations back in their family histories. This suggests that mixture with Neandertals was the rule rather than the exception when the first modern humans arrived in Europe.
quote: It was previously thought that bearers of the Initial Upper Palaeolithic died out without contributing genetically to modern humans arriving later. However, the researchers now show that the oldest Bacho Kiro Cave individuals, or groups closely related to them, contributed genes to present-day people. Surprisingly, this contribution is found particularly in East Asia and the Americas rather than in Europe where the Bacho Kiro Cave people lived. These genetic links to Asia mirror the links seen between the Initial Upper Palaeolithic stone tools and personal ornaments found in Bacho Kiro Cave and tools and ancient jewelry found across Eurasia to Mongolia.
Genomes of the earliest Europeans Ancient genomes shed new light on the earliest Europeans and their relationships with Neandertals Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. 2021
quote: Abstract Modern humans appeared in Europe by at least 45,000 years ago, but the extent of their interactions with Neanderthals, who disappeared by about 40,000 years ago, and their relationship to the broader expansion of modern humans outside Africa are poorly understood. Here we present genome-wide data from three individuals dated to between 45,930 and 42,580 years ago from Bacho Kiro Cave, Bulgaria. They are the earliest Late Pleistocene modern humans known to have been recovered in Europe so far, and were found in association with an Initial Upper Palaeolithic artefact assemblage. Unlike two previously studied individuals of similar ages from Romania and Siberia who did not contribute detectably to later populations, these individuals are more closely related to present-day and ancient populations in East Asia and the Americas than to later west Eurasian populations. This indicates that they belonged to a modern human migration into Europe that was not previously known from the genetic record, and provides evidence that there was at least some continuity between the earliest modern humans in Europe and later people in Eurasia. Moreover, we find that all three individuals had Neanderthal ancestors a few generations back in their family history, confirming that the first European modern humans mixed with Neanderthals and suggesting that such mixing could have been common.
Initial Upper Palaeolithic humans in Europe had recent Neanderthal ancestry Nature 2021
The oldest European Homo sapiens, can be the one whose remains are found in Grotte Mandrin, in Southern France.
quote: Our direct ancestors, Homo sapiens, may have ventured into Neanderthal territory in Europe much earlier than previously thought, according to an archaeological study published this week. Researchers also believe that Neanderthals and Homo sapiens may have alternately shared territory in southeastern France. - The latest research, by a team of archaeologists and palaeoanthropologists led by Ludovic Slimak of Toulouse University, pushes the arrival time of Homo sapiens in western Europe to around 54,000 years ago.
Tooth from the Mandrin cave assessed to be from modern Homo sapiens
quote: We determined that layer E, which contains the modern human fossil, dates to 56.8 ka to 51.7 ka cal. B.P. (95.4% prob.; see Materials and Methods; figs. S15 to S20 and tables S1 to S10), suggesting that this individual is substantially earlier than any previously documented modern human remains or potential transitional archeological assemblages in Europe, and penecontemporaneous with, if not older than, the Manot 1 calvaria from Israel (6).
Slimak, S et al, 2022: Modern human incursion into Neanderthal territories 54,000 years ago at Mandrin, France Science Advances Vol 8, No 6 Link to article
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quote:Originally posted by BrandonP: BTW, is it just me, or are East Asians another group of people who are widely uncomfortable with the idea of ultimately being descended from Black people? I had a guy on Twitter accuse me of "erasing non-Black POC" because I depicted certain prehistoric people from Asia (e.g. Tianyuan Man) as Black since they would have lived before East Asian features as we know them had evolved. He then messaged me this on Instagram:
Later in the exchange, he told me that he hoped a "disgusting negro" would kill me.
I know we give racist North Africans a hard time on these forums, but racist East Asians are not any nicer if he's typical of them.
It goes to show you...
Yeah, unfortunately some Asians can be just as racist as some Europeans. The worst in my opinion are the Japanese though Chinese aren't far behind. Racialism in Asia by the way, was in large part inspired by Europeans and particular the Nazis.
Tianyuan Man is the East Asian equivalent to European Cro-Magnon yet we know AM Humans at that time even if ancestral to the populations living there today don't look like them.
Cro-Magnon
We know that Cro-Magnon in features resembles Australian-Aborigines or more closely aboriginal populations of India than today's Europeans and had darker skin.
We only have Tianyuan Man's jaw but from that it appears that in terms of features he more closely resembles Jomon type people than anything like contemporary Chinese.
But then you have the 10,000 years younger skull of UP 101 a.k.a. Lao-Ren whom the Chinese made this reconstruction.
Even though his features make him a more robust form of Paleo-Indian or at best a more robust Polynesian.
This is why forensic reconstruction is as much art as science and thus prone to bias.
Brandon, as for your reconstruction, though I doubt that's how Tianyuan man looked his ancestors on the other hand probably did look that way since we have Andamanese as being a branch of that ancestry.
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We know that Cro-Magnon in features resembles Australian-Aborigines or more closely aboriginal populations of India than today's Europeans and had darker skin.
Here are two facial reconstructions of the original Cromagnon skull. The one to the left is made by Oscar Nilsson and the one to the right by the people of Ancestral whispers.
And as a comparison the original Cromagnon 1 skull
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: Brandon, as for your reconstruction, though I doubt that's how Tianyuan man looked his ancestors on the other hand probably did look that way since we have Andamanese as being a branch of that ancestry.
Do you think Tianyuan Man would have been significantly lighter-skinned? He seems to have lived a bit too early IMO to have undergone significant depigmentation.
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If skin color is difficult to assess for these ancient people, then hair type must be equally difficult or more difficult, especially if we not have any DNA left. The cromagnon man for example is mostly depicted with straight hair, and maybe that also have support in ancient art, if this portrait is real, something that is discussed here.
Ivory head from Dolni Vestonice
Ivory head from Dolni Vestonice
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The difference between TianYan and CroMagnon is fragments of a skull vs a full skull. And this is true across the board between Europe and Asia where they have many more ancient full skulls or skeletons whereas Asia has mostly fragments.
As for skin color, there were plenty of areas in Asia even up to 100 years ago with dark skinned "black" Asians, so the idea that light skin swept the entire area thousands of years before that is a myth, even in Northern Asia. Again, South China is on the same latitude as Northern Africa. So there is no reason there wouldn't have been darker skinned people there even in more recent times.
Unfortunately the racism of Asia comes from this belief spread by Europeans that Asian civilization originates in North East Asia from superior light skinned people. However the facts on the ground are just the opposite. Much of the culture in Asia originates from the South as in the spread of IndoBuddhist culture across South East Asia. And the ancient cultural traditions of tied to ancient Sundaland such as various styles of huts and stilt houses and other cultural traits extending into the Pacific. There are also ancient styles of martial arts that also existed in South and South East Asia before China and even the Chinese themselves say they got Kung Fu from India.
Anyway, on the topic of ancient Asian remains, here is another recent set of remains found that may be the oldest found yet.
quote: What connects a fossil found in a cave in northern Laos with stone tools made in north Australia? The answer is, we do. When our early Homo sapiens ancestors first arrived in Southeast Asia on their way from Africa to Australia, they left evidence of their presence in the form of human fossils that accumulated over thousands of years deep in a cave.
The latest evidence from Tam Pà Ling cave in northern Laos, uncovered by a team of Laotian, French, American and Australian researchers and published in Nature Communications, demonstrates beyond doubt that modern humans spread from Africa through Arabia and to Asia much earlier than previously thought.
It also confirms that our ancestors didn’t just follow coastlines and islands. They travelled through forested regions, most likely along river valleys, too. Some then moved on through Southeast Asia to become Australia’s First People.
“Tam Pà Ling plays a key role in the story of modern human migration through Asia but its significance and value is only just being recognised,” says University of Copenhagen palaeoanthropologist Assistant Professor Fabrice Demeter, one of the paper’s lead authors.
...
From 2010 to 2023, annual excavations (delayed by three years of lockdowns) revealed increasingly more evidence that Homo sapiens had passed through en route to Australia. Seven pieces of human skeleton were found at intervals through 4.5 metres of sediment, pushing the potential timeline far back into the realms of the earliest Homo sapiens migrations to this region.
In this study*, the team overcame these issues by creatively applying strategic dating techniques where possible, such as the uranium-series dating of a stalactite tip that had been buried in sediment, and the use of uranium-series dating coupled with electron-spin-resonance dating techniques to two rare but complete bovid teeth, unearthed at 6.5 metres.
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: Brandon, as for your reconstruction, though I doubt that's how Tianyuan man looked his ancestors on the other hand probably did look that way since we have Andamanese as being a branch of that ancestry.
Do you think Tianyuan Man would have been significantly lighter-skinned? He seems to have lived a bit too early IMO to have undergone significant depigmentation.
No. I never said he was light skinned only that I don't think he was necessarily that dark. I believe that both Cro-Magnon and Tianyuan after moving into higher latitudes did become relatively lighter but that doesn't mean fair-skin. They may be more "brown" in complexion or at least as black as say coastal North Africans (before European admixture).
By the way, one thing I forgot to mention is that while Lao-Ren's odontic morphology is scored as sinodonty, Tianyuan's partial dentition suggests sundadonty which is not surprising considering the jaw configuration.
Considering the autosomal data that I previously cited in regards to populations of Southeast Asia, note that Australo-Melanesians form their own 'australodonty' complex as the late Dr. Turner called it or 'sahuldonty' as I like to call it. Meanwhile 'Negritos' of the Philippines and other black aborignals of Southeast Asia (except Andamanese) are all sundadonts, while the Andamanese themselves are actually part of the 'indodonty' complex.
Bulbeck made some interesting hypothetical claims in regards to the divergence and evolution of traits of East Eurasian populations in regards to hair form and skin color but this was based on the autosomal data of that time and before all these latest updates shown here.
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quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: If skin color is difficult to assess for these ancient people, then hair type must be equally difficult or more difficult, especially if we not have any DNA left. The cromagnon man for example is mostly depicted with straight hair, and maybe that also have support in ancient art, if this portrait is real, something that is discussed here.
Ivory head from Dolni Vestonice
Ivory head from Dolni Vestonice
It should be noted that one characteristic of Paleolithic Europeans was their prominent brow ridges comparable to that of Australo-Melanesians. Even today, Europeans have brow ridges second in prominence to Australo-Melansians.
But to get back to the Saami. I believe Saami represent Paleolithic Europeans with Neolithic Asian admixture which is seen in both their genetics as well as features. I suspect the dark features seen in some Saami to represent the Asian admixture. Not to mention the ANE ancestry which peaks today in Yeneseian speakers of North Asia.
This is not to say Y-hg N carrying Yeneseians represent the original ANE population but rather they seemed to have absorbed that population as high frequencies of ANE are also associated with Proto-Indo-European speakers why carry Y-hg R.
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Culturally Saami has been rather close to many other reindeer herding peoples in northern Eurasia. All Saamis were not reindeer herders though, from the beginning they were mostly hunter gatherers, and some groups are still mainly living of hunting, gathering and fishing.
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: No. I never said he was light skinned only that I don't think he was necessarily that dark. I believe that both Cro-Magnon and Tianyuan after moving into higher latitudes did become relatively lighter but that doesn't mean fair-skin. They may be more "brown" in complexion or at least as black as say coastal North Africans (before European admixture).
What makes brown more of a better term than black when both include many ranges of brown? I don't understand why you keep making a distinction here.
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^ I'm pointing out that in terms of adaptation, I doubt a population at higher latitudes away from the equator would have the same complexion as equatorial populations is all. Note that I said, if the early population in China was 'black' it would be of the coastal North African kind and not say Sudanese.
This is why terms like 'black' and 'white' are always relative.
Khoisan are very light-skinned to the point where one really can argue that they are not black, but what are we to make of say a dark-skinned Mexican or Meso-American? Usually they are not labeled as black either but many approach skin tones of Africans who still are called 'black'.
So I don't have a problem with it at all. YOU on the other hand are someone who seems to be hung up on labels.
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Honestly, DJ, your use of "black" sometimes confuses me. I understand you're using it in reference to skin color rather than race or ethnicity, but it's sometimes unclear to me where you draw the lines marking your categorization of skin tones.
Maybe using more specific terms would help in this case? Like, would you say Tianyuan Man could have been caramel, coppery, or maybe mahogany-skinned instead of ebony? Maybe pick a tone from this image that best represents how you picture his people?
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You literally used both terms in the same sentence is what I am referring to as if that somehow really is a semantic distinction.
quote:may be more "brown" in complexion or at least as black
Meaning the populations in ancient China would have had a range of brown complexions, not a single complexion and therefore could absolutely be called either black or brown in reference to that same range of complexions. Hence why I asked why you are making the distinction as if any group of tropically adapted people anywhere on the planet all have the same exact complexion when they don't.
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quote:Lastly, the time series aDNA data can be used to track the emergence and spreading pattern of adaptive sequence variants. By utilizing the published aDNA data, we reconstructed the spatial-temporal distribution of an East Asian-specific variant (OCA2-His615Arg) that contributes to skin lightening due to local Darwinian positive selection (Figure 5, left panel). It turned out that all the Late Pleistocene individuals (e.g., MZR, Tianyuan, Amur-33K, Amur-19K, and UKY) lack the derived allele (OCA2-615Arg). The first presence of the adaptive allele (OCA2-615Arg) was in Liangdao 2–7.5 kya from coastal southern China and it quickly elevated to medium frequency (25.67%), mainly in coastal East Asia, and then spread to northern East Asia 3,500 years ago, and finally became dominant (60.00%) in current East Asians (Figure 5, left panel; Data S1N). This pattern suggests that the selective event in East Asians likely occurred in the Late Holocene epoch, coinciding the proposed quasi-exponential population growth during that time.
This would indicate that the Red Deer Cave people and other Pleistocene East Asians were significantly darker than modern populations in the region, as indicated by the absence of a derived allele causing lighter skin. This may not necessarily mean they were all dark brown, as "red" Native Americans also have the ancestral allele for the gene tested. Still, it seems likely to me that the Red Deer Cave people were at least coppery-colored if not darker.
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If we're still talking about Tianyuan Man, he lived around 40,000 years ago, not long after ancestral East Asians had colonized the northern latitudes from further south. So it would make sense to me if he was in the darker brown range like the people in the first three photos you posted, since his people were still relatively new arrivals in the region. The Red Deer Cave people, on the other hand, could potentially have been lighter brown like those Native Amazonians and Southeast Asians since they had more time to evolve a lighter complexion (although they still lived rather far south in China IIRC).
It would be interesting to find out just how long it takes for a population to lose skin pigmentation. Some recent research seems to indicate that, in West Eurasia at least, lighter skin tones became more common after 30 kya (although blue eyes evolved earlier, around 42 kya). Though, of course, there's the problem of not all skin color genes potentially having been identified yet.
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The only one who is literally black (more or less) on the pictures above is the Jarawa boy. All the others are different shades of brown. But out of historical and political reasons many brown skinned people are also called black. Maybe most important is what people call themselves, if they at all identify with a color.
The Cheddar reconstruction looks a bit off, but it is of course hard to know exactly how he looked like. His skin tone has been discussed Was Cheddar man white after all?
Here is another image made by artist Tom Björklund of a WHG girl from Denmark. Her skin tone is based on DNA found in a Birch tar "chewing gum".
She is reconstructed lighter than the Cheddar man but still darker than todays Danish people
Native Americans can vary a lot in skin color from dark brown, to nearly white, depending on environment. Seems that they somewhat have adapted their skin color to rather different environments. We do not really know how varied their colors where when they first came to America, but probably there has been some selection also going on since then.
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Seems like the matter of which genes that govern skin color is a bit complicated. Another gene that also affects skin color is MFSD12 and East Asians and Native Americans have a special allele of it. I do not know how old it is though, or in what ancient skeletons it is found. But it is supposed to have arrived in America with the first ancient migrants from Asia.
quote: Strongest association with skin pigmentation at 19p13 was observed for an Y182H missense variant (common only in East Asians and Native Americans) in MFSD12, a gene recently associated with skin pigmentation in Africans. We show that the frequency of the derived allele at Y182H is significantly correlated with lower solar radiation intensity in East Asia and infer that MFSD12 was under selection in East Asians, probably after their split from Europeans.
Adhikari, K. et al, 2019: A GWAS in Latin Americans highlights the convergent evolution of lighter skin pigmentation in Eurasia
quote: This study identifies five new associated regions involving skin, eye and hair colour. Genes affecting skin colour in Europeans have been extensively studied, but here researchers identified an important variation in the gene MFSD12 seen uniquely in East Asians and Native Americans.
They show it was under natural selection in East Asians after they split from Europeans around 40,000 years ago, and was then carried over to America by ancient migrations of Native Americans. It is the first time this gene has been linked to skin colour in Native Americans and East Asians.
Dr Kaustubh Adhikari (UCL Genetics Institute), said: "Our work demonstrates that lighter skin colour evolved independently in Europe and East Asia. We also show that this gene was under strong natural selection in East Asia, possibly as adaptation to changes in sunlight levels and ultraviolet radiation."
Genetic study provides novel insights into the evolution of skin color Science Daily 2019
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Look, I don't want to dwell on the issue of skin color. I'm just pointing out the fact that "dark" covers a range of complexions, and that before the rise of SLC24A5 or OCA2-615Arg mutations human skin color of populations living in temperate latitudes need not necessarily be ebony dark in color is all.
-------------------- Mahirap gisingin ang nagtutulog-tulugan. Posts: 26260 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ Yes, it's the same for UP Europeans like Cromagnon. So obviously they were dark-skinned. I'm just questioning how dark.
Were they as dark as this Andamanese boy?
What about the reconstruction of Cheddar Man of England? Do you think him to be as dark as the reconstruction below?
Or this Indian?
My point is that there is whole range of complexions that are dark skinned.
Here are people typically called "brown" today (from Amazon, SE Asia, North Asia).
The only thing I am pointing out is the idea that outside Africa, the only "black" people are those with jet black skin. When in fact most "black" Africans don't have jet black skin and are still included in the dictionary definition of black. And yes, some of that or a lot of it goes back to European semantics about race in the 19th and 20th century. For example the idea of a "brown race", which is based on trying to separate populations by variations phenotype and is totally unscientific. Unfortunately a lot of that still has a large role in the study of ancient Asian population history.
Not to mention the word "brown" when it comes to ethnicity or skin color often refers to the most lightest skinned people out of a population with mixture. Latinos, Coloreds in South Africa, certain Mediterranean populations and so forth would be an example. Which goes back to my point that using brown is no more precise than using the word black and often is used to refer to the lighter ranges of brown skin. Therefore, using the term black is much more precise when you are referring to people who are not very light skinned and in the medium to darker ranges of complexion. And yes, people like to play games with this and it is unfortunate, especially when you are trying to nail down specifics.
As far as I am concerned these ancient populations were tropically adapted, meaning having a range of complexions that would be seen among various tropically adapted populations today. I deliberately use tropically adapted to avoid this nonsensical semantic sticking point around what "black" means vs what "brown" means when they literally refer to the same thing. And on this forum it is funny that image of the Kazakh or Uzbek man gets posted whenever someone talks about black Asians normally by trolls trying to cause confusion because nobody is using that person as being relevant to what black means in Asia and is not tropically adapted.
If I had to guess, I would argue that the Tianyan man would have been more similar to the Canela woman or Indian woman in complexion.
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: Look, I don't want to dwell on the issue of skin color. I'm just pointing out the fact that "dark" covers a range of complexions, and that before the rise of SLC24A5 or OCA2-615Arg mutations human skin color of populations living in temperate latitudes need not necessarily be ebony dark in color is all.
In the interest of fairness, I do think it is possible that initial OOA populations varied a bit in skin tone even before those depigmentation events. I have read that people with the very darkest skin tones (what you call "ebony dark") carry mutations on a couple of genes (MFSD12 and DDB1) that, while predating AMH, may not have necessarily been universal among them.
quote:The most dramatic discovery concerned a gene known as MFSD12. Two mutations that decrease expression of this gene were found in high frequencies in people with the darkest skin. These variants arose about a half-million years ago, suggesting that human ancestors before that time may have had moderately dark skin, rather than the deep black hue created today by these mutations.
These same two variants are found in Melanesians, Australian Aborigines, and some Indians. These people may have inherited the variants from ancient migrants from Africa who followed a “southern route” out of East Africa, along the southern coast of India to Melanesia and Australia, Tishkoff says. That idea, however, counters three genetic studies that concluded last year that Australians, Melanesians, and Eurasians all descend from a single migration out of Africa. Alternatively, this great migration may have included people carrying variants for both light and dark skin, but the dark variants later were lost in Eurasians.
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We know for a fact that Tianyan man was related to the populations of the Americas. And we know that some of them maintained their dark pigment into the current day. And of course that is mostly in tropical areas. Across the various Native American populations you see the variation in features also found in Asia.
Unfortunately as for the mainland, since historic migrations from China well into the modern era have impacted many parts of South East Asia, a lot of this discussion gets bogged down in modern ideas of what constitutes "Asian" features. When there is absolutely no guarantee that the people of many parts of China today looked the same as they did 5,000 years ago. And I am not saying they were all dark skinned either.
Be that as it may, without more ancient DNA from across the continent and more actual full skeletons or skulls, this will remain an open question in terms of the diversity and evolution of populations in ancient Asia over time.
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A video by Razib Khan about the ancient genetic roots of the Chinese
quote: On this episode of Unsupervised Learning Razib explores the history of China through the lens of genetics and ancient DNA. This podcast is a companion to the recent two pieces, Genetic history with Chinese characteristics and Venerable Ancestors: untangling the Chinese people's hybrid Pleistocene origins. Today 92% of the citizens of the People’s Republic of China are ethnic Han, accounting for 16% of humanity. With China’s new prominence in genomics over the last decade, the genetic structure and relatedness of the Han and other ethnic groups in modern China have been extensively mapped. While India is fractured into thousands of endogamous groups, the Han Chinese are surprisingly homogeneous, with most variation dividing the North Chinese from the South Chinese.
Though the Chinese claim “5,000 years of history,” Razib probes deeper, back to the arrival of modern humans to East Asia more than 40,000 years ago, perhaps as early as 50,000 years ago. The monologue recounts the discovery and implications of the first modern human genome from East Asia, Tianyun Man, and how he relates to the region's peoples today and their Pleistocene diversification and Holocene homogenization. Finally, Razib reflects on how science differs from the narrative the modern Chinese tell about their origins and how they relate to their neighboring nations.
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While looking for information on a possible Negrito presence in the Khmer Empire, I found this from an old book titled The Ancient Khmer Empire. I know Djehuti has mentioned Chinese records of a woman with Negrito traits ruling the Funanese, but the Chinese describing Funanese in general as being dark-skinned with curly hair was a surprise. I knew there had to be Negrito people living in the region's jungles by that date, but I would have thought they had already become the minority, with the majority looking more like modern Khmer Cambodians.
Anyone know if there are records of Negritos persisting in Cambodia by the time of the Khmer Empire? I don't buy the claims of some Afrocentrics that the medieval Khmers were all Negrito, but a Negrito minority persisting in the kingdom's boondocks seems plausible to me. I haven't found any information on there being Negritos in the country today though.
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^ The black aboriginal people of Cambodia are known as Maa or Moi.
Unfortunately, they are a very small population and many of them have already mixed with older Austroasian groups other than Khmer so many of them have lost their original look other than black skin. Contrast this with the Indian ancestry found in elite Khmer remains as discussed before.
-------------------- Mahirap gisingin ang nagtutulog-tulugan. Posts: 26260 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ The black aboriginal people of Cambodia are known as Maa or Moi.
There is a chapter about the Moi in Roy Pinney´s old book Vanishing tribes
quote: THE MOI In the mountains of central Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia live a number of primitive tribes whose total population is perhaps 50Q,000. They are called collectively by the Vietnamese word Moi a generic term that means simply "savage." The Laotians call them the Kha and the Cambodians Pnong. They live in the inaccessible jungle areas of the Indochina peninsula but their isolation from the complex civilisation that have developed around them is also due also due in part to their suspicion of outsiders Their more civilized neighbors have always regarded them as dangerous, savage people and have spread stories of their cannibalism but these stories have not been verified.
The Moi live in a big-game hunter's paradise, although non hunters might find it a bit harrowing. The elephant is an economic staple for them, and the tiger is their most feared and venerated enemy. A Moi village is often abandoned and a new site found merely to avoid the ravages of a man-eating tiger who has been preying on the villagers. Comparatively little has been learned about the customs and beliefs of these peoples, some of whom live within one hundred miles of Saigon.
In many older books the authors often stated that a people was vanishing, but they did not often try to raise public opinion to save the people in question (through guaranteed land rights, protection from violence, drugs, trafficking and other degrading factors). Hopefully the attitude has changed nowadays among anthropologists and maybe one day among authorities in different countries too.
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: ^ The black aboriginal people of Cambodia are known as Maa or Moi.
Unfortunately, they are a very small population and many of them have already mixed with older Austroasian groups other than Khmer so many of them have lost their original look other than black skin. Contrast this with the Indian ancestry found in elite Khmer remains as discussed before.
"Moi" is a term often used by the French in the colonial era to refer to various "primitive" groups in Vietnam. It was never used as a reference to "Aborigines" as opposed to "indigenous" or "tribal" populations outside the cities. At that time, this was part of French Indochina and Vietnam was referred to as Annam. And most of those populations in those photographs from 80 to 100 years ago are mostly straight haired. More recently these various groups have also been labelled as Montagnards, especially in Vietnam.
Generally Cambodia has a wide range of indigenous types and that diversity is quite ancient even if there arent many "negritoes". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6LqeEf9d7s
"Aboriginal" in this context when it comes to populations in Asia refers to those groups who maintained an ancient DNA profile associated with the first settlers of Asia. The only reason "negritoes" are identified with being "aborigines" is because of this, but technically only certain Negrito populations have this distinction. It is simply assumed that because of their looks they have unique OOA related DNA lineages but all of them don't. Australian Aborigines have this distinction because of geographic isolation, but they aren't short or kinky haired. The Andaman Islanders have it also because of geography and isolation but also because of fierce rejection of foreign intrusion. Other "negrito" populations do not have such ancient DNA lineages, including the Aeta, despite them being relatively isolated from other populations and maintaining a relatively distinct phenotype. That said, they are identified as "aboriginal" to the Philippines, but not necessarily having lineages as ancient as Australians or Andamese. And technically all aboriginal Filipinos weren't kinky haired either.
quote: We first investigated the relationship between individuals by PCA. Figure 1A shows that the first two principal components (PCs) separates the Andamanese, Malaysian Negritos and Philippine Negritos into distinct clusters. If Papuans and Melanesians were included (supplementary fig. S4A, Supplementary Material online), the Philippine Negritos were located between the Papuans and Malaysian Negritos along PC2. When the Andamanese individuals were omitted, PC1 separates the Aeta, Agta, and Batak from the other populations whereas PC2 separates the Mamanwa and Jehai from other groups (fig. 1B). The Agta, Aeta, and Batak individuals form a comet-like pattern along PC1, which may indicate admixture events. Similarly, the Mamanwa also showed the comet-like pattern along PC2. The PCA plot without Agta and Aeta (supplementary fig. S4B, Supplementary Material online) places the Batak close to the non-Negrito Philippine groups, suggesting a high proportion of admixture. The Manobo and Mamanwa, both living in northern Mindanao, have a high affinity as several Manobo individuals clustered with the Mamanwa (fig. 1B and supplementary fig. S4B, Supplementary Material online).
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