ANTROPOGENEZ.RU - the largest Russian scientific and educational portal dedicated to human evolution. The project was launched in 2010 on the initiative of the scientific journalist Alexander Sokolov and the anthropologist Stanislav Drobyshevsky.
Anthropologists have been investing significant effort in reconstructing the appearance of ancient humans, but who and why would be interested in the result? What is the use for knowing archaic human phenotype? We have an answer: from the very beginning, the reconstruction methods, in addition to merely satisfying scientists’ curiosity, had a very practical application – the forensic examination. In particular, anthropologists helped in putting names on unidentified remains.
Homo neanderthalensis. Credit: Roman Evseev Homo neanderthalensis. Credit: Roman Evseev For a long time geneticists have been working side by side with classic anthropologists in the field of forensic science: they determine the identity of the criminal by samples of blood, saliva, semen or even by the traces of sweat on objects the perpetrator has touched. This is possible if the suspect’s genetic “autograph” is present in the police database. What if it is not? In this case, we can use the geno-geography to find out the probable region of the person’s origin. However, this can also be a problem due to poor DNA preservation. The reconstruction of the genome owner’s appearance is an answer. Person’s hair, eyes and skin color will be the easiest things to determine. The genetics of pigmentation has been developing for a long period. By now, specialists identified dozens of genes affecting the synthesis and distribution of pigment in various human tissues.
The Forensic Science International: Genetics journal published an article on the development the DNA-based methods of prediction of human pigmentation [1]. The techniques were designed for searching for criminals, acquitting innocent suspects, and for identifying victims of accidents and natural disasters. A few years ago the authors designed a system called HIrisPlex (H for hair). From its name it is easy to figure out that it was designed to deduce eye and hair color from DNA sequence. Predicting skin pigmentation was more challenging due to high number of genetic variants associated with the variance in eye and hair color. Therefore, it was easier for geneticists to study a relatively homogeneous group of people which has evolved within a particular continent. Human skin provides quite a different, more complex, planet-wide story. We know, for example, that in the course of evolution Europeans and Asians became light-skinned at least partially independently – their lack of skin pigmentation have different genetic bases.
Back in 2010 geneticists developed a version of their algorithm for predicting the skin color based just on three SNPs (SNP – single nucleotide polymorphism. It is a position of DNA sequence which can hold different “letters of genetic alphabet” in different individuals) [2]. An improved protocol was published a year later. It analyzed 7 SNPs predicting three types - "not pale", "not dark", or "not pale / not dark" (i.e. intermediate). The version released later took into account 17-18 SNPs and it predicted "dark/pale skin" with 67% probability.
Finally, in 2014, authors estimated the predictive ability of 59 SNPs and selected 10 of them, which produced good prediction [3]. However, the applicability of the product was low due to the limited number of tested individuals. In 2017, the authors extended their selection up to 2,025 individuals from around the world and tested 77 SNPs of 37 genes [4]. This resulted in a model that was able to place a tested genotype into one of five color categories the skin, from very pale to very dark ("Dark-Black"), with reasonably high probability. The technique was tested on 200 individuals from various human populations, with pretty decent result. For example, it managed to predict "Dark-Black" skin in 98% of cases.
After combining their successful algorithms, the authors developed a unified system of DNA testing HIrisPlex-S (S for skin). Seventeen SNPs used for predicting the skin color were combined with 24 SNPs "for eyes and hair" (19 of them also affecting skin pigmentation). The technique estimates the probabilities for 3 eye colors, 4 hair colorations and 5 skin types.
For calibrating the system, genetic data of hundreds individuals from different parts of the world were included in the analysis. Special focus was made on the samples of a "forensic" type: blood stains, saliva, semen, vaginal smears, and traces of touch on various objects.
The article pays special attention to the description of sample preparation procedure, as well as to the testing of technique reliability. For example, what happens if we mix DNA samples of two different persons? The tests demonstrated that the technique determined which sample was mixed, although not in every case. Will the technique distinguish human DNA from animal DNA? According to the tests, it will, except for the chimpanzees – our closest relatives are too similar to us. Will the results be reproduced in different laboratories? Yes, the tests in five independent laboratories were successful, producing correct results in 28 out of 30 samples.
In the process of testing the algorithm, the authors put the results of skin color prediction of over 1000 individuals on the world map (Figure 1). The resulted picture was similar to the observed geographical distribution of human pigmentation.
Illustrative example of the performance of the skin colour prediction model provided with the HIrisPlex-S DNA test system.
Another illustration of the technique’s effectiveness is the correct prediction of the skin color of 35 arbitrarily selected individuals from America, Europe, Africa and Asia. Importantly, these individuals were not included in the database used in the calibration of the model. Figure 2 indicates high correlation of skin photographs with the results of the HIrisPlex-S method.
Authors emphasized that the technique demonstrated excellent results in samples of poor quality with very low content of DNA – as little as 63pg. The developers plan to further improve the method by including new SNPs into the procedure for better reliability of prediction.
The researchers drew attention to the fact that their program might be applied not only to forensic science, but also to other areas, no doubt including evolutionary biology and paleoanthropology.
Now we proceed to the most interesting part. Among other things, the developers published a free online version of the technique. To use the pigmentation calculator at https://hirisplex.erasmusmc.nl/ you can fill in the variants of 41 SNPs from the genome of interest and get a prediction!
We do have an appropriate genome, and even a few. The website of Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (https://bioinf.eva.mpg.de/jbrowse/) has freely accessible genetic sequences of ancient humans. We could not resist taking advantage of this opportunity and tested the genomes of two Neanderthals (from Denisova cave in Altai and from Vindija cave in Croatia), a Denisovan, and a 45 thousand years old Homo sapiens from Ust-Ishim (Siberia) in Hirisplex.
We are grateful to Dr. Susan Walsh, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Biology Department, Forensic & Investigative Sciences Program for clarifying the details of how to select SNP calls for Hirisplex.
The result came as a surprise:
According to Hirisplex, and providing we did not make any mistakes, both Neanderthals, as well as the Denisovan, had very dark skin. The Ust-Ishim man’s skin turned out to be just as dark, though this ancient Homo sapiens stood out with his potentially blue eyes (with probability 0.678), due to a T in the SNP rs12896399 at locus LOC105370627.
Interestingly, the Cheddar man’s reconstructed portrait (Britain, 10 thousand years ago) had the same look – dark skin and blue eyes, as well as other European Mesolithic hunters, who lived much later – 7-8 thousand years ago (see the studies of 2014 [5] and 2015 [6]). This suggests that genetic trait responsible for blue eyes had spread among our ancestors long before the European inhabitants became light skinned.
The uniform blackness of all four archaic individuals had puzzled us so much, that we became concerned about software artifacts. As controls, we analyzed the genomes of a French and a Mbuti pygmy from the same website of Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. The results were as follows:
Even though we did not know the actual pigmentation of these French and Mbuti individuals, the results looked plausible. Yet, before spreading the word about black Neanderthals all over the world, we must make an important disclosure. HIrisPlex-S is a technique designed for testing modern humans. We have mentioned above that even within our species the evolution of the pigmentation went different ways in different populations. Both Neanderthals and Denisovans had been evolving in Eurasia for hundreds of thousands years separately from our ancestors, so they could acquire light skin, eyes or hair in their own way, as a result of mutations yet unknown to us. In this case, the technique would not work, because such unique Neanderthal’s SNPs were not represented in the HIrisPlex-S calculator.
It should be pointed out that the famous Neanderthal red hair, of which a lot has been written after the research in 2007 in which scientists had obtained DNA fragments from Neanderthal remains from Monti Lessini (Italy) and El Sidron (Spain). Note that the mutation in MC1R gene which, according to the scientists, had resulted in the Neanderthals having red-hair was not found in modern humans.
We did not find this mutation of red hairness in the Neanderthals from Denisova cave and Vindia. Very likely, the hair color of Neanderthals in Eurasia was variable like in modern humans.
Based on our limited amateur research, we can draw the following conclusions:
1. Taking into account only those SNPs that determine the color of skin, hair and eyes in modern humans and represented in HIrisPlex-S, the Neanderthals from Denisova cave and Vindja, as well as the Denisovian and the ancient Homo sapiens from Ust-Ishim were brunettes with very dark skin. The Ust-Ishim man potentially had blue eyes (although, the probability in favor of Ust’-Ishim’s blue eyes was not overwhelmingly high), while the eyes of other specimens tested were brown.
2. The common ancestor of Homo sapiens, Homo denisova and Homo neanderthalensis was a dark-skinned brunette with brown eyes. The Eurasian Homo sapiens have acquired their light skin independently of the Neanderthals, if the latter had ever been pale.
The flaws of our analysis and the future directions of research are the following:
We were limited to the set of SNPs represented in HIrisPlex-S. Additional studies of archaic genomes are necessary to identify the mutations absent in modern human population which could have influenced Neanderthals’ pigmentation.
Siberia is a cold place today, especially in winter. Was it any warmer 50 thousand years ago, or not, the question of whether Altai Neanderthals wore clothes remains open. Lack of clothing could be a factor of selection in favor of retaining the dark pigmentation in Neanderthals.
If the Neanderthals and the Denisovans of Altai did not wear clothes, could they possess genetically determined resistance to the winter cold? We can recall Konstantin Anisimov’s and Verona Konrad’s reports about cold-proof Papuans walking naked at +8°C [ref]. It is the Papuan genome that contains the highest proportion of the Denisovan DNA. We can speculate that archaic SNPs provide Papuans with tolerance to low temperature. Similarly, several researches demonstrated that not all populations of ancient humans in Europe used fire regularly [7].
The archaic genomes still hold many surprises for us. The availability of full-size genomes and of the tools for their analysis allows any enthusiast in genetics to make small discoveries, similar to amateur astronomers finding new comets and asteroids.
“Europeans carry a motley mix of genes from at least three ancient sources: indigenous hunter-gatherers within Europe, people from the Middle East, and northwest Asians from near the Great Steppe of eastern Europe and central Asia. One high-profile recent study suggested that each genetic component entered Europe by way of a separate migration and that they only came together in most Europeans in the past 5000 years.
Now ancient DNA from the fossilized skeleton of a short, dark-skinned, dark-eyed man who lived at least 36,000 years ago along the Middle Don River in Russia presents a different view: This young man had DNA from all three of those migratory groups and so was already “pure European,” says evolutionary biologist Eske Willerslev of the Natural History Museum of Denmark at the University of Copenhagen, who led the analysis.”
[...]
From the sequence data, they found gene variants indicating that the man had dark skin and eyes. He also had about 1% more Neandertal DNA than do Europeans and Asians today, confirming what another, even older human from Siberia had shown—that humans and Neandertals mixed early, before 45,000 years ago, perhaps in the Middle East.
"If the Neanderthals and the Denisovans of Altai did not wear clothes, could they possess genetically determined resistance to the winter cold? We can recall Konstantin Anisimov’s and Verona Konrad’s reports about cold-proof Papuans walking naked at +8°C [ref]. It is the Papuan genome that contains the highest proportion of the Denisovan DNA. We can speculate that archaic SNPs provide Papuans with tolerance to low temperature. Similarly, several researches demonstrated that not all populations of ancient humans in Europe used fire regularly [7].
The archaic genomes still hold many surprises for us. The availability of full-size genomes and of the tools for their analysis allows any enthusiast in genetics to make small discoveries, similar to amateur astronomers finding new comets and asteroids."
Interesting question about what kind of adaptations we inherited from Denisovans and Neanderthals. One such adaptation can be tolerance of high altitudes among people on the Tibetan plateau
quote: Recent archaeological discoveries suggest that both archaic Denisovans and Homo sapiens occupied the Tibetan Plateau earlier than expected. Genetic studies show that a pulse of Denisovan introgression was involved in the adaptation of Tibetan populations to high-altitude hypoxia. These findings challenge the traditional view that the plateau was one of the last places on earth colonized by H. sapiens and warrant a reappraisal of the population history of this highland. Here, we integrate archaeological and genomic evidence relevant to human dispersal, settlement, and adaptation in the region. We propose two testable models to address the peopling of the plateau in the broader context of H. sapiens dispersal and their encounters with Denisovans in Asia.
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There are some discussions if the HIrisPlex-S system is reliable in all populations. For example in a study from 2019 on mixed people in Brazil it showed less reliability. It makes one wonder if the application of the system on archaic humans always gives reliable results.
quote:The main goal of DNA phenotyping is to predict externally visible characteristics (EVCs) of an individual using only its genetic information. Nowadays, the HIrisPlex-S system stands as a reliable model designed for skin color prediction. However, prediction of skin color phenotypes has not been thoroughly tested in recently admixed populations, so it is important to evaluate the applicability of this tool in these populations. This study aims to analyze the HIrisPlex-S system accuracy in an admixed sample of 276 individuals from the region of Ribeirão Preto city in Southeastern Brazil. Predictive markers were directly genotyped by Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS), Infinium Multi-Ethnic Global-8 (MEGA) Kit Array (Illumina), or imputed using the IMPUTE2 software. Skin color predictions were performed using the HIrisPlex-S online tool. Our report shows that, except for dark to black color, the tool consistently fails in determining skin phenotypes. Therefore, results reveal that the HIrisPlex-S System is less reliable when dealing with admixed population samples, not supporting its utility for forensic casework in Brazil.
quote:The failure of HIrisPlex-S in determining skin color in Brazilian population corroborates the hypothesis that other genetics factors may be involved in the determination of pigmentation phenotypes, such as the existence of SNPs not included in the system, as well as epistatic interactions that occur in Brazilians in a different way to those occurring in Europeans due to the admixed nature of the former. It is important to mention that recent studies in African and admixed populations have identified two independent variants within the MFSD12 gene that are strongly associated with skin pigmentation and these markers are not present in the HIrisPlex-S system.
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Nice lies and obfuscation by omission as the problem with regards to skin color is light skin.
An excerpt from the article:
Three out of five AUC values were lower than 0.8 (Table 1). Considering the extreme phenotypes (i.e., very pale and dark to black), it is possible to conclude that the AUC of 0.85 for very pale skin color can be misleading, since no individual had this phenotype predicted, which led to a sensitivity value of zero, complemented by a specificity of one. On the other hand, dark to black color showed the best result: AUC of 0.99 and a sensitivity of 1.
Here's more:
It is also noteworthythat the same classification scheme that HIrisPlexS proponents used to classify individuals’ skin color (Fitzpatrick scale) revealed that individuals with very pale skin are much more common in Europe than Brazil. In Brazil, there are more people with very dark skin tone, which is rare among individuals of European ancestry. Therefore, due to perception or misclassification biases, two individuals with skin tones considered very pale and intermediate in Brazil may be classified with pale and dark skin in Europe, respectively. This can also explain in part why no individual was predicted with very pale skin phenotype and why everyone with dark-black skin was predicted correctly. 🤔🤔🤔😳😳😳🙄🙄🙄
Posts: 1123 | From: New York | Registered: Feb 2016
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posted
I have to agree with the article cited in the OP that the Neanderthals could potentially have had mutations for light skin that the HIrisPlex-S software might not have in its database (since it was designed with modern humans in mind):
quote:Even though we did not know the actual pigmentation of these French and Mbuti individuals, the results looked plausible. Yet, before spreading the word about black Neanderthals all over the world, we must make an important disclosure. HIrisPlex-S is a technique designed for testing modern humans. We have mentioned above that even within our species the evolution of the pigmentation went different ways in different populations. Both Neanderthals and Denisovans had been evolving in Eurasia for hundreds of thousands years separately from our ancestors, so they could acquire light skin, eyes or hair in their own way, as a result of mutations yet unknown to us. In this case, the technique would not work, because such unique Neanderthal’s SNPs were not represented in the HIrisPlex-S calculator.
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Yes, HIrisplex has a certain number of SNP:s it can detect but it is possible that there are SNPs which it can not detect among Neanderthals and Denisovans. The bottom line is that it is not fail proof.
One can also wonder how broad a category as dark black is. I remember a study I once read where individuals from both the Karitiana and Surui peoples in Brazil were classified as Dark - Black
So it would be even more difficult to exactly assess the skin color of samples belonging to ancient archaic humans.
A karitiana man
A Surui man
So in the case of Neanderthals and Denisovans, how dark was really Dark/Black? And did they catch all SNP:s relevant to skin color?
I presume these systems will be updated in the future improving their ability to more exactly predict skin color.
When it comes to ancient archaic humans there is also a question of representability. Denisovan full genomes come from the Denisova cave. How do we know how representative they are for the whole species in it´s entire distribution area?
-------------------- Once an archaeologist, always an archaeologist Posts: 2683 | From: Sweden | Registered: Mar 2020
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Because some Natives aren't that much lighter than Some Black people in the Americas. Boxers Cristobal Cruz vs Maurice Hooker, Cristobal is Mexican and Hooker is Afram.
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Regarding black people in the Americas they vary so much in color that sometimes even sun tanned Europeans are darker than some of them.
In the OP article they thank Dr Susan Walsh for help
quote: We are grateful to Dr. Susan Walsh, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Biology Department, Forensic & Investigative Sciences Program for clarifying the details of how to select SNP calls for Hirisplex.
But even she has said that the predictions of skin color in ancient samples are not fool proof.
She said regarding the famous Cheddar man
quote: Geneticist Susan Walsh at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, says we simply don't know his skin color. While her computer model shows being black is his 'probable profile', DNA testing is not advanced enough to say for certain.
I think it is to early to go out and say that Neanderthals and Denisovans were black (whatever is meant by black, but I presume in the case of the OP they mean according to the Fitzpatrick scale). First we must know that all relevant SNPS:s are taken account for. Then we must know how representative a sample is.
-------------------- Once an archaeologist, always an archaeologist Posts: 2683 | From: Sweden | Registered: Mar 2020
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quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: Regarding black people in the Americas they vary so much in color that sometimes even sun tanned Europeans are darker than some of them.
In the OP article they thank Dr Susan Walsh for help
quote: We are grateful to Dr. Susan Walsh, Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Biology Department, Forensic & Investigative Sciences Program for clarifying the details of how to select SNP calls for Hirisplex.
But even she has said that the predictions of skin color in ancient samples are not fool proof.
She said regarding the famous Cheddar man
quote: Geneticist Susan Walsh at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis, says we simply don't know his skin color. While her computer model shows being black is his 'probable profile', DNA testing is not advanced enough to say for certain.
I think it is to early to go out and say that Neanderthals and Denisovans were black (whatever is meant by black, but I presume in the case of the OP they mean according to the Fitzpatrick scale). First we must know that all relevant SNPS:s are taken account for. Then we must know how representative a sample is.
Majority of Black Americans in the US are brown skinned individuals. Lighter skin tones is an outlier from what I've seen. And Europeans do not tan darker than Black people, what are you talking about? Maybe Italians/Greeks with already Mediterranean skin tones(which are already tannish). But Northern to Western europeans do not tan darker than Black people so I do not get where you are getting this from.
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^^ When I talked about Europeans in this case I mostly meant south Europeans. But even some very tanned north Europeans can get as brown as some light mixed African Americans or African Europeans. I have seen it with my own eyes.
-------------------- Once an archaeologist, always an archaeologist Posts: 2683 | From: Sweden | Registered: Mar 2020
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quote:Originally posted by BrandonP: I have to agree with the article cited in the OP that the Neanderthals could potentially have had mutations for light skin that the HIrisPlex-S software might not have in its database (since it was designed with modern humans in mind):
quote:Even though we did not know the actual pigmentation of these French and Mbuti individuals, the results looked plausible. Yet, before spreading the word about black Neanderthals all over the world, we must make an important disclosure. HIrisPlex-S is a technique designed for testing modern humans. We have mentioned above that even within our species the evolution of the pigmentation went different ways in different populations. Both Neanderthals and Denisovans had been evolving in Eurasia for hundreds of thousands years separately from our ancestors, so they could acquire light skin, eyes or hair in their own way, as a result of mutations yet unknown to us. In this case, the technique would not work, because such unique Neanderthal’s SNPs were not represented in the HIrisPlex-S calculator.
Not that I really care about Neanderthal or Denisovan Skin color or anything but I have to point out most of the "Unknown SNP for skin color" argument is conjecture. In fact it extends beyond this argument to even things like the vitamin D hypothesis... all conjecture. I studied melanin and the biomechanical pathway extensively and it was what I came into this forum talking about primarily back in the days. All I will say is if you want to have a predictive reference look to Africans who haven't shown evidence for selective pressures resulting in darkening in the last 100,000 years. Pictures of Native Americans with variable Genotypes and Phenotypes are useless here. Point mutations in the coding regions for pigmentation if not passed down to Eurasians within the ~45,000 years since they mixed with Neanderthals will only be represented in extant Africans. Same goes for Paleolithic and early Neolithic Eurasians who also lacked known and very well studied genes for skin pigmentation.
Posts: 1781 | From: New York | Registered: Jul 2016
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quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: ^^ When I talked about Europeans in this case I mostly meant south Europeans. But even some very tanned north Europeans can get as brown as some light mixed African Americans or African Europeans. I have seen it with my own eyes.
Sure they do Posts: 80 | From: USA, America | Registered: May 2023
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A study talking about Neanderthal DNA and genes for phenotype
Popular article from Max-Planck-Gesellschaft:
quote:How easily we tan is influenced by Neandertal DNA
Neandertal DNA influences variation in skin tone and hair colour in people living today
After humans and Neandertals met many thousands of years ago, the two species began interbreeding. While Neandertals aren’t around anymore, about two percent of the DNA in non-African people living today comes from them. Recent studies have shown that some of those Neandertal genes have contributed to human immunity and modern diseases. Now researchers have found that our Neandertal inheritance has contributed to other characteristics, too, including skin tone, hair colour, sleep patterns, mood, and even a person’s smoking status.
quote: Assessing the genetic contribution of Neanderthals to non-disease phenotypes in modern humans has been difficult because of the absence of large cohorts for which common phenotype information is available. Using baseline phenotypes collected for 112,000 individuals by the UK Biobank, we can now elaborate on previous findings that identified associations between signatures of positive selection on Neanderthal DNA and various modern human traits but not any specific phenotypic consequences. Here, we show that Neanderthal DNA affects skin tone and hair color, height, sleeping patterns, mood, and smoking status in present-day Europeans. Interestingly, multiple Neanderthal alleles at different loci contribute to skin and hair color in present-day Europeans, and these Neanderthal alleles contribute to both lighter and darker skin tones and hair color, suggesting that Neanderthals themselves were most likely variable in these traits.
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: A study talking about Neanderthal DNA and genes for phenotype
Popular article from Max-Planck-Gesellschaft:
quote:How easily we tan is influenced by Neandertal DNA
Neandertal DNA influences variation in skin tone and hair colour in people living today
After humans and Neandertals met many thousands of years ago, the two species began interbreeding. While Neandertals aren’t around anymore, about two percent of the DNA in non-African people living today comes from them. Recent studies have shown that some of those Neandertal genes have contributed to human immunity and modern diseases. Now researchers have found that our Neandertal inheritance has contributed to other characteristics, too, including skin tone, hair colour, sleep patterns, mood, and even a person’s smoking status.
quote: Assessing the genetic contribution of Neanderthals to non-disease phenotypes in modern humans has been difficult because of the absence of large cohorts for which common phenotype information is available. Using baseline phenotypes collected for 112,000 individuals by the UK Biobank, we can now elaborate on previous findings that identified associations between signatures of positive selection on Neanderthal DNA and various modern human traits but not any specific phenotypic consequences. Here, we show that Neanderthal DNA affects skin tone and hair color, height, sleeping patterns, mood, and smoking status in present-day Europeans. Interestingly, multiple Neanderthal alleles at different loci contribute to skin and hair color in present-day Europeans, and these Neanderthal alleles contribute to both lighter and darker skin tones and hair color, suggesting that Neanderthals themselves were most likely variable in these traits.
Interesting, seeing as how its extremely rare to see a native Northern/Western European with very brown melanated skin. No one said they do not tan, but let's not act like its common to tan this dark. I see "White' people everyday, they do not come close to the skin tones of everyday black people for that matter.
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Here is a blog entry by paleoanthropologist John Hawks where he discusses the difficulties of getting an unambiguous picture of the skin color of Neanderthals. He ends the article with a list of references
quote:What color were Neandertals? Even with whole genomes, scientists can't say very precisely what pattern of skin, hair, and eye pigmentation was in ancient populations like the Neandertals.
But he thinks they were quite variable
quote: But much of human variation today is not adaptive, or at least not strongly constrained by physical environments. Faces, hair texture and patterns, eye shapes and iris pigmentation, patterns of wrinkling and graying, all of these aspects of appearance became markedly variable in the last 100,000 years. These may have varied remarkably more in Neandertals, who existed across a range of more than 20° in latitude, more than 90° of longitude, and almost 500,000 years. Genetics shows us that most Neandertals lived in small populations subject to strong genetic drift.
All this points to one conclusion: Neandertals should have been much more variable in their life appearance than the living peoples of Eurasia. The range of art and scientific illustration we have now is massively underrepresenting that variability.
A collage of Neandertal faces as imagined by artists and exhibited in museums during the genome era. Artists include Alfons and Adrie Kennis, John Gurche, Elisabeth Daynès, Tom Björklund, Oscar Nilsson, and Fabio Fogliazza.
-------------------- Once an archaeologist, always an archaeologist Posts: 2683 | From: Sweden | Registered: Mar 2020
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posted
These findings are interesting. First off we know that skin color expression is a lot more complex than is realized since skin complexion in humans comes in a broad range. Second, there is a difference between genotype and phenotype, with the former being a basis or significant factor for the latter but genes are also affected by environmental factors hence epigenetics. I find it odd that these Hominid species who lived outside of Africa in cold climate latitudes would retain very dark skins.
Yet when it comes to Egyptians in Africa living in subtropics, we are being given the image that they are light-skinned, even though melanin dosage tests on Middle Kingdom mummies show that their skins were "packed" with melanin we have these estimated results of the Late Period Abusire sample:
Posts: 26236 | From: Atlanta, Georgia, USA | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
According to this graph from a lecture by Nina Jablonskij there could have been a cline from North to South with somewhat varying skin colors also in Egypt. So some variation probably occurred.
Few today believe in a "white" Egypt as in Northern Europe, but few also believe in a fully "black" Egypt, as if everyone looked like Dinkas or other southern peoples. There would have been variation also in ancient times.
But to really know the scope of the variation and its distribution in time and space we need more full genomes.
quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: melanin dosage tests on Middle Kingdom mummies show that their skins were "packed" with melanin
There is no test called "melanin dosage" that has been performed on mummies Around 2002 German researchers A.M Mekota and M Vermehren ran tests on mummies on how to compare rehydration and staining methods on mummy tissue for analysis. They noted various things about skin, placenta and Meniscus tissues including that skin samples had a lot of melanin indicating dark skin,
Posts: 42918 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: According to this graph from a lecture by Nina Jablonskij there could have been a cline from North to South with somewhat varying skin colors also in Egypt. So some variation probably occurred.
Few today believe in a "white" Egypt as in Northern Europe, but few also believe in a fully "black" Egypt, as if everyone looked like Dinkas or other southern peoples. There would have been variation also in ancient times.
But to really know the scope of the variation and its distribution in time and space we need more full genomes.
How many times do we have to explain on this website that "Sub-Saharan" Africans do not all fall into the stereotypical look for a "black" African?
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Kimbles, he did not use the word "Sub-Saharan" That term has not men used in the thread thus far so you can't expect somebody to account for term they didn't use in this thread
Posts: 42918 | From: , | Registered: Jan 2010
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quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: According to this graph from a lecture by Nina Jablonskij there could have been a cline from North to South with somewhat varying skin colors also in Egypt. So some variation probably occurred.
Few today believe in a "white" Egypt as in Northern Europe, but few also believe in a fully "black" Egypt, as if everyone looked like Dinkas or other southern peoples. There would have been variation also in ancient times.
But to really know the scope of the variation and its distribution in time and space we need more full genomes.
Nobody is saying the Egyptians were as dark as Dinka. The ancient Egyptians give us a pretty good idea of their range of complexion via their own artwork (where the paint is preserved). And while there is no doubt variation in complexion existed along the Egyptian Nile I doubt it was as radically diverse as seen in that Jablonski chart. Unless there is a significant foreign presence, the variation in skin color for a population of a country shouldn't vary all that much.
I still question how Egyptian the Abusir sample is as they are held up as par exemplar Egyptian despite being from the Late Period and studies on Middle Kingdom mummies show skin tissue packed with melanin.
quote:Originally posted by the lioness,: There is no test called "melanin dosage" that has been performed on mummies Around 2002 German researchers A.M Mekota and M Vermehren ran tests on mummies on how to compare rehydration and staining methods on mummy tissue for analysis. They noted various things about skin, placenta and Meniscus tissues including that skin samples had a lot of melanin indicating dark skin,
You're correct, that no actual melanin dosage testing was done. That's one test that remains to be done and was suggested by Diop decades ago. Strange how since the Mekota & Vermehren dermato-histology study came out, there is very little talk about it.
My original point is that Neanderthals, Denisovan, and even Paleolithic Europeans like Cheddar Man of England were 'black' but not Egyptians in Africa. Make that make sense.
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: Strange how since the Mekota & Vermehren dermato-histology study came out, there is very little talk about it.
I would say the opposite. This was a dry scientific methods article running multiple chemical tests on how to best rehydrate and stain mummy tissue and it has been mentioned on the internet for 18 years here and there because they used the word "Negroid": "The basal epithelial cells were packed with melanin as expected for specimens of Negroid origin." Google that quote and you will see quite a few pages on the internet Now King's Monologue on youtube made a new video about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8B7lbA_kdU&t=171s and it has 270K views in a mere 2 weeks I'm not sure why these researchers mentioned the word Negroid. "Negroid" in forensics has mainly to do with craniofacial traits described as racial types but this was a skin analysis. They don't say exactly why they had this "Negroid" expectation. The were looking at skin tissue, placenta and another type. As aside they noted a lot of melanin in the surface layer of the skin but this was not a test that Diop described, he suggested a grading system of melanin levels indicating particular "races"
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quote:Originally posted by Djehuti: Nobody is saying the Egyptians were as dark as Dinka.
I agree, nearly no professional anthropologist would say something like that. But there are a lot of amateur armchair anthropologists on internet who make that kind of statements, and even wilder claims than that.
quote:The ancient Egyptians give us a pretty good idea of their range of complexion via their own artwork (where the paint is preserved). And while there is no doubt variation in complexion existed along the Egyptian Nile I doubt it was as radically diverse as seen in that Jablonski chart. Unless there is a significant foreign presence, the variation in skin color for a population of a country shouldn't vary all that much.
Maybe Egypt partially can be an exception due to its unusual geographical location in the junction between Africa, Asia and Europe with rather dark people in the south but with lighter skinned people in the north, north east and according to Egyptian art also in the west.
We just need more genetic studies, with full genomes to show us how they were related, and how they looked like in different times and places.
quote: I still question how Egyptian the Abusir sample is as they are held up as par exemplar Egyptian despite being from the Late Period and studies on Middle Kingdom mummies show skin tissue packed with melanin
The same team who made the Abusir study claims that they made a new study which cover the whole Nile valley and 4000 years, and that it gave similar results as the Abusir study, at least concerning mtDNA. Unfortunately it seems they have not published the full study yet though.
About Melanin, I wonder which resolution ancient tissue samples have when it concerns the exact grade of color? Would one for example be able to see a difference between these three individuals, a modern, tanned Cretan, a modern Egyptian and a modern Nubian girl if one found their remains 3000 years into the future?
But maybe we got away a bit to far from the topic of the thread, which is the color of Neanderthals.
When it comes to them it would be very strange if they in all their geographical range, and during 400 000 years or more only had one skin color. That would crave some explanation. But since very few Neanderthals have been tested regarding genes for skin color and even fewer Denisovans (only from one place) we must admit that we really do not know anything about variations in skin colors among Neandertals and Denisovans.
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^ Modern Egyptians are not the same as ancient Egyptians from the Dynastic Period and Late Period Egyptians are not necessarily the same as New Kingdom Egyptians especially depending on the region.
Modern Nubians are not the same as ancient Nubians especially since the Ottoman Empire there are Nubians of Albanian ancestry. This is why when comparing populations of a region throughout time one has to take into account historical population movements such as migrations.
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I know there has been changes during the ages. To get a good grasp of ancient populations in Egypt we need more DNA. One can hope that the team behind the Abusir study will publish their new study sometime. It is said to cover the whole Egyptian part of the Nile valley during 4000 years. Maybe it will be more representative than those studies made so far. But what I understand there will only be mtDNA, not full genomes which would have been more informative.
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Just at face value there is no "need" for DNA as the Nile Valley is completely in Africa and the ancient dynastic kingdom was of African origin. And just like with Neanderthals, all hominids are of African origin, so there is no "need" for additional data to "prove" ancient Africans were black. There is already more than enough evidence to support it. All these claims of needing more data are from a mentality of people who want to act as if they can't accept ancient Africans being black just at face value based on ideology.
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quote:Originally posted by Doug M Just at face value there is no "need" for DNA as the Nile Valley is completely in Africa and the ancient dynastic kingdom was of African origin. And just like with Neanderthals, all hominids are of African origin, so there is no "need" for additional data to "prove" ancient Africans were black. There is already more than enough evidence to support it. All these claims of needing more data are from a mentality of people who want to act as if they can't accept ancient Africans being black just at face value based on ideology.
The fact that Egypt is in Africa does not neccesarily mean that the whole population through all times looked the same. Egypt is adjacent to West Asia and rather close to Europe so it could have easily been affected genetically by people from those regions too. People were able to move between the Levant and Egypt, people were also able to move over the sea between Egypt and the Aegean. In the West lived Libyan peoples and in the South Kushites who also came in contact and sometimes moved into Egypt. Egypts geographic location is rather unique since it is close to Asia and not far from Europe.
But to get more details we of course need more DNA to clarify relationships between diferent peoples, to map migrations and investigate changes through time. To think we already know everything about ancient Egypt and its demography is just simple minded.
And to learn more about these things have nothing to do with "black" and "white" which are mostly imaginary racial concepts promoted by simple minded Americans.
-------------------- Once an archaeologist, always an archaeologist Posts: 2683 | From: Sweden | Registered: Mar 2020
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quote:Originally posted by Doug M Just at face value there is no "need" for DNA as the Nile Valley is completely in Africa and the ancient dynastic kingdom was of African origin. And just like with Neanderthals, all hominids are of African origin, so there is no "need" for additional data to "prove" ancient Africans were black. There is already more than enough evidence to support it. All these claims of needing more data are from a mentality of people who want to act as if they can't accept ancient Africans being black just at face value based on ideology.
The fact that Egypt is in Africa does not neccesarily mean that the whole population through all times looked the same. Egypt is adjacent to West Asia and rather close to Europe so it could have easily been affected genetically by people from those regions too. People were able to move between the Levant and Egypt, people were also able to move over the sea between Egypt and the Aegean. In the West lived Libyan peoples and in the South Kushites who also came in contact and sometimes moved into Egypt. Egypts geographic location is rather unique since it is close to Asia and not far from Europe.
But to get more details we of course need more DNA to clarify relationships between diferent peoples, to map migrations and investigate changes through time. To think we already know everything about ancient Egypt and its demography is just simple minded.
And to learn more about these things have nothing to do with "black" and "white" which are mostly imaginary racial concepts promoted by simple minded Americans.
OK. But I didn't say that all these populations at all times looked "the same". What I said was you don't "need" DNA to agree that there were black people in ancient Africa. The people claiming they "need" DNA are those who reject the idea of black people being in ancient Africa as somehow far fetched and ridiculous. That was my point. All this extra hand wringing about black people in ancient Africa is not objectivity it is simply anti-blackness masquerading as objectivity.
Again, all hominids, including neanderthals, originated in Africa. Black skin has been the dominant skin color in ancient hominids for a long time, including humans. There shouldn't be anything "shocking" about black skin in ancient Africa.
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quote:OK. But I didn't say that all these populations at all times looked "the same". What I said was you don't "need" DNA to agree that there were black people in ancient Africa. The people claiming they "need" DNA are those who reject the idea of black people being in ancient Africa as somehow far fetched and ridiculous. That was my point. All this extra hand wringing about black people in ancient Africa is not objectivity it is simply anti-blackness masquerading as objectivity.
Again, all hominids, including neanderthals, originated in Africa. Black skin has been the dominant skin color in ancient hominids for a long time, including humans. There shouldn't be anything "shocking" about black skin in ancient Africa
Most human skin in Africa and many other places are different shades of brown. The label black can be misleading and create confusion.
Even if all people originally came from Africa so did they adapt to other climates, foods and different levels of UV radiation. And even within Africa one can see differences in phenotype. It would be weird if Neanderthals and Denisovans lived for hundreds of thousands of years in different environments without any adaptations to these environments regarding skin color, adaptation to different altitude and other traits. So far we have only sequenced a few Neanderthal genomes and even fewer Denisova genomes, the later also from just one place, the Denisova cave. So we have still much to learn.
When it concerns Egypt few researchers believe they where white like North Europeans, but they seem not to have been dark as Dinkas either. And one could expect some variation, among other for the reason that Egypt is adjacent to two other continents and surrounded by people with varying phenotype. Egyptians traded and exchanged goods with several peoples so one could expect also some exchange of genes.
In modern archaeological and anthropological literature concepts like "black" or "white" gets more rare, just like concepts like "Caucasoid" or "negroid". Maybe it is time to discard such simplified categorizations.
But of course, even if scientists discard those categories they may go on to be used by all sorts of keyboard warriors, armchair historians and amateur anthropologists.
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quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: Most human skin in Africa and many other places are different shades of brown. The label black can be misleading and create confusion.
Then why have Europeans been calling Africans with various shades of brown, black, for hundreds of years then? There is nothing confusing about black skin in Africa. What you are calling 'confusion' is just rejection of facts in terms of the ancient Nile being an African civilization. That isn't "confusion", as opposed to rejecting facts that you don't like.
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: Even if all people originally came from Africa so did they adapt to other climates, foods and different levels of UV radiation. And even within Africa one can see differences in phenotype. It would be weird if Neanderthals and Denisovans lived for hundreds of thousands of years in different environments without any adaptations to these environments regarding skin color, adaptation to different altitude and other traits. So far we have only sequenced a few Neanderthal genomes and even fewer Denisova genomes, the later also from just one place, the Denisova cave. So we have still much to learn.
The point was they originated in Africa as the source of all hominids. This means they originally had black skin. This result shows that this black skin didn't disappear after they left Africa and thus was still present among them. Which means, therefore, that black skin has been the most dominant skin color for most hominids since they arose in Africa.
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: When it concerns Egypt few researchers believe they where white like North Europeans, but they seem not to have been dark as Dinkas either. And one could expect some variation, among other for the reason that Egypt is adjacent to two other continents and surrounded by people with varying phenotype. Egyptians traded and exchanged goods with several peoples so one could expect also some exchange of genes.
Again, the Nile Valley is completely in Africa and therefore no reason why there is any "need" for DNA to show whether ancient Africans in the Nile were black or not. The only reason you are saying this is because you fundamentally cannot accept the idea that ancient Africans in the Nile Valley were black. And the word black means shades of brown so saying brown is redundant, because at the end of the day, what you are trying to say is they were mostly light skinned. Which actually means that people don't believe that ancient Africans actually were responsible for the Nile Valley civilization. Which supports my argument that there is no real debate over whether ancient Africans had black skin, but whether the ancient Nile Civilization was built by Africans. That is why people keep arguing that they "need" DNA from the ancient Nile to "prove" whether they were Africans or not.
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: In modern archaeological and anthropological literature concepts like "black" or "white" gets more rare, just like concepts like "Caucasoid" or "negroid". Maybe it is time to discard such simplified categorizations.
But of course, even if scientists discard those categories they may go on to be used by all sorts of keyboard warriors, armchair historians and amateur anthropologists.
The debate over skin color is not about words it is about skin color. No matter what words you use people will still be debating whether the skin color of the ancient Nile.
quote: Scientists estimate that humans and Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) shared a common ancestor that lived 800,000 years ago in Africa.
Fossil evidence suggests that a Neanderthal ancestor may have traveled out of Africa into Europe and Asia. There, the Neanderthal ancestor evolved into Homo neanderthalensis some 400,000 to 500,000 years ago.
The human ancestor remained in Africa, evolving into our own species—Homo sapiens. The two groups may not have cross paths again until modern humans exited Africa some 50,000 years ago.
quote:Originally posted by Doug M: Then why have Europeans been calling Africans with various shades of brown, black, for hundreds of years then? There is nothing confusing about black skin in Africa. What you are calling 'confusion' is just rejection of facts in terms of the ancient Nile being an African civilization. That isn't "confusion", as opposed to rejecting facts that you don't like.
Hard to say, maybe it was just a way to contrast the brown peoples from themselves by lumping them together under the label "black". But that does not mean that we are forced to continue using obsolete words. Today "negro" is not used so much even if it was used also for centuries. And mostly dark skinned people in Europe of today are not called "Moors" or "Morians" either.
African does not necssarily mean that all have the same skin tone which a look at a map with the distribution of skin colors can tell you.
Few people have literally black skin, it is an obsolete term that some for some reasons stubbornly upholds.
quote:The point was they originated in Africa as the source of all hominids. This means they originally had black skin. This result shows that this black skin didn't di Africa.
What they originally had does not necessarily say so much. Even a blonde Swede have sometimes back in history dark skinned ancestors. That does not mean that he is "black" today. People adapt, develop and change.
quote:Again, the Nile Valley is completely in Africa and therefore no reason why there is any "need" for DNA to show whether ancient Africans in the Nile were black or not. The only reason you are saying this is because you fundamentally cannot accept the idea that ancient Africans in the Nile Valley were black. And the word black means shades of brown so saying brown is redundant, because at the end of the day, what you are trying to say is they were mostly light skinned. Which actually means that people don't believe that ancient Africans actually were responsible for the Nile Valley civilization. Which supports my argument that there is no real debate over whether ancient Africans had black skin, but whether the ancient Nile Civilization was built by Africans. That is why people keep arguing that they "need" DNA from the ancient Nile to "prove" whether they were Africans or not.
The Nile valley is in Africa, but there were peoples with different skin tones surrounding the Nile valley, in the North, North East, West. It was not impossible for these people to mix with Egyptians which we also know that they did. Nile valley was not isolated from the surrounding world. There were no high walls in East, West or in the North that totally isolated Egypt from the rest of the world. Instead Egypt had a rather unique position, neighboring to two other continents. Look at a map.
And stop with the black idiocy. Brown is not black (even if some Nilotics in what is today Sudan actually are more or less black in skin tone).
In scientific anthropological contexts words like black and white becomes more and more rare in the context of ancient Egypt. These concepts are mostly used by amateurs and armchair historians (many of them who have never sat their foot in Egypt, or any other part of Africa).
quote:The debate over skin color is not about words it is about skin color. No matter what words you use people will still be debating whether the skin color of the ancient Nile.
It is about words. A lot of idiots online claim everything as black even if most of the people labeled that way have different brown skin tones.
quote:Scientists estimate that humans and Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) shared a common ancestor that lived 800,000 years ago in Africa.
Fossil evidence suggests that a Neanderthal ancestor may have traveled out of Africa into Europe and Asia. There, the Neanderthal ancestor evolved into Homo neanderthalensis some 400,000 to 500,000 years ago.
So you believe that these people retained same skin color in the whole area of their distribution during half a million years? Ever heard about Natural selection?
And to prove such a thing you would have to have tons of sequenced individuals from different areas and from different times. As I mentioned we have ancient Denisova DNA just from ONE place in the whole world so far. And we do not have very many ancient Neanderthal genomes either. Hard to generalize from such limited material.
Funny I hear people complaining over the Abusir study claiming it is not representative for Egypt, still we have DNA from 90 individuals. But still some think that a couple of genomes from a cave in Russia is more representative for a species that may have populated a large part of Asia.
quote:The human ancestor remained in Africa, evolving into our own species—Homo sapiens. The two groups may not have cross paths again until modern humans exited Africa some 50,000 years ago
So just take look at our own species, it has evolved different skin colors, eye colors, hair colors and other traits since it left Africa. Still we have lived outside of Africa just a fraction of the time that Neanderthals and Denisovans did.
About the illustration you showed, there are many illustrations out there, one must take them with a grain of salt.
Examples of skin colors in Ancient and modern Egypt. Both have a brown skin tone. To call them black is just political, outdated labeling. Or colorblindness
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quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: Hard to say, maybe it was just a way to contrast the brown peoples from themselves by lumping them together under the label "black". But that does not mean that we are forced to continue using obsolete words. Today "negro" is not used so much even if it was used also for centuries. And mostly dark skinned people in Europe of today are not called "Moors" or "Morians" either.
We know why they used it. And nobody is being "forced" to do anything. The issue is who controls the definitions of terms. And you see this in Latin America where they have numerous terms referring to skin color and mixture. It is all about Europeans trying to distort history by imposing their own definitions of terms and own labels on populations in order to support a racist ideology. And using the term "brown" is an example of the same thing.
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: African does not necssarily mean that all have the same skin tone which a look at a map with the distribution of skin colors can tell you.
Few people have literally black skin, it is an obsolete term that some for some reasons stubbornly upholds.
The word black has been used in Africa for skin color for thousands of years. This paper uses the word black for the skin color of the ancient Neanderthals. Why aren't you complaining about that? Europeans have used the term and different variations of the term to refer to black skin in Africa for thousands of years. The issue isn't words, it is actual skin color.
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: What they originally had does not necessarily say so much. Even a blonde Swede have sometimes back in history dark skinned ancestors. That does not mean that he is "black" today. People adapt, develop and change.
It says they originated in Africa and that they had skin tones associated with tropical environments, which means black. You claim to want to support scientific rigor but then play dumb when convenient.
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: The Nile valley is in Africa, but there were peoples with different skin tones surrounding the Nile valley, in the North, North East, West. It was not impossible for these people to mix with Egyptians which we also know that they did. Nile valley was not isolated from the surrounding world. There were no high walls in East, West or in the North that totally isolated Egypt from the rest of the world. Instead Egypt had a rather unique position, neighboring to two other continents. Look at a map.
So what this is all about is that you are claiming that the ancient Nile Valley was "special" and separate from the rest of Africa. Which is ultimately the whole reason you are complaining about the word black, because according to you the ancient Nile Valley wasn't like the rest of Africa. And you keep repeating this nonsense no matter what facts have been shown to the contrary. So this isn't about the word "black", it is about you and your desire to separate the Nile Valley from Africa, so you can claim they looked different from "black" Africans. Which is what I said before. This isn't about science it is about people like you who are determined to separate the ancient Nile Valley from Africa.
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: And stop with the black idiocy. Brown is not black (even if some Nilotics in what is today Sudan actually are more or less black in skin tone).
In scientific anthropological contexts words like black and white becomes more and more rare in the context of ancient Egypt. These concepts are mostly used by amateurs and armchair historians (many of them who have never sat their foot in Egypt, or any other part of Africa).
This article uses the term black in reference to Neanderthals doesn't it? Which means nobody is confused about what it means. The only one concerned about the term is YOU because you want to claim the ancient Nile Valley and other places in the world as having separate and different forms of human biology. All humans have skin color and people with tropical adaption have similar skin colors and features no matter where they are on the planet. Not to mention humans originated in a tropical environment and therefore had tropical skin adaptation, ie. black skin. That is the science. You just don't like it is the problem.
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: So you believe that these people retained same skin color in the whole area of their distribution during half a million years? Ever heard about Natural selection?
And to prove such a thing you would have to have tons of sequenced individuals from different areas and from different times. As I mentioned we have ancient Denisova DNA just from ONE place in the whole world so far. And we do not have very many ancient Neanderthal genomes either. Hard to generalize from such limited material.
Funny I hear people complaining over the Abusir study claiming it is not representative for Egypt, still we have DNA from 90 individuals. But still some think that a couple of genomes from a cave in Russia is more representative for a species that may have populated a large part of Asia.
I never said that all Neanderthals had black skin. What I said was all hominids originated in Africa. Therefore, they have had black skin as a dominant feature for most of their history. Doesn't mean that they didn't evolve light skin in other places as they migrated. Apparently you don't understand the point of the paper which is to show that skin color in Neanderthals wasn't exclusively white as suggested by most artwork of Neanderthals. Skin color and variation of skin color is a fact of history, including in ancient hominids. So this has absolutely nothing to do with the Abusir study.
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: So just take look at our own species, it has evolved different skin colors, eye colors, hair colors and other traits since it left Africa. Still we have lived outside of Africa just a fraction of the time that Neanderthals and Denisovans did.
Most of that skin color evolution is less than 10,000 years old. Humans have existed for upwards of 300,000 years and for most of that time they had black skin. And the point is that as you go back in time it isn't surprising or shocking that you would find black skin in hominids or humans even outside Africa. The problem is that Europeans have spent the last 500 years trying to isolate and segregate black Africans from the history of humanity as if they had no part or role in human evolution, including the development of civilization.
quote:Originally posted by Archeopteryx: About the illustration you showed, there are many illustrations out there, one must take them with a grain of salt.
Examples of skin colors in Ancient and modern Egypt. Both have a brown skin tone. To call them black is just political, outdated labeling. Or colorblindness
Again, you arguing that this "brown" in the Nile Valley is somehow special and different than the brown skin covered under the term black shows your hypocrisy. It is all about you trying to separate the ancient Nile Valley from the rest of Africa by claiming their skin tones were unique. That is why you don't like the term black because it associates these populations with other Africans, which apparently you find problematic. Again, the Nile Valley is in AFrica and the ancient populations originated in Africa. Therefore they had the same skin tones as other Africans, ie. black. And it also reflects your desire to segregate black Africans from the rest of human history, when humanity originated in black Africa. All these gymnastics trying to categorize populations in such a way to make it seem that Africa isn't the basis and origin of all human diversity is the ultimate issue and has always been the issue with European racial thinking and ideologies.
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quote: Originally posted by Doug M: We know why they used it. And nobody is being "forced" to do anything. The issue is who controls the definitions of terms. And you see this in Latin America where they have numerous terms referring to skin color and mixture. It is all about Europeans trying to distort history by imposing their own definitions of terms and own labels on populations in order to support a racist ideology. And using the term "brown" is an example of the same thing.
They used it to separate and control people. But today is a new time. If people want to call themselves black, it is up to them if they want to use obsolete colonialist language. But they should abstain calling other peoples black. As many Egyptians have said: keep those labels in USA. It is just simple minded to try to reduce phenotypic diversity to two colors "black" and "white".
quote:The word black has been used in Africa for skin color for thousands of years. This paper uses the word black for the skin color of the ancient Neanderthals. Why aren't you complaining about that? Europeans have used the term and different variations of the term to refer to black skin in Africa for thousands of years. The issue isn't words, it is actual skin color.
Still all people can not be labelled black, it is still obsolete, as many other old words that are not used so much anymore. People have believed in giants for thousands of years too. It is no argument to use obsolete colonialist language. Especially not if you talk about other people than your own.
Today we try to get a more correct and detailed picture of the world, not get stuck in old values or ancient terminology.
quote:It says they originated in Africa and that they had skin tones associated with tropical environments, which means black. You claim to want to support scientific rigor but then play dumb when convenient.
All Africans are not the same color. If you ever go there someday you will see for yourself. To use the word black for so many skin tones are just simplistic.
quote: So what this is all about is that you are claiming that the ancient Nile Valley was "special" and separate from the rest of Africa. Which is ultimately the whole reason you are complaining about the word black, because according to you the ancient Nile Valley wasn't like the rest of Africa. And you keep repeating this nonsense no matter what facts have been shown to the contrary. So this isn't about the word "black", it is about you and your desire to separate the Nile Valley from Africa, so you can claim they looked different from "black" Africans. Which is what I said before. This isn't about science it is about people like you who are determined to separate the ancient Nile Valley from Africa.
There are also other places in North Africa that have seen variation in skin color, not only Egypt. There were Libyans who are depicted with lighter skin. Ancient Canarians had light skin, and they descended from mainland Norh Africa, So Egypt was not totally unique. The specia with Egypt is that it lies close to both West Asia, south Europe and of course its African neighbours.
quote:This article uses the term black in reference to Neanderthals doesn't it? Which means nobody is confused about what it means. The only one concerned about the term is YOU because you want to claim the ancient Nile Valley and other places in the world as having separate and different forms of human biology. All humans have skin color and people with tropical adaption have similar skin colors and features no matter where they are on the planet. Not to mention humans originated in a tropical environment and therefore had tropical skin adaptation, ie. black skin. That is the science. You just don't like it is the problem.
There are always some exception, there are even one scholar that claim that her grandmother said that Cleopatra was black. But I talk about the bulk of modern anthropological literature. Most serious profsssional anthropologists or archaeologists do not talk in terms of black and white anymore. Spend some time with them then you can hear for yourself.
quote:I never said that all Neanderthals had black skin. What I said was all hominids originated in Africa. Therefore, they have had black skin as a dominant feature for most of their history. Doesn't mean that they didn't evolve light skin in other places as they migrated. Apparently you don't understand the point of the paper which is to show that skin color in Neanderthals wasn't exclusively white as suggested by most artwork of Neanderthals. Skin color and variation of skin color is a fact of history, including in ancient hominids. So this has absolutely nothing to do with the Abusir study.
We all originate in Africa, still we are not all "black". I think not anyone today think that Neanderthals were exclusively white, black or any color. If we shall draw any conclusions from our own species then we could draw the conclusion that it varied depending were they lived.
As I said, we need many more genomes from Neanderthals and Denisovans, from different places and different time periods before we can start generalize about their skin color, hair type, hair color or similar traits.
quote:Most of that skin color evolution is less than 10,000 years old. Humans have existed for upwards of 300,000 years and for most of that time they had black skin. And the point is that as you go back in time it isn't surprising or shocking that you would find black skin in hominids or humans even outside Africa. The problem is that Europeans have spent the last 500 years trying to isolate and segregate black Africans from the history of humanity as if they had no part or role in human evolution, including the development of civilization.
Blue eyes are about 42 000 years or more, light skin color is between 20 000 and 28000 years, Blonde hair is about 18 000 years old. At least what we know today. We might find even older examples. Who knows?
Also the time period when modern Homo sapiens been outside Africa is not 300 000 years. It is not suprprising if people had dark skin in Africa. But outside of Africa they have evolved different eye colors, different hair colors and different skin tones. Especially on more northern latitudes.
Neanderthals lived many times so long time outside Africa as modern Homo sapiens, and so did Denisovans. So it would crave some explanation if they all retained the same skin color.
quote:Again, you arguing that this "brown" in the Nile Valley is somehow special and different than the brown skin covered under the term black shows your hypocrisy. It is all about you trying to separate the ancient Nile Valley from the rest of Africa by claiming their skin tones were unique. That is why you don't like the term black because it associates these populations with other Africans, which apparently you find problematic. Again, the Nile Valley is in AFrica and the ancient populations originated in Africa. Therefore they had the same skin tones as other Africans, ie. black. And it also reflects your desire to segregate black Africans from the rest of human history, when humanity originated in black Africa. All these gymnastics trying to categorize populations in such a way to make it seem that Africa isn't the basis and origin of all human diversity is the ultimate issue and has always been the issue with European racial thinking and ideologies.
People in Egypt did not depict themselves with same color as they depicted Nubians. Egyptians do not look like Congolese. There is a variation, genetically and morphologically between different parts of Africa, They do not all look the same. Maybe they look the same in American peoples eyes.
And Egyptian skin tones are not totally unique, as I told you there were lighter skin tones also in other parts of North Africa.
quote:So this has absolutely nothing to do with the Abusir study.
It has to do with representativeness. The Abusir study was claimed to be not representative for Egypt. Still some people seem to think that a couple of genomes from one cave should be representative for a people who probably populated a large area in Asia.
About black and white: where do you draw the line? Which one is black and which one is not black? Which Egyptians are black and which is not black? Which Indians are black and which is not? Which Arabs are black and which are not?
Which are most black, a light skinned African American or a deeply tanned Greek?
Who is black, the bedouin or Will Smith?
quote:Again, you arguing that this "brown" in the Nile Valley is somehow special and different than the brown skin covered under the term black shows your hypocrisy. It is all about you trying to separate the ancient Nile Valley from the rest of Africa by claiming their skin tones were unique.
I am not out to separate anything, unlike some people online who want to separate todays Egyptians from their own ancient history. And many of them who are trying to do that have not even been to Egypt, still they bother a lot about what skin color ancient Egyptians had.
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