[Sonsowey]

(02-18-2015 10:45 AM)Deluge Wrote:  

Fun fact: Europeans have actually had dark skin for the vast majority of the time they've been living there, and it seems like they evolved blue eyes thousands of years BEFORE they evolved white skin.

You probably know this but it's a bit inaccurate to say "Europeans evolved blue eyes before they evolved white skin" as it seems like blue eyes were evolved by the Western Hunter Gatherers, the "indigenous" inhabitants of Europe, before invaders from both the Levant and the Steppe brought in lighter skin and other features, and through a long process of mixture, created what we now know as "Europeans".

It wasn't like there was a hunter-gatherer population in Europe that just evolved in situ into what we now know as Europeans, all Europeans are composed of 3 basic ancestral elements. Hell those other ancestral elements themselves are composits as well.

I'm sure you knew that, but not everyone here does.

Here's a blog post discussing this in more detail:
http://eurogenes.blogspot.com/2013/12/an...three.html



Here "Western Hunter Gatherers" are the "indigenous" European Hunter-Gatherers who were dark-skinned and light-eyed.

The "EEF" are "Early European Farmers" from the Levant, typified by Southern Europeans.

The "ANE" are Ancient North Eurasians, this ancestry was present in Indo Europeans, but it seems they were also mixed with another population, similar to "Western Hunter Gatherers", but not quite, ie. some are starting to call them Eastern Hunter Gatherers. To Be Continued.

Anyway the mixture of these 3 groups gives us "Europeans" as we know them today.