How Old Is Fairness?

Researchers have discovered a skeleton in Europe with blue eyes but dark skin and hair

When and how did Europeans develop fair skin? As the explanation went, when humans migrated out Africa to the higher altitudes of Europe, they started developing lighter skin as a response to low UV radiation. The assumption was that dark skin prevents UV-ray absorption, which is the primary source of vitamin D. It was believed that this change in skin colour occurred soon after humans migrated to Europe some 45,000 years ago.

The findings of a new study, however, show that this theory needs revision. In 2006, two ancient skeletons were discovered in a cave in Spain. Using a tooth extracted from one of the skeletons, researchers were able to sequence the genome of the ancient man. Their research has now been published in Nature. They found that the individual, termed La Brana 1, lived only about 7,000 years ago. And strangely enough, while he had blue eyes, his skin and hair were dark. He was found to be genetically related closely to people living in Sweden and Finland.

According to the researchers, this mixture of African and European traits implies that long after modern humans left Africa, their racial transformation was still in progress. Also, La Brana 1’s age means that he lived in the Mesolithic period that lasted from 10,000 to 5,000 years ago and ended with the advent of agriculture and livestock farming. The researchers argue that lighter skin came about as a result of a dietary change. When Europeans started farming, which occurred about 2,000 years after the demise of La Brana 1, their cereal- rich diet lacked vitamin D, thereby causing Europeans to rapidly lose their dark-skin pigmentation. It was only when they switched to agriculture that they had to synthesise vitamin D from the sun more readily.

In a press release, Carles Lalueza- Fox, one of the researchers says, ‘The biggest surprise was to discover that this individual possessed African versions in the genes that determine the light pigmentation of the current Europeans, which indicates that he had dark skin… Even more surprising was to find that he possessed the genetic variations that produce blue eyes in current Europeans, resulting in a unique phenotype in a genome that is otherwise clearly northern European.’

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