Light skin allele of SLC24A5 gene was spread by the Indo-Europeans (R1a + R1b)

[Maciamo]

Hello, I'm new here, I really like the Eupedia website and all the Maciamo works; I'm not fluent in english, so sorry if in my messages I do mistakes.

Welcome to the forum, Drax and thank you for the kind words.

About the subject, for Indians peoples with light eyes, that have already proven and explained of the IE invaders/migration, so I don't think it's a valid comparaison with the curious cro-magon with brown skin and blue eyes...or maybe not.

What we want to ascertain by looking into the genomes of blue-eyed South Asians is what genes have an influence on eye pigmentation without affecting skin pigmentation (or vice versa). There are two main genes for blue eyes (HERC2, OCA2), but one of them (OCA2) is also known to influence skin colour and hair colour. Many South Asians also carry the light skin allele of SLC24A5 gene, but have nevertheless darker skin than Europeans. Some South Asians have very dark skin and blue eyes. Since all Europeans have light skin, it is hard to determine just how much influence the various genes for light skin and light eyes have on each others. The only way to be sure that Mesolithic Europeans could have had dark skin and blue eyes is to try to find individuals with the same mutations for dark skin and blue eyes, and such people can probably only be found in South Asia nowadays.

I'm not a specialist, so sorry if I do a big mistake, but if they have similar maternal lineage already in 3000 BC, that made them technically more or less "cousin" genetically ? if during this time they has already the same mtdna haplogroups, I suppose we can say that they were already mixed way before this date ? We know blue eyes are from one single woman ancestor...so how we can be sure that not among the IE the blue eyes have appeared first (among peoples with light skins and light hairs like...today), and have passed of others cro-magnons with their wives ? The majority of cro-magnons were described, until this CM with blue eyes, like tanned, brown eyes and hairs, imho, it's not judicious to transform all of them with blue eyes just because of an indvidual case.
...
My third hypthosis, is maybe the simple ones, because of their mtdna, both of them has blue eyes, the IE invaders improves the presences of blue eyes appearances in all the Europe but in others places in the world, that explains how a recessive traits are so present among europeans and why it's seem exclusively, at least physically, to the Europeans peoples.

Yes and no. U4 and U5 are extremely old lineages, especially U which could be over 50,000 years old, i.e. older than the presence of Homo Sapiens in Europe. So saying that people are close cousins because they both possess U5 lineages devoid of sense. Nevertheless, R1a tribes surely absorbed a lot of European maternal lineages when they arrived in Eastern Europe from Central Asia or Siberia. Skeletons from Mesolithic or Neolithic Russia and Ukraine show that a lot of individuals were of proto-Europoid type, in other words anatomically intermediary between Mesolithic Europeans and Siberians.

As for the genes for blue eyes, there is a high likelihood that they were inherited from Neanderthal, rather than having appeared independently in Europeans fairly recently. It hasn't been proven yet that Neanderthals had blue eyes. Actually Neanderthals evolved for 300,000 years in Europe and were probably more genetically diverse than modern humans, who all share a more recent ancestry. If blue eyes indeed originated in Neanderthal, different Neanderthal populations could have passed blue eyes genes many times to Homo sapiens in Europe, the Middle East or Central Asia. It's not even granted that the two main genes, OCA2 and HERC2 were passed at the same time or to the same people. They might only have converged later in Europeans. Another alternative is that only one of these genes came from Neanderthal while the other arose in Homo sapiens.

In my opinion, both Mesolithic Europeans and Proto-Indo-Europeans possessed blue eyes. It is clear that PIE people had blue eyes because blue eyes spread to North, Central and South Asia. But the La Brana sample also confirms that blue eyes were already present in Mesolithic Europe.

 

[Drax]

Thank you very much Lebrock and Maciamo for your welcomes.

Welcome to the forum, Drax and thank you for the kind words.



What we want to ascertain by looking into the genomes of blue-eyed South Asians is what genes have an influence on eye pigmentation without affecting skin pigmentation (or vice versa). There are two main genes for blue eyes (HERC2, OCA2), but one of them (OCA2) is also known to influence skin colour and hair colour. Many South Asians also carry the light skin allele of SLC24A5 gene, but have nevertheless darker skin than Europeans. Some South Asians have very dark skin and blue eyes. Since all Europeans have light skin, it is hard to determine just how much influence the various genes for light skin and light eyes have on each others. The only way to be sure that Mesolithic Europeans could have had dark skin and blue eyes is to try to find individuals with the same mutations for dark skin and blue eyes, and such people can probably only be found in South Asia nowadays

Thank you very much for the explanation, I'm extremely novice about everything around the genetics, I was more concentrated about the historical aspect about the presence of the light eyes, but it's very interesting; I was not really aware about various degree of influence between the light skin and light eyes, it's really fascinating.

There are also the nubians peoples in the south of Egypt, they are mixed with caucasians peoples, but some of them have kept a very dark skin but with light eyes; but I'm sure that would work better with south asians peoples.

Yes and no. U4 and U5 are extremely old lineages, especially U which could be over 50,000 years old, i.e. older than the presence of Homo Sapiens in Europe. So saying that people are close cousins because they both possess U5 lineages devoid of sense. Nevertheless, R1a tribes surely absorbed a lot of European maternal lineages when they arrived in Eastern Europe from Central Asia or Siberia. Skeletons from Mesolithic or Neolithic Russia and Ukraine show that a lot of individuals were of proto-Europoid type, in other words anatomically intermediary between Mesolithic Europeans and Siberians.

Okay, you confirm my suspicious about the mtdna, I was aware that some of them are extremely olds, but I was not sure about U4 and U5, I have already read an interesting thread in Eupedia from you about the aspect of the first IE.

As for the genes for blue eyes, there is a high likelihood that they were inherited from Neanderthal, rather than having appeared independently in Europeans fairly recently. It hasn't been proven yet that Neanderthals had blue eyes. Actually Neanderthals evolved for 300,000 years in Europe and were probably more genetically diverse than modern humans, who all share a more recent ancestry. If blue eyes indeed originated in Neanderthal, different Neanderthal populations could have passed blue eyes genes many times to Homo sapiens in Europe, the Middle East or Central Asia. It's not even granted that the two main genes, OCA2 and HERC2 were passed at the same time or to the same people. They might only have converged later in Europeans. Another alternative is that only one of these genes came from Neanderthal while the other arose in Homo sapiens.

I'm really novice in genetics, but how, I can interpret the recent studies who try to demonstrate that blues eyes are from a single woman in -10.000BC ? It's just a easy explanation for the general audience ? Your theory about neanderthal have lot sense, and seem far more "complex" in the good sense of the term, so OCA2 and HERC2 have not been proven to "appear" on the same woman in the same time...so why make this study like an official fact ? I'm really confused

In my opinion, both Mesolithic Europeans and Proto-Indo-Europeans possessed blue eyes. It is clear that PIE people had blue eyes because blue eyes spread to North, Central and South Asia. But the La Brana sample also confirms that blue eyes were already present in Mesolithic Europe.

I'm 100% agree with you, I think it's the most logical explanation (lol, at my level of course); but I think for La Brana, he is from Mesolithic Europe, but more in the end of the Mesolithic, and the beginning of the neolithic, so 5000BC, The IE was already present in Europe, in the East part of course, but La brana, with some of his scandinavian genes shouldn't not technically present in Spain...I think we can't separate definitely La Brana with the IE about the blue eyes, like something official, I think it's still a possibility, if we trust the single ancestor blue eyes woman, that these woman was present among IE tribes and later (in a very short time), to the cro-magnon peoples, specially in the context, that blue eyes, seem exclusively linked to whites skins peoples and most of times with light hairs.

 

[joeyc]

We've been over these kinds of pseudo-arguments before. They did not work then, they won't work now. These alleles prove absolutely nothing regarding actual skin tones.

That's your opinion, not a scientific fact.

Indeed Iberians have a much lower percentage of the most important light skin alleles found among West Eurasians.

SLC45A2 (MATP Leu374Phe), SLC24A5 (NCKX5 Ala111Thr) and OCA2 (r12913832 T/C)

For the last one I've got the percentages from the large Alfre Alleles database.

The higher value = the lighter skintone/eye color.

542 Italians from Verona 0.526

114 Italians from Tuscany 0.446

547 Greeks from Thessaloniki 0.344

511 Spaniards from Madrid 0.369

547 Norwegians from Bergen 0.864

385 Poles from Southern Poland 0.780

498 Irish from Belfast 0.807

579 Estonian 0.904

6420 Dutch 0.820

According to such faulty "logic" based on such allele frequencies northern Portuguese should be darker on average than Italians from around Rome, yet when skin tones were actually measured in these populations the opposite was found:

One of the author of Candille et al. is a Portuguese from Porto, Sandra Beleza. Of course she only picked the lightest individuals from her birthplace. So much about this crappy study.

 

[joeyc]

Precisely the study of Jablonski gives spanairds a lighter skin than many other Western Europeans :

ROFL Jablonski et al. also claims that South East Asians like Cambodians, Vietnamese and Philipponos are lighter skinned than the Japanese. Really ludicrous.

Moreover they give zero information about the samples. Good stuff for laughs.

 

[Nobody1]

Indeed Iberians have a much lower percentage of the most important light skin alleles found among West Eurasians.

SLC45A2 (MATP Leu374Phe), SLC24A5 (NCKX5 Ala111Thr) and OCA2 (r12913832 T/C)

For the last one I've got the percentages from the large Alfre Alleles database.

The higher value = the lighter skintone/eye color.

542 Italians from Verona 0.526

114 Italians from Tuscany 0.446

547 Greeks from Thessaloniki 0.344

511 Spaniards from Madrid 0.369

547 Norwegians from Bergen 0.864

385 Poles from Southern Poland 0.780

498 Irish from Belfast 0.807

579 Estonian 0.904

6420 Dutch 0.820

Nothing new; Was already well documented in Anthropology;

Carleton Coon - Ch.XI(15) & Ch.XII(7)

South Spain (Andalusia) -
The skin color of the Andalusians is light brown, corresponding to #15 to #18 on the von Luschan chart, in 80 per cent of cases, while only one man in six has a pinkish-white skin of the type so frequent among Ruffians. Sixty per cent have dark brown hair, 30 per cent black hair. The remaining 10 per cent show some evidence of blondism or of rufosity. Only one man out of 420 was truly blond. The hair is straight in half the series, wavy in a third, and curly in a sixth. Six men in the entire group have negroid, frizzly hair; a minor absorption of negro blood, dating from Moorish times, is evident. As a whole, however, Andalusians are free from negroid traits. As among most Mediterraneans, beard and body hair are not abundant. Sixty per cent of Andalusians have pure brown eyes, of which the majority are dark brown, although light brown and mixed-brown irises occur. Mixed-light eyes comprise 30 per cent of the series, with a prev-alence of greenish-brown shades, while 10 per cent of the whole sample possesses bluish-gray eyes, on the gray rather than blue side. A ratio of 40 per cent of light or incipiently light eyes is higher than one expects to find among racially pure Mediterraneans, and indicates the infusion of Nordic blood, from both North European and Berber sources. Probably if the rest of Spain were studied for eye color in the same way, higher ratios of eye blondism would appear elsewhere, since most of the green-brown eyes in this sample are predominantly dark.

Portugal -
As in southern Spain, the skin color is evenly divided between a light brown, 45 per cent, and brunet-white, 45 per cent, while pinkish-white skins are found in only one-tenth of the population.122 Again as in Spain, the prevailing hair color is dark brown, which amounts to 68 per cent of the total; blond and red hair is limited to 2 per cent. Eye color, with 7 per cent of "blue," 15 per cent of "medium," 78 per cent of "dark," shows some correlation with latitude, which is not as clear in the cases of skin color and hair color. Blue eyes run to 13 per cent in the north, and as low as 1 and 2 per cent in the south. Dark eyes seem to range inversely from 71 per cent to 87 per cent. Portugal contains no more than the traditional 25 per cent of incipient blondism common to many groups of Mediterraneans. Non-Mediterranean elements in the Portuguese population are rare and of little importance. A few Nordics are scattered throughout but are particularly concentrated in the north. Traces of Dinaric blood, as we have already seen, may likewise be found on the northern coast. Negroid blood, introduced into Portugal through the medium of freed slaves, has largely been absorbed. The liberated negroes settled mostly in the cities, where negroes from the Portuguese colonies are still to be seen in some numbers. The liberality of the Portuguese social attitude toward persons of different race has prevented the retention, as in Arabia and the United States, of a stigmatized negroid class. On the whole, the absorption of negroes by the Portuguese has had no appreciable effect on the racial position of the country.

South Italy (in comparison) -
The skin color is as a rule dark; over 50 per cent of unexposed shades are definitely light brown or olive-colored, while the exposed skin often tans to a distinctive reddish-brown. Ten per cent are freckled. About 20 per cent have black hair, and 48 per cent dark brown; reddish brown shades, or dark to medium brown with a reddish glint, account for some 16 per cent, while the remaining 6 per cent have light brown or blondish colors. Pure dark eyes are found among 44 per cent of those studied; mixed eyes among 50 per cent, and pure light eyes among 6 per cent. The high ratio of reddish shades in the hair and of mixed eyes reflects the strong Alpine strain in this population, as does the large minority of non-brunet skin colors and the presence of freckling. Of the mixed eyes, the majority are dark-mixed, and green-brown combinations are three times as common as blue-brown and gray-brown put together.

 

[joeyc]

^^ those datas from the racist Hooton and friends referr to Italian Americans, not real Italians from Italy. So the are not reliable.

 

[Drac II]

That's your opinion, not a scientific fact.

Indeed Iberians have a much lower percentage of the most important light skin alleles found among West Eurasians.

SLC45A2 (MATP Leu374Phe), SLC24A5 (NCKX5 Ala111Thr) and OCA2 (r12913832 T/C)

For the last one I've got the percentages from the large Alfre Alleles database.

The higher value = the lighter skintone/eye color.

542 Italians from Verona 0.526

114 Italians from Tuscany 0.446

547 Greeks from Thessaloniki 0.344

511 Spaniards from Madrid 0.369

547 Norwegians from Bergen 0.864

385 Poles from Southern Poland 0.780

498 Irish from Belfast 0.807

579 Estonian 0.904

6420 Dutch 0.820

Apparently you must think that we are clueless and can't easily tell that you are carefully picking the results you want to hear and leaving out those you don't like. By carefully picking the results any given person wants to hear according to his/her agenda, we can easily present the following results that show that Italians have in fact lower values of that allele:

The higher value = the lighter skintone/eye color.

Italians from Tuscany: 0.415

Spaniards from Madrid (the sample that you chose for your manipulated example is actually from Alicante, not Madrid): 0.461

Spaniards from Galicia: 0.469

Plus in order to show how unreliable such single SNPs are when attempted to be interpreted in the sense that you want to interpret them, the database also gives, for example, the following as one of the values of that allele for Italians, French and Orcadians:

Italians (unspecified region) : 0.690

Orcadians (unspecified region): 0.607

French from Paris: 0.522

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to easily perceive how deceiving would be to jump to conclusions from such results, the way you obviously wish to do just because you want to hear that Italians are lighter than Iberians. If that's so, then we should also believe that French and even Orcadians are also darker than Italians. As pointed out before, these "predictions" fly in the face of all actual pigmentation surveys of all these populations. "Predictions" are for prophets, not science.

One of the author of Candille et al. is a Portuguese from Porto, Sandra Beleza. Of course she only picked the lightest individuals from her birthplace. So much about this crappy study.

So when a study does not agree with your agenda then you immediately and without any grounds accuse the author/s of fraud. Except of course when Italians are involved and the results agree with your agenda, then we should of course not suspect foul play. Interesting "logic" there.

 

[Drac II]

Nothing new; Was already well documented in Anthropology;

Carleton Coon - Ch.XI(15) & Ch.XII(7)

South Spain (Andalusia) -
The skin color of the Andalusians is light brown, corresponding to #15 to #18 on the von Luschan chart, in 80 per cent of cases, while only one man in six has a pinkish-white skin of the type so frequent among Ruffians. Sixty per cent have dark brown hair, 30 per cent black hair. The remaining 10 per cent show some evidence of blondism or of rufosity. Only one man out of 420 was truly blond. The hair is straight in half the series, wavy in a third, and curly in a sixth. Six men in the entire group have negroid, frizzly hair; a minor absorption of negro blood, dating from Moorish times, is evident. As a whole, however, Andalusians are free from negroid traits. As among most Mediterraneans, beard and body hair are not abundant. Sixty per cent of Andalusians have pure brown eyes, of which the majority are dark brown, although light brown and mixed-brown irises occur. Mixed-light eyes comprise 30 per cent of the series, with a prev-alence of greenish-brown shades, while 10 per cent of the whole sample possesses bluish-gray eyes, on the gray rather than blue side. A ratio of 40 per cent of light or incipiently light eyes is higher than one expects to find among racially pure Mediterraneans, and indicates the infusion of Nordic blood, from both North European and Berber sources. Probably if the rest of Spain were studied for eye color in the same way, higher ratios of eye blondism would appear elsewhere, since most of the green-brown eyes in this sample are predominantly dark.

Portugal -
As in southern Spain, the skin color is evenly divided between a light brown, 45 per cent, and brunet-white, 45 per cent, while pinkish-white skins are found in only one-tenth of the population.122 Again as in Spain, the prevailing hair color is dark brown, which amounts to 68 per cent of the total; blond and red hair is limited to 2 per cent. Eye color, with 7 per cent of "blue," 15 per cent of "medium," 78 per cent of "dark," shows some correlation with latitude, which is not as clear in the cases of skin color and hair color. Blue eyes run to 13 per cent in the north, and as low as 1 and 2 per cent in the south. Dark eyes seem to range inversely from 71 per cent to 87 per cent. Portugal contains no more than the traditional 25 per cent of incipient blondism common to many groups of Mediterraneans. Non-Mediterranean elements in the Portuguese population are rare and of little importance. A few Nordics are scattered throughout but are particularly concentrated in the north. Traces of Dinaric blood, as we have already seen, may likewise be found on the northern coast. Negroid blood, introduced into Portugal through the medium of freed slaves, has largely been absorbed. The liberated negroes settled mostly in the cities, where negroes from the Portuguese colonies are still to be seen in some numbers. The liberality of the Portuguese social attitude toward persons of different race has prevented the retention, as in Arabia and the United States, of a stigmatized negroid class. On the whole, the absorption of negroes by the Portuguese has had no appreciable effect on the racial position of the country.

South Italy (in comparison) -
The skin color is as a rule dark; over 50 per cent of unexposed shades are definitely light brown or olive-colored, while the exposed skin often tans to a distinctive reddish-brown. Ten per cent are freckled. About 20 per cent have black hair, and 48 per cent dark brown; reddish brown shades, or dark to medium brown with a reddish glint, account for some 16 per cent, while the remaining 6 per cent have light brown or blondish colors. Pure dark eyes are found among 44 per cent of those studied; mixed eyes among 50 per cent, and pure light eyes among 6 per cent. The high ratio of reddish shades in the hair and of mixed eyes reflects the strong Alpine strain in this population, as does the large minority of non-brunet skin colors and the presence of freckling. Of the mixed eyes, the majority are dark-mixed, and green-brown combinations are three times as common as blue-brown and gray-brown put together.

Actually, it is "new" since such "predictions" actually contradict the actual empirical data gathered by those anthropologists, which by the way you again manipulated at your convenience. Coon also says that such "olive/light brown" skin tones in Spain (all of it, not just Andalusia isolated from the rest of the country) are less than 46%, while he cites a study that suggests (at least to his criterion) that even as far up north in Italy as Bologna these skin stones make up about 50%.

 

[Drac II]

ROFL Jablonski et al. also claims that South East Asians like Cambodians, Vietnamese and Philipponos are lighter skinned than the Japanese. Really ludicrous.

Moreover they give zero information about the samples. Good stuff for laughs.

The provenance of their samples is clearly identified. In the case of their Spanish samples, they came from Basque and Leon regions. The techniques they used are accepted as the most accurate ones so far to measure skin tones (skin reflectance, more accurate than the older "tiles" of Von Luschan and the like anthropologists.) It seems that whenever the results of a study don't fit into your agenda you just keep on pretending to find faults in it. I suppose that next you are going to tell us that Jablonski and Chaplin are really just evil Iberians manipulating data.

 

[Sile]

Apparently you must think that we are clueless and can't easily tell that you are carefully picking the results you want to hear and leaving out those you don't like. By carefully picking the results any given person wants to hear according to his/her agenda, we can easily present the following results that show that Italians have in fact lower values of that allele:

The higher value = the lighter skintone/eye color.

Italians from Tuscany: 0.415

Spaniards from Madrid (the sample that you chose for your manipulated example is actually from Alicante, not Madrid): 0.461

Spaniards from Galicia: 0.469

Plus in order to show how unreliable such single SNPs are when attempted to be interpreted in the sense that you want to interpret them, the database also gives, for example, the following as one of the values of that allele for Italians, French and Orcadians:

Italians (unspecified region) : 0.690

Orcadians (unspecified region): 0.607

French from Paris: 0.522

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to easily perceive how deceiving would be to jump to conclusions from such results, the way you obviously wish to do just because you want to hear that Italians are lighter than Iberians. If that's so, then we should also believe that French and even Orcadians are also darker than Italians. As pointed out before, these "predictions" fly in the face of all actual pigmentation surveys of all these populations. "Predictions" are for prophets, not science.



So when a study does not agree with your agenda then you immediately and without any grounds accuse the author/s of fraud. Except of course when Italians are involved and the results agree with your agenda, then we should of course not suspect foul play. Interesting "logic" there.

The person split the results into areas/regions indicating more precision to the results, you are trying to lump all Spaniards together, all italians together, all french together..........be serious, you clearly do not have the data to justify your way out predictions.
Stop lumping nations together , because clearly you are distorting regional results

 

[Sile]

Actually, it is "new" since such "predictions" actually contradict the actual empirical data gathered by those anthropologists, which by the way you again manipulated at your convenience. Coon also says that such "olive/light brown" skin tones in Spain (all of it, not just Andalusia isolated from the rest of the country) are less than 46%, while he cites a study that suggests (at least to his criterion) that even as far up north in Italy as Bologna these skin stones make up about 50%.

What day was it when you fabricated these percentages?

 

[Nobody1]

Actually, it is "new" since such "predictions" actually contradict the actual empirical data gathered by those anthropologists, which by the way you again manipulated at your convenience. Coon also says that such "olive/light brown" skin tones in Spain (all of it, not just Andalusia isolated from the rest of the country) are less than 46%, while he cites a study that suggests (at least to his criterion) that even as far up north in Italy as Bologna these skin stones make up about 50%.

But with not one word does Coon state that the other 54% are 'pinkish-white' he only writes that 46% are 'definitely dark skin' and in Andalusia 'only one man in six has a pinkish-white skin' - whereas with North Italy he clearly writes that the other 50% are 'pinkish-white'; And also that light-eyes are more common in North Italy than in Spain; But all that you know already - so truly nothing new; Which all is thus also clearly reflected in the light of the Genetic results of SLC45A2 rs16891982 and SLC24A5 rs1426654 as illustrated by joeyc in post#123 and in all studies posted in this thread (starting with p.1 SLC24A5 and post#33 SLC45A2);

 

[Drac II]

The person split the results into areas/regions indicating more precision to the results, you are trying to lump all Spaniards together, all italians together, all french together..........be serious, you clearly do not have the data to justify your way out predictions.
Stop lumping nations together , because clearly you are distorting regional results

I did exactly what he did, namely: arbitrarily choose whatever values suit an agenda. The difference is that he did it so that Spaniards appeared on the "darker" end, I turned it around so that Italians appeared so.

Bottom line: such "predictions" are not reliable and are often at odds with actual pigmentation levels observed for average people of those populations. It's pretty much the same thing that happened to Jablonski and Chaplin when they calculated "predicted" values for skin reflectance based purely on environmental factors and then got real empirical values by actually gathering samples from all these places and testing them. In the case of Spain, which is the one pertinent to this thread, their "predicted" values fell short of the actual measured values. According to their "predicted" values their Spanish samples should have been darker than the ones coming from more northern locations, yet in some instances (Belgium, Wales, Ireland and southern England) they actually came up pretty much the same or even lighter.

 

[Drac II]

What day was it when you fabricated these percentages?

The day that you obviously did not bother to check the actual source they came from and that I most certainly did not "invent": Carleton Coon's The Races of Europe. And Coon himself did not "invent" the percentages either. He got them from studies of those populations made by Italian and Spanish anthropologists.

 

[Drac II]

But with not one word does Coon state that the other 54% are 'pinkish-white' he only writes that 46% are 'definitely dark skin' and in Andalusia 'only one man in six has a pinkish-white skin' - whereas with North Italy he clearly writes that the other 50% are 'pinkish-white'; And also that light-eyes are more common in North Italy than in Spain; But all that you know already - so truly nothing new;

Coon says that the 46% in Spain is for both "light brown/olive" and "dark brunet-white" skin tones. He does not go into detail about how much of each makes up that 46%, but obviously since both skin tones are included in the 46% then logically "light brown/olive" skin tones have to be less than 46%. So, what is left of lighter skin tones on the von Luschan scale that he uses to describe skin pigmentation? Only "light brunet-white" and "pink", so obviously the remaining 56% of Spain's skin tones belong to these two categories (again, as in the previous case of the darker tones, he does not specify how much of this 56% is "light brunet-white" and how much is "pink", so it's anyone's guess.) The point here was not whether Spain has a higher frequency of "pink" skin tones than Italy, but that Spain has a lower frequency of "light brown/olive" skin tones than Italy. This is what the skin pigmentation data used by Coon shows.

Regarding light eyes: Agreed. Pigmentation data of both countries shows that Italy is lighter eyed on average than Spain. No disputes here.

Which all is thus also clearly reflected in the light of the Genetic results of SLC45A2 rs16891982 and SLC24A5 rs1426654 as illustrated by joeyc in post#123 and in all studies posted in this thread (starting with p.1 SLC24A5 and post#33 SLC45A2);

No, I have to disagree here. These "predictions" based on single SNPs are often quite off-the-mark when contrasted to actual observed pigmentation data. And it is not just in the cases for Italy and Spain, by the way. If you go to the database in question where joeyc got those values from and you look at these "predicted" results for Greeks, for example, and then contrast them to their actual pigmentation data (consult Coon on the pigmentation of Greeks) you will also notice that these "predicted" values would appear to present them as "darker" than Italians as well, yet the actual observed values show that Greeks are of similar pigmentation as northern Italians, at least when it comes to skin tones (roughly 50-50 "light brown/olive" & "pink")

 

[Aberdeen]

You can win this argument, Drac. Just post a picture of yourself so we can see your blond hair, blue eyes and pale white skin.

Or you could stop with all the internalized self-hatred and just be proud of your olive skin. I think that's a much healthier approach. Why should it matter whether the darker Mediterranean look is an adaptation to local conditions or a result of some minor mixing with "Moors". We're all pretty closely related, when it comes down to it. The scientists tell us that there's often more genetic diversity in one band of chimpanzees than you'll find in the whole of Europe's human population.

 

[joeyc]

The day that you obviously did not bother to check the actual source they came from and that I most certainly did not "invent": Carleton Coon's The Races of Europe. And Coon himself did not "invent" the percentages either. He got them from studies of those populations made by Italian and Spanish anthropologists.

The Von Luschan's chromatic scale is not a valid method of classifying skin colour, as in many instances, different investigators would give different readings of the same person. Moreover Coon cites clearly racist and ludicrous scientists like Earnest Hooton, who has never set his foot in Italy.

 

[joeyc]

The provenance of their samples is clearly identified. In the case of their Spanish samples, they came from Basque and Leon regions. The techniques they used are accepted as the most accurate ones so far to measure skin tones (skin reflectance, more accurate than the older "tiles" of Von Luschan and the like anthropologists.) It seems that whenever the results of a study don't fit into your agenda you just keep on pretending to find faults in it. I suppose that next you are going to tell us that Jablonski and Chaplin are really just evil Iberians manipulating data.

It's not very accurate if it claims that South East Asians are lighter skinned than Japanese people.

Actually I've read the whole book, and the authors give no information about the sample size or how the samples were collected. They also have not checked the ancestry of tested samples. Very unreliable.

 

[joeyc]

So when a study does not agree with your agenda then you immediately and without any grounds accuse the author/s of fraud. Except of course when Italians are involved and the results agree with your agenda, then we should of course not suspect foul play. Interesting "logic" there.

One of the main author of Candille et al. is the Portuguese researcher Sandra Beleza from Porto.

The same Sandra Beleza also picked the participants from the university and a research institute of Porto. Guess what? The Portuguese came out as super nordic.

Do you really believe that it is just a coincidence?

 

[joeyc]

@Drac

1) The connection between the frequencies of these 3 light skin alleles and the fairness of the skin among West Eurasians, has been proved by several peer reviewed studies, and I doubt you can prove them wrong.

2) I've only picked the largest clusters from the Alfred Alleles database. Generally speaking the bigger the cluster the more reliable it is. Smaller clusters as the ones from Madrid or France should be ignored. I did not notice the Galician cluster.

3) You should consider the frequencies of the 3 light skin alleles, not just one. Galicians and Iberians as whole have much lower percentages of the 3 light skin alleles than any mainland Italian. That of course means that Iberians are much darker skinned.

4) These results are in line with the ones from the IrisPlex System (rate of prediction accuracy of over 90%) which shows the lightest Italians as being about 2 times lighter than the lightest Iberians.