Hirisplex Hair-Eye color predictions for stone-age Europeans

Fire Haired14

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If anyone has knowledge on the Hirisplex system, key SNPs, or whatever feel free to post. I'm just doing this for fun, it's nothing serious, it's to complicated for me.

I used this online Hirisplex tool to predict the hair and eye color of several EEF and HG(Including K-14) stone age Europeans, just for the fun of it. All the samples except K-14, Gok2, Ajv-58, and Motala-12, have results from the most recent version of Hirisplex in their published studies, which basically give the same predictions.

http://www.erasmusmc.nl/47743/3604975/HIris?lang=en

I put each sample's geneotypes for each SNP of Hirisplex predictor, their location, their date/age, and their results in the Google drive spreadsheet below. I separated the stone age Europeans into 2 categories based on their genetic affinities(EEF and HG).

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1seNbDtuZKjZZguMgMF2XxPalVTa91VjyIDQPp2TWFjc/edit#gid=0

These are the facts we know so far
>Upper Palaeolithic HGs were mostly black haired and brown eyed(K-14 and MA1).

>Mesolithic HGs were mostly black haired and blue eyed.

>EEFs in central Europe and Sweden had hair-eye color diversity, and were mostly brown-black haired(2/11 blonde) and brown eyed(7/11 brown).

>Copper age people of the Pontiac steppe(including early Indo Europeans) were mostly brown eyed(over 90%) and dark haired(probably black)

>Bronze and Iron age Indo Europeans of Siberia were mostly blue eyed and light haired


I don't have the sources now but I remember reading(from reliable sources) that there's preserved bronze age hair from Denmark and central Europe that ranged from brown to blonde.

This reveals to me that European's stone age ancestors were a similar color to middle easterns and south Asians(and most humans in general), but suddenly it changed very quickly in the Neolithic and bronze age. EEFs from Hungary and Sweden show the begging of this change, even though genetically speaking they're most similar to Sardinians.

I'd imagine Gok2 could have looked something like this.
images


My opinion is that probably both the invaders(EEF-ANE?) and natives(EEF and WHG, ANE depending on region?) of bronze age Europe were going through the same color change, and after they mixed it simply kept changing. Universal change in pigmentation not one light population, mixing with many darker populations, can probably explain similar pigmentation stretching from Volga Russia to Ireland. But who knows ancient DNA has already thrown out surprises no one could have predicted, and I doubt it's that simple.
 
Hungarian Bronze and Iron Age samples were all black haired/eyed. So

HiritPlex was not used to predict the pigmentation of Bronze/Iron age Siberians. You are quoting an older study with an outdated methology.
 
I doubt light hair mutation(S?) increased everywhere by true hazard - some natural conditions controlled it, so after more drift and selection/isolation some precise populations can have SPREAD light hairs, and NOT only a kind of purely one-gene diffusion independant of other genes of the genome- a thought -

AND + : thinking all first Bronze tribes could have had the same origin, even in a rough sense, is mistaking
 
Hungarian Bronze and Iron Age samples were all black haired/eyed. So

HiritPlex was not used to predict the pigmentation of Bronze/Iron age Siberians. You are quoting an older study with an outdated methology.

Hirisplex was used in Gamba 2014 to predict the hair and eye color of all their ancient Hungarians. There were two bronze age samples and one Iron age one. All three had brown eyes(predicting eye color is the most accurate), the two bronze age ones probably had brown hair and the iron age one light brown or blonde. Hirisplex is very good at predicting eye color(pretty much always correct) but it is much harder to predict hair color. We should have even more doubt when it's used on very ancient individuals.
 
I doubt light hair mutation(S?) increased everywhere by true hazard - some natural conditions controlled it, so after more drift and selection/isolation some precise populations can have SPREAD light hairs, and NOT only a kind of purely one-gene diffusion independant of other genes of the genome- a thought -

AND + : thinking all first Bronze tribes could have had the same origin, even in a rough sense, is mistaking

The only way to answer this question is intense study on modern populations genes and phenotype, intense studies on what causes different hair colors, and intense study on hair-color markers in ancient DNA. Light vs brown eye color can very easily be predicted, and so we know that Neolithic Hungarians-Swedes had much lighter eyes than their closest modern relatives in southern Europe and especially Sardinians who have the darkest eyes in Europe.

That alone should be a surprise and lead to questions. Plus, it appears they had a higher amount of light colored hair, and one of them was a carrier of a marker said to give "classic blonde hair".

It appears Neolithic Hungarians and Swedes(Gok2) mark the begging of a change in central-north European pigmentation. Remember that central-north Europeans are mostly the same thing genetically speaking as south Europeans, and many of their ancestors were literally nearly identical to modern Sardinians. A mixture of Gok2-Neolithic Hungarians-West Med+Yamna-people+Mesolithic survives(or somehow elevated WHG ancestry)=Central-north Europeans.

And so a good question is, then why do they have so much brown and blonde hair and light colored eyes, compared to Sardinians. The answer appears to be that Central-north European's West-med-like ancestors were lighter than south Europeans and light hair-eyes were further selected for after they mixed with other populations during the bronze age, to create the genetic makeup in that region today.
 

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