Bronze Age Warrior from Poland

Angela

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Ancient DNA continues to amaze:

http://www.dienekes.blogspot.com/2015/01/bronze-age-warrior-from-poland.html

There is a reconstruction, and pigmentation alleles indicate he had dark hair, dark eyes and a dark complexion. He apparently dates to around 2000 BC.

He doesn't look all that dark skinned to me; maybe they were expecting really fair skin.

Anyway, this is the original article in Polish:

In what universe are Poles all blonde and blue eyed? I'm curious about the "complexion" part which alludes to the SLC24A5 mutations? Interesting that he would be ancestral for these. The skull and all the bone structure looks fairly contemporary European. I've definitely seen many European men with dimensions like that - both east and west.
 
Most likely Unetice Culture at the end of Corded Ware. They say that he was healthy with all teeth. He also had a non malignant bone cancer in one leg, just the beginning. We'll see what they release later when full reconstruction is finished.
 
He was from the southeastern edge of Poland. Catacomb samples from Ukriane and around the same time had dark-alleles for pigmentation. I suspect by 4,000 years ago in east and north Europe the Yamna+EEF+WHG people were pigmented like their modern descendants. You can't just keep having ancient people coming up dark, especially as recent as 4,000 years ago, because they became light at some-point. Andronovo was from 3,400-3,800 and had the same pigmentation markers as east and north Europeans.
 
In Poland we can find variety of phenotype from blond to brunette with light olive skin. He just happened to be on this darker end of the spectrum, I suppose.
 
In Poland we can find variety of phenotype from blond to brunette with light olive skin. He just happened to be on this darker end of the spectrum, I suppose.

We shouldn't compare him to modern Poles in my opinion, because of migrations from central Europe into eastern Poland after 4,000 years ago. When it comes to DNA I bet it would be very difficult to find a Pole with the dark-alleles like this guy had. Maybe the olive-type Poles you're describing are the remnant of what used to be mainstream. Modern middle easterns even have a higher frequency of the light allele in rs16891982 than bronze age and Neolithic Europeans.

He was dark just like Yamna and Catacomb were, and lived around the same time and region. Modern Poles are very similar if not identical to Corded ware who lived in Germany and probably CWC from other areas of Europe 5,000 years ago. Maybe this warrior was very similar to German Corded ware, but he also could have been more like Yamna.

The CWC , UN, and bell beaker genomes Reich has might also come out dark skinned and brown eyed, which will make us have to make an even more recent date post-4,000 years ago for when the lighting process ended.
 
In what universe are Poles all blonde and blue eyed? I'm curious about the "complexion" part which alludes to the SLC24A5 mutations? Interesting that he would be ancestral for these. The skull and all the bone structure looks fairly contemporary European. I've definitely seen many European men with dimensions like that - both east and west.


I never mentioned blue eyed blondes. What I did state is that, in my opinion, the reconstruction does not present a man who is "dark complexioned". The Polish researchers obviously believe it does. I don't think it's illogical to conclude that perhaps their standard is therefore different from mine.

As for the snps involved, one snp does not confer "European fair" skin. Pigmentation is a polygenic trait. It remains to be seen what depigmentation alleles this man possessed. If he was ancestral for two of the major ones, SLC 24A5 and SCL42A5, then he would probably have been quite a bit darker than this reproduction. Perhaps he had the pigmentation profile of the Yamna samples, who presumably had derived SLC24A5, but the majority of which did not have the derived versions of SLC42A5. That is the pigmentation profile of many people in the Near East.
Sandra Wilde et al: http://www.pnas.org/content/111/13/4832.full

We'll have to wait and see, but if that is the case then, from my experience with Polish people here in the U.S., he would indeed be unusual for Poland today, although the Polish members may correct me if that is incorrect. As others have pointed out, however, the current population has also been influenced by subsequent population movements from further north and west, so the pigmentation profile might have changed.
 
He was from the southeastern edge of Poland. Catacomb samples from Ukriane and around the same time had dark-alleles for pigmentation. I suspect by 4,000 years ago in east and north Europe the Yamna+EEF+WHG people were pigmented like their modern descendants. You can't just keep having ancient people coming up dark, especially as recent as 4,000 years ago, because they became light at some-point. Andronovo was from 3,400-3,800 and had the same pigmentation markers as east and north Europeans.

Sorry, when I wrote my post I hadn't yet seen this.

I would also have thought that this area would already be showing an increase in depigmentation genes. It's 2,000 BC, after all. Although we have to remember that Wilde said selection in the last 5,000 years. I just had sort of assumed it would be further along by 2,000 BC., especially because of the Andronovo results from 1800 to 1400 BC. It just may be that at this early date it still varied by area.

We'll just have to wait until we get the snp analysis.
 
He was from the southeastern edge of Poland. Catacomb samples from Ukriane and around the same time had dark-alleles for pigmentation. I suspect by 4,000 years ago in east and north Europe the Yamna+EEF+WHG people were pigmented like their modern descendants. You can't just keep having ancient people coming up dark, especially as recent as 4,000 years ago, because they became light at some-point. Andronovo was from 3,400-3,800 and had the same pigmentation markers as east and north Europeans.


The Warrior is from Bronze Age( 3200-600 BC in Europe). He was either part of the CW or the Unetic culture. So this is roughly around 4000 years ago. Either we have to assume that they became light haired within few generations (epigenetics? a simple genetic switch?) or that the ultimate source of light hair/eyes/skin is not CW in Europe but something else.

Ironically the only individual so far with the combination of light hair and eyes is a farmer from late neolithic Hungary (NE7) preceding this CW/Unetic individual by more than one or two thousand years.

quite funny and ironic is also, that by that time of this sample from Poland, light hair and eyes was already known and found in Western Asia, as seen on Sumerian description and sculptures made of Gutians and Subarians. And the Andronovo culture on the other half of the globe was also already by 60% of the samples, light haired and eyed. Makes one wonder if these traits in West Eurasians have multiple origins and not just a single one.
 
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In what universe are Poles all blonde and blue eyed? I'm curious about the "complexion" part which alludes to the SLC24A5 mutations? Interesting that he would be ancestral for these. The skull and all the bone structure looks fairly contemporary European. I've definitely seen many European men with dimensions like that - both east and west.

It is the combination of dark hair/eyes and skin. This combination in Poles or any modern North- East and Central Europeans is rare.
 
In what universe are Poles all blonde and blue eyed? I'm curious about the "complexion" part which alludes to the SLC24A5 mutations? Interesting that he would be ancestral for these. The skull and all the bone structure looks fairly contemporary European. I've definitely seen many European men with dimensions like that - both east and west.

no country in Europe in uniformly "light" or "dark", just more or less strong tendancies towards a pole (not a Pole!) - I'm sure you agree with that -
the probleme in these descriptions is the vocabulary: is "dark" here for the whole humanity range or for the today "white" Eurasian range??? Always the same problem -
I would be very surprised he had not the SLC24A5 mutated gene (and other mutations also).
I find he has something 'eurafrican' in him, but with a small enough face compared to skull (more modern mediterranean tendancy?) SO not completly in the range of comon "corded" types more highly faced and more strongly jawed - all bets because I lack other angles of view, as all of ours - a previous southern Caucasus southern Caspian origin is not to discard all the way -
 
It is the combination of dark hair/eyes and skin. This combination in Poles or any modern North- East and Central Europeans is extremely rare.

Good answer: I agree: in a mixed (for a long time) population tending towards light, the dark combination of the 3 aspects is rare enough if not exceptionel -
 
The Warrior is from Bronze Age( 3200-600 BC in Europe). He was either part of the CW or the Unetic culture. So this is roughly around 4000 years ago. Either we have to assume that they became light haired within few generations (epigenetics? a simple genetic switch?) or that the ultimate source of light hair/eyes/skin is not CW in Europe but something else.

Ironically the only individual so far with the combination of light hair and eyes is a farmer from late neolithic Hungary (NE7) preceding this CW/Unetic individual by more than one or two thousand years.

quite funny and ironic is also, that by that time of this sample from Poland, light hair and eyes was already known and found in Western Asia, as seen on Sumerian description of Gutians and Subarians. And the Andronovo culture on the other half of the clobe was also already by half of the samples, light haired and eyed. Makes one wonder if these traits in West Eurasians have multiple origins and not just a single one.

Or perhaps subsequent migrations changed the pigmentation profile in certain areas, depending on the nature of the migration in terms of numbers.

As I stated upthread, it may be that this sample mirrors, in terms of alleles, the samples tested by Sarah Wilde in the Yamnaya area. If that is the case, I fail to see why this is such a surprise to people who have long claimed that Corded Ware is descended from Yamnaya.
 
Or perhaps subsequent migrations changed the pigmentation profile in certain areas, depending on the nature of the migration in terms of numbers.

As I stated upthread, it may be that this sample mirrors, in terms of alleles, the samples tested by Sarah Wilde in the Yamnaya area. If that is the case, I fail to see why this is such a surprise to people who have long claimed that Corded Ware is descended from Yamnaya.


I would think present day Polish have pale skin, eyes and hair because of Slavic invasion, which was much later.
On the other hand, Slavs were probably related to Corded Ware who had already arrived in Poland before.
 
................
quite funny and ironic is also, that by that time of this sample from Poland, light hair and eyes was already known and found in Western Asia, as seen on Sumerian description and sculptures made of Gutians and Subarians. And the Andronovo culture on the other half of the globe was also already by 60% of the samples, light haired and eyed. Makes one wonder if these traits in West Eurasians have multiple origins and not just a single one.

Yes, this. There's plenty of room to debate why depigmentation became so entrenched in Europe, but it seems likely to me that the genetic traits for depigmentation came from multiple sources.
 
Yes, this. There's plenty of room to debate why depigmentation became so entrenched in Europe, but it seems likely to me that the genetic traits for depigmentation came from multiple sources.

Vitamin D deficient is still the best explanation, the thing is light hair and eyes was recorded there, where animal domestication was born and widespread. These regions are not typically semi deserts or Mediteranean hot lands as the rest of Western Asia. I assume that milk products even caused Vitamin D deficients in these mountainous regions. Don't forget that even the Kalash in the mountainous have more frequently light features compared to their neighbors. And think about Subarians and Gutians beeing described as mountainous people too.
 
I've read many posts here discussing his pigmentation, but it's not clear to me how "dark" this guy was. For example, here is an apulian actor who is considered "dark" in Italy:
2003-7847AbatantuonoDiego_IMG_x900.jpg
Was Bronze Age Warrior roughly darker than him? I don't understand well without direct comparisions :)
 
1- today Poland is not as a whole a very "light" pigmented region (30-32% of blond-very-very-light brown only) except in far Northwest and Northeast (about 50%? what is not a maximum in N-Europe) -
and the gain between an 'olive' complexion man and a lilly white one concerning vitamin D is not so obvious; in winter the difference is not so strong as in summer - (by the way Poles have often enough light skins but not so much very whitish ones): and I recall this relative contradiction: "white" men supposed to accumulate sunlight against vitamin D do tan when sun is at its strongest! damned intrications of selection and evolution!!!
don't mix light skin question with light eyes light hairs question; I suppose the relatively SLIGHT over-depigmentation linked to blond hairs and/or without blue eyes is linked to other mutated alleles than the principal ones concerning ONLY skin BUT WITH A STRONGEST EFFECT - I know, I repeat myself, peace and love...


mountains? why? for me I see no clear relation, depending on places... different kinds of milks producing lacks of different degree ?
 

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