was blonde hair in europe spread by I1 carrying SHG or by a SHG derived people

[redithater]

sorry if the question is stupid. i come recently from a debate with some guy claiming that blondism in europe stemmed from Scandinavian hunter gatherers, who spread throughout europe along with the group I1. he speculated that blondism spread either before the steppe invasion or during the viking age. his evidence for this was the maps showing high correlation between I1 haplogroup spread in europe and the spread of blondism. i said that blondism was selected for and spread with they yamnaya and derived populations/cultures, and that before their invasion/spread blondism, while it existed in europe, it was not as widespread. we went back and forth for a while and came to a stalemate

so i am asking here; are I1 carrying people responsible for the spread of blondism in pre-modern Europe? if yes, when did this happen and how do the steppe people enter in here? if not, why does blondism correlate so highly with the cline of I1 in europe?

 

[Cato]

I doubt

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[Cato]

Blonde hair are either from the steppe (Mathieson et al.) or from the ANF (https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.08.03.454888v1)

SHG didn't left descendants outside of Scandinavia

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[Doggerland]

It could had different sources. Lets see what the samples say:

rs3829241 A = Blonde/Lighter Hair
rs35264875 T = Blonde/Lighter Hair
rs12821256 C = Blonde/Lighter Hair
rs1393350 A = Blonde/Lighter Hair

rs3829241 A is found in:

Anatolia HG
Early Balkan Neolithic
EHG
Ertebolle
Globular Amphora
Early Neolithic Greece
Italy Mesolithic
Linear Pottery
Maglemose
Pitted Ware
Ukraine Mesolithic
Villabruna

rs35264875 T is found in:

Yamnaya

rs12821256 C is found in:

Ukraine Mesolithic

rs1393350 A is found in:

Cardial Pottery
Linear Pottery

There is no SNP which can make you be dark skinned, very dark eyed and light blonde. Light Blonde only occurs if other SNPs for lower pigmentation are present, like the ones who also cause blue eyes and/or skin. But only one SNP that is causing blue eyes doesn't make blue eyes, but can cause blonde hair in combination with the specific light hair SNPs.

Another way to get blonde hair is from recessive/het red. It enhances sun damage to pigments and if the person is constantly in UV light, brown hair will turn blonde by pigment damage, similar to bleaching.

There are some diseases and another form of healthy blonde hair in Oceania/South East Asia, but this is not the topic here.

 

[johen]

It could had different sources. Lets see what the samples say:

rs3829241 A = Blonde/Lighter Hair
rs35264875 T = Blonde/Lighter Hair
rs12821256 C = Blonde/Lighter Hair
rs1393350 A = Blonde/Lighter Hair

Can you tell me what type of SNPs on phenotype WSHG and neolithic/bronze lake Baikal people have?

Lastly, the Siberia ancestry is connected with dark eye and hair pigmentation, but also green28 eye color and lower age at menarche. Again, even if this last trait has ambiguous associations29 with Anatolia N and WHG ancestries, covA ICs provide a clue to disentangle their interactions30 in favour of a more robust connection with the Siberia ancestry.

 

[traveller]

I1 is one of the paternal lines of WHG. The Nordic region is where the hunter-gatherer lifestyle survived the longest.

Light skin (and blonde hair that often comes with it) is a beneficial trait in the higher latitudes where sunlight is scarce in the winter. It helps the body produce more Vitamin D, for instance.Northern Europe has the most habitable high latitudes in the world, that may be the reason why light skin is so frequent there.

Nordic people of all haplotypes have light skin. I remember a study of Birka remains where all people were blonde and blue-eyed, regardless of the haplotype.

The oldest Scandinavian remains discovered are I2, by the way, so I1 migration there is somewhat more recent. It’s possible that current high proportion in Scandinavia is most due to slower population growth and less migration than elsewhere in Europe - I males were crowded out elsewhere, mostly by R1 males.

 

[Doggerland]

Can you tell me what type of SNPs on phenotype WSHG and neolithic/bronze lake Baikal people have?

Yes, I will try. I will use neolithic and bronze age samples around Lake Baikal from this study: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aar7711

But this will take some time, some days, because the samples have to be converted to read the SNPs.

For now I can only show you Trans Baikal Mesolithic and Mal Ta Buret:

Mal Ta Buret:

rs3829241 MISSING
rs35264875 AA (No blonde hair)
rs12821256 MISSING
rs1393350 MISSING

Trans Baikal Mesolithic:

rs3829241 GG
rs35264875 AA
rs12821256 TT
rs1393350 GG

No alleles for blonde hair at all.

 

[Maciamo]

Blond hair appears to have originated in the Baltic region and Northwest Russia, where it was already present during the Mesolithic period. Blond hair was found a low frequencies among most Indo-European tribes in the Bronze Age. Natural selection increased its frequency at the high latitudes of Northeast Europe during the Bronze and Iron Ages. By the time of the great migrations of the Late Antiquity blond hair had become very common among Germanic, Finnic, Baltic and Slavic (the homeland from Poland, Belarus and NW Ukraine) people.

 

[Doggerland]

Baltic HG (Comb Ceramic)

rs3829241 AG
rs35264875 AA
rs12821256 TT
rs1393350 GG

In a AG population AA individuals are possible and they had blue eyes and brown skin. Some of them could have had blonde hair.
But they are nothing special, same SNPs can also be found in SHGs and the one for hair even in Neolithic populations.

I would suggest that today's blonde hair in Europe has its origin in a combination of traits from Neolithic populations, HGs of Scandinavia and Baltic, Yamnaya and Ukraine too.
There is not only one blonde, but many shades.
It was environmental selection over time that made light hair and its supporting traits like blue eyes and light skin so common, or even maybe social ideas.

 

[redithater]

Blond hair appears to have originated in the Baltic region and Northwest Russia, where it was already present during the Mesolithic period. Blond hair was found a low frequencies among most Indo-European tribes in the Bronze Age. Natural selection increased its frequency at the high latitudes of Northeast Europe during the Bronze and Iron Ages. By the time of the great migrations of the Late Antiquity blond hair had become very common among Germanic, Finnic, Baltic and Slavic (the homeland from Poland, Belarus and NW Ukraine) people.

i dont think natural selection is enough to explain it's increase in frequency during the bronze age for 2 reasons:
1. happened too fast and natural selection works more slowly as far as i understand
2. blonde hair does not largely increase the vitamin D intake. you get enough of that through your skin and food, and a few more square centimetres do not bring in enough vitamin D for it to make a huge difference

i think sexual selection played a role in its drastic increase from the bronze age on

 

[Cato]

i think sexual selection played a role in its drastic increase from the bronze age on

I agree

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[redithater]

I agree

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would you say this sexual selection was steppe-derived male mediated, since they dominated a large chunk of europe from that time on? if yes, then why does blondism seem to correlate so much with I1? I1, as far as we know, was not originally a steppe haplogroup, but it seems to have not been an originally SHG or Scandi Funnelbeaker haplogroup either (i mean I1-M253, not that doubtable I1-Z2699 found in a contaminated sample among SHG). do you hold it for possible that I1 was integrated by the corded ware before they entered scandinavia, and in scandinavia it became sexually dominant?

 

[traveller]

From Wikipedia on “blond”:

the oldest fossil known to carry the derived KITLG allele, which is responsible for blond hair in modern Europeans, is a 17,000 year old Ancient North Eurasian specimen from eastern Siberia.

Referencing David Reich, Gavin Evans and this article:

Carlberg, Carsten; Hanel, Andrea (2020). "Skin colour and vitamin D: An update". Experimental Dermatology. 29 (9): 864–875. doi:10.1111/exd.14142. PMID 32621306.

They postulate that blond hair entered the gene pool purely with migrations from the East (Yamnaya), far later than the Northern latitudes got settled. The link to vitamin D seems to be weaker than thought before, thus the spread may really be more social selection than anything else.

 

[Doggerland]

I did 3 Neolithic samples and 3 Bronze Age from Lake Baikal.
Not a single blonde allele in one of them. There are more, but many are of bad quality, it is unlikely that they contain the specific SNPs, because they are under the size of 1GB.

I wonder what the 17.000 years old ANE sample from eastern Siberia is. Didn't find it anywhere. But the KITLG gene mentioned in the Wikipedia article, is only linked to rs12821256 that's the one found in Ukraine Mesolithic. Maybe an ancestor of that population.
I don’t think that this single gene is the reason for all blonde hair in Europe, because it is too rare today. It is only present in 12% of Danish people and 24% of northern Swedish people according to NCBI. But blonde hair in Denmark is with 68% the most common hair color. This cannot be explained by the allele of ANE/Ukraine origin (KITLG gene) alone.
rs35264875 T is found in 21% of northern Swedes.
rs1393350 A is found in 23% of northern Swedes.
rs3829241 A is found in 41% of northern Swedes.

A combination of blonde alleles from different genetic regions is the only explanation for modern blonde in my opinion. The variation rs3829241 A found in Villabruna/Anatolia HG/SHG is the most widespread in Europe with 38% and was present before the arrival of Steppe/ANE ancestry.

 

[traveller]

The sample with the rs12821256 mutation should be AfonfovaGora3 from Mathieson 2018 - The Genomic History of Southeastern Europe. Pg 52 of the supplement is where they discuss KITLG.

Considering the variety of blond from light browns and reds to platinum blonds and whatnot, it does make perfect sense that not all blonds are carriers of that allele.

 

[Doggerland]

The sample with the rs12821256 mutation should be AfonfovaGora3 from Mathieson 2018 - The Genomic History of Southeastern Europe. Pg 52 of the supplement is where they discuss KITLG.

Thank you.

AfontovaGora3 is only 6mb in size and of very low quality: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/browser/view/SAMEA3913290?show=reads

It doesn't contain specific SNPs, not even the one mentioned in the study. Either they used not the same data available for the public for their results, or they used some “cheating” technology like imputation to get the allele data. But if the second is true, I would not trust their results.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imputation_(genetics)

But this is not supposed to be an allegation to the scientists.

 

[BillMC]

The original Western Hunter Gatherers were black or dark skinned with jet black hair. They probably evolved lighter skins by the time the came to either Scandinavia or the British Isles, but they certainly would not have been blonde haired. Until of course they started to inter breed with the R1a and R1b Yamnaya, who came from the Russian Stepps.

 

[Mmiikkii]

Blond hair was majority among Scandinavian hunter-gatherers. Only a few Easteners and zero Westeners had it.

So it's very likely that blondness really peaked among the populations that carried I1 haplogroup. Also had U5 mt-haplogroups.

 

[BillMC]

Blond hair was majority among Scandinavian hunter-gatherers. Only a few Easteners and zero Westeners had it.

So it's very likely that blondness really peaked among the populations that carried I1 haplogroup. Also had U5 mt-haplogroups.

According to Eupedia's section on haplogroup R1a, it says the following: Fair hair was another physical trait associated with the Indo-Europeans. In contrast, the genes for blue eyes were already present among Mesolithic Europeans belonging to Y-haplogroup I. The genes for blond hair are more strongly correlated with the distribution of haplogroup R1a, but those for red hair have not been found in Western or Central Europe before the Bronze Age, and appear to have been spread primarily by R1b people
(sorry I can't post the link, because I am a newbee and I need to do at least 20 posts first, but you can check it out by going to the R1a page)

The orignal I1 and I2 were dark skinned people with jet black hair and blue eyes. I expect that there must have been a time when they evolved lighter coloured skin and hair. I've asked the question on a few forums as to when this happened but nobody seems to be able to answer the question. Maybe they only became white and with blonde hair after they mated with the R1a people.

 

[Mmiikkii]

The orignal I1 and I2 were dark skinned people with jet black hair and blue eyes. I expect that there must have been a time when they evolved lighter coloured skin and hair. I've asked the question on a few forums as to when this happened but nobody seems to be able to answer the question. Maybe they only became white and with blonde hair after they mated with the R1a people.

Take a look at this. I don't remember the study, I saw this in suplementary material I had downloaded.