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Racist Britons Upset to Learn that Early Briton Had Dark Skin

2/8/2018

 
This week's announcement that a 10,000-year-old resident of Britain had dark skin and blue eyes has added another data point to our understanding of the complex and fascinating evolution of variability in human pigmentation. DNA analysis was used to give "Cheddar Man" a makeover:
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The new "Cheddar Man" reconstruction is on the left; the old one is on the right. (Image: Natural History Museum).
The portrait of a dark-complected Cheddar Man has upset many racist modern Britons, who were comfortable with a lighter-skinned ancestor.  White supremacists are attributing the change in Cheddar Man's skin tone to political correctness, cultural Marxism, and a hoax perpetrated by the UN and Jewish scientists.

These blanket rejections of the science responsible for Cheddar Man's new look come from the same crowd that, just two weeks ago, hailed the announcement of a 200,000-year-old "modern human" fossil from Israel as a significant blow to the Out of Africa theory. Oh you fickle racists.

In reality, the claim that a European from the Early Holocene probably had dark skin and blue eyes is unsurprising in light of other recent work suggesting that lightened skin pigmentation emerged relatively recently in European populations. These conclusions are not the result of agenda-driven guesswork, but of direct analysis of DNA. Have a look at the paper from the La Brana specimen for an example.

Data on the recent emergence of "whiteness" among European populations undercuts the white supremacist notion that light skin tone is ancient, "special," and somehow linked to inherent biological/cultural superiority. It's a very short step from the modern mythologies of white supremacy into numerous threads of pseudo-archaeology, many of which depend on the existence of ancient "white gods," "white giants," "white Atlanteans," etc.

​The real stories of human variability are much more interesting than the fantasy ones. I recommend embracing evidence. 
Bob Jase
2/11/2018 07:00:43 am

Good to see the US doesn't have all the racists.

E.P. Grondine
2/11/2018 09:22:43 am

Hi Andy -

Try it this way: "It's a very short step from numerous threads of pseudo-archaeology, many of which depend on the existence of ancient "white gods," "white giants," "white Atlanteans," etc. to the modern mythologies of white supremacy."

The reason for that is that theosophist cult archaeology fully reflected the lower class racial views of the late nineteenth century.

Graham
2/13/2018 09:58:10 pm

And it's equally interesting to see how the Afrocentrists in the 20thC took the same material the Theosopists and other 19thC fringe archaeologists used and re-purposed it to claim that 'everything' (From Samurai Masks to Beethoven) was created by Black people.

Bill Wagner
3/5/2018 08:45:07 am

For years they've been cautioning us that genetic characteristics are not simple, single-gene-to-single-characteristics linkages. Rather, a number of genes acting in concert are involved.

But now, with looks like a chance to do CPR on the out-of-Africa meme, they're pushing the "white people were once black" single gene expression meme for all they're worth.

Beside being blatant doublethink, this isn't even science, but public opinion management. Seriously -- if some nutjob advanced the Solutrian-Clovis-White people idea, based on a single gene, the world would go nuts condemning it as fraudulent abuse of science.

Looks like Out-of-Africa's dead --

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001678781730113X

Yet the meme continues, on life support.

So what am I missing here ?

Bill Wagner
3/5/2018 09:59:35 am

Kindly revise previous,based on incomplete accounts :

"The test focused on 36 points of comparison in 16 genes, which are all linked to skin colour."
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5453665/Was-Cheddar-man-white-all.html#ixzz58tjIMu39

"A BRITON who lived 10,000 years ago had dark brown skin and blue eyes. At least, that’s what dozens of news stories last month – including our own – stated as fact. Now one of the geneticists who performed the research says the conclusion is not certain, and according to others we are not even close to knowing the skin colour of any ancient human."
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23731674-500-ancient-dark-skinned-briton-cheddar-man-find-may-not-be-true/

Several points that seem relevant :
https://www.sott.net/article/378199-Despite-new-findings-ancient-Cheddar-Man-Briton-may-not-be-dark-skinned

Andy White
3/12/2018 07:08:20 am

The post was mainly about the hysterical reaction of white supremacists to the news that early Briton was inhabited by people with dark skin.

No, there is no "magic gene" that determines skin color. But people that know much more about genetics than you or I have concluded (in this case and others) that the early hunting-gathering populations of Europe probably had dark skin.

Bill Wagner
3/16/2018 10:54:04 am

Any time activist types commandeer science to advance political agendas, my BS detector goes off. It's not exactly the modern equivalent of "Nine out of ten doctors smoke camels," but the appeal mechanism is identical.

IMO, your appeal to "trust the experts" not only assumes that an initial finding (already in dispute) will be the last word on the matter (probability of that = 0.000001 %), but that a climate of freedom to inquire and disagree exists ("fascists" must be silenced lest they speak, and persecuted if they do).

The idea that such an adaption to different circumstances compelled a sudden, magic wand alteration in genetics is a self-evident absurdity. Were that the case, the change in complexion would have happened somewhere around the time Cro Magnons showed up. They, of all people, swathed in furs year round with only faces & hands exposed like modern reindeer herders, would have needed it far more.


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