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Those ancient Britons get darker brown with every pop science article. Pretty soon they will be actively bending light and absorbing photons from their surround

Those ancient Britons get darker brown with every pop science article. Pretty soon they will be actively bending light and absorbing photons from their surroundings. Can anybody point me toward a scientific basis for the ever darkening skin color of these ancient peoples?

Mikeb85 4y ago
There is none. It's pop-archaeology influenced by politics. Especially since this article is drawing a comparison with Neanderthals, which is the ancient hominid literally responsible for blue eyes, red hair and pale skin... Also funny that the artist's rendition kind of looks like a dark Michael Jackson...
- meheleventyone 4y ago
  These comments are super confusing in light of reading the article which is quite mundane if an interesting write up of a comparison between finds on two sites and much less politically charged than they make out.
  - Mikeb85 4y ago
    Look at the artist's rendition of the hominid. Then read the article where they're talking about likeness and genetic similarity to Neanderthals. Then consider what we know of what genes Neanderthals passed along, especially relating to skin tone, eye and hair colour... There's a constant attempt in the British archaeology sphere to paint 'indigenous' Britons as dark-skinned even though all the evidence points to them being very light-skinned (as you'd expect at their latitude). It's not just this article but many articles.
    - meheleventyone 4y ago
      This seems like you injecting your own political hobby horse into the arena. It’s an illustration not a diatribe. The article doesn’t mention skin colour and casts doubt on the link to Neanderthals.
      - Mikeb85 4y ago
        > The article doesn’t mention skin colour Which is why the article picture is so confusing and misleading. Why not show some bones? Why not show the researcher? It's intended to mislead...
        meheleventyone 4y ago
        Or it’s just there to make people tell on themselves in comments sections. Both seem plausible. I personally think it’s a nice illustration in a relatively banal if interesting article.
        Mikeb85 4y ago
        > tell on themselves Really? "If you don't believe this you're racist" I've got dark hair dark eyes tanned skin and no British ancestry at all. I look more Middle Eastern than British... I just hate that a discipline I love (archaeology) is becoming so politicised. The past literally means nothing to the present or future beyond being interesting...
        meheleventyone 4y ago
        Then stop politicising it. By the way the part you cut out your quote was not meant as an accusation. Just to juxtapose how ludicrous jumping to the conclusion you did was. Occams Razor favours my explanation in the following paragraph.
  - midislack 4y ago
    Confusing or just hurtful to the overall agenda? It's perfectly sensible.
delecti 4y ago
Well on one hand, moving further north creates a pretty strong pressure for early humans to evolve lighter skin, so naturally the first early humans to move northward to a place would on average have darker skin than their descendants down the line. Though presumably some of that would have happened before those early descendants got all the way to the northern shores of France and Spain to move to Britain, so even granting them some benefit of the doubt, this does seem a bit much.
- namaria 4y ago
  I dislike the language 'pressure to evolve'. There is only a selective bias towards whatever produces more healthy offspring. Evolution is not teleological, it is merely pruning whatever sprouts but doesn't work.
shagmin 4y ago
[0] mentions the "Cheddar Man" from 10,000 years ago as having dark skin and blue eyes, whereas originally he was depicted as having light skin - and that was probably just an assumption. I don't think there was as much awareness before that there was a time in Europe where people were dark skinned, and it didn't spread over night. The article from the post is talking about fossils from between 400,000 to 500,000 years ago, and uses the word ancient, but it's not something you can compare in timescale to say ancient Egypt, which may evoke images of the pyramids or something. Humans were drastically different and wildly more diverse. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-briton-had-dark-skin-and-light-eyes-dna-analysis-shows-180968097/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-briton-had...
- Mikeb85 4y ago
  And one of the scientists involved in that study says they don't know the skin colour... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5453665/Was-Cheddar-man-white-all.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5453665/Was-...
  - shagmin 4y ago
    The article says >While her computer model shows being black is his 'probable profile', DNA testing is not advanced enough to say for certain. >The model came up with 'black' or 'dark black' skin for Cheddar Man based on his DNA. >Some, particularly on the far-right, have questioned whether there was a political agenda behind the claims. So it seems like, yeah, they are not absolutely positive (and the tabloid article sensationalizes this point), but so far the science shows dark skin, and this ruffles the feathers of the far-right.
    - Mikeb85 4y ago
      The science doesn't show dark skin, it doesn't show any skin colour. Saying X might be true != X is true.
      - shagmin 4y ago
lkrubner 4y ago
The extreme whiteness of modern Europeans is thanks to the Gulf Stream, which was not necessarily working at the same level of intensity in the distant past, especially during periods of glaciation. As such, the skin color we should expect to see in Britain, for much of the Ice Age, would be a level of brown on par with people who live in the far north of eastern Eurasia -- think Mongolians and American-Indians.
- Mikeb85 4y ago
  It's an interesting theory that temperature leads to skin pigmentation however all research points towards it being an adaptation to UV rays.
  - JJMcJ 4y ago
    The two big evolutionary pressures are believed to be a balance between protection against skin cancer vs. enough sunlight for vitamin D production. And maybe a little bit about the calories needed to actually produce melanin. For Britons, if it was hotter it's likely there would less cloud cover, but that's just a guess.
  - lkrubner 4y ago
    Your response is incoherent. Are you saying that a person in France, at latitude 48.0, gets less in UV rays than aboriginal people living north of the Arctic Circle, up north of latitude 67.0? A simple explanation based on UV rays would suggest that everyone at a certain latitude would have the same level of pigmentation and so, to repeat myself, the default a priori assumption has to be that the first people in Europe had the same level of brown skin as the other people living at similar latitudes. Again, Mongolians and Eskimos and other aboriginal people, including early American Indians, would form a reference point. And, indeed, there is evidence that Europeans were exactly this brown as recently as 8,000 years ago: https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-evolution-human-origins/white-skin-developed-europe-only-recently-8000-years-020287 https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-evolution-human-origins... So if you want to explain the whiteness that is unique to Europe, you need to look for an explanation beyond a simple mapping of latitude and UV rays. You need to look for something that could have been altered by the arrival of the first forms of agriculture, and the Gulf Stream -- the warm weather provided by the Gulf Stream would have allowed agriculture further north in Europe than at any other place on the globe for a given latitude. That would have lead to the unique situation of people having enough to eat, very far north, but not necessarily getting what Vitamin D and E that they needed. Of the Eskimo and other aboriginal groups: "People who eat a lot of raw meat or oily fish have somewhat less desperate need of the vitamin D that sunlight provides, and so don’t end up as pale as those who rely on agriculture."
yongjik 4y ago
Are we now complaining that an artist's depiction of a hominid that lived 480,000 years ago (not even an anatomically modern human) does not look like a proper Englishman? What is it missing? An umbrella?
drak0n1c 4y ago
As recently as a few hundred years ago many Europeans had dark tans because they spent their few decades alive working long days in the sun. But that was tanning and long term skin damage, not genetic. There was an anthropological time period in early humanity when people migrating out of Africa hadn't yet genetically adapted to having lighter skin tones. I don't know if the pop science is actually trying to depict that period accurately, or if it's an anachronistic cargo cult phenomenon.
nonameiguess 4y ago
The Wikipedia article on human skin color (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_skin_color https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_skin_color) seems to think consensus is that all humans were still dark-skinned up until 100,000 years ago or so, which is far more recent than this picture is meant to depict.
kitd 4y ago
The ancient Briton in question is around 480,000 years old. White skin appeared 22,000 to 28,000 years ago. Why should the skin colour need questioning?

Mikeb85 4y ago

There is none. It's pop-archaeology influenced by politics. Especially since this article is drawing a comparison with Neanderthals, which is the ancient hominid literally responsible for blue eyes, red hair and pale skin... Also funny that the artist's rendition kind of looks like a dark Michael Jackson...

meheleventyone 4y ago
These comments are super confusing in light of reading the article which is quite mundane if an interesting write up of a comparison between finds on two sites and much less politically charged than they make out.
- Mikeb85 4y ago
  Look at the artist's rendition of the hominid. Then read the article where they're talking about likeness and genetic similarity to Neanderthals. Then consider what we know of what genes Neanderthals passed along, especially relating to skin tone, eye and hair colour... There's a constant attempt in the British archaeology sphere to paint 'indigenous' Britons as dark-skinned even though all the evidence points to them being very light-skinned (as you'd expect at their latitude). It's not just this article but many articles.
  - meheleventyone 4y ago
    This seems like you injecting your own political hobby horse into the arena. It’s an illustration not a diatribe. The article doesn’t mention skin colour and casts doubt on the link to Neanderthals.
    - Mikeb85 4y ago
      > The article doesn’t mention skin colour Which is why the article picture is so confusing and misleading. Why not show some bones? Why not show the researcher? It's intended to mislead...
      - meheleventyone 4y ago
        Or it’s just there to make people tell on themselves in comments sections. Both seem plausible. I personally think it’s a nice illustration in a relatively banal if interesting article.
        Mikeb85 4y ago
        > tell on themselves Really? "If you don't believe this you're racist" I've got dark hair dark eyes tanned skin and no British ancestry at all. I look more Middle Eastern than British... I just hate that a discipline I love (archaeology) is becoming so politicised. The past literally means nothing to the present or future beyond being interesting...
        meheleventyone 4y ago
        Then stop politicising it. By the way the part you cut out your quote was not meant as an accusation. Just to juxtapose how ludicrous jumping to the conclusion you did was. Occams Razor favours my explanation in the following paragraph.
- midislack 4y ago
  Confusing or just hurtful to the overall agenda? It's perfectly sensible.

delecti 4y ago

Well on one hand, moving further north creates a pretty strong pressure for early humans to evolve lighter skin, so naturally the first early humans to move northward to a place would on average have darker skin than their descendants down the line. Though presumably some of that would have happened before those early descendants got all the way to the northern shores of France and Spain to move to Britain, so even granting them some benefit of the doubt, this does seem a bit much.

namaria 4y ago
I dislike the language 'pressure to evolve'. There is only a selective bias towards whatever produces more healthy offspring. Evolution is not teleological, it is merely pruning whatever sprouts but doesn't work.

shagmin 4y ago

[0] mentions the "Cheddar Man" from 10,000 years ago as having dark skin and blue eyes, whereas originally he was depicted as having light skin - and that was probably just an assumption. I don't think there was as much awareness before that there was a time in Europe where people were dark skinned, and it didn't spread over night. The article from the post is talking about fossils from between 400,000 to 500,000 years ago, and uses the word ancient, but it's not something you can compare in timescale to say ancient Egypt, which may evoke images of the pyramids or something. Humans were drastically different and wildly more diverse. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-briton-had-dark-skin-and-light-eyes-dna-analysis-shows-180968097/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-briton-had...

Mikeb85 4y ago
And one of the scientists involved in that study says they don't know the skin colour... https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5453665/Was-Cheddar-man-white-all.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5453665/Was-...
- shagmin 4y ago
  The article says >While her computer model shows being black is his 'probable profile', DNA testing is not advanced enough to say for certain. >The model came up with 'black' or 'dark black' skin for Cheddar Man based on his DNA. >Some, particularly on the far-right, have questioned whether there was a political agenda behind the claims. So it seems like, yeah, they are not absolutely positive (and the tabloid article sensationalizes this point), but so far the science shows dark skin, and this ruffles the feathers of the far-right.
  - Mikeb85 4y ago
    The science doesn't show dark skin, it doesn't show any skin colour. Saying X might be true != X is true.
    - shagmin 4y ago

lkrubner 4y ago

The extreme whiteness of modern Europeans is thanks to the Gulf Stream, which was not necessarily working at the same level of intensity in the distant past, especially during periods of glaciation. As such, the skin color we should expect to see in Britain, for much of the Ice Age, would be a level of brown on par with people who live in the far north of eastern Eurasia -- think Mongolians and American-Indians.

Mikeb85 4y ago
It's an interesting theory that temperature leads to skin pigmentation however all research points towards it being an adaptation to UV rays.
- JJMcJ 4y ago
  The two big evolutionary pressures are believed to be a balance between protection against skin cancer vs. enough sunlight for vitamin D production. And maybe a little bit about the calories needed to actually produce melanin. For Britons, if it was hotter it's likely there would less cloud cover, but that's just a guess.
- lkrubner 4y ago
  Your response is incoherent. Are you saying that a person in France, at latitude 48.0, gets less in UV rays than aboriginal people living north of the Arctic Circle, up north of latitude 67.0? A simple explanation based on UV rays would suggest that everyone at a certain latitude would have the same level of pigmentation and so, to repeat myself, the default a priori assumption has to be that the first people in Europe had the same level of brown skin as the other people living at similar latitudes. Again, Mongolians and Eskimos and other aboriginal people, including early American Indians, would form a reference point. And, indeed, there is evidence that Europeans were exactly this brown as recently as 8,000 years ago: https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-evolution-human-origins/white-skin-developed-europe-only-recently-8000-years-020287 https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-evolution-human-origins... So if you want to explain the whiteness that is unique to Europe, you need to look for an explanation beyond a simple mapping of latitude and UV rays. You need to look for something that could have been altered by the arrival of the first forms of agriculture, and the Gulf Stream -- the warm weather provided by the Gulf Stream would have allowed agriculture further north in Europe than at any other place on the globe for a given latitude. That would have lead to the unique situation of people having enough to eat, very far north, but not necessarily getting what Vitamin D and E that they needed. Of the Eskimo and other aboriginal groups: "People who eat a lot of raw meat or oily fish have somewhat less desperate need of the vitamin D that sunlight provides, and so don’t end up as pale as those who rely on agriculture."

yongjik 4y ago

Are we now complaining that an artist's depiction of a hominid that lived 480,000 years ago (not even an anatomically modern human) does not look like a proper Englishman? What is it missing? An umbrella?

drak0n1c 4y ago

As recently as a few hundred years ago many Europeans had dark tans because they spent their few decades alive working long days in the sun. But that was tanning and long term skin damage, not genetic. There was an anthropological time period in early humanity when people migrating out of Africa hadn't yet genetically adapted to having lighter skin tones. I don't know if the pop science is actually trying to depict that period accurately, or if it's an anachronistic cargo cult phenomenon.

nonameiguess 4y ago

The Wikipedia article on human skin color (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_skin_color https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_skin_color) seems to think consensus is that all humans were still dark-skinned up until 100,000 years ago or so, which is far more recent than this picture is meant to depict.

kitd 4y ago

The ancient Briton in question is around 480,000 years old. White skin appeared 22,000 to 28,000 years ago. Why should the skin colour need questioning?