The earliest Britons were black-skinned, with dark curly hair and possibly blue eyes, new analysis of a 10,000-year-old Somerset skeleton has revealed.
The results show, contrary to popular belief, that the founding generations of Britons owed more in appearance to Paleolithic Africans, from whom all humans descend.
Scientists said they show that commonly understood racial categories are historically only “recent constructions”.
Sure. Lighter skin is an evolutionary adaptation to northern climes.
Dr Yoan Dieckmann, from University College London, who took part in the project, said: “The historical perspective that you get just tells you that things change, things are in flux, and what may seem as a cemented truth that people who feel British should have white skin, through time is not at all something that is an immutable truth.
“It has always changed and will change.”
And yet that’s a different point. Isn’t it now? Something of a logical leap from “early Britons were black skinned” to “mass immigration ain’t no thing.” Note that my comment is purely about the logic on display, not the assertion itself.
It’s a fairly useful principal,when one is being told something to first ask, why am I being told this?
So what are we being told here? That a possible interpretation of some very old DNA traces could indicate early Britons had dark skin. In the OPINION of certain scientists.
I’ll leave the rest to your distrustful imaginations.
One to file under ‘fuck off and keep on fucking off until you’ve fucked off altogether’.
In the same vein as the BBC’s ‘why Britain is evil’ documentary detailed earlier.
So a deep-tanned, blue-eyed, slavic-faced youth who died 9000 years ago is recruited to the cause of promoting a multicultural and rootlessly cosmopolitan society – a nation of immigrants, etc, etc… Great news for Black History Month.
Earlier still the first inhabitants may have been semi-apes.
So what?
Piss on multi-culti bullshit. And sack the CM mouthpiece.
“It has always changed and will change.”
If white skin evolved to suit our climate, that means that all non-white people in Britain will inevitably become white. Or would that be racist?
“If white skin evolved to suit our climate, that means that all non-white people in Britain will inevitably become white. Or would that be racist?”
It would be a bit disappointing if our services and society deteriorated to the point that some people died young or lived unhealthy lives because of vitamin D deficiency. That’s how evolution works. That’s the process that was working 10,000 years ago.
“… deteriorated to the point that some people died young or lived unhealthy lives because of vitamin D deficiency. ”
Isn’t it happening already?
Vit D is added to many common foods in order to prevent deficiency amongst invaders not genetically equipped to survive here.
Reading this article in the telegraph today and it is such incredible bollocks. We are told that because (possibly) a single past inhabitant of these Isles was a bit swarthy, mass 3rd world immigration is no problem, and people who would like it not to happen are deniers, racists, and opposers of the tide of history. These politicised scientists need sacked asap.
As Tim points out the logic is appropriate only for fooling children, but apparently that is often enough when coupled with extreme self loathing. Society has changed so much since I was a child that I feel like I am living through a version of the film “invasion of the body snatchers”. How did this happen? I am stunned by it.
So the British population has evolved significantly in Britain?
Sounds like perhaps we are a separate sub-species then.
Although, alas, eye colour is caused by melanin or the lack thereof. Blue eyes, blond hair and white skin all come from the same lack of melanin. It would be a surprise if we evolved to lack melanin in the eye but not in the skin or hair.
I am sure the degree of melanism has been exaggerated a little bit for political purposes…
Ironic really that this is in the Terriblegraph, once the home of Peter Simple. I am sure that one of his scientists discovered numerous hominids in Halesowen that predated Lucy and Co. I seem to recall that one of them even had black bones
The ideal solution would be genetic tech such that migrants are injected when they get here and any kids they have are white in appearance and IQ level regardless of the ethnicity of their parents.
That would still leave poisonous cultures to deal with but it would break the Global Elites plans for white genocide.
Another “Western Civilization must go cos ____” study.
“Earlier still the first inhabitants may have been semi-apes.”
Like sub-saharans today.
James o brien on LBC currently being a complete cunt about this.
Yes, blue eyes and dark skin are fairly rare (as SMFS said), as they really do the opposite things – blue eyes (or any eye colour not brown/dark) is the absence of melanin, dark skin its presence. Quite why you would evolve one and not the other is odd, but where evolution is concerned, what works works.
Still, to extrapolate from this the racial profile of the entire islands is bollocks on stilts.
As soon as I saw the headline I knew the BBC would be all over this. It follows that absurd suggestion months ago that the “typical Roman British family were black”.
‘The groundbreaking discovery was made in a “stroke of luck” after archeologists found scraps of DNA in the ear of the Mesolithic “Cheddar Man”’
A. Could have been from the janitor moving the body, circa 1997.
B. One body. One study. Sweeping generalizations.
‘The results show, contrary to popular belief, that the founding generations of Britons owed more in appearance to Paleolithic Africans, from whom all humans descend.’
Popular belief? WUT? No one thinks about the stump of their family tree 10,000 years ago.
Fortunately, the paleo African appearance has been bred out in those 10,000 years. In Africa. As well as elsewhere.
The Beeb website says “the Stone Age Briton had dark hair – with a small probability that it was curlier than average …”.
Observe how that has become “with dark curly hair” in the Tel.
Fucking journalism, eh?
10,000 years seems an awfully short amount of time to breed out a high melanin content in an entire population.
And a dark skin & blue eye combination is usually found in mixed-race offspring. As others note, they would otherwise indicate simultaneous evolution in opposite directions.
Its almost as if, like CAGW and dire Brexit forecasts, its all made up nonsense.
Whenever a scientist comes up with the result they clearly desired… beware.
Times two when they then sound like an activist in subsequent interviews.
“Whenever a scientist comes up with the result they clearly desired… beware.”
See the Out of Africa hypothesis…
I seem to recall recently hearing someone from the Natural History Museum talking about Britain’s first human populations on the BBC. He was saying that each wave of migrants in prehistorical times exterminated those already living here* – so successfully that there is effectively none of their DNA in the current population. Needless to say, the Beeb’s interviewer talked past this point without acknowledging it at all.
* Of course, you don’t have to go back that far to be in a time when the British Isles weren’t isles.
Seen any Iceni around lately?
There’s still Neanderthal DNA around apparently. More ancient than this guy, and white. Who knew?
IT’S OKAY TO BE WHITE!
Pretty sure there was also a recent and credible challenge to the out of Africa hypothesis. But that doesn’t give much opportunity for the Telegraph to put a pic of a black guy on the cover while telling us thick. Racist. Pricks that this is our real daddy.
TBH I think they are trolling with this. Wait a few months and the extent of the exaggeration of melanism will slip out when someone else looks at the data.
Theophrastus:
Nope, the ok status of whiteness has apparently been revoked. We must all celebrate the FACT that our recent ancestors were black guys and being a thick racist prick is now laughably ironic given our diverse ancestry.
Oh and black cave men means lots of black immigration now is irrefutably ok, (even though those are completely different black guys and colour is only skin deep, or something..)
May I commend an article by the admirable Razib Khan, a brown-skinned Indian geneticist and therefore without racial prejudice in this matter:
https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2018/02/06/the-genome-of-cheddar-man-is-about-to-be-published/
Khan points out that the Cheddar genome, like that of other Mesolithic Western European hunter-gatherers, did not have the modern European versions of the SLC24A5 and SLC45A2 genes which are associated with white skin. But he stresses that these are by no means the only genes involved in skin pigmentation; and, very importantly, East Asians don’t have the modern European versions of SLC24A5 and SLC45A2 either. We just don’t know enough about melanin production to predict skin colour from a couple of genes.
However, not even British journalists are likely to tell the Chinese or Japanese that they are black (and if they did so in China or Japan they would be lucky to get away with it).
The reconstruction has an ambiguous look about it. That may have been a black male’s skeleton but it had a woman’s brain.
“The reconstruction has an ambiguous look about it. That may have been a black male’s skeleton but it had a woman’s brain.”
You called? 🙂
This isn’t news. It’s been know for ages that white European skin evolved in the last 10-20 thousand years and spread across Europe only in the last 6-8 thousand years.
I’m pretty sure I mentioned it last time we were discussing race.
But so what? Everyone is pretty much the same under the skin – it’s no more significant than hair colour or blood group. It doesn’t mean white people are superior or inferior. It overturns no social hierarchies nor disturbs the foundations of civilisation. It’s just an interesting evolutionary observation that a lot of people might not have known.
“However, not even British journalists are likely to tell the Chinese or Japanese that they are black (and if they did so in China or Japan they would be lucky to get away with it).”
But councils and unions certainly do. When my Hong Kong Chinese then-wife started working as a social worker she was told to join the Black Employees Forum*. “But I’m not black” she said. “Yes you are, you’re Chinese” they said.
*or some such name
““But I’m not black” she said. “Yes you are, you’re Chinese” they said.”
Oh, yes, the mental defect of binary thinking. ‘There are two sorts of people, and you’re either in one category or the other. No alternatives are acceptable.’
You could probably call it “black-and-white thinking”. 🙂
@So Much For Subtlety, February 7, 2018 at 12:24 pm
Makes sense.
A question: lots of Irish (NI&RoI) like me have black/dark-brown hair and very white skin – verging on goth – why?
Wander round London and you can see reverse evolution in action. Obviously white skin is not good. How else could it be.
probably the curse of 15+ sunscreen
Maybe their point is that in 100,000 years the inhabitants of the Caliphate of the Sceptered Isles will be white again?
You suggest that what turned European populations white was a survival adaptation to northern climes, presumably related to improving access to vitamin D.
Natural selection also operates through sexual selection, so that for instance fairer women may be chosen more as mates. The force of this preference is still observable throughout the world today, and although it is usually explained as a post-colonial construct, that ain’t necessarily so. It could be something rooted deeper in our natures. Pale skin is neotenous in both humans and chimps.
The final selection bottleneck is differential survival of infants. In marginal environments parents have to choose which of their offspring to invest in (Sarah Hrdy, Mother Nature). Once there is runaway selection for pale skin, the dark-skinned infants do not survive so well.
It may thus be that Europeans turning white was the expression of a preference, or a prejudice, that goes back many thousands of years, and which still persists.