July 15, 2004
Ancient Germans weren't so fair
This news story is in relation to this paper at DNA7 conference.
This girl’s ancestors may have had darker skin that didn't burn so easily, ancient DNA suggests (Image: iStockphoto)
Researchers may be able to make more accurate reconstructions of what ancient humans looked like with the first ever use of ancient DNA to determine hair and skin colour from skeletal remains.
The research was presented today at an international ancient DNA conference in Brisbane, Australia, by German anthropologist, Dr Diane Schmidt of the University of Göttingen.
She said her research may also help to identify modern day murderers and their victims.
"Three thousand years ago, nobody was doing painting and there was no photography. We do not know what people looked like," Schmidt told ABC Science Online.
She said most images in museums and books were derived from comparisons with living people from the same regions.
"For example, when we make a reconstruction of people from Africa we think that they had dark skin or dark hair," she said. "But there's no real scientific information. It's just a guess. It's mostly imagination."
She said this had meant, for example, that the reconstruction of Neanderthals had changed over time.
"In the 1920s, the Neanderthals were reconstructed as wild people with dark hair and dumb, not really clever," she said. "Today, with the same fossil record, with the same bones and no other information - just a change in ideology - you see reconstructions of people with blue eyes and quite light skin colour, looking intelligent and using tools.
"Most of the reconstructions you see in museums are a thing of the imagination of the reconstructor. Our goal is to make this reconstruction less subjective and give them an objective basis with scientific data."
Genetic markers for hair colour
In research for her recently completed PhD, Schmidt built on research from the fields of dermatology and skin cancer that have found genetic markers for traits such as skin and hair colour in modern humans.
In particular, Schmidt relied on the fact that different mutations (known as single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs) in the melanocortin receptor 1 gene are responsible for skin and hair colour.
"There is a set of SNPs that tells you that a person was a redhead and a different set of markers tell you they were fair skinned."
She extracted DNA from ancient human bones as old as 3000 years old from three different locations in Germany and looked for these SNPs.
Her findings suggest that red hair and fair skin was very uncommon among ancient Germans.
Out of a total of 26 people analysed, Schmidt found only one person with red hair and fair skin, a man from the Middle Ages. All the other people had more UV-tolerant skin that tans easily.
She said she was excited when she "coloured in" the faces that once covered the skulls, and had even developed "a kind of a personal relationship" with one of them.
"It's not so anonymous," she said. "I think this is the reason why people in museums can do reconstruction because our ancestors are not so anonymous any more; they have a face you can look into."
Unfortunately the genetic markers Schmidt used could not distinguish which of the ancient humans had blond versus black hair, and she could not determine eye colour.
But, she said she was confident that this will be possible in a few years.
Schmidt said that such research could also be used to help build up identikit pictures to help identify skeletons or criminals.
The research has been submitted for publication.
Posted by Dienekes at July 15, 2004 10:17 PM | PermaLinkI have skin that tans well, but I also have blond hair. So do many people from around the Baltic.
Posted by: Polak at July 16, 2004 03:23 AM>>I have skin that tans well, but I also have blond hair. So do many people from around the Baltic.
IMHO so do most Germanic and Slavic groups, with the exception of those in the Galicia region bordering Poland and Ukraine - which has a large Celtic infleunce.
Most people make the error of equating fair skin with white skin, whereas the fairest (or technically the most non UV-tolerant) skin type is actually freckled skin - which would be pale pink and almost transparent, without the freckles.
I'm Irish and although I have Black hair and Green eyes, have this freckled skin so common in Ireland, in fact I need to wear SP45 to go outside, here in New York city. I forgot and got sunburnt in early April this year!
My former girlfriend was from Northern Poland, had Blond hair and Blue eyes, and had white skin which tanned easily. My current girlfriend is Ukrainian/German, has Blond hair and Brown eyes, and has a more yellowish colored skin, which tans very readily.
>>Her findings suggest that red hair and fair skin was very uncommon among ancient Germans.
This is not surprizing, as it is also very uncommon in modern Germans.
Cheers,
Paul
My theory is that in the North where there is
no penalty to a depigmented mutation sexual
selection was allowed to run its course producing
whole tribes that had the fairer appearance. I
don't imagine that tribes turned blond and then
moved North.
I have one question however...
Why haven't groups like the innuit developed any
depigmentation from their original appearance?
I the randome mutation for depigmentation not
present in the ancestor population?
By the way, my daughter has "whitish blond" hair and blue eyes but can tan to a near mediteranean copper in summer.
Posted by: J.H. at July 16, 2004 06:48 AMIncidentally, I should mention that in addition to Black hair and Green eyes, I have a 75% Red, 25% Black beard, which though uncommon, is also found on a number of male relatives on my Mom's side - I wonder then what this SNP would show for someone like me, as I have both Black and Red hair, but not Blonde or Fair.
Cheers,
Paul
sample size seems too small to jump to these conclusions.... (1 redhead out of 26 doesn't sound that weird).
Posted by: razib at July 16, 2004 12:00 PM"Why haven't groups like the inuit developed any depigmentation from their original appearance?"
"Arctic" doesn't mean "cloudy." By and large it's sunny enough where Alaskan/Canadian Eskimos live to have prevented their depigmentation. In northern and northwestern Europe where depigmented white people developed it's cloudy/hazy enough over a large-enough portion of the region to have allowed theirs. Incidentally, someone in the thread opined that once high levels of melanin production were no longer necessary depigmentation might have been brought about by sexual selection. Reasons other than sexual selection can be imagined for decreased melanin production conferring a reproductive advantage where it's cloudy/hazy.
Posted by: Fred Scrooby at July 16, 2004 08:19 PMBig Deal, Red hair is very very uncommon in Central Germany anyway. This is from observation from living in the Berlin-Brandenburg area for a time(I am red-haired also), I was quite suprised at its infrequency in fact.
Looking for and testing Pict bodies found in scottish bogs would be a better application for this technique, to at least confirm or deny myths about the racial character of the picts themselves.
Posted by: StephenF at July 18, 2004 07:26 PM"This is from observation from living in the Berlin-Brandenburg area [...]"
Living currently in the Berlin-Brandenburg area is a HUGE Turkish population -- numbering I believe something like 700,000 -- so, informal observation of this particular local population might skew things away from what would be reflective of "racially German" traits.
I seem to recall vaguely that in the 1800s the great German medical pathologist Rudolph Virchow conducted some kind of study which sought to measure how prevalent frank blondness was among Germans, and he found it wasn't as prevalent as had been thought, or something like that. If I run across a reference to it, I'll post it.
Posted by: Fred Scrooby at July 19, 2004 12:14 PMThat's about 3.8% of redheads in ancient Germany according to their sample. That may be more than modern Germany.
The way they write the article is misleading. It's implying Germans were not fair or were "dark". I don't think anyone expected most Germans to be porcelain-skinned redheads. One can have fair skin and not have the untannable redheaded-type skin.
Posted by: Nordhammer at July 21, 2004 09:00 PMAll the Bronze Age examples were neither red-haired nor fair-skinned. The one redhead/fair-skinned individual was from the medieval period (see linked abstract). Also, as the researcher mentions, they look at different sets of markers to determine redheadedness or fair skin. While it is true that redheads are a minority in Germany, people with UV-sensitive alleles are generally more frequent, as many northern European blonds and brunets have UV-sensitive skin as well.
For example, according to this study on German children, few redheaded children have skin that 'tans' (i.e., red hair => skin that burns), but only 14.5% of the individuals with skin type I (the one that burns the most) were also redheads (i.e., 6 out of 7 German children with very UV-sensitive skin were not redheaded).
Posted by: Dienekes at July 21, 2004 10:03 PMIt would be better if they used the Fitzpatrick Skin Types or the Ethnic Color Types scale.
Type I, II and III could all be considered fair without tanning (type III is typical for Central Europe).
I White, always burns, never tans
II White, always burns, sometimes tans
III White, sometimes burns, always tans
>> It would be better if they used the Fitzpatrick Skin Types or the Ethnic Color Types scale.
If you are referring to the ancient DNA study, then "Fitzpatrick Skin Types" cannot be exactly predicted from molecular data. If you are referring to the German children study, then the Fitzpatrick skin types were used.
To refer to only type I as "fair" and not type II and III is misleading. The ability to tan doesn't automatically make one not fairskinned. While we don't know what skin type the other 25 samples were except not being type I, it's probable that they were similar to modern day Germans, most being type II or III, and not as dark as Middle Easterners or sub-Saharan Africans.
"Out of a total of 26 people analysed, Schmidt found only one person with red hair and fair skin, a man from the Middle Ages. All the other people had more UV-tolerant skin that tans easily."
Posted by: Nordhammer at July 23, 2004 02:15 AMThis is also a silly statement: "This girl’s ancestors may have had darker skin that didn't burn so easily, ancient DNA suggests"
It's possible and probable that many in her family have "darker skin" than she does that doesn't burn easily.
Posted by: Nordhammer at July 23, 2004 02:25 AM>> To refer to only type I as "fair" and not type II and III is misleading.
Incorrect, there is nothing in Schmidt's abstract about "Fitzpatrick Skin Types".
>> While we don't know what skin type the other 25 samples were except not being type I
Incorrect, we have no such information.
>> it's probable that they were similar to modern day Germans, most being type II or III, and not as dark as Middle Easterners or sub-Saharan Africans.
Let's try not to speculate.
Posted by: Dienekes at July 23, 2004 05:35 PM