How Europeans became tall and fair-skinned 8,500 years ago (2024)

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How Europeans became tall and fair-skinned 8,500 years ago? ›

After they began farming, ancient Europeans also evolved to have lighter skin pigmentation, which is better able to capture vitamin D from the sun.

Then, the first farmers from the Near East arrived in Europe; they carried both genes for light skin. As they interbred with the indigenous hunter-gatherers, one of their light-skin genes swept through Europe, so that central and southern Europeans also began to have lighter skin.

The evidence suggests that the most important single cause of increasing height was the improving disease environment as reflected by the fall in infant mortality. Rising income and education and falling family size had more modest effects.

The new genetic analysis suggests that when farmers arrived in Europe about 8,000 years ago, they encountered the descendants of this long history, with light-skinned, dark-eyed people to the east, and possibly dark-skinned and blue-eyed people to the west.

After the ancestors of West Eurasians and East Eurasians diverged more than 40,000 years ago, lighter skin tones evolved independently in a subset of each of the two populations.

Loomis originally opined that “white skins” had evolved to maximize cutaneous photoconversion of 7‐dehydrocholesterol (7‐DHC) into vitamin D under low UVB conditions at high latitudes and that “black skins” had evolved to protect against vitamin D toxicity due to potential overproduction of vitamin D at low latitudes ...

Ancient Northern European hunter - gatherers already had white skin 7700 years ago. The light skin Middle Eastern Farmers migrated into Europe and replaced the brown skin Cro-Magnon about 8000 years ago and just like the Neanderthal before them, the brown skin Cro-Magnon disappeared.

No. Most ancient people were actually much shorter, due to deficient diets that did not give them the nutrients they needed to grow to heights seen today. A lot of people living today would seem like giants, or just be very tall, in the earlier periods.

ABSTRACT. The Dutch have a remarkable history when it comes to height. From being one of the shortest European populations in the 19th Century, the Dutch grew some 20 cm and are currently the tallest population in the world. Wealth, hygiene, and diet are well-established contributors to this major increase in height.

Early Humans Became Tall and Thin 1.5 Million Years Ago to Survive Outside the Forest. For most of hominid evolution, our ancestors got heavier as they got taller. However, about 1.5 million years ago, humans had a growth spurt, suddenly becoming tall and lanky. This was likely a response to changes in human behavior.

Where did white skin originate? ›

Once the first farmers from the near East began to arrive in Europe, and who carried both genes for light skin, they began breeding with the “indigenous hunter gatherers”. One of the depigmentation genes became prominent throughout Europe to the point where central and southern Europeans developed lighter skin.

Dark skin. All modern humans share a common ancestor who lived around 200,000 years ago in Africa. Comparisons between known skin pigmentation genes in chimpanzees and modern Africans show that dark skin evolved along with the loss of body hair about 1.2 million years ago and that this common ancestor had dark skin.

Present day Europeans owe their blue eyes to hunter gatherers, their height to Asian nomads and their blonde hair to Anatolian Neolithic farmers, a new study suggests.

People with a rare condition called methemoglobinemia have actual blue skin. The Blue Fugates of Kentucky are the only known family carrying this trait. Tan skin complexion with blue eyes is rare combination. Rarest Hair and skin color is: Red head, Tan complexion and blue eyes.

Many scientists have believed that lighter skin gradually arose in Europeans starting around 40,000 years ago, soon after people left tropical Africa for Europe's higher latitudes.

Researchers agree that our early australopithecine ancestors in Africa probably had light skin beneath hairy pelts. “If you shave a chimpanzee, its skin is light,” says evolutionary geneticist Sarah Tishkoff of the University of Pennsylvania, the lead author of the new study.

Some Northwest Europeans have substantially lost the ability to tan as a result of relaxed natural selection. Their skin burns and peels rather than tans. This is due to the fact that they produce a defective form of a skin protein Mc1r (melanocortin-1 receptor) which is necessary for the production of melanin.

MC1R is a receptor gene that controls the production of melanin, the protein responsible for pigmentation of the hair and skin. Neanderthals had a mutation in this receptor gene which changed an amino acid, making the resulting protein less efficient and likely creating a phenotype of red hair and pale skin.

All in all, there is solid evidence to suggest that lighter skin tones only evolved in Europe within the last 5,000 years or so, and that people who lived in Europe before then typically had darker skin.

One of the earliest known humans is hom*o habilis, or “handy man,” who lived about 2.4 million to 1.4 million years ago in Eastern and Southern Africa.