Re: Sex, Genes, Skin Color, Sex, and Europe Only?


Jois wrote:
> "rmacfarl" <rmacfarl@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
> news:1135156177.186891.66700@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >
> > Jois wrote:
> > ...
> > > Holy Cow! Wouldn't it be just as easy to say that "Europe Only" light
> > > skinned genes came from the Neanderthals?
> >
> > That'd be a stretch...
> >
> > Ross Macfarlane
> >
>
> Maybe, but that hasn't stopped a lot of other weird Neanderthal stuff!
>
> Gee, what is it, Christmas? I put "sex" in two thread titles and only got a
> couple of responses? Maybe I should have put "sex" first? And/or twice?
>
> Seriously, would this have been a big factor (need for lighter skin) in the
> rate of expansion of the AMH in Europe? Then what would it have taken to
> spread the lighter skin through the population (10,000?) - a selective
> sweep? then wouldn't a lot of the variation of the 10,000 have been lost?

I'm not too sure, but this story is interesting in that I had read that
there are multiple loci involved in skin colour. This is the first time
I've heard of a single-point mutation being sufficient to cause light
skin in Europeans (is that what this work implies?) That's much more
likely to occur than picking up a gene from cross-breeding with
Neanderthals & only having 1 gene to show for it.

It isn't only the skin colour that needs explanation with the first AMH
in Europe. There's also the length of Cro-Magnon long bones.
Neanderthal skeletons show a ratio of long bone size that implies they
were adapted to a colder climate than modern Inuit. By contrast,
Cro-Magnon long bones were more typical of modern races that are
adapted to tropical climates. So there would have been selection not
just for lighter skin, but for body shapes that were better adapted to
the last glacial maximum that arrived about 18 to 20 KYA in Europe...

Ross Macfarlane

.

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