Thursday, February 6, 2014

Blue Eyed Dark Skin Hunter

Have you ever seen an dark skin person with blue eye...very unlikely but according to an article by Tina Hemsnay Seay blue eyes evolved before blonde hair and pale skin. Scientists discovered the skeleton of a 7,000 year old Stone Aged man. It was founded in a cave in Spain on a site called La Braña-Arintero which is why they named the fossil skeleton La Braña 1. The DNA from La Braña 1 showed that his eyes were blue and that the pigmentation of his skin and hair were dark. With some research they noticed that the man's wisdom tooth showed evidence that he was a mix of different and unusual traits. On top of his blue eyes the hunter had curly hair which brought more evidence that he was of African descent. The African skin was suggested due to the evidence that the hunter was lactose intolerant and lacked vitamin D. The hunter was unable to obtain vitamin D from dairy due the fact that the man's small intestine was deficient in lactase and with having darker skin it produced less vitamin D.

A sketch of the blue eyed dark skin hunter
Posted by CC





7 comments:

  1. Hi CC!
    It is truly amazing to see how far science has really come, especially with the help of technology. By testing this man's bones, which you said are 7,000 years old, scientists were able to discover the evolution of blue eyes. In your article you state that by testing his tooth, scientists were able to find a mix of different and unusual traits. I was wondering if you knew of any more traits other than the ones listed that could possibly also make him genetically different than most present day Europeans.

    Lindsey Janof

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  2. It's interesting to compare his features to modern day humans and see how much we've changed. It's also incredible how much information we can gather from such an ancient fossil! If we know that he was unable to obtain vitamin D from milk or from the sun do we know anything about how this affected his lifestyle? Does his inability have anything to do with the lack of similar colouring in today's society?

    Posted by Kirk MacKinnon

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  3. You said that the African skin was because of lactose intolerant and lacked vitamin D. I thought that the dark skin shows that there is high amount of melanin, which can produce vitamin D when the skin is exposed under sunlight. If so, does it mean the hunter could be living with small amount of sunlight exposure?

    Yim Hui

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  4. It's crazy how advanced modern day science is. The fact that scientist can tell he was different and a mix just by looking at the wisdom teeth is phenomenon. It is quite true that we rarely see people with dark skin and blue eyes. This article kind of explains why. I wonder how advanced science will be in 10 years.
    Posted by Amber Vien

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  5. This was a great topic, and I was actually pretty surprised to read the results of the research. There are the occasional dark-skinned, blue-eyed people but I always assumed they got lucky with the recessive alleles for blue eyes. It would be truly interesting to see if the progression of blue eyes from dark-skinned ancestors to the blonde, blue-eyed that is more common and more expected today. If you saw any further interpretation for that evolution, feel free to post here I'd be happy to know.
    Posted by Steven Yu

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  6. Hey Lindsey, when I read the article it said that the man lived his life before light skin Europeans were around
    Posted by CC

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  7. Yeah Steven I'll definitely be looking out for that cause I always that that dark skin people were from Africa and they were placed in other countries. So it was shocking to read that they existed before light skin Europeans.
    Posted by CC

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