Daily Mail Reporter, May 4, 2009
This is the face of the first early European human which has been painstakingly constructed by scientists from bone fragments.
The man or woman—it is still not possible to determine the sex—lived 35,000 years ago in the Carpathian Mountains that today are part of Romania.
Their face was rebuilt in clay based on an incomplete skull and jawbone discovered in a cave where bears hibernated.
Forensic artist Richard Neave made the model based on his measurements of the pieces of bone and his knowledge of how facial tissues sit on the skull.
Forensic Scientist Richard Neave reconstructed the face based on skull fragments from 35,000 years ago
It was created for TV show The Incredible Human Journey about the origins of the human race and evolution, which will be screened on BBC next Sunday.
Anthropologist Alice Roberts will introduce the series and currently has the head sitting on her desk.
‘It’s really quite bizarre. I’m a scientist and objective but I look at that face and think “Gosh, I’m actually looking at the face of somebody from 40,000 years ago” and there’s something weirdly moving about that,’ she told the Independent.
‘Richard creates skulls of much more recent humans and he’s used to looking at differences between populations,’ she added.
‘He said the skull doesn’t actually look European, or Asian, or African. It looks like a mixture of all of them. And you think, well that’s probably what you’d expect of someone who was among the earliest populations to come to Europe.’
Potholers found the jawbone of what has been dubbed the ‘first modern European’ in 2002 in the south-west of the Carpathian Mountains.
Using radiocarbon analysis, scientists have dated them to between 34,000 and 36,000 years ago.
Europe was then occupied by both Neanderthal man, who had by then been in the region for thousands of years, and anatomically-modern humans—Homo sapiens.
Modern humans first arrived in Europe from Africa.
The skull appears very like humans today, although there are some remaining traits including the very large teeth.
Erik Trinkaus from Washington University, Missouri, said: ‘Taken together, the material is the first that securely documents what modern humans looked like when they spread to Europe.’
The “first European.”
Original article
(Posted on May 4, 2009)
Comments
Well…he was probably as dark as a bushman (so not that dark) the genes for light skin did not exist until about 10-12,000 years ago (as well as the genes for blond hair) that seem to have originated in the Baltic. So yes, the first European would have been “dark”, not Bantu dark though, I doubt it. They would get rickets and die at such high latitudes. If humans left Africa between 100-60 K years ago and this guy lived about 35K, when humans started in Europe, he likely should be called “proto-Caucasian”. There is no shame in this. Think about it. We evolved, some folks didn’t. :-)
If that’s truly what my ancestors looked like, I can only say, thank God they had the sense to leave Africa, both for a better life and a better “look”!
‘He said the skull doesn’t actually look European, or Asian, or African. It looks like a mixture of all of them. And you think, well that’s probably what you’d expect of someone who was among the earliest populations to come to Europe.’
They can take the jawbone of an ass and shape some clay around it to make it look like Miss America, but nobody is going to convince me that it’s not the jawbone of an ass.
He doesn’t look like a mix. He looks like your average NBA player.
That is a picture of Seal, Mr. Heidi Kulm.
Amazing how these “early man” reconstructions have dark skin while living in cold Europe.
Part of the Turkish heritage I guess.
A question. If the nose is all cartilage, how does she know to make an African shaped nose??
My husband’s family all came from the Carpathian Mountains in Poland as well (as far back as we can tell on BOTH sides of his family…). And, well, yeah — bears no resemblance to this guy at ALL…
One thing I find funny — do they ever consider that people may not have LIVED where they are found? I mean, maybe they were on a skiing vacation? ;)
I have serious doubts that they can tell what the first european looked like from some 35,000 year old bone fragments. Also, this face looks Black, not a white,asian and european mixture. However, science has been permeated by political correctness too so I doubt a lot of what they say.
Reminds me of all those black history month picturesshowing Cleopatra, Beethoven, Alexander the Great and other notables with brown skin and widened noses.
This is reconstructed from a jaw fragment???
The so called anthropoligist or artist or whatever she calls herself is of course a White woman.
More and more I admire the Taliban treatment of women. Say what you will about Taliban society and culture, they will not allow their weak willed, ignorant, brain washed women to destroy it.
Would that I could say the same for Western Christian heritage men.
Was this reconstruction done by blacks by chance? And stop saying people came from Africa, WE DID NOT, at least we White people did not.
Yes…definitely a woman :)
This confirms my theory (with only a slight wink) that Whites actually came from Mars - we are the aliens noted in a some cultures and in a few strange passages in the Old Testament. Just wait until they find human fossils there along with remnants of a civilization! It would also explain the “Chariots of the Gods” phenomena and why so many non-White cultures greeted arriving Whites as gods. I joke about this, but sometimes when articles like this arise - brown skin and all, it makes me wonder if there isn’t something to it?
But this reconstruction also demonstrates that these people were already quite changed from sub-Sharan Black Africans. I have a tendancy to think that Neaderthals were White and light haired and were not wiped out. I have know a few White men in my time who were short, stalky and had incredible strength - I mean lifting the end of a car type strength.
I don’t think this nook of scientific investigation has even begun. This is only one individual example.
Google freerepublic face of first european and you will see the inevitable, a White woman, anthropologist Alice Roberts in a flirtatious, admiring pose with the African face. She is just delirious that the Europeans are actually Africans according to her brainwashed ignorant mind.
You know, the PC crowd better be careful what they wish for.
If this is an accurate recreation, then it simply represents outstanding evidence of how quickly the human species has changed (dare I say it, “evolved”?) phenotypically in a very short time frame.
If our (European) appearance has changed so drastically in that time, could it not also indicate that we just as quickly distanced ourselves cognitively (and therefore, behaviorally) from our common ancestors?
Perhaps we have just found the best answer to all those perplexing questions of why blacks don’t do as well as other groups in school, in business and in life in a European based society.
To be sure, there were a number of anatomical differences between peoples living in Europe 35,000 BP (collectively called “Anatomically Modern Humans”) and those living there today. For starters, their faces looked different than ours (due to adoption of agricultural practices, the faces of Europeans have shrunk, on avg., 30% in the past 10,000 years).
They were physically somewhat more robust than us, and due to the fact they wandered into Europe from the Near East/North Africa they were most certainly (at least in the beginning) darker than we are today.
That, however, describes a people who looked worlds different than the obviously sub-Saharan African-looking fellow in the picture above. They can’t discern whether it was a male or female, yet we’re supposed to believe he(?) looked like that? Get real!
Another in a long list of examples of how scientists toss the truth in the cylindrical file in order to appease the “p.c.” crowd (and therefore continue to obtain funding). Pathetic.
When I think of “early European” THAT certainly isn’t the face that comes to mind.
There seemed to be a great deal of “artistic license” that came with Forensic Scientist Richard Neave’s assignment.
Quote; “Europe was then occupied by both Neanderthal man, who had by then been in the region for thousands of years, and anatomically-modern humans—Homo sapiens.”
That doesn’t look like a modern human to me.
I proclaim no expertise is this area what so ever, but I am ‘a guy with a eye’.
http://tinyurl.com/cxfblk or http://tinyurl.com/cnzdcy
http://tinyurl.com/crmg9p or http://tinyurl.com/3lz8f
The individual is this stories picture, looks closer to being a relative of the San people tribe.http://tinyurl.com/d2w8qu http://tinyurl.com/csmcdo
I wouldn’t get too upset about this and I take everything that comes out of the bbc with a grain of salt.
There is still so much we don’t know (liberal’s too).http://tinyurl.com/ddmws3
Just think of the stunning physical improvement that occurred in the span of a mere 30,000 years!
I suspect we European decendents already had our pigment by the time our ancestors arrived there. 35,000 years is like a “flash” in evolution terms; genes don’t change and spread that fast. From my copy of the Genographic Project:
Haplogroup R1b (M343)
Your Y chromosome results identify you as a member of haplogroup R1b, a lineage defned by a genetic marker called M343. This hoplogroup is the final destination of a genetic journey that began some 60,000 years ago with an ancient Y chromosome marker called M168.
The very widely dispersed M168 marker can be traced to a single individual - “Eurasian Adam.” This African man, who lived some 31,000 to 79,000 years ago, is the common ancestor of every non-African person living today. His descendants migrated out of Africa and became the only lineage to survive away from humanity’s home continent.
Population growth during the Upper Paleolithic era may have spurred the M168 lineage to seek new hunting grounds for the plains animals crucial to their survival. A period of moist and favorable climate had expanded the ranges of such animals at this time, so nomadic may have simply followed their food source.
Improved tools and rudimentary art appeared during this same epoch, suggesting significant mental and behavioral changes. These shifts may have been spurred by a genetic mutation that gave “Eurasian Adam’s” descendants a cognitive advantage over other contemporary, but now extinct, human lineages.
Some 90 to 95 percent of all non-Africans are descendants of the second great human migration out of Africa, which is defined by the marker M89.
M89 first appeared 45,000 years ago in Northern Africa or the Middle East. It arose on the original lineage (M168) of “Eurasian Adam,” and defines a large inland migration of hunters who followed expanding grasslands and plentiful game to the Middle East.
Many people of this lineage remained in the Middle East, but others continued their movement and followed the grasslands through Iran to the vast Steppes of Central Asia. Herds of buffalo, antelope, woolly mammoths, and other game probably enticed them to explore new grasslands.
With much of Earth’s water frozen in massive ice sheets, the era’s vast steppes stretched from eastern France to Korea. The grasslands hunters of M89 lineage traveled both east and west along this steppe “superhighway” and eventually peopled much of the continent.
A group of M89 descendants moved north from the Middle East to Anatolia and the Balkans, trading familiar grasslands for forests and high country. Though their numbers were likely small, genetic traces of their journey are still found today.
Some 40,000 years ago a man in Iran or southern Central Asia was born with a unique genetic marker known as M9, which marked a new lineage diverging from M89 group. His descendants spent the next 30,000 years populating much of the planet.
Most residents of the Northern Hemisphere trace their roots to this unique individual, and carry this defining marker. Nearly all North Americans and East Asians have the M9 marker, as do most Europeans and many Indians. The haplogroup defined by M9, K, is known as the Eurasian Clan.
This large lineage dispersed gradually. Seasoned hunters followed the herds ever eastward, along a vast belt of Eurasian steppe, until the massive mountain ranges of south central Asia blocked their path.
The Hindu Kush, the Tian Shan, and Himalaya, and even more formidable during the era’s ice age, divided eastward migrations. These migrations through the “Pamir Knot” region would be subsequently become defined by additional genetic markers.
The marker M45 first appeared about 35,000 to 40,000 years ago in a man who became the common ancestor of most Europeans and nearly all Native Americans. This unique individual was part of the M9 lineage, which was moving to the north of the mountainous Hindu Kush and onto the game-rich steppes of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and southern Siberia.
The M45 lineage survived on these northern steppes even in the frigid Ice Age climate. While big game was plentiful, these resourceful hunters had to adapt their behavior to an increasingly hostile environment. They erected animal skin shelters and sewed weathertight clothing. They also refined the flint heads to their weapons to compensate for the scarcity of obsidian and other materials.
Members of haplogroup R are descendents of Europe’s first large-scale human settlers. The lineage is defined by Y chromosome marker M173, which shows a westward journey of M45-carrying Central Asian steppe hunters.
The descendents of M173 arrived in Europe around 35,000 years ago and immediately began to make their own dramatic mark on the continent. Famous cave paintings, like those of Lascaux and Chauvet, signal to sudden arrival of humans with artistic skill. There are no artistic precedents or precursors to their appearance.
Soon after this lineage’s arrival, the era of the Neandertals came to a close. Genetic evidence proves that these hominids were not the ancestors but an evolutionary dead end. Smarter, more resourceful human descendents of M173 likely outcompeted Neandertals for scarce Ice Age resources and thus heralded their demise.
The long journey of this lineage was further shaped by the preponderance of ice at this time. Humans were forced to southern refuges in Spain, Italy, and the Balkans. Years later, as the ice retreated, they moved out of these isolated refuges and left and enduring, concentrated trail of the M173 marker in their wake.
Today, for example, the marker’s frequency remains very high in northern France and the British Isles - where it was carried by M173 descendents who had weathered the Ice Age in Spain.
Members of haplogroup R1b, defined by M343, are the direct descendents of Europe’s first modern humans - known as the Cro-Magnon people.
Cro-Magnons arrived in Europe some 35,000 years ago, during a time when Neandertals still lived in the region. M343-carrying peoples made woven clothing and constructed huts to withstand the frigid climes of the Upper Paleolithic era. They used relatively advanced tools of stone, bone, and ivory. Jewelry, carvings, and intricate, colorful cave paintings bear witness to the Cro-Magnons’ surprisingly advanced culture during the last glacial age.
When the ice retreated genetically homogenous groups recolonized the north, where are still found in high frequencies. Some 70 percent of men in southern England are R1b. In parts of Spain and Ireland that number exceeds 90 percent.
There are many sublineages within R1b that are yet to be defined. The Genographic Project hopes to bring future clarity to the disparate parts of this distinctive European lineage.
Article on R1b: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_R1b_(Y-DNA)
Diagram showing the migration pattern of R1b: http://homepage.eircom.net/~thetierneyclan/Migration%20map%20for%20Haplo%20R1b.jpg
The constructed face you see was entirely based on skull fragments. Thus there is no way at all to determine the other biological features such as skin tone, the properties of its hair or its color and lastly its eye color based simply on the shape of the face. Additionally, considering that the average temperature of Europe was drastically colder during that period (35,000+ years ago) and UV radiation was far less penetrable, it seems highly impractical, illogical and in fact border-line ludicrous to assume it was darker-skinned. Its survival rate in a harsh environment without hair, or the ability to absorb more vitamin D (as a lighter-skinned individual would have) are some such examples.
But of course we all know this is pop-science and given the media’s own imprisonment within the contemporary norms and traditions of popular culture, one would hardly designate them as a candidate for a proper and scientific presentation of the peoples of ancient Europe.
“‘It’s really quite bizarre. I’m a scientist and objective but I look at that face and think “Gosh, I’m actually looking at the face of somebody from 40,000 years ago” and there’s something weirdly moving about that,’ she told the Independent.”
The quote above is why they don’t look to anthropologists for the analysis of scientific data.
“The man or woman—it is still not possible to determine the sex—lived 35,000 years ago in the Carpathian Mountains that today are part of Romania.”
They can’t determine the sex, but how easy it was for them to determine the skin tone and the flared nostrils.
Absolute poppycock.
And we’re supposed to believe this is objective science? How would Africans feel if their ancestors were depicted as white? This is insulting! Perhaps, if this depiction were accurate, we could conclude that Europeans had African slaves a very long time ago indeed.
Whites are a later evolutionary development. We became dominant in Europe between 5,500—and 12,000 years ago. The darker ones died off. They didn’t have the right adaptations and mutations for the European climate.
Whites are on their way to being a different species if they avoid miscegenation. Of course if they don’t avoid massive miscegenation, they’ll be pulled back into the dark masses.
Of course the skull doesn’t have recognizable features of any race. They can’t even tell weather its male or female!
What all of these scientists fail to report when they do these reconstructions, is exactly when our ‘African’ ancestors started having white children. The blacks in America have been here 400-500 years and unless there has been miscegenation in the bloodline, they are as dark today as when they first arrived.
Just how long does it take for one race to transform into the myriad of other races that inhabit this planet. The number of Africans leaving Africa would have to have been quite large to reach every corner of the earth in order to account for possible inbreeding that would come with a small migration. And why did they stop ‘leaving’ Africa? How long does it take to walk from Africa to China, India, etc. while also hunting for food etc. These are the questions science can’t answer because it didn’t happen this way.
The propaganda machine continues to spin its web of lies.
Wow, I didn’t know the first European was boxing referee Richard Steele.
http://tinyurl.com/co6nvf
Yes, of course it’s not White; it shouldn’t be. Pale skin and light hair and eyes are relatively recent adaptations that occurred only during the last ice age. While pale skin is an environmental adaptation to provide more vitamin D from scarcer European sunlight, light eyes and hair are selective adaptations that happened because of the drop in population numbers when Europe cooled. White facial features that convey beauty became selected because of reproductive competition and a small gene pool.
I’m not sure why Amren is trying to insinuate that this is some sort of politically correct ploy by paleoanthropologists. The skin tone and facial features are correct given the age of the specimen.
Psychological warfare. How do we know its brown if we don’t even know its sex?
Where did they get that picture from, Heidi Klum’s mantle?
How can they be certain of anything regarding the features of the person the skull belonged to when they cannot even determine the sex of it? The “Out Of Africa” theory to me seems completely absurd as does any other explanation I have researched about the origins of human beings and of sub-races. The fact is, unless you have a working time machine and can observe these magical mutations that can turn a kayne west into a G.F. Handel, the answer will forever elude all who seek it.
This reconstruction must be correct.
The “White European” phenotype as we know it today did not come into existence until after 12,000 years ago, or maybe sooner. Before that, European Caucasians resemble Arabs. Before that, I never knew, but I guess they must have looked like this guy! This makes perfect sense.
The original proto-Asians came out of Africa 65,000 years ago, probably descendants of the M168 line,although NE Asians are probably partly M89.
The original Caucasians did indeed come out of Africa about 40-45,000 years ago, probably descendants of the M89 line. White are probably a legacy of M89 and not M168. M89 birthed M45, which are the proto-Amerindians of 35,000 years ago on the steppes and in the Mongolia-Siberia region. A child of M45, M173, were the first Europeans, and may be represented by this fellow. Later, M343, Cro-Magnon, appeared.
The early genesis of the Caucasoid race involved a large injection of Asian genes from Mongolia, Siberia and East Turkestan. These proto-East Asians probably looked something like Aborigines or possibly Ainu. Out of the African-proto-Asian mixture was birthed the proto-Caucasian. The African phenotype was Bushman or Hottentot, not Bantuoid.
I have always wondered what these folks looked like and this is an interesting part of our heritage.
I agree with We’re Screwed at 7:48, JPT and Peter K. Clearly, Whites have moved beyond out African heritage. IQ scores alone seem to be evidence of that. Evolution is generally a positive thing, and it was great for Whites, as we selected well.
JPT is not correct that Whites are on our way to being a different species. We are closer to Blacks than any other group since we were the last to split from them. The furthest apart are Blacks and Aborigines.
Anon 12:03, I do believe you’ve been answered.
Seriously, all you Amreni’s: if you care about race you should know that race isn’t about pigmentation. Pigmentation is one gene among many. And it doesn’t show up in jaw bone shape, and it’s not relevant to sex.
Our gracious host points out, “of course the reconstruction is not white”. Well, yeah: of course. It’s not going to be white in this ancient stage. The “iceman” was white but he was a Bronze Age fellow; dozens of thousands of years after this jawbone here…
Anonymous at 12:03 AM,
The genes for the depigmented pinkish color of Europeans arose only some 10-12,000 years ago. There are scientific methods that date phenotypical traits.
The supposed phenotype is based mainly on conjecture because all the phenotypicall traits except color that one finds in all the continents were in Africa before humans trekked out Africa.
What an interesting time to come out with this. At a time when Europeans are growing tired of the hordes of ‘immigrants’ displacing them in their homelands, this reconstructed model comes out, complete with flared nostrils and dark skin. Could this be an attempt to silence those critics of multiculturalism? A way of telling the critics that it is they, rather than their new dark-skinned neighbors, that are the real immigrants?
Greetings from Liverpool. Surely this is conclusive proof that the Romanians were the first Europeans to have African slaves.
“JPT is not correct that Whites are on our way to being a different species. We are closer to Blacks than any other group since we were the last to split from them. The furthest apart are Blacks and Aborigines.”
Robert, speciation has to do first and foremost with breeding. Whites do not accept half black children as white. That means whites have at least some impulse to speciation from blacks.
Many animals from different species and even different genera can cross-breed, but ordinarily don’t. They are different species due to some kind of kin recognition or habitat differentiation. Why would humans be different?
That “British” singer named Seal looks like this guy’s twin. There is no way skin color and a flat nose shape can ve gleaned from skull fragments. This is just another sorry propaganda photo for the multi culti crowd to use against whites.
I stand by my earlier comment at 10:30PM. In simplest terms, the “white” genotype seems to me to have a strong likelihood of diverging even more from others and reaching full specieshood (which is usually defined in large part by the inability to bear viable, reproductively capable offspring with others).
Of course, there are many variables and many twists and turns ahead and my above comment does not mean all whites will make it, but there may be a new Adam and Eve in our future.
Then again, by not living consciously and by not understanding some of the ways of nature, we could just all metaphorically return to Africa, as did Barack Obama’s mother.
“Zulus and Danes presumably had a common ancestor about the time humans left Africa, but are now so different from each other that standard taxonomies might well classify them as separate species.”
“Far from slowing down, evolution has been speeding up, and the authors (The 10,000 Year Explosion: How Civilization Accelerated Human Evolution, Basic Books, 2009) argue that for the last several thousand years it has been roaring along 100 times faster than during the Stone Age, making different populations increasingly unlike each other.”
Amen to that.
Marrying a different race member is actually in conflict with the thrust of evolution.
As Sam Francis once said, and I paraphrase, going back proves nothing. If you go back far enough, we all descended from fish.
Go back several hundred million years and you’ll find the ancestor of this guy/girl and all of us is a single cell.
It’s called evolution. Frankly,I don’t feel any more affinity for this guy/girl than I do for the single cell and I’m not about to gush the nonsense about how we’re all the same. After all, at some level we are all the same since we’re all made of the same chemicals. So what? I’m not about to go kiss some dirt.
And, unlike some brain dead whites, I wouldn’t marry this person since I know the result would be children more like him/her than white people.
It is the differences that matter. Keep the differences and increase them. That’s the way up for us.
This guy is an earlier model human. We are the latest model.
Light eyes and hair are selective adaptations that happened because of the drop in population numbers when Europe cooled. White facial features that convey beauty became selected because of reproductive competition and a small gene pool.
____
I do not agree with Peter Frost on his theory. In my opinion, Light eyes and hair has nothing to do with the population drop. If they had, all people in Europe should be light haired and eyed. All Europeans are white skinned, but they are not all light eyed and haired. By the way, Siberian huskies and polar bears are also light eyed and haired (furred). It perfectly correlates with the climate, according to my own theory.
According to recent researches, men tend to be blue eyed more then women which may be an advantage while hunting in dark, damp environment. Light hair might be a protection contrary to the dark on the snowy terrain (as camouflage against wild animals)?
While Northwest Russians tend to be light haired but darker eyed (the sunshine becomes stronger toward the North Pole), The Irish and Welsh show exactly the opposite (very light skinned and eyed, but darker haired, damp but not cold).
The blondest people (both hair and eye blondism) in Europe are found in the dampest parts of the continent.
And why did they stop ‘leaving’ Africa?
They haven’t!! But now they can BE FLOWN HERE.
“Surely this is conclusive proof that the Romanians were the first Europeans to have African slaves.”
That’s probably how they fund the study. Under the auspices of investigating the ‘slave’ trade.
I saw this on the Drudge Report and my first thought was, “Oh, for the love of God! This is just ridiculous.”
The way you determine race is by the ethmoid bone (it where we get the word “ethnic”). The ethmoid bone is flat bone on the forehead. It is found between the eyebrows.
This skull looks like a white skull made to look outwardly black.
Fellow Amrener’s this is nothing more than pyops.
This is just a gambit to sell Europe on taking on 40 million immigrants from the third world. Remember some European elites were talking about this?
Well this is part of their marketing effort to convince the average European that “Hey, this is what your great grand-daddy looked like so what’s the difference if you’re eventually over-run with people that look like this?”
“More and more I admire the Taliban treatment of women. Say what you will about Taliban society and culture, they will not allow their weak willed, ignorant, brain washed women to destroy it. Would that I could say the same for Western Christian heritage men.”
Are you crazy??? You admire the Taliban? As far as brainwashed and weak-willed people destroying society, there are just as many men as there are women, just go talk to most male college professors or male media people. Also, look at all the males in congress and big business who want all these cheap illegal migrants to fill their pockets and make them rich?
“Absolute poppycock.”
Posted by ranger at 9:51 PM on May 4
“It really seems that there is an assumption - an assumption based on present stereotypes and racial politics that seek to isolate the White race into oblivion.”
Racial politics: exactly! That’s a good term. It seems that in the realm of [so-called] “science” today, nothing can be done or said without a tacit nod in the direction of diversity and multi-racialism. Politics trumps all.
When I was in high-school (long ago) we learned about Lysenko’s foolish, and disastrous, state-sponsored “science” in the Soviet Union. Now, years later, we have the same thing going on here. Offical science. Racial politics. The same madness has taken over the West. And we made fun of the USSR!
This is junk science. The very idea that you can tell someone’s skin color, the shape of their nose, ears and the shape and color of their eyes all from a few skull fragments and a piece of jawbone is preposterous. As far as ALL humans coming from Africa (ironic since their was no Africa back then) I’ll believe it when I’m shown actual proof. I don’t mean a bunch of incomplete, cobbled together ancient skeletons or a bunch of eggheads using words like “theory”, “probably” and “might”.
The politically correct reconstruction instantly reminded me of a book of my youth: Science Made Stupid.
http://www.besse.at/sms/evolutn.html
To paraphrase Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own science.”
All the people who are outraged at the fact that this face of the first European is somewhat dark complected and has a broad nose are doing the race realism movement a disservice. People with irrational knee-jerk reactions like this are the ones who make it hard for the general public to take race realism seriously. They are as bad as the Jesse Jackson types who scream racism whenever they are confronted with a fact they don’t want to believe.
As some of the sane posters have pointed out, it’s realistic to believe that the first Europeans did not look like present day Europeans who had thousands of years of additional evolution to adapt their physical characteristics to the European environment.
It is realistic for scientists to conjecture that they still had a somewhat African appearance.
I think this sums up everything;
Trinkaus said the fossils show features of modern humans: …But they also have clear archaic features that place them outside the range of variation for modern humans:
“To find wisdom teeth that big,” he said (Trinkaus), “you have to go back 500,000 years.”
Clearly, even the experts don’t consider this an early European.
It’s funny how everyone forgets that dark skin is an evolved trait. Don’t believe me? Shave a chimp.
Yes, dark skin is an evolved trait - in cool, cloudy areas, dark skin is not only a non-advantage, but a handicap - it does not let in enough sunlight for adequate vitamin-D production.
The depicted appearance of soft tissues like the nose here is simply conjecture, but Europeans would have naturally evolved our current noses as a response to cooler climates; a big nose acts as a heat-exchanger.
I’m not sure why Amren is trying to insinuate that this is some sort of politically correct ploy by paleoanthropologists. The skin tone and facial features are correct given the age of the specimen.
As some of the sane posters have pointed out, it’s realistic to believe that the first Europeans did not look like present day Europeans
It’s funny how everyone forgets that dark skin is an evolved trait. Don’t believe me? Shave a chimp.
I agree with Quinhagak 8:12 PM. In fact, I was going to write something similar. Look, we whites didn’t just pop up as we are now. We evolved out of earlier forms. It’s just basic evolution. And, we’re still evolving as nature continues to constantly shuffle DNA.
I also agree with William G. 9:32 AM. We whites are the new model human.
“Well…he was probably as dark as a bushman (so not that dark) the genes for light skin did not exist until about 10-12,000 years ago (as well as the genes for blond hair) that seem to have originated in the Baltic. So yes, the first European would have been “dark”, not Bantu dark though, I doubt it”….Posted by ModEuro
There’s too much talk here about “dark”, “light”, “skin”, “blond”, as in other posts as well. Forget about “dark”! Forget color! There’s much more involved here than coloration. Just look at that head! Where did the artist get those flaring nostrils? From out of his own vivid imagination? All he had was a few “bone fragments”… “based on an incomplete skull and jawbone.”
They can’t even determine the sex of the “bone fragments”, and yet they can tell the color of its skin and eyes and the shape of its nose? Come now! This is just another piece of multiracial fantasy for another BBC propaganda show “which will be screened on BBC next Sunday.”
ModEuro.
I love your comment about our ancestors having evolved whilst others didn’t.
So true, so true…..
I think this sums up everything;
Trinkaus said the fossils show features of modern humans: …But they also have clear archaic features that place them outside the range of variation for modern humans:
“To find wisdom teeth that big,” he said (Trinkaus), “you have to go back 500,000 years.”
Clearly, even the experts don’t consider this an early European.
I’m just going to quote (cut and paste), an opinion on this reconstruction more credible than I could ever aspire to be from…..http://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpress.com/2009/05/
First of all let me comment my objection to this recon is entirely to do with the really dark skin colour of the head. My main point is that even Southern Africans have a skin colour a lot lighter than this. Modern humans were also resident across North Africa from about 130k ago, and into the near East from about 100k ago- 60k prior to the entry into Europe, so the reason behind the UV-resistant equatorial skin tone escapes me as that area was left behind about 100k prior to entering Europe.
Also needing to be taken into consideration is that the European hair colour mutations for fair/brown and red hair date back to over 80k, and that the red hair genes at least will have had a lightening affect on skin tone. Lighter eye colours also lighten skin colour, and although blue is recent and fairly limited in distribution, other eye colours are much older and wider distributed, even as far as the Ainu and the Hmong.
From the same author, also see …http://tinyurl.com/c9zlq9 http://tinyurl.com/cb9e2f http://tinyurl.com/d75csu
They think now the Homo Erectus made it to Europe at some
White people didn’t exist 35,000 years ago. Furthermore, modern Europeans are not necessarily descended from this guy or his relatives. The Mongoloid race and Caucasoid race had not even formed this point.
It’s funny how everyone forgets that dark skin is an evolved trait. Don’t believe me? Shave a chimp…Posted by Exegesis…I can agree with you on that. It seems logical…Posted by browser
Just don’t either one of you try to shave a gorilla - especially the 800-pound one in the living room.
A few things.
Matilda is one of those writers who is on some sort of a jihad to prove that Southern Europeans have little to no Black in them. The truth is that they are around 5% Black. This seems to motivate a lot of her writings.
The early arrivals in the Levant 100,000 years ago do not seem to be related to us. We are related to another movement out of Africa 70,000 YBP.
To say that the mutation for red hair goes back 80,000 years is very controversial. The European red hair mutation is thought to only go back 9000 years or so.
Wolpoff et al are really on the fringes now with the Multiregional stuff. Almost the whole field is behind out of Africa.
No one knows if there was any interbreeding with earlier types with the Aborigines and the East Asians. Maybe some. No one really knows. But nothing is showing up in genes. To call these earlier types the OOA people may have bred with Erectus isn’t quite right either. More like archaic Sapiens.
I fail to understand why it is so insulting to say that we Whites came from Blacks. So Grandpa was Black folks, big deal. Chinese and Japanese came from Aborigine types. Both of us, we Whites and the NE Asians, have certainly moved along, have we not? This is the tapestry of life: progress.
My earlier point about skin tone relates to the existence of a glacial climate between approx. 110,000 BC and 10,000 BC (the Wisconsin period). Warm weather adaptation would have only worked well on the hot spots of the world - this article supposes that Romania, cold today, got colonized during an ice age by persons used to living in a jungle. The world was a very different place 35k years ago.
To say that the mutation for red hair goes back 80,000 years is very controversial.
“I fail to understand why it is so insulting to say…….{snip}… Grandpa was Black folks, big deal”.
Hmmm. With all due respect to those who think we whites haven’t evolved from earlier sorts (and who don’t rely on the Bible for their science) I would suggest you reason from the fact that everything we know about always starts as a single point on a bare canvas (both in a real and metaphorical sense).
More specifically,current scientific thinking is that all life began with chemicals joining together and forming DNA and then the DNA formed a single cell and the single cell…and on…and on…and on as life multiplied, adapted, mutated, evolved.
I’m not at all upset that several hundred million years ago my gggggggggg etc granparent was a single cell probably living in a dirty pool of water, and I’m also not upset that 50,000 years ago some people out of Africa changed more into what I am now.
I just don’t want my genes to return to Africa and I want to keep evolving in the direction that I think is best—which is to become more white (meaning having even more of all of the characteristics that our people have), not less so.
The “first European.”