
Why are Europeans White? - alex_marchant
http://essays.backintyme.com/item/332
======
fecklessyouth
I'm definitely no expert, but it seems to me that the two pieces of evidence
he uses to date the creation of "whiteness" aren't very reliable. As one
commenter on his blog pointed out, cave painting may be dark simply because
that was the color they had available. And in terms of the Egyptians, the
woman may simply have been portrayed as wearing make-up...not as being white.
And even if his hypothesis is correct, I don't see how a white person in the
Baltic would end up marrying the Pharaoh.

------
edj
There's another school of thought that attributes the variety of hair, skin,
and eye color in Europe to sexual selection rather than the brightness of the
sun. In brief, Europe during the last glacial period offered very little food
for women to gather, so women were almost completely dependent upon men for
hunted meat. As a result of this imbalance, women developed striking looks to
attract men.

For an example of this line of thinking in the evolutionary literature see:
"European hair and eye color: A case of frequency-dependent sexual selection?"
(Frost 2006) [1]

 _Human hair and eye color is unusually diverse in northern and eastern
Europe. The many alleles involved (at least seven for hair color) and their
independent origin over a short span of evolutionary time indicate some kind
of selection. Sexual selection is particularly indicated because it is known
to favor color traits and color polymorphisms. In addition, hair and eye color
is most diverse in what used to be, when first peopled by hunter-gatherers, a
unique ecozone of low-latitude continental tundra. This type of environment
skews the operational sex ratio (OSR) of hunter-gatherers toward a male
shortage in two ways: (1) men have to hunt highly mobile and spatially
concentrated herbivores over longer distances, with no alternate food sources
in case of failure, the result being more deaths among young men; (2) women
have fewer opportunities for food gathering and thus require more male
provisioning, the result being less polygyny. These two factors combine to
leave more women than men unmated at any one time. Such an OSR imbalance would
have increased the pressures of sexual selection on early European women, one
possible outcome being an unusual complex of color traits: hair- and eye-color
diversity and, possibly, extreme skin depigmentation._

[1]:
[http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138(05)00059-0/abstr...](http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138\(05\)00059-0/abstract)

~~~
Tichy
So the way to look more sexy was to start looking weird? That sounds rather
arbitrary to me. Why not grow three boobs or develop wings or whatever?
Anything can be explained like that.

~~~
edj
A peacock's plumage is rather arbitrary and weird, as well. But for whatever
reason, vibrant plumage worked to attract the attention of peahens, so it was
selected for.

I've heard it argued that the existence of decorative traits indicates fitness
because it shows that an organism has a enough extra energy to devote to
decoration.

But that's speculative. Sexual selection isn't really a logical proces. It's
just an accumulating response to stimuli, over time.

------
jpxxx
Nitpick: That heat ferried by the gulf stream is what warns the Baltic is a
quasi-religious supposition from the father of oceanography. The thermal
ballast of the Atlantic ocean that develops in the summer is primarily
responsible for most of Europe's uncommonly warm winters.

~~~
vacri
The Baltic isn't all that warm either - half of it freezes over in winter.

~~~
nosse
I'm from small town called Liminka, it's next to Oulu in Finland. The sea
freezes in the winter but that doesn't keep Liminka from being a legendary
farming area because of high crop yield. It's just warm enough to have good
crops in the summer.

The crops are of course not nearly as good as in Germany, but you cant find
similar area from the same latitude in Russia or Canada.

[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Liminka....](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Liminka.sijainti.suomi.2008.svg)

~~~
vacri
I don't question that cereals are grown there, but I do question the
hypothesis that the gulf stream is responsible for making cereals viable via
warming the Baltic.

The author may be spot on with his cereal theory, but I'm not convinced by the
suggested mechanism. The nascent fluid dynamicist in me doesn't see how a sea
with only one tight opening can exchange enough water for a significant
thermal exchange, one which would have to be pretty sizeable given the
freezing. I could be wrong, but I do note that the 'gulf stream' graphic
barely gets past Newfoundland, let alone showing the North Sea or the
Baltic...

~~~
nosse
I can't really say that I would have deep knowledge of this stuff. I do know
however that Golf current does not come to the Baltic sea. It cannot, as it
would just rise to water-level, no way to run through.

But usually wind and weather comes from west. So as golf current warms up the
coast of Norway, some of that warmth comes here. It's a weather pattern, but I
don't seem to find a good picture now, sorry.
[http://www.weatherwise.org/sebin/x/a/russian-inferno-
photo6....](http://www.weatherwise.org/sebin/x/a/russian-inferno-photo6.jpg)

I remember from geography class that we are in this climate zone and it's
called a Hadley cell. And inside that cell air circulates, but it cannot
really break away. So kind of Golf course breaks into that cell from below.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadley_cell>

EDIT: sorry, lost in translation, I meant a Ferrel cell
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_circulation#Ferrel_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_circulation#Ferrel_cell)
Ans that's not very accurate as Finland seems to be in polar front.

------
bfe
This essay is from 2002 (and most of the citations in the longer cited version
were quite old even then), and a great deal has been learned through DNA
studies since then. And some of his points of evidence such as the coloration
on a piece of cave art are obviously flimsy. (And not to rely on an appeal to
authority but he doesn't convincingly overcome being a non-expert commenting
on an active scientific field, and I'm calling crackpot on the website.)

There's good evidence that Homo sapiens sapiens first arrived in Europe during
a warm period sometime around 45,000 years ago, then lived through the last
glaciation maximum covering most of the continent with a peak around 18,000
years ago, driving the population through a harsh bottleneck that strongly
selected for traits that aided survival in the cold climate. The population
rebounded in numbers and in latitude from that bottleneck as the climate
warmed again. A higher initial population under greater selective pressure for
a longer period of time than elsewhere suffices to explain the resulting
traits.

------
trafficlight
Good thing you can't actually click on the images to make them larger. I
didn't really want to look at those maps anyway.

~~~
dmoy
That's odd, I can rightclick-> open image or zoom just fine. Is something
wrong with your (or my!) browser?

~~~
vacri
Even then, they're not a great size for examination. The whole format of the
page looks like it was made by Crackpots-R-Us, which doesn't contribute well
to his argument.

~~~
dmoy
Fair enough, I see :)

------
necolas
This is a _hypothesis_. IIRC, there is considerable variation in pigmentation
in other parts of the world too. There isn't a direct mapping because other
factors, like sexual selection (something not mentioned in the article),
affect the phenotype of populations.

------
scalable
"In fact, it happened after 13 KYA. Cave art from that time always shows
normally pigmented people. Notice that in this painting from 13 KYA, the
hunters are the same color as the deer."

Notice how the painting is monochrome. Maybe they just didn't have the
artistic skill required?

------
jlmendezbonini
"Children around the world are often blonde, but their hair darkens at
puberty. So it is not just northern European adult skin that lacks pigment. It
is also adult European hair."

The pictures posted by the author about child blondness look suspiciously like
cases of malnutrition [1][2].

[1][http://www.lancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(...](http://www.lancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736\(09\)61314-3/fulltext)
(search for "vitamin")

[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_hair_color#Medical_condit...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_hair_color#Medical_conditions)

~~~
hackinthebochs
Those pictures were probably from melanesia where blonde hair is native to the
population (more striking in children)

~~~
jlmendezbonini
I've never heard of that population before, it's quite an impressive thing to
see [1]. On the other hand, the author's statement makes it sound like it's a
common phenomenon around the world when it's not.

[1][https://www.google.com/search?q=melanesian+blonde&hl=en&...](https://www.google.com/search?q=melanesian+blonde&hl=en&sa=X&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&ei=mbXnT-
OEH4aa9gSLovWtAQ&ved=0CFgQsAQ&biw=1024&bih=662)

------
Gustomaximus
"Blonde hair and blue eyes were other infantile traits that were just swept
along accidentally."

I felt this is a bit of a loose statement. I would think, like light skin,
there would be a reason a recessive genes became so prevalent.

Edit: spelling

~~~
TheSOB88
This happens a lot though. For example, the alleles that keep domestic cats
and dogs friendly are from juvenilizing mutations. These mutations also make
the ears floppy. It's called "neoteny". The same thing happened when the
Russians domesticated silver foxes[1][2].

Humans are subject to a lot of these effects. Our head shape is very similar
to the head shape of a baby chimp or gorilla, which obviously changes later in
the ape's life. We have much smaller teeth and jaws than other apes our size.

Anyways, the point is that many alleles can be linked to a specific gene, so
the fact that blue eyes and blond hair become more prevalent when less skin
tone is selected for makes sense.

That said, I don't agree with some of the points made. He's kind of jumping to
conclusions. You really can't rely on _art_ to guide your research on skin
tone. I draw art where humans are #FFFFFF because that's the color of the
paper. Nobody in their right mind would trust something as symbolic as art.

I think the theory as a whole makes sense, though. Grains can grow, need moar
vitamin D, lighter skin, other alleles come along for the ride. Now that's a
pretty valid theory IMO.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoteny#Domestication> [2]
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1G2yZMUNUQ>

~~~
Terretta
> _Nobody in their right mind would trust something as symbolic as art._

So your conjecture is that the author is insane?

------
tokenadult
I see that as daylight has reached my multi-ethnic neighborhood near the 45th
parallel of north latitude in the middle of North America, this article about
settlement patterns of Homo sapiens has received a lot of upvotes. I'll reply
based on the more than fifty replies already posted, based on background
reading I've done on the subject, and based on my "natural experiment" of
living all over the United States (I have been to all states) and living near
the Tropic of Cancer in east Asia.

Essential background reading on this topic can be found in a user bibliography
on Wikipedia.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/Anthropol...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:WeijiBaikeBianji/AnthropologyHumanBiologyRaceCitations)

Any hypothesis about the origin, in deep prehistoric time, of a human
characteristic will be just that, a hypothesis, now that we are remote in time
from when our ancestors settled the earth. Tracing geographic patterns of gene
distribution for genes that are under WEAK selection pressure helps suggest
where the founder populations of different regions of the world most likely
came from, and there is no longer any serious doubt that species H. sapiens
originated in Africa and settled first the Old World (including Australia,
which required sea-crossing canoes to cross the Wallace Line) and then the New
World, with islands such as Madagascar and New Zealand being some of the last
places on earth to be settled.

My ancestors are known to have lived in recent historic times in the region
the author of the submitted article mentions the most, the shores of the
Baltic and North seas. People in my family line are quite pale-skinned
although not invariably blond or blue-eyed. My wife's family are known to have
lived in recent historic times in the region spanning both sides of the Taiwan
Strait at the edge of the tropics. There is a large difference in annual
sunlight exposure between those two regions, but my wife's family is like many
families from east Asia in also being quite pale-skinned as a baseline,
although always black-haired and dark-eyed. As several of the previous
comments have correctly pointed out, there is LARGE variation of skin color in
all geographic populations anywhere on earth. Moreover, there is large
individual variation in skin color in most individuals subject to lifestyle
variations (more or less outdoor activity) and seasonal variations (sunny
summers contrasted with cloudy winters). My children's skin color varies over
a wide range, with my son who plays the most travel soccer becoming the most
dark during the summer and my son who is a hacker staying the most pale year-
round.

The deep ancestral condition of all hominins was pale skin. Beneath their
black hair, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) have pale skin at birth and in
youth.

[http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/07/3/text_pop/l_07...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/07/3/text_pop/l_073_04.html)

<http://humanorigins.si.edu/evidence/genetics/skin-color>

The hominin line of descent that branched into H. sapiens had to develop skin
that began dark and persisted as dark as humans lost body hair and began
living in savannah environments with less shade than forests, according to the
currently accepted hypothesis. As population bottlenecks in Africa formed the
species H. sapiens, presumptively the typical skin color of all modern humans
was dark (within a pattern of continued variation among individuals and a
continued capacity for individual skin color to vary over the course of
seasons). Then as different founder populations settled in Europe (high
latitude) and east Asia (cloudy even when not at high latitude in many coastal
areas), the local populations were under selection pressure for selective
sweeps of mutations that increased the gene frequency of paler skin.
Generally, both Europeans and east Asians are pale, but they aren't usually
pale because of the same novel gene patterns.

By the way, the "race" categories that are used in the United States are
arbitrary, subject to rewriting from time to time for political
considerations, and do not correspond to any scientific view of geographical
populations. In any event, it is clear that human beings have been traveling
back and forth and exchanging genes from one local population to another from
the earliest days of human settlement of the earth. For more on the specific
"race" categories in United States law and how they are applied to specific
situations (especially college and university admission), see

[http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-
admissions/12282...](http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-
admissions/1228264-race-college-admission-faq-discussion-9-a.html)

for FAQ links to many official websites with governmental regulations and
definitions and statistics.

~~~
jessriedel
> By the way, the "race" categories that are used in the United States are
> arbitrary, subject to rewriting from time to time for political
> considerations, and do not correspond to any scientific view of geographical
> populations.

These categories are hardly arbitrary, they are political. We separate people
into republicans and democrats, too, but just because this separation is not
based on genetics or geography does not make it arbitrary or even bad.

~~~
primatology
That's his point. Political categorizations seem arbitrary from a scientific
perspective.

~~~
jessriedel
He doesn't say "arbitrary from a scientific perspective", he says "arbitrary".
The former would be a silly point anyways. Would it make sense to point out
how arbitrary it is that the houses of congress are divided up by party
because party appears arbitrary from a (genetic) scientific viewpoint?

Don't confuse genetic/geographic science with science as a whole. Anywhere you
can do experiments you can do science, and politics is no exception (although
everything is much noisier). Certainly, the groups of people described by the
census are meaningful in a scientifically confirm-able way: they identify with
each other, forming clearly discernible self-selecting cliques, neighborhoods,
etc.

------
hurshp
This is just plain wrong, if you watch the documentary "the human family tree"
the first people with less pigment were southeast asians as in towards China,
and there is genetic evidence for it.

I think it is sad the more I watch these genetic documentaries the more I see
the mixing of gene pools the more you know humans are very much the same but
we also have a massive innate disposition to see people with different
physical traits or culture as different from ourselves.

~~~
hurshp
I wish White Europeans and American etc. Could get over it, you owe your white
skin to Africans becoming light skin asians It has almost nothing to do with
Europe except that is where the settlements ended up. The genetic trace has
all been done. Yes we are all as much Asian as African believe it or not.

This is why I wish more scientists would speak up because of debates like this
where the evidence is out there but no scientist to presents it, instead just
random blog posts faking the science behind it.

------
devs1010
Is it just me or do some Asians not seem nearly as white as caucasians? It
seems especially Japanese can be fairly pale, I think its fairly subjective to
say people of European ancestry are universally the most pale on earth.

~~~
batista
Of course they do not. Malaysians for example are dark colored, as are
Indonesians etc. Also Indians are far from pale.

~~~
devs1010
I work with many Indians and they themselves refer to "Asian" as a different
race (meaning East Asian), so I didn't mean Indian people by this, rather East
Asian, obviously many East Asians are much darker skinned than whites, however
I personally know Asians that are fairly pale and I am sure at times I have
been more tan than they are (when I would spend more time outside) and I
primarily of German-Irish ancestry.

~~~
bencoder
For whatever reason, pale skin is highly coveted by many Asian cultures and
some will avoid the sun almost entirely to avoid darkening their skin. As well
as using (potentially dangerous) skin lightening products which is a huge
market in Asia: <http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/v35/naacr_vol35_273.pdf>

~~~
batista
> _For whatever reason, pale skin is highly coveted by many Asian cultures and
> some will avoid the sun almost entirely to avoid darkening their skin._

Isn't the opposite also true in Western cultures? In Europe, where I live,
people want to look darker, and go sunbathing. And in the US there's also this
"fake tan" thing.

~~~
unsigner
Here in Southeastern Europe, there's definitely a strong preference towards
white in folklore; 150 years ago, only rich folks' daughters could afford to
avoid crop work and stay indoors long enough to stay white.

------
iand
I smell BS. He suggests that these people around the coast gave up eating fish
in favour of grains. I doubt it. Even today fish and shellfish feature heavily
in the region's cuisine.

~~~
nosse
Heard of Viking crusades? It happened partly because there was too many people
living in Scandinavia. That happened because Scandinavian farming had gotten
the population to get too big. You run out of reliable fishing sources long
before you hit the grains maximum. You don't have to replace fish with grains,
just introducing grains to the diet can increase risk of malnutrition.

On the contrary this explains nicely how Sami people can be darker than
Germans. They lived of reindeer, bird trapping and fishing, even like hundred
years ago. It explains why Finnish are somewhat darker than swedes, we relied
on hunting and fishing far longer than Swedes did.

------
ricardobeat
The UV map doesn't match the color skin distribution that well (there is a
distribution map at the end). Natives all over America had reddish-brown skin
instead of black, despite receiving similar amounts of UV to Africa. Maybe
related to dense forests vs desert/savana?

~~~
sliverstorm
Well, American natives are supposedly Russian in origin (?), and if they came
from a group that had developed the paleness trait, it's feasible that in re-
developing darker skin their bodies wouldn't come up with the exact same
solution as the original Africans.

~~~
mhurron
Native Americans are Mongoloid in decent, not Caucasian Russians.

~~~
sliverstorm
Ah, there we go. Well, either way, Mongols are not black.

------
kqr2
The Q&A section of the animated video is also interesting:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3eUP4-BlXI#t=08m24s>

It addresses other competing theories, in particular sexual selection and
genetic drift.

------
exit
i wonder whether depigmentation happened fast enough for people to be
cognissant of the advantages.

well into the processes, would people know that dark skinned atavisms would
have nutritional problems?

~~~
molmalo
I think that the most visible advantage/disadvantage of having different skin
colors, are the frequency and severity of sunburns. Black people are more
resistant to sunburns than white people. And given that they would need to
move hundreds or thousands of kilometers, to be exposed to lower latitudes and
heavier solar radiation, and that it was a loooong trip in those prehistoric
times, maybe they didn't get to see the advantages/disadvantages.

But then again... who knows?!

~~~
InclinedPlane
How common were sunburns before indoor lighting and industrialization though?
If you spent at least an hour outdoors every day from early spring through
late fall would you ever get sunburned?

~~~
nosse
People have used protective clothing for a long time now. Farmers used to use
big hats. I can't prove anything from 5000 years ago, but there was a kind of
cowboy hat in Finnish farmer culture about hundred years back.

[http://rautu.fi/Tallenne/EntinenRautu/Maanviljely/Jurtin-
har...](http://rautu.fi/Tallenne/EntinenRautu/Maanviljely/Jurtin-
harvennuskurssi.jpg)

------
berntb
Uh, light skin, blue eyes and blonde hair is just 6000 year old?! Sounds
really weird to get so common so quickly.

This should already be well known, by the mutation speed of the relevant
genes?

What about an alternative hypothesis, like sexual evolution?

Edit: From the wikipedia page, this theory seems to be quite recent.
Interesting. (Sigh, I liked the idea of blonde neanderthals. :-) )

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_skin_color#Evolution_of_s...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_skin_color#Evolution_of_skin_color)

" _This theory is supported by a study into the SLC24A5 gene which found that
the allelle associated with light skin in Europe may have originated as
recently as 6,000–10,000 years ago[23] which is in line with the earliest
evidence of farming.[47]_ "

~~~
thaumasiotes
Peter Frost has been writing about this for years. He comes down on the side
of the sexual selection theory, so if you're interested in that, check him
out.

[http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2009/07/why-are-europeans-
wh...](http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2009/07/why-are-europeans-white.html)

[http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2010/04/puzzle-of-
european-h...](http://evoandproud.blogspot.com/2010/04/puzzle-of-european-
hair-and-eye-color.html)

~~~
henrikschroder
But he even contradicts himself in that post. He has an example of a modern
experiment where people select brunettes over blondes because of rarity.

So if european whiteness is a product of sexual selection of rare blondes, why
didn't it swing the other way when the majority of the population were blonde?
In some parts of Sweden and Finland, 85% of the adults are blonde, how could
it ever go way above 50%? If the hypothesis was true, then people in those
areas would have strongly selected brunettes and reversed it?

~~~
thaumasiotes
Here's what I understand of Frost's opinions:

> if european whiteness is a product of sexual selection of rare blondes

It isn't. European whiteness (of skin) is a product of women being more
heavily selected than men, since paleness of skin is a sex characteristic of
females. (For example, african boys are born light, and darken over time.
African girls are born light, darken until puberty, and then lighten.)

European variation in hair and eye color (but not skin color) is a color
polymorphism typical of sexual selection. On this theory, 85% of adults
sharing the identical hair color is unexpected.

\-----

Here are some of my own thoughts on your question (I claim no qualification at
all to pontificate here):

\- What size are these "some parts of Sweden and Finland"? The smaller they
are, the less interesting it is that they might appear uniform.

\- Do 85% of adults share the identical hair color, or is variation being
binned into the category "blonde"? Compare the internal variation of african
or chinese hair color.

------
ygmelnikova
Of course, there's another reason that's been kicking around for decades. A
pair suddenly shows up in Mesopotamia around 6000 years ago. Their descendants
taken captive by Assyria, and their eventual migration into Northern Europe as
the Anglo Saxons / Celtic peoples.

[http://www.livescience.com/9578-common-ancestor-blue-
eyes.ht...](http://www.livescience.com/9578-common-ancestor-blue-eyes.html)

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Israelism>

~~~
ygmelnikova
"Hine's work The British Nation Identified with Lost Israel (1871) sold up to
250,000 copies"

~~~
ygmelnikova
"It has been claimed that by the early 20th century there were more than two
million British Israelites in Britain and the United States"

------
SagelyGuru
Interesting theory. Pity though for the author that it is well know that white
people migrated into Europe from Iran and Northern India.

------
Zenst
How does this explain blue grass? Is grass the same colour all over the World?
Just a thought.

Also white people look white as they reflect that light so there skin is the
opposite, same for people who are black in that there skin is obsorbing the
other light frequencies and so reflecting back not alot and as such appearing
black.

Now if you got all the populations and used transport like planes and mixed
them all about over the World then stopped having any movement, would the
people in the northern and southern climates away from the equator become
paler skinned and would those in the equator become darker skinned! Its like
that eggs/drugs analogy - this your skin and this is your skin on sun :-).

Still, I would like to know what is the average shade of green per country and
how much effect does its lattitude have upon that shade of green. Plants
tended not to move as much and as humans have.

So to answear to original question:

Why are Europeans White? Because none of them are Wong :-) and there not
actualy white.

~~~
rokhayakebe
Why was this downvoted?

~~~
Zenst
No idea, shortcommings in others eludes me as well.

