I just discovered that I am a mutant---

[franmarz]

In this mornings paper-Friday-Dec 16, there was a scientific article about how the human race was all dark skinned until they migrated up out of africa into northern Europe.
It seems that a mutant form emerged that started to turn the skin lighter. I wonder if anyone else has read the same article, and if so, what is their opinion-is it proven or just a scientific theory?

[preciousdove]

1. Cold climes require clothing, blocks vitamin D needed for health

Those with less melanin had an advantage in the far North. Of course those Red haired white skinned Vikings then went out far and wide and "married" the locals, Cleopatra sent colonists to Ireland and the Chippewa from Middle North America have European mitrochondrial DNA from 26,000 years ago so for anyone to say they are pure anything they are probably wrong. Funded scientists are making some assumptions based on DNA that I think may need more study but that dark skin came before light is probably true but the changes happened over thousands of years.

I do enjoy the Hawaiian story about God making a man and baked him too long and he was dark and he made another who he baked too little and he was white and then he made the perfect man and put him in Hawaii.

[sybylla]

3. Gee, that's interesting?

If you ask an anthropologist/archaeolgoist, the Chippewa didn't exist 26,000 years ago and most will argue this continent was barren of human life.

If you have a source for the mitochondrial DNA story, I'd love to read it.

[preciousdove]

4. Not my field

Mitochondrial DNA was studied in current populations and indicated 5 migrations. The "odd" population was the Chippewa. They ruled out post Columbus migration as the source.

I read it this year in Discover, Smithsonian or National Geographic. When I google all three come up as discussing the study below but I no longer have the magazine that makes that conclusion. Sorry. The DNA origin split was 26,000 years not the immigration.

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=379119

[Joe Chi Minh]

2. In one British TV programme of a series called,

"Tomorrow's World", that I watched many years ago, I believe the presenter stated that blue eyes were actually a genetic flaw or the result of one, and I may have seen a reference to it since, though I'm not sure; which is kind of ironical, if true, since I doubt that they've been a handicap to anyone(!), fair skin and blue eyes being widely coveted throughout the world, doubtless because of the considerable historical dominance of the Nordic races, particularly the Norsemen/Normans, since the middle-ages. Fair features can also be very attractive, of course, too.