99.5% of Europeans today carry two copies of the genetic variant at SLC24A5 correlated with lighter skin. When ancient DNA began to examine the genetic prehistory of the continent in 2014, almost none of the prehistoric indigenous European hunter-gatherers had these “European” alleles. Their genetic state was similar to Africans and East Asians. And there was yet another twist. These early Europeans did have very high frequencies of the alleles associated with blue eyes. Higher than any modern Western European population, with as many as 80% having blue eyes (curiously, modern Finns and Estonians actually match them today). The foraging tribes roaming Western Europe after the end of the last Ice Age 12,000 years ago would have looked unlike any modern human population. The past was truly a different land.

In Western Europe, light skin only arrived with farmers from the Near East. Unlike the blue-eyed Mesolithic foragers they encountered, these people seem to have had the human norm of brown eyes. It is hard to deny the likelihood that this prehistoric encounter would have had a racial valence.

The third major actor in this demographic conveyer belt is the Indo-Europeans. About 5,000 years ago, these agro-pastoralists migrated into Europe westward from the steppe, mixing with the indigenous farmers and the last foragers, and imposing their languages on the continent. Like the farmers, these people had light skin and brown eyes, but their genetic innovation was introducing the allele for blonde hair on the KITLG gene.

Paleogenetics makes clear that the genetic ingredients for the typical physical appearance of many modern Europeans came together only 5,000 years ago. The precise combination of light hair, blue eyes, and white skin, seen in many Nordic populations was unknown in prehistory. It was only the fusion of steppe agro-pastoralists with Neolithic farmers and Mesolithic foragers that produced a genetic mix that set the stage for the emergence of what we might think of today as a prototypical European look.

And yet this did not snap together overnight. The most recent work on selection in pigmentation suggests that alleles associated with lighter complexion have been evolving even over the last 2,000 years in England. The same is true in Estonia, where we even have ancient DNA from 2,500 years ago attesting to the reality that prehistoric Balts were considerably darker than modern ethnic groups in the region. The fact that 90% of Estonians today have blue eyes seems to be due to strong selection for this trait over the past 3,000 years.

Because human genetics has had a Eurocentric focus, we understand the genetic basis for pigmentation in these populations in the greatest detail. Ancient DNA datasets are also more comprehensive for Europe, allowing for deeper investigation of natural selection in this region over time. But this phenomenon is not limited to Europeans. About 2,000 years ago, pastoralists migrating out of East Africa brought the skin-lightening variant of SLC24A5 to the Khoisan people of southern Africa. Today the novel A allele is present at 30-50% among the Khoisan due to strong natural selection. It is no coincidence that Khoi pastoralists and Bushmen hunter-gatherers are lighter-skinned than their Bantu neighbors. Several thousand years earlier in prehistoric South Asia, populations from West Asia and Eastern Europe carried the A allele, and mixed with dark-skinned populations which had only the ancestral allele, G. Here too, natural selection drove the allele frequency up to higher frequencies (I myself carry the genotype AA, meaning I carry two of the “European” alleles). The same is true in Ethiopia, where Eurasian populations mixed with Africans over the past 3,000 years, as selection has driven up the relative frequency of A over G.

In all these regions, the selected variant is associated with lighter skin. There is one simple model where light skin is selected in areas with lower ultraviolet radiation, in order to synthesize vitamin D in the skin. But I have a difficult time believing this was true of the Kalahari desert, coastal India, and the sunny highlands of Ethiopia.

I noted earlier that the genetic region around SLC24A5 in Europeans is rather homogeneous. This means that a whole block of the genome is basically identical, and comes from a common ancestor. For geneticists, this is an immediate sign of a “sweep”, where a strong selection event removes variation across the whole region of the genome due to a very rapid adaptive drive. The region around SLC24A5 in Indians, Ethiopians, and Khoisan shows the same sweep, and the same genetic variation. In other words, the variant of SLC24A5 being targeted by natural selection from the Cape of Good Hope to the Bay of Bengal and the Baltic is the exact same one. When geneticists look at the A allele in samples 20,000 years ago in the Caucasus, the block of SLC25A5 already looks the same there as well. The vast majority of the copies of SLC24A5 carrying the A-mutation over the past 20,000 years from Europe, to South Asia, to South Africa, are genetically identical, coming from the same ancestor.

What does this all mean? Speaking as someone who has looked deep into the literature, and spoken to the scientists, I'm sorry to say we have no idea.

A surge in gang-related killings has catapulted Sweden to top of Europe's murder league & launched national moral panic https://t.co/lWkbOgftU3
For perspective, it remains at < 1/10th of the gun murder rate in the US.https://t.co/X6yqkgOtwB pic.twitter.com/oqj9kFDXrK

— Adam Tooze (@adam_tooze) November 19, 2023

lemme see that kings

“Swedes make you feel foreign even when you have the passport, even my kids who were born here,” he says. “They blame immigrants for everything. But this gang violence affects me, my family, my friends as well.”

NOOOOO you have to feel sorry for MEEEEEE!!!! I HAVE to raise my family 4,000 miles away from home and still expect not to be treated as a foreigner for some reason!!!!

LOOOOK i have the magic book which says I'm just as swedish as you!! We're the same!!!!!!!!

God I wish that were true

Arabs r stupid

don't miss the part where she talks about how the local bushmen were exterminated because they wouldn't stop cattle rustling.

Based pan-Africanists