Dark skin and hair, like his African ancestors, but also blue eyes. This was the appearance of a hunter-gatherer who lived in the Mesolithic, 7 thousand years ago, whose remains were found in 2006 in a cave, on the site of Valdelugueros, in the north of Spain. And he didn't digest lactose and starch.
Don't store avocado like this: it's dangerous
Dark skin and hair, like his African ancestors, but also blue eyes. This was the appearance of a hunter-gatherer who lived in the Mesolithic, 7 thousand years ago, whose remains were found in 2006 in a cave, on the site of Valdelugueros, in the north of Spain. And he didn't digest lactose and starch.
This was discovered by a team of researchers coordinated by Carles Lalueza-Fox, of the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona, after having reconstructed its entire genome from DNA extracted from one of the teeth. The result, as it reveals study published yesterday in Nature, suggests that the shift to lighter skin in modern Europeans occurred later than the change in eye color.
Perhaps lighter skin evolved in cooler climates, perhaps it has to do with a lack of vitamin D. Eye color, on the other hand, is more difficult to explain. What's its purpose? It could be that the blue eyes evolved by sexual selection: one or both partners had chosen each other with blue eyes for some cultural reason.
But not only. The study of DNA reveals also that our Spanish collector was lactose intolerant. This is why its genome will be able to help us understand how the arrival of agriculture and livestock has shaped modern Europeans, who have adapted to a new diet and new diseases linked to the consumption of animal products. developing lactose tolerance, or the ability to drink the milk of other animals even as adults.
He also had difficulty digesting starches, compared to Neolithic farmers. The other surprise lies in the hunter-gatherer immune system. Its immune system genes and those that influence the risk of bacterial infection are similar to those of modern humans. Until now, scholars were convinced that many immunity genes had evolved from farmers.
Roberta Ragni
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