White Europe is only dominated by 1700 years / day

The color of the indigenous people of the northern part of Europe is pale, and over the centuries it has strengthened the conviction that white people have always lived in cool regions. However, it turns out that the European population, who is considered, is relatively new – white as the dominant group in this part of the continent has become relatively recently, 1700 years ago, or during the decline of the Roman Empire.

The discovery of Gene Researchers at the University of Ferrara is not surprising in itself. The fact that the first immigrants in Europe were dark, have long been spoken by scientists. However, it is unexpected that the discovery that white has begun relatively late. Evaluating the whole western part of the continent as a whole, white people have become the largest group at the beginning of our era.

Entered the dark -skinned

The oldest residents of Europe were believed to have reached relatively cool and intense areas 45 thousand years ago. They were black people who left Africa and initially settled in the Mediterranean. The way north resumed resumed when the Middle East tribes learned to process the land and were able to provide themselves with food in cooler climates.

After studying the DNA samples obtained by the Stone, Copper and Bronze Age, Italian scientists found that only about 14,000 years ago, lighter people appeared, apparently from families in the north to adapt to the specific climate where the sun was rarely shining and radiation was not intense.

« When early people spread to the north, lighter phenotypes appeared, » Italian scientists explain. Getting lighter skin for northerners was a matter of survival. The pale skin tone facilitates the penetration of ultraviolet radiation in the body, where it helps the body to produce vitamin D. It is very important to maintain strong bones and muscles. Meanwhile, darker skin better protects against excessive ultraviolet radiation, characterized by hot areas.

Slow change

The dark population in Europe had dominated millennia, or 96% of the entire European population period, but 7,000 years ago, the picture began to change. Three thousand years ago, the population of light color was already remarkable and became the largest group in some northern territories. However, in Europe as a whole, the dark people have still been larger. The decisive turnaround only happened 1,700 years ago, when the White became the dominant group in the middle and north of Europe.

« The turning point for lighter pigmentation was not linear and did not happen everywhere at the same time. It was even slower than one could expect, » the authors of the work wrote in a released statement.

DNA analyzes shows that white people became the dominant group in Sweden – about 6,000 years ago. White Europe is dominated by only 1700 years of lighter skin color for northerners, it turns out to have been a long -term process that ended in our era in the UK, Denmark, Estonia and Romania about 4,000 years ago, and in the Czech Republic, France and Hungary 2500 years ago. The case of Finland is very unusual. Even at the beginning of our era, there was a relatively large population of dark -skinned people, but the changes have taken place relatively rapidly, and in the Middle Ages, the inhabitants of the area have been almost 100 % light skin.

There have been no radical changes elsewhere in Europe. For example, in Italy, Spain and southern regions of Russia, the proportion of dark people remained high. In the Britain in the Bronze Age 2000 to 500 BC, about a quarter of the population had a distinctly dark skin color, 50% medium and only a quarter had already become white. In France, on the other hand, all people were white during this period.