January
27
/ 2014
A recent analysis on DNA taken from the wisdom tooth of a 7,000-year-old human found in Spain in 2006 has overturned the popular image of light-skinned European hunter-gatherers. The study revealed that the individual had dark hair, the dark-skinned genes of an African, though scientists don’t know this exact skin tone, and blue-eyes, which were thought to have been brought to Europe by late-arriving farmers who invaded the continent more than 5,000 years ago. The new study, published in the journal Nature and led by Inigo Olalde of Spain’s Institut de Biologia Evolutiva in Barcelona, involved the first ever analysis of a pre-agricultural European genome and has given scientists an unprecedented glimpse of modern humans in Europe before the rise
