A 7,000 year old Spanish individual may have had blue eyes and dark skin.
The Mesolithic Period (between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago) remains are believed to be the" first recovered genome of [a] European hunter-gatherer," a Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) news release reported.
The team named the ancient individual La Braña 1 after the La Braña-Arintero site in Valdelugueros where the remains were discovered. The site is located in a cave found in a chilly mountainous region; it is 1,500 meters below the sea level. These conditions are believed to have contributed to the "excellent" DNA preservation of La Braña 1 and another body dubbed La Braña 2.
During the end of the Mesolithic period agriculture and livestock farming started to work its way into society beginning in the Middle-East.
The following Neolithic period brought a carbohydrate-based diet as well as pathogens contracted from domesticated animals. La Braña 1 did not have the ability to digest lactose.
"The biggest surprise was to discover that this individual possessed African versions in the genes that determine the light pigmentation of the current Europeans, which indicates that he had dark skin, although we [cannot] know the exact shade," Carles Lalueza-Fox, researcher from the CSIC, said in the news release.
La Braña 1's genome suggests the individual's closest relatives now live in Northern European countries such as Sweden and Finland. It is also believed to be related to remains found in the "Upper Paleolithic site of Mal'ta, located in Lake Baikal (Siberia)," the news release reported.
"These data indicate that there is genetic continuity in the populations of central and western Eurasia. In fact, these data are consistent with the archeological remains, as in other excavations in Europe and Russia, including the site of Mal'ta, anthropomorphic figures -called Paleolithic Venus- have been recovered and they are very similar to each other," Lalueza-Fox said.
"Even more surprising was to find that he possessed the genetic variations that produce blue eyes in current Europeans, resulting in a unique phenotype in a genome that is otherwise clearly northern European," she said.
