Bronze Age Europeans had dark skin and blue eyes due to a DNA mutation.
A recent scientific research shows that DNA is responsible for lactose intolerance and white skin in Europeans. According to experts’ declarations, these traits appeared as a result of a DNA mutation which most likely occurred during the Bronze Age.
Scientists have followed different leads in order to understand the differences in point of physical traits occurring between Europeans and other cultures. They have thus found out that the large group of modern humans who have left Africa about 40,000 years ago have also headed towards north.
These people populated today’s territories of Europe, north, west and central Asia and they soon started to develop new physical characteristics. Several centuries later, these inhabitants no longer looked like their African co-inhabitants, but started to look more like the European populations we now know.
The exact DNA mutation occurred in the Bronze Age, so scientists have conducted a lengthy research to determine what happened back then. They have thus, found out that this was the period when European populations featured persons with dark skin and blue eyes for the first time.
Dark skin populations on the territory of Europe received blue eyes during the Bronze Age as a result of the OCA2 gene mutation. This modification might have been inherited from the European hunters of the Mesolithic as other populations in the area.
In addition to the light skin traits that Europeans had during the Bronze Age, scientists have also managed to identify possible lactose tolerance that inhabitants might have had back then. Further analyses have helped them discover that the Yamnaya population of Europe had problems digesting milk during adulthood.
Researchers were not able to identify the exact cause behind these population’s lactose intolerance. They presuppose that it has a lot to do with the milk being produced by cattle living in this region. Further evidence is required to prove that the milk that our Bonze Age ancestors consumed has led to Europeans’ lactose intolerance.
What is known for sure at the time being is that Europeans living in the Bronze Age already presented such a DNA mutation. This DNA mutation has further spread among populations and have eventually produced lactose intolerance and white skin in Europeans.
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