• CheGueBeara [he/him]
      ·
      2 years ago

      Fun fact: per DNA evidence at archeological sites, at least some peoples of Ireland several thousand years ago did have dark skin. And at least sometimes, blue eyes.

      Doesn't make the line you're mentioning less dumb and racist, I just think it's interesting that they could be slightly right about a part that really just reveals holocene humanity was more interesting and varied than we usually think.

      • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        That's not surprising at all Europe has a long maritime history and is next to both Africa and the middle east.

        • Farman [any]
          ·
          edit-2
          2 years ago

          Everyone was dark skinned 10k years ago. Ligth skin is an adaptation to the convination of a vitamin poor diet and low uv radiation. If your population lives way up north but have a good diet like eskimos or mongols or siberians you are not as white. If your population has a shity diet but live further south you are not as white.

          • CheGueBeara [he/him]
            ·
            2 years ago

            I think the general consensus is that light skin evolved a few times and some of those times were at least 20-30k years ago. There were folks with different amounts of melanin running around for a long time.

            • Farman [any]
              ·
              2 years ago

              Oviously the first instances of those genes are cery old. Maybe even neanderthal old. But selection preassure for them to become dominant in a population is due to vitamin d deficieny in pregnancy. And that is mostly an agriculturalist thing. But if there is enough sunligth its not as bad. That explains the north south gradient in skintones as well as darker skinned huntergatherers in high latitudes. And that diserent version of the gene were selectd in west and east asia.

              • CheGueBeara [he/him]
                ·
                2 years ago

                Those are definitely reasonable explanations, especially since you do get more vitamin D w/ less sun the lighter your skin is - and there are trade-offs when you get a lot of sun with light skin. Though the story could also be more complex or even seemingly random (or just historically contingent), also having to do with how people migrated, how big their populations got, etc etc.

      • Farman [any]
        ·
        2 years ago

        All people on both british islands are decendants of king mil of galicia(spain). That is were the mame morarity comes from

        • CheGueBeara [he/him]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Well, they all at least claim to have royal blood, lol.

          The Irish in particular have stories about people from Spain coming over hundreds of years ago, part of the other legend around being Black Irish (in this case, meaning darker hair and brown eyes but still light skin).

          • Farman [any]
            ·
            2 years ago

            The original population had to come from europe. But continental europe was to coold except for a few areas. Spain was the closest to the british islands. And so it is likley they went from there. The legend is probably originated in aome pun as such things often are but in this case turned out correct. If mil lived at the end of the last ice age

      • usernamesaredifficul [he/him]
        ·
        2 years ago

        The Scottish != the Irish

        there were no such theories about the Scottish as the Scottish were just considered British and thus equals to the English and Welsh