bones

This supposedly has to do with the fact that the original Celts were Iberian and their ancestors migrated across the strait of Gibraltar from Africa. The red-haired and pale look typically associated with Celtic identity likely comes from admixture from Germanic peoples. Remember that everyone’s ancestors came from Africa if you go far back enough.

Evidence of this phenotype can still be seen in some people today, particularly those from Wales and other western coastal regions. For example:

Welsh presenter Alex Jones

Welsh footballer Chris Coleman

Welsh actress Catherine Zeta-Jones who can notably pass for Hispanic.

English actor Ian McShane

It’s important to note that none of these people are immigrants or descended from immigrants. They all come from families native to the British Isles.

The take-home message here is A) don’t ever let anyone tell you British = pale and B) this

Cheddar Man was a Mesolithic hunter-gatherer whose bones were found in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, UK. He’s about 10,000 years old and from his DNA, it is likely that he had dark skin and pale eyes. He’s not alone! Other hunter-gatherers found in Spain, dating from around 7,000 years ago, showed similar genetics.

And even when we move into the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition and into the Neolithic, we have evidence of Whitehawk Woman and Lola (discovered in the UK and Denmark, respectively) - also with dark skin and pale eyes. Lola is incredibly cool because all we know of her is the DNA left on the birch pitch “chewing gum” she left behind.

It goes to show that when Homo sapiens radiated out of Africa (around 45,000 years ago, but now is not the time to talk about Out-of-Africa vs. Multiregional Continuity vs. Assimilation models), the switch from dark skin to pale skin did not happen as quickly as previously thought.

There are so many different skin tones because of the balance between UV radiation, folate, and Vitamin D. High UV exposure usually means darker skin because folate, an essential vitamin for growth and development, can be found in the skin and breaks down under high UV. High UV also means you’re getting plenty of Vitamin D from the sun, which you need for calcium absorption, amongst other things. Yes, more melanin also equals more protection from skin cancer, but from a natural selection point of view that doesn’t matter as much as folate and Vitamin D.

When humans started moving into areas with weaker UV (aka higher latitudes), that could have triggered a shift to paler skin to allow for more Vitamin D synthesis - and because UV is weaker overall, there isn’t as much concern about folate breaking down, either. However, if you’re getting enough Vitamin D from your diet, that shift from darker to paler skin need not happen - Inuit populations are a great example of this, and so are these historical examples.

It was probably only when during a shift to intensive agriculture in Neolithic Europe - and other areas, but Europe’s the one losing its mind over dark-skinned hunter-gatherers - that natural selection kicked in and there was a change where genes like MC1R shifted from producing eumelanin (brown-black pigment) to pheomelanin (reddish-pink). Intensive agriculture meant more monocropping and less diversity in diet. The Vitamin D that was once coming from the diet now needed to come from Vitamin D synthesis within the skin.

Sources:

-Cheddar Man: Mesolithic Britain’s blue-eyed boy

-Hunter-gatherer European had blue eyes and dark skin

-This Is ‘Lola,’ a 5,700-Year-Old Woman Whose Entire Life Is Revealed in Her ‘Chewing Gum’

-Why does ‘Whitehawk Woman’ have dark skin?

In 2016, a facial reconstruction was done by an artist specialising in forensic archaeology. He used samples of the colouring from the modern local population as he recreated her features.

However, two years later, further research included genetic sequencing and they found out that Ava not only had migrated to the area (possibly first or second generation from the Netherlands area), but they were able to identify that she was lactose intolerant and details of her appearance. The reconstruction was adjusted accordingly.