Are light traits in Southern Europe due to the northern European admixture ?

[Reozek]

did light eyes/hair in Southern Europe appeared in the bronze age with the indoeuropean migrations from Central-Eastern Europe or they were already present in the indigenous paleolithic/neolithic popoluation ??

from what i've read it seems that Oetzi the mummy who lived in Chalcolithic northern Italy (before the indoeuropeans) had brown eyes and no northern european admixture...while this component among modern-day northern italians reach about 50% of aDNA

[Sikeliot]

I'd assume light traits would be less frequent in Southern Europe if not for Northern European admixture, but they'd still exist to a degree. You see light pigmented West Asians after all, so why not Southern Europeans too?

[Insuperable]

I'd assume light traits would be less frequent in Southern Europe if not for Northern European admixture, but they'd still exist to a degree. You see light pigmented West Asians after all, so why not Southern Europeans too?

They still are not completely "Northern European" free

[Sikeliot]

They still are not completely "Northern European" free

But the Northern European admixture is small enough that it shouldn't have much phenotypical impact.

[Insuperable]

But the Northern European admixture is small enough that it shouldn't have much phenotypical impact.

If 10% of SWA can make someone look Arab so 10% of northern European admixture can make some look northern

[Stefan]

These phenotypic qualities disperse as a gradient with an origin. Define what you mean by "North-European." It's likely the case that Southern Europeans have had many waves of admixture since the origin of the mutation which caused light traits in Northeastern Europe. Since Southern Europe is further away from Northeastern Europe and population movements to Southern Europe from these regions and the adjacent regions (which decrease in frequency by distance) would be less frequent, there is a lower frequency. Hence, the further away from the origin of the mutation, with a few exceptions, the lesser the probabilistic chance that you will have that mutation. It's likely the case that enough populations movement occurred very early on (since the onset of the mutation) that Southern Europeans mixed enough to have these light features, and the frequency increased or decreased based on other population movements and gradients.

Basically, in order to have these light features you must have mixed some time in the distant or near past with the population in which the light features originated or populations they have mixed with. Furthermore, different light features such as: skin pigmentation, eye color, hair color, etc originated in different periods of time, and some of these traits are polygenic, meaning multiple mutations (in multiple genes) contribute to the overall phenotype.

So yes, since the mutation for most of these traits, with the exception of skin depigmentation originated in Northern Europe, Southern Europeans have mixture with Northern Europeans. Of course, this holds true for Northern Europeans with each-other as well. All of these groups are intermixed heavily and could be considered one genetic population, if we are to use the biological and ecological definition of population.

edit: This is of course excluding natural selection from the picture.

[Prince Carlo]

If 10% of SWA can make someone look Arab so 10% of northern European admixture can make some look northern

The only West Asians that can overlap with North Euros are North Caucasians and they rarely do it.

[alfieb]

But the Northern European admixture is small enough that it shouldn't have much phenotypical impact.

I don't know how true that is. The natives of Central Turkey in Greco-Roman times were Celts who were said to strongly resemble the Gauls of France.

[Reozek]

I don't know how true that is. The natives of Central Turkey in Greco-Roman times were Celts who were said to strongly resemble the Gauls of France.

Before them even the Phrygians migrated from Europe (Lusatian area according to Gimbutas) to Anatolia...

[Peyrol]

It depens zone by zone.

In northern Italy lighter traits are moslty celtic (that's also why our languages are called ''Gallo-Romance'') + minor germanic, in some zone slike Sicily are a normannic and swabian heritage.