Hair and eye pigmentation of various Bronze Age and Iron Age people

[Maciamo]

I found these and thought I would share them here. I think the charts were made by Owen McCormick.

Bronze Age​

Iron Age​

 

[Maciamo]

The following charts are by Iovincorīx.

Iron Age Gauls from France​

Gauls from Northern France (Picardy & Normandy)​

Gauls from Northern France (Champagne region)​

Gauls from Northeastern France (Alsace)​

Gauls from Southern France (Languedoc)​

 

[Maciamo]

Roman Kingdom and Republic​

 

[Vallicanus]

Roman Kingdom and Republic​

View attachment 19613

Owen McCormick excluded 3 East Mediterranean outliers from these Roman charts.

 

[Maciamo]

For some reason the charts about Bronze Age Iberians has hair colour and Y-DNA (instead of eye color). BA Iberians had about 75% of brown eyes.

The author of the charts mentioned that he only used liberian samples with Steppe autosomal DNA (hence the predominance of R1b samples).

 

[Vallicanus]

Is there nothing for Etruscans?

 

[Maciamo]

Vikings/Norsemen​

 

[bigsnake49]

If both eye color and hair color are very polygenic, how did they determine eye color and hair color? According to one of the eye color determinant based on DNA I am supposed to have gray eye color (my father had blue gray eyes). I, however have dark brown eyes and dark brown hair.

 

[Riverman]

If both eye color and hair color are very polygenic, how did they determine eye color and hair color? According to one of the eye color determinant based on DNA I am supposed to have gray eye color (my father had blue gray eyes). I, however have dark brown eyes and dark brown hair.

It is polygenic indeed, but if I'm not mistaken there is one "main switch", namely HERC2/OCA2, SNP rs12913832. If you have other blue/grey/green eye variants, but not even one of those, you are highly likely to get brown eyes.
To differentiate e.g. blue from green eyes, you need to use a polygenic score, because there is more than one allel involved. Therefore they likely did just differentiate light from dark with HERC2 would be my guess.

 

[Maciamo]

Anglo-Saxons​

 

[Vallicanus]

Roman Kingdom and Republic​

View attachment 19613

So, we are supposed to believe that the Moots/Antonio sample which was mainly Southweat European or West Mediterranean genetically had these high levels of blond hair and blue eyes? Really?

 

[HereToLearn]

So, we are supposed to believe that the Moots/Antonio sample which was mainly Southweat European or West Mediterranean genetically had these high levels of blond hair and blue eyes? Really?

I don't know, I wouldn't rule out those results in a sample of 6 or 7. In general, small samples have higher variance, so they are more likely to produce extreme results (law of small numbers).

 

[Vallicanus]

Roman Kingdom and Republic​

View attachment 19613

So, we are supposed to believe that the Moots/Antonio sample which was mainly Southweat European or West Mediterranean genetically had these high levels of blond hair and blue eyes? Really?

I don't know, I wouldn't rule out those results in a sample of 6 or 7. In general, small samples have higher variance, so they are more likely to produce extreme results (law of small numbers).

Perhaps but the Roman sample should be mainly dark of hair and eye if it was West Mediterranean and similar to IA Iberians.

 

[HereToLearn]

Perhaps but the Roman sample should be mainly dark of hair and eye if it was West Mediterranean and similar to IA Iberians.

As you know, the relationship between DNA and phenotype is not always straightforward, given the potential impact of different admixture events, sexual selection, and other population-specific factors. To take a simple modern example, Italians and Spaniards have, on average, broadly similar patterns of hair and eye pigmentation, even though they are genetically distinguishable populations.

That said, I agree that, under the baseline scenario — namely, assuming comparable and statistically significant Iron Age Iberian and Iron Age Roman samples — one would probably expect broadly comparable results.

 

[Riverman]

The Roman Kingdom and early Republic was still largely Italic-Etruscan and therefore had overwhelmingly Bell Beaker ancestry. Besides many prominent Roman personalities of that era were described as having lighter hair and blue eyes. E.g. Augustus was described as having lighter hair.

 

[Vallicanus]

Roman Kingdom and Republic​

View attachment 19613

So, we are supposed to believe that the Moots/Antonio sample which was mainly Southweat European or West Mediterranean genetically had these high levels of blond hair and blue eyes? Really?

I don't know, I wouldn't rule out those results in a sample of 6 or 7. In general, small samples have higher variance, so they are more likely to produce extreme results (law of small numbers).

Perhaps but the Roman sample should be mainly dark of hair and eye if it was West Mediterranean and similar to IA Iberians.

The Roman Kingdom and early Republic was still largely Italic-Etruscan and therefore had overwhelmingly Bell Beaker ancestry. Besides many prominent Roman personalities of that era were described as having lighter hair and blue eyes. E.g. Augustus was described as having lighter hair.

Augustus was described as "subflavus", not quite blond, i.e. maybe light brown-haired.
Genetically, the early Romans of the kingdom and early republic were mostly southwestern European-like closest to Corsicans and Iberians and the most northerly Italians.

Italic and Etruscan Iron Age (Latins, Etruscans and Daunians) were at a distance of:

0.02348094 from French_Corsica
0.02432314 from Italian_Bergamo
0.02634218 from Spanish_Menorca
0.02836173 from Italian_Lombardy
0.02853444 from Spanish_Baleares
0.02886766 from Italian_Trentino-Alto-Adige
0.02925620 from Italian_Veneto
0.03074275 from Spanish_Peri-Barcelona

 

[Riverman]

Worth to mention the sample is quite small, by the way. This can easily skew results a bit, even though I'm sure they were lighter haired than say late Republican-Imperial inhabitants.

 

[Vitruvius]

The Roman Kingdom and early Republic was still largely Italic-Etruscan and therefore had overwhelmingly Bell Beaker ancestry. Besides many prominent Roman personalities of that era were described as having lighter hair and blue eyes. E.g. Augustus was described as having lighter hair.

Augustus had brown hair and brown eyes as per the restored color pigmentation from the Prima Porta statue which was kept at his own family's residence and commissioned during his lifetime. There is a lot of nonsense spread by politically motivated individuals claiming Roman Emperors and high ranking officials to have an uncommon amount of light hair and eye colors relative to the local population which has quite simply never been true. You would do best to stop believing it. Light hair and eyes did of course exist amongst some emperors but not at any noticably high frequency.

 

[Vitruvius]

So, we are supposed to believe that the Moots/Antonio sample which was mainly Southweat European or West Mediterranean genetically had these high levels of blond hair and blue eyes? Really?

I would be willing to bet these estimates are not terribly accurate for any population to begin with for the reasons mentioned in this thread, but I also agree with Heretolearn, in that small sample sizes can additionally have biases which are not reflected in the larger encompassing demography. I believe the Picenes were predicted to have an unusually high frequency of blonde hair/blue eyes as well if memory serves despite the fact that they plot with N. Italians and not Northern Europeans. I've noticed Hirisplex skin color complexion estimates often lack accuracy as well.

 

[HereToLearn]

If I go out to lunch, or attend a meeting with six or seven people — the same size as the sample considered here — it is entirely possible that half or more of them will have blue eyes. Naturally blond hair (not light brown) is rarer, even in such a small group, but there would still be a realistic possibility that at least one person would be blond. In a sample of six people, that would translate into approximately 17% blond individuals, which is obviously a high percentage even for Northern Italy (that in modern Milan genetically 100% Northern Italian people are perhaps a minority is beside the point here). The point is that samples this small are simply too unpredictable to support any meaningful statistical inference.