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From: "Ken Nordtvedt" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] Were the I1a people Brown Eyed?
Date: Sat, 11 Sep 2004 20:57:07 -0600
References: <20040912020856.12841.qmail@web81109.mail.yahoo.com>


Gary, I wish I had Cavalli-Sforza's book and the map you refer to. I only
have his other smaller book "Genes, Language, and People". Haplogroup "I"
spreads as I1a all the way northwest to Norway/Sweden/Iceland. That's about
as far as you can go in that direction. Does Sforza put a time with his
Baltic origin theory for this eye color mutation? I would think
substantially after the last glacial maximum; I don't think there were many
people up around the Baltic before the last ice age. That doesn't leave
much time for this human selection fashion for blue eyes to spread to not
only the nearby R1a folks, but also the R1b people who after the LGM leave
Iberia and move up the Atlantic coast to eventually populate the British
Isles and that portion of Norway/Sweden that was habitable at the time. R1b
hardly reaches Finland ever.

Human selection can indeed work very fast; but doesn't that make it an
"explanation" of convenience when nothing else comes to mind?

Ken
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