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Archiver > GENEALOGY-DNA > 2006-05 > 1147209101


From: "Lawrence Mayka" <>
Subject: RE: [DNA] Brown eyes
Date: Tue, 9 May 2006 16:11:41 -0500
In-Reply-To: <001301c67393$c73fc5f0$bec79045@Ken1>


> From: Ken Nordtvedt [mailto:]
> most of them concerning the eye color. But what then makes me wonder is
why
> these alleged selection pressures only prevailed in northern Europe? As
far
> as I can tell the only place in the world that the blue eye thing came to
> high frequency was the swath of northern Europe from the Atlantic to
> somewhere in Russia. There's lots more temperate and sub-arctic zone
> peoples on earth.

Has anyone considered a religious/cultural explanation? Consider the two
possible reactions in a "primitive" (non-scientific) society whenever a
child with an unusual characteristic is born:

1) Rejection. The unusual child is presumed to be "bad." The child may be
abandoned outright, or slowly neglected, or eventually exiled, or may simply
have great difficulty finding a spouse. This is probably the more common
case.

2) Favor. The unusual child is taken to be "gifted" (e.g., from the gods).
The child is given special care and feeding, and eventually has his choice
of spouses--maybe multiple! This is the rarer case, but is certainly not
impossible, especially if the distinguishing characteristic is not in any
way dysfunctional, but merely eye-catching (no pun intended).

Fundamentally, my hypothesis is that in most Paleolithic and even Neolithic
cultures around the world, blond-haired and blue-eyed children were
discriminated *against*, and hence those characteristics were never allowed
to take hold. But for whatever odd reason, religious or cultural, the early
cultures of northern Europe saw blond-haired and blue-eyed children as
divinely favored, and ensure not just their survival but their accelerated
propagation.


Perhaps the most famous example of this favorable reaction to blond hair and
blue eyes is that of Pope Gregory the Great in the 6th century:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angles
---
The Angles are the subject of a legend about Pope Gregory I (ca. 540-604).
As an abbreviated version of the story goes, Gregory happened to see a group
of Angle children from Deira for sale as slaves in the Roman market. Struck
by the beauty of their fair-skinned complexions and bright blue eyes,
Gregory inquired about their background. When told they were Angles, he
replied with a Latin pun that translates well into English: "Non Angli, sed
angeli" ("Not Angles, but angels"). Supposedly, he thereafter resolved to
convert their pagan homeland to Christianity.
---


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