ZAP // Freepik
17,000-year-old remains may be the oldest evidence of blue eyes. They are from a child born with a heart problem 17,000 years ago.
A team of researchers from the University of Bologna found, in Italy, the remains of a child born 17 thousand years ago.
The discovery was presented in a recently published in the journal Nature Communications.
Based on genetic data From these remains, “the child would most likely have blue eyes, dark skin and dark brown, almost black, curly hair”, explains the first author of the article Owen Higginsat the university.
Like many other children of the Paleolithic period, this Ice Age child did not have the genes that would allow him to digest milk in adult.
Genetic analysis also allowed researchers to find evidence that it would have unusually thick heart musclescaused by a typically hereditary disease.
Just 82 centimeters long, the remains suggest the child was short-lived. Researchers estimate that he died at an age between 8 and 18 months.
Histological analysis of the baby’s teeth and a healed fracture of the clavicle indicate that had a difficult birth and who had already been through other stressful situations, notes .
“The analyzes revealed a slightly earlier development than the average of modern European populations and at least 9 episodes of stress physiological, three of which occurred during intrauterine life,” says Higgins.
Stress markers are in line with genetic results suggesting that the child suffered from hypertrophic cardiomyopathya congenital heart disease linked to sudden death in youth.
It is likely that the baby’s mother has suffered some stress during pregnancy and may have been malnourished. An isotope analysis suggests that she remained in the same place for at least the last period of the pregnancy. It was in the same area that the child was born and lived his short life.
The skeletal remains of the prehistoric child were discovered in 1998 by archaeologists from the University of Siena. They were hiddenwithout any final possessions or adornments, behind slabs of rock in the Grotta delle Mura cave of Monopoli, Apulia, on the southwest coast of Italy.
Os blue eyes result from a mutation in the gene OCA2which reduces our body’s ability to produce the brown eye pigment melanin. A mutation in the gene was also detected OCA2 in the Ice Age boy.
Genetic analysis suggests that all blue-eyed humans of today, which may represent up to 40% of some current European populations, can be attributed to a single mutation which emerged in Europe between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago.
O oldest known blue-eyed individual to date dated back around 14,000 years, known as the man from Villabruna. The color of the eyes and other genetic similarities suggest that the boy’s people may have been ancestors of the Villabruna man.
