What is actually meant by the “whiteness” which, some say, could only have appeared in the last 12,000 years

In an earlier thread, the question was discussed whether the first Europeans could have been black. An intriguing point was made at Mathilda’s Anthropology blog that the change to whiteness could only have taken place in the last 12,000 years, because when people in northern Europe adopted agriculture and switched to a vegetable diet, they no longer got their Vitamin D from meat, at which point in time there began selective pressures to reduce the amount of melanin in order to receive more sunlight and Vitamin D. However, a further comment in the thread at Mathilda’s Anthropology blog on the “first European” qualifies that statement and clarifies the issue:

mathilda37 // May 16, 2009 at 11:02 am | Reply

Yes Tod, but Non Europeans populations with no Neolithic skin lightening genes are only slightly darker than Europeans and are lighter than the San. The ‘pasty’ gene only makes the difference from tan to pink, not black to white. Take a look at native Americans at the same kinds of latitudes as Europeans. Totally isolated from Eurasian Neolithic mutations, but not black.

Even the San [Bushmen] are a very light colour when out of the sun. My aunty went a very yellow colour when she moved to England.

In reply to Mathilda is this comment:

pconroy // May 13, 2009 at 10:24 pm | Reply

I’m a very light skinned person from Ireland—I can’t tan at all, only burn in the sun—even in April in the US….

In other words, there are white people who tan, and very light white people who are more “pinkish,” and do not tan. What this means is that the lightening of the skin that (according to the theory) occurred in northern latitudes as a result of the invention of agriculture and the switch from meat to vegetable diets, was not a lightening from what we call nonwhite to what we call white; it was a lightening from “tan” white to “pinkish” white. Thus the argument that the first modern humans who entered Europe could not have been white, because this was pre-agriculture and they still had a meat diet, falls down. They were likely people of a Caucasoid physical type, whose skin was either brown or “white,” i.e., the darker kind of “white” skin that tans. The claim made by some that the white race could only have appeared in the last 12,000 years is not supported.

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Liberal readers who think that my discussion of this topic is controlled by a racialist ideology should note that when I initially read the theory that whiteness could only have come into being very recently, after the spread of agriculture, I found the idea fascinating and I reported it. When I later read the qualification of what is meant by “whiteness,” I reported that. If I were driven by a racial agenda to arrive at an older rather than a more recent date of the appearance of whiteness, I would have suppressed or argued against the theory of very recent whiteness when I first came upon it, instead of saying to readers, “Here is something really interesting.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 17, 2009 09:27 PM | Send