From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 17655
Date: 2003-01-15
----- Original Message -----
From: <richard.wordingham@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 5:08 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: Of Aryanism
> Are any of the plausible or popular urheimats consistent with the
> first PIE speakers often having blond hair and blue eyes? This needs
> some thought, because of climate changes.
What's the evidence that they _often_ had them? Both blue eyes and blond hair are recessive traits (skin pigmentation is a more complex affair), and even if they were valued as the ideal of beauty in some IE commmunities (there's some mythological evidence for that), their relative _rarity_ may have been the reason why. My wife has told me that attached earlobes (also recessive) are regarded as a desirable feature among models and actors. Also, the fact that recessive traits occur more frequently in inbreeding groups might have led to the association of light hair and eye pigmentation with "aristocratic" beauty. This doesn't prove anything about the prevalent pigmentation of the PIE speekers, except that the recessive alleles very likely existed in the ancestral population.
Piotr