The blonde and blue-eyed myth

Here in northern Europe there is a widespread myth of an earlier homogenous appearance.  Before a certain point in time all the area’s inhabitants would have been blonde and blue-eyed.  Nazis would add strait hair and strait noses to that.  Fore sure there were more physical traits which were ascribed to an earlier “pure race”.  Such a genetic homogeneity have never ever existed.  To the opposite humanity shows clinal variation.  This means the populations gradually transit into each other.

Associated with this is the myth that a small immigration wave would have had large biological impact.  Alternatively immigration waves are believed to have been much larger.  One example of this is Walloon immigrants to Sweden.  These were only circa 1,000 people arriving around 1600.  This on an already existing population of at least circa one million.  Around 1900 people started to believe that all short and dark were of Walloon descent.  As such loads of Swedes came to wrongfully believe they were.  I think it is only about 1% of Sweden’s population which is.  Larger contribution they have not made to the current Swedish gene pool.

All human hair colours are common among Europeans.  Same applies to hair textures except for the curliest.  It is the only one which came here though modern immigration.  In the same way there is great variation in nose shape.  I think all human eye colours occur among Europeans.  All this variation established itself here as early as during the Bronze Age.  Now certain physical traits are more common in certain ethnic groups.  However, this is a matter of genetic drift accumulating these traits in some areas over time.  Likely they were never more common that just before the breakthrough of the bike.  Why in particular the breakthrough of the bike?  Because it made it possible to travel twice as fast.  This drastically increased the area which people could choose their mates from.  Which in turn decreased the effects of earlier genetic drift.

Colonialist wishful thinking seems to have contributed to the myth.  Colonialists believed their own people to be intrinsically superior.  They believed some ethnic groups would take over entire countries in a purely biological sense.  (No, they did not.)  That belief was then projected on archaeological cultures.  It did not help early Indo-Europeans were ascribed the North European stereotype.  It went so far the word “Aryan” was used as a synonym for Germanic peoples.  Those which originally called themselves arya I think resembled Iranians.  The fact is the words are related!

Modern genetic sequencing has largely disproved that type of ideas.  To the opposite cultural groups have more or less genetically mixed with pre-existing populations.  Something I think was anyway necessary.  The pre-existing population was already adapted to the local environment.  Moreover, there was needed more genetic variation than what the few migrants had.  Groups which genetically mixed the least frequently suffer hereditary diseases.  The cause of such problems was unknown to the colonialists.

 

Uploaded on the 4th of June 2025.