John Hawks is a professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin.  Regular readers of this website will be quite familiar with Hawks.  He is regarded as one of the top 5 paleoanthropologists in the world along with such luminaries as Chris Stringer and his close friend and ally Lee Berger.

Hawks has been a partner and close collaborator with Prof. Berger on the Homo naledi project in South Africa, since its inception in 2013.

of the University of Wisconsin, currently co-starring with Lee Berger in the Netflix series on Homo naledi, wrote a detailed analysis on Otzi’s DNA in 2012. His conclusion: Otzi had substantial Neanderthal admixture. (Mysteriously the paper has disappeared.) Neanderthals passed down a specific gene allele only to Europeans, absent in Africans and Africans, for “pallid” skin tone. It’s called BNC2.

The liberal media has been attempting to morph Otzi the Iceman into an African.

From CNN, August 23,

Ötzi the Iceman’s true appearance revealed by new DNA analysis

Albert ZinkÖtzi the Iceman, whose frozen remains were found in a gully high in the Tyrolean Alps by hikers in 1991, is perhaps the world’s most closely studied corpse.

The mystery over his violent death, who he was and how he ended up on a mountain pass has sparked fascination far beyond the field of archaeology. Each year, thousands visit his mummified remains contained in a special cold cell at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy. Ötzi the Iceman…

More:

“It seems that the dark skin color of the mummy is quite close to the Iceman’s skin color during (his) lifetime,” said [Albert] Zink, who is a coauthor of the research published Wednesday in the scientific journal Cell Genomics.

It’s not that surprising that Ötzi was dark skinned, said Zink via email, noting that many Europeans at that time likely had darker skin pigmentation than many present-day Europeans.

And this from ScienceNews.org, August 23, 2023,

A new look at Ötzi the Iceman’s DNA reveals new ancestry and other surprises

Johannes KrauseÖtzi was balding, dark-skinned and didn’t have ancestors from the Caspian steppe…

About 90 percent of Ötzi’s genetic heritage comes from Neolithic farmers, an unusually high amount compared with other Copper Age remains, [Johannes] Krause says.

The Iceman’s new genome also reveals he had male-pattern baldness and much darker skin than artistic representations suggest. Genes conferring light skin tones didn’t become prevalent until 4,000 to 3,000 years ago when early farmers started eating plant-based diets and didn’t get as much vitamin D from fish and meat as hunter-gathers did, Krause says.

Note – Dr. Krause, from the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig (his boss is Svante Paabo), does not say specifically that Otzi had dark skin.  Rather, Krause skirts the issue.

John Hawks: Otzi at “5.5 percent” Neanderthal DNA

Fortunately, Hawk’s original piece is summarized on an archival site that he has no control over.  Whether he was not aware of this site is unknown.  However, he has no way of deleting the original piece from this archival site.

Summary, Metafiler, 2018:

Ötzi the Iceman died around 3,300 B.C., yet his body was preserved frozen in the Alps until 1991. DNA sequencing of Neandertals (who died out about 35,000 years ago) suggests modern humans with ancestry outside of Africa carry a few percent of Neandertal genes due to interbreeding. Now (in a blog post knocking down a re-interpretation of the Neandertal DNA evidence) paleontologist John Hawks previews an upcoming publication of his examining Ötzi’s DNA…

If we took as a baseline that Europeans have an average of 3.5 percent Neandertal, Ötzi would have around 5.5 percent (again, the actual percentage would be highly model-dependent). He has substantially greater sharing with Neandertals than any other recent person we have ever examined. [Emphasis added.]

When Neanderthal DNA in Europeans first discovered in early 2010s, it was fashionable to take swipes at ethnic Europeans as “Cavemen”

This summary was taken from Hawk’s previewing an upcoming piece on Otzi’s DNA.  But note, Hawks has deleted the post from his Blog in its entirety.  Only this summary still exists.

In the early 2010s, it was fashionable in paleoanthropology to poke fun at Whites for having Neanderthal DNA.  It was a leftover from the days of when Neanderthals were seen as rough and dirty cavemen.  But that changed in the late 2010s when new morphological data started coming out showing that Neanderthals were actually quite smart and even had brain sizes much larger than the average Homo sapien at 1450cc.  (Avg. H-Sap 1350cc).

Otzi was likely lighter skin tone

Since the articles first came out last Summer, numerous other studies have corrected the record.  Otzi may have had a more olive complexion similar to Mediterranean populations of today.  This would be consistent with his Anatolian farmer ancestry.

Noted British historian and paleolithic era Pagan expert Tom Rowsell:

[they] Tom Rowsellwere genetically the same as modern day Sardinians except they had lived in North West Europe for over 2000 years so they were lighter.

There is nothing black about them. These are two reconstructions of Neolithic men from the British Isles. All the skeletons from Britain dated between 4000 BC – 2500 BC belong to this race known as Early European Farmers…

Further, Krause and Paabo have noted that Neanderthals passed down a specific gene allele only to Europeans, absent in Africans and Africans, for “pallid” skin tone.

It’s called BNC2.

Note – Tom Rowsell’s videos on Otzi and other right-paleoanthropology topics can be found at his YouTube channel.

Eric

Author Eric

FSU grad, US Navy Veteran. Houston, Texas

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