"Vikings Proved Not To Be The Blue Eyed Blonds History Has" Topic

… Recorded

"The popular beliefs that Vikings were fair haired, wore helmets with horns, were brutal invaders and were always Scandinavian is finally being put to rest thanks to an impressive DNA sequencing of over four hundred Vikings found in burial sites in Greenland and Europe.

According to eurekalert.org, the project has taken over six years and was headed by Professor Eske Willerslev, a Fellow of St John's College, University of Cambridge and director of The Lundbeck Foundation GeoGenetics Centre, University of Copenhagen who remarked.

"We have this image of well-connected Vikings mixing with each other, trading and going on raiding parties to fight Kings across Europe because this is what we see on television and read in books – but genetically we have shown for the first time that it wasn't that kind of world."…"
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Amicalement
Armand

All very old news -- some of it disputed.
My Dad and grandfathers hair, my hair, all 9 of my brothers hair, most of my many niece's and nephews, my childrens and grandchildrens hair is brown in winter months, becomes light blond in the summer months.

Russ Dunaway

Russ Dunaway

I can't paint blond hair worth a @#$@, so everyone has brown/black hair. I can't paint eyes either.

So who cares?

DNA research is slowly demolishing the old concepts of "race." Given the many problems this unscientific concept has caused through the years, it is a good thing.

Also +1 to jdpintex!

Yes, seeing as how we're all descended from the few thousand homo sapiens that lived through the last ice age, we should be able to xo-exist. But then human nature rears its ugly head and off we go!

So Asians have primarily blond or red hair ????

It seems to me that a disproportionate number of Danes are small and dark, and have either lost most of their teeth or have a wholly un-Teutonic disregard for consonants.

Legionaries you have me worried I have been doing my job as a Biology teacher wrong all these years. Can you list some of the DNA evidence please so I can check it out?

A better idea is for you to tell us what you've been teaching your students 'for all these years'.

I understand the human genome project went a long way towards confirming at least some ideas about race. As, indeed, does my experience every time I see my wife beside me in a mirror!

I think it's more that there is vastly more genetic variance within a given 'race' than there is between two races. Furthermore, the few genetic differences there are are generally less significant (things like skin colour, minor variations in the shape of some facial features etc) than those variations that typically exist within a race.

Cheers,
John

Thanks!.

Amicalement
Armand

I refer you to the 1958 documentary film "The Vikings" with Ernest Borgnine & Tony Curtis concerning this topic.