My Upper Paleolithic Lappish Peculiarities

Me at various ages.

I often write about my Saami (Scandinvaian Lapplanders) ancestors, but my U5b1b1-T16192C! motherline is most likely proto-Saami (although my motherline is also found among the Saami without the extra mutation), as most (but not all) modern Saami carry 1 extra mutation at np 16144 that I don't carry. The defining Saami-specific motif mutation at np 16144 is believed to have split off from my motherline about 4000 years before the present. So, my motherline and the Saami (also known as Lapps) shared a common ancestor (and were of a common genetic people) at least over 4000 years ago.

This being understood, given the high likelihood that I inherited my short 5'2" stature from my circumpolar Lapplander ancestors, the proto-Saami/Lapps, I decided to evaluate other features of myself I may have inherited from these ancestors.

First, my ash blonde hair - while I am also a mixture of Nordic (Germanic Anglo-Saxon-Fennoscandian-Keltic) European racial stocks (where blondism is common), blondism is also found among pure Lapps (without Nordic admixture). When blondism is found among pure Lapps, it is ashen blonde. Ash blonde hair is characteristic of Lapps found in Finland and the Kola Penninsula.

Lapp hair is usually thick and wavy, mine is fine and straight - so while my hair color may have come from my Lapp ancestry, it's texture most likely did not. So, it's still unclear to me if my blondism came from my Lappish or Nordic ancestors.

Graying comes late for Lapps. I haven't a gray hair on my head yet, even at 53 years old, so this physical trait may be Lappish.

Second, my eyes, both color and character - while pure dark eyes are found in Reindeer Lapps and in a few in Norway, fairer light-mixed green-cast brown irises in eyes like mine are also common among Lapps of Finland. (My eyes are lighter than they appear in the attached monochrome photos).

Increasingly, based on my Lappish phenotypic traits, it looks like my proto-Lappish ancestors lived in or migrated specifically to the area of circumpolar Finland.

Not so much as an adult (though still minimally present), but more pronounced during one portion of my childhood, my eyes have a mild fold of skin slightly above my eyelid (see red arrows in attached photo) - this fold is a Lappish trait - it is not a Mongoloid epicanthic fold which covers the inner corner of the eye - according to Schreiner's detailed study of Lapp craniology, it "signifies that the original ancestral Lapps represented a stage in the evolution of both Upper Paleolithic Europeans and Mongoloids (in other words, the eye fold.characteristic of the Lapps is a trait which developed among homo sapiens predating the racial split between Europids and Mongoloids) .. In view of the Upper Paleolithic white and of mongoloids, this divergence of the Lapps from the others must have taken place as early as the Laufen glacial retreat*. Their area of specialization was presumably Western Siberia. Their specialization there shows little interference (from other genetic groups). From there they spread over Finland and northwestern Russia, then to Scandinavia during the first millennium CE". Scientists further write that "some of the Lappish peculiarities may have been common possessions of the Upper Paleolithic peoples (and) there may have been transitional forms between Lapps and Europeans. In other words, Lapps may represent a pure ancestral form common to all admixed European strains of humanity.

*The Laufen glacial retreat refers to the warm phase of the Würm glaciation, the glaciation dated to c. 24,000–10,000 BP (before present).

Interestingly, I'm finding that studying racial phenotypic characteristics is a really good way to find out about one's ancestors and ancestral migrations - information can be found in these studies tracing development of racial phenotypes about ancestral migrations that one won't find anywhere else.