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This article deals with the European people as an ethnic group or ethnic groups. For information about residents or nationals of Europe, see Demography of Europe. For information on other uses please see disambiguation page: European

The term European people in the context of this article refers to the ethnic groups of Europe.

Identity and culture

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A number of nations outside of Europe were originally established as colonies of European countries. Many of those nations retain a dominant "European culture" - that is a population whose ancestry, language and culture is largely derived from their European predecessors.

European is particularly common as an ethnic descriptor for those populations. A good example of this is the European American, to identify a person from the United States with European ancestry. While generally established by particular European countries, the immigration policy of these colonies has often been very open and inclusive towards other European nations, and thus a "European" identity has been preferred by government and social institutions over narrower categories such as English, British or German. In the United States, it is rare to call people of European ancestry "European." Such people are sometimes called "white," but more generally are labelled by the nation their ancestors are from (e.g., English Americans).

Physical appearance and genetics

The European (or Caucasoid) ethnic groups are characterized by lightly pigmented skins and variability in eye and hair colour and by a number of biochemical similarities.

Light skin

Europeans have lighter skin (as measured by population average skin reflectance read by spectrophotometer) than other ethnic groups. While all mean values of skin reflectance of non-European populations are lower than Europeans, some European and non-European populations overlap in lightness of skin,

Humans have pigment cells, which contain pigment granules called melanosomes. In people of European descent, the melanosomes are relatively fewer and smaller than other human populations.

Origins of light skin

According to a 2006 study, light pigmentation in Europeans and East Asians is largely a function of geography, an adaptive response to decreased exposure to ultraviolt radiation at ntemperate latitudes albeit via distinct genetic mechanisms; this research alos suggests that sexual selection may be a contributing factor. Europeans may have had an accumulation of lighter skin causing alleles, either by genetic drift, natural selection, sexual selection or a combination of these effects. Since their effects are additive it is possible light skin could arise over several generations without any new mutations taking place,

A historian suggested that Europeans may have retained their dark skin until as early as 13,000 years ago. This is based on Magdelanian cave art in which the painters depict hunters as darker than the animals hunted. Other scientists speculated that white skin mutation arose between 20,000 and 50,000 years ago.

Hair and eye colors

A greater population diversity in hair and eye colors occurs in groups which are socially designated as white. Eye color experts Sturm and Frudakis note, "The common occurrence of lighter iris colours is found almost exclusively in Europeans and individuals of European admixture."

Anthropologist Peter Frost geographically locates the variation as follows, "This diversity reaches a maximum in an area centered on the East Baltic and covering northern and eastern Europe." He speculates that this diversity may be because "sexual selection was much stronger among ancestral Europeans than in other human populations."

Blonde

Lighter hair colors occur naturally in humans of all ethnicities as rare mutations, but at such low rates that it is hardly noticeable in most populations, or is only found in children. In certain European populations, the occurrence of blond hair is more frequent, and often remains throughout adulthood. Based on recent genetic information, it is probable that humans with blond hair became distinctly numerous in Europe during the last Ice Age. Before then, Europeans had dark brown hair and dark eyes.

Red Hair

Red hair (also referred to as auburn, ginger, or titian) is a hair color that varies from a deep red through to bright copper. It is characterized by high levels of the reddish pigment pheomelanin and relatively low levels of the dark pigment eumelanin.

Genetics

Haplogroups are branches on the tree of early human migrations and genetic evolution. Haplogroups are defined by genetic mutations or "markers" found in Y chromosome and mtDNA testing. The examination of population differences within Europe using mitochondrial or Y chromosome haplogroups has been particularly useful in tracing part of the routes of migration and populating of Europe, but these haplogroups do not provide strong inferences on population genetic structure.

According to University of Oulu Library (Finland):

Classical polymorphic markers (i.e. blood groups, protein electromorphs and HLA antigenes) have suggested that Europe is a genetically homogeneous continent with a few outliers such as the Saami, Sardinians, Icelanders and Basques (Cavalli-Sforza et al. 1993, Piazza 1993). The analysis of mtDNA sequences has also shown a high degree of homogeneity among European populations, and the genetic distances have been found to be much smaller than between populations on other continents. (Comas et al. 1997).

The mtDNA haplogroups of Europeans are surveyed by using a combination of data from RFLP analysis of the coding region and sequencing of the hypervariable segment I. About 99% of European mtDNAs fall into one of ten haplogroups: H, I, J, K, M, T, U, V, W or X (Torroni et al. 1996a). Each of these is defined by certain relatively ancient and stable polymorphic sites located in the coding region (Torroni et al. 1996a).......Haplogroup H, which is defined by the absence of a AluI site at bp 7025, is the most prevalent, comprising half of all Europeans (Torroni et al. 1996a, Richards et al. 1998)......Six of the European haplogroups (H, I, J, K, T and W) are essentially confined to European populations (Torroni et al. 1994, 1996a).

mtDNA Haplogroup N1a while presently rare (.18%-.3%) occurred in as many as 25% of Neolithic Europeans and has subsequently been absorbed into the current populations .

Y chromosome markers

There are three major haplogroups which account for most of Europe's present-day population.

• Haplogroup R1b has it's highest frequencies on the Atlantic coast of Europe from Spain to Scotland.
• Haplogroup I is common across central Europe and up into Scandinavia.
• Haplogroup R1a is common in eastern, central and northern Europe.

The most common haplogroup in Europe is R1b. Each haplogroup also have subclades. R1a and R1b are subclades of Haplogroup R (Y-DNA) Two main subgroups of Haplogroup I (Y-DNA) are I-M253/I-M307/I-P30/I-P40 which has highest frequency in Scandinavia, Iceland, and northwest Europe. The other is I-S31 which includes I-P37.2, which is the most common form in the Balkans and Sardinia, and I-S23/I-S30/I-S32/I-S33, which reaches its highest frequency along the northwest coast of continental Europe.

There is an ongoing debate regarding Neolithic Europe, with evidence both for and against a demic diffusion from the Near East: genetic studies have failed to settle the controversy so far, because they have been interpreted in different ways... A rather heated debate followed, and is still continuing.

A little later, around 4,500 years ago, Haplogroup N3 began moving across from west of the Ural mountains. Haplogroup N3 follows closely the spread of the Finno-Ugric languages.

European population substructure

In 2006, a study by 9 scientists made an analysis comparing different individuals from European ancestry groups. They concluded that "there is a consistent and reproducible distinction between “northern” and “southern” European population groups"

While above scientists claimed that the people of British Isles cluster with Northern Europeans Stephen Oppenheimer stated: "By far the majority of male gene types in the British Isles derive from Iberia (Spain and Portugal)"

Bryan Sykes, also stated that "The genetic evidence shows that a large proportion of Irish Celts, on both the male and female side, did arrive from Iberia at or the same time as farming reached the Isles"

A recent genetic piece of research from 2007, claims: "The Spanish and Basque groups are the furthest away from other continental groups, which is consistent with the suggestions that the Iberian peninsula holds the most ancient European genetic ancestry". The same study also found "several significant axes of stratification, most prominently in a North-Southeastern trend but also along an East-West axis." They also confirmed English and Irish cluster with Northern Europeans such as Germans and Poles while some Basque and Italian individuals also clustered with Northern Europeans. Despite these stratifications, they also said: "there is low apparent diversity in Europe with the entire continent-wide samples only marginally more dispersed than single population samples elsewhere in the world."

Distribution

For a list of European nations, see Europe (also see Languages of Europe).

Nations and regions outside of Europe with significant populations of European ancestry:

• Africa
  • South Africa (Whites in South Africa)
  • Zimbabwe
• The Middle East
  • Israel
• North America
  • Canada - 86.6% of the population
  • United States of America (European American) - 60.7% of the population
• Central & South America (see Latin America or Ibero-America)
  • Argentina - 95% of the population
  • Brazil (White Brazilian) - 49.9% of the population
  • Chile
  • Uruguay
  • Venezuela
• Oceania
  • Australia - 89.3% of the population
  • New Zealand (New Zealand European) - 59.1% of the population

References

1. http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-34574/Europe
2. Jablonski NG, Chaplin G. 2000. The evolution of skin coloration, p. 19.
3. American Anthropological Association, "The Human Spectrum", Race: Are we so different? website.
4. Fish gene sheds light on human skin color variation
5. Heather L. Norton, Rick A. Kittles, Esteban Parra, Paul McKeigue, Xianyun Mao, Keith Cheng, Victor A. Canfield, Daniel G. Bradley, Brian McEvoy and Mark D. Shriver (December 11, 2006) Genetic Evidence for the Convergent Evolution of Light Skin in Europeans and East Asians. Molecular Biology and Evolution
6. Human skin color diversity is highest in sub-Saharan African populations
7. Cite error: The named reference convergent was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
8. Paleo etiology of skin tone
9. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/15/AR2005121501728_pf.html
10. ^
11. ^
12. Sturm RA, Frudakis TN. "Eye colour: portals into pigmentation genes and ancestry," Trends in Genetics, 2004 Aug;20(8):327-32.
13. Why Do Europeans Have So Many Hair and Eye Colors? by Peter Frost Université Laval (Canada) and St. Andrews University (Scotland)
14. European hair and eye colorA case of frequency-dependent sexual selection?
15. ^ "Cavegirls were first blondes to have fun", from The Times.
16. Phenotypic Expression of Melanocortin-1 Receptor Mutations in Black Jamaicans
17. Glossary of Genetic terms
18. ^ European Population Substructure: Clustering of Northern and Southern Populations
19. Mitochondrial DNA sequence variation in human populations, Oulu University Library (Finland)
20. http://herkules.oulu.fi/isbn9514255674/html/x367.html
21. Haak, Wolfgang, et al. "Ancient DNA from the First European Farmers in 7500-Year-Old Neolithic Sites" Science, vol. 310, pg. 1016 (2005)
22. Balter, Michael "Ancient DNA Yields Clues to the Puzzle of European Origins" Science, vol. 310, pg. 964 (2005)
23. ^ DNA Heritage
24. Semino et al (2000), The Genetic Legacy of Paleolithic Homo sapiens sapiens in Extant Europeans, Science Vol 290 Note: Haplogroup names are different in this article. For ex: Haplogroup I is referred as M170
25. World Haplogroups Maps
26. World haplogroup maps
27. Y-chromosome DNA Haplogroups
28. Y-DNA Haplogroup Tree 2006
29. Y-DNA Haplogroup R and its Subclades
30. Y-DNA Haplogroup I and its Subclades
31. Population genetics: DNAs from the European Neolithic
33. "most individual participants with southern European ancestry (Italian, Greek, Portuguese, and Spanish) have >85% membership in the “southern” population; and most northern, western, eastern, and central Europeans have >90% in the “northern” population group. Ashkenazi Jewish as well as Sephardic Jewish origin also showed >85% membership in the “southern” population, consistent with a later Mediterranean origin of these ethnic groups." Based on this work, we have developed a core set of informative SNP markers that can control for this partition in European population structure in a variety of clinical and genetic studies." European Population Substructure: Clustering of Northern and Southern Populations
34. On average only 30% of gene types in England derive from north-west Europe. Even without dating the earlier waves of north-west European immigration, this invalidates the Anglo-Saxon wipeout theory... ...75-95% of British Isles (genetic) matches derive from Iberia... Oppenheimer, "Origins of the British" (pages 375 and 378)
35. Here again, the strongest signal is a Celtic one, in the form of the clan of Oisin, which dominates the scene all over the Isles. The predominance in every part of the Isles of the Atlantic chromosome (the most frequent in the Oisin clan), with its strong affinities to Iberia, along with other matches and the evidence from the maternal side convinces me that it is from this direction that we must look for the origin of Oisin and the great majority of our Y-chromosomes. The sea routes of the Atlantic fringe conveyed both men and women to the Isles. Sykes, "Blood of the Isles" (2006), Pages 281,282,283
36. Measuring European Population Stratification using Microarray Genotype Data

Further reading

• The Hidden Frontier: Ecology and Ethnicity in an Alpine Valley, by John W. Cole (Author), Eric R. Wolf University of California Press; 1 edition (October 11, 1999) ISBN-10: 0520216814 ISBN-13: 978-0520216815

• Europe
• European people