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iriaz123 [2019-03-06 03:38:36 +0000 UTC]

Excellent jobs on the paintings. There are just four things that are not accurate in light of the archaic genomes.

 Neanderthals (the Vindija and Altai samples) and Denisovans (Altai cave) are missing all the 8 variants on the AR, EDAR, HDAC9, etc., to do with facial hair, indicating that they definitely did not have beards. They are most similar in their genome score to the San HGDP sample and Peruvians from the 1000 Genomes database. I have computed the scores based on the weights given by Adhikari 2016 here: www.quora.com/Are-there-certai… . Beards (and subsequent balding to compensate for the loss of sweat glands) are a luxury of modern humans (and more specifically, Caucasians and Oceanians who do have the beard mutations). 

Also, beards are a big liability in cold weather. This is why short, stocky, cold adapted populations have the least facial hair. Please see: www.quora.com/Why-did-American…

They are also missing the most important FOXL2 eyebrow variant, indicating that their eyebrows would have been very thin or absent. 
As well, they do not have the blue eye mutations on HERC2 and OCA2 that are found in Europeans nor the blonde hair variants on TYR1. The MC1R "red hair" mutation is not a red hair mutation at all-- it's found in Taiwanese Aborigines and East Asians but very rarely in Europeans (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24… ). So,  based on the genetics, they were definitely most similar to Native Americans and the Khoisan in terms of little facial hair. Most likely they had dark hair and very thin eyebrows, if at all. The eye color was almost certainly dark based in the HIRISPLEX Algorithm: antropogenez.ru/article/1095/ . Blue eyes are not helpful when the glare from the ice sheets is enough you make you snowblind. This is why in fact East Asians and the Inuit have epicanthic folds and dark eyes-- it is a cold adaptation. 

Also, beards and balding have a high correlation (see the figure in the post). Neanderthals don't have a single balding variant on any of the known loci and they likely did not go bald. It is hence highly improbable for them to have had thick facial hair. 

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