These features exist in a background of countless other genetic influences borrowed from many populations, old and new.ĭennis McNevin is a professor of Forensic Genetics, University of Technology Sydney Lightly pigmented skin, hair and eyes are simply an adaptation to northern European climates (and represent an inferior adaptation in equatorial regions). In short, the idea of a pure white race has no basis in genetics. In fact, Vikings were more likely to have dark hair than modern Scandinavians. A recent study of 442 human genomes from archaeological sites across Europe and Greenland found substantial ancestry from elsewhere in Europe entering Scandinavia during the Viking Age. Race science, racial purity and racial dominance became the driving force behind Hitlers Nazism. They are epitomised historically by the Vikings. Even Vikings were diverseīlonde-haired, blue-eyed northern Europeans are considered by many white supremacists as the ideal of racial purity. For those that subscribe to this ideology, all cultures can be situated within this hierarchy, but there is only one culture and/or race that ranks supreme. It found an initial wave of hunter-gatherers had been supplanted by an Anatolian population, and during the age of Imperial Rome (27 BC to 300 AD) there were significant introductions of genes from what is now Iran and the eastern Mediterranean. Racial purity relates to the idea that human beings can be ranked on a hierarchical scale where one ethnoracial group, or race, is ranked as more advanced than another group. A recent study looked at the genomes of 127 people from 29 sites across the past 10,000 years. Even the Roman civilization, considered to be one of the historical foundations of European identity, was home to great genetic variety.