4 ms·

It's an interesting theory that temperature leads to skin pigmentation however all research points towards it being an adaptation to UV rays.

JJMcJ 4y ago
The two big evolutionary pressures are believed to be a balance between protection against skin cancer vs. enough sunlight for vitamin D production. And maybe a little bit about the calories needed to actually produce melanin. For Britons, if it was hotter it's likely there would less cloud cover, but that's just a guess.
lkrubner 4y ago
Your response is incoherent. Are you saying that a person in France, at latitude 48.0, gets less in UV rays than aboriginal people living north of the Arctic Circle, up north of latitude 67.0? A simple explanation based on UV rays would suggest that everyone at a certain latitude would have the same level of pigmentation and so, to repeat myself, the default a priori assumption has to be that the first people in Europe had the same level of brown skin as the other people living at similar latitudes. Again, Mongolians and Eskimos and other aboriginal people, including early American Indians, would form a reference point. And, indeed, there is evidence that Europeans were exactly this brown as recently as 8,000 years ago: https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-evolution-human-origins/white-skin-developed-europe-only-recently-8000-years-020287 https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-evolution-human-origins... So if you want to explain the whiteness that is unique to Europe, you need to look for an explanation beyond a simple mapping of latitude and UV rays. You need to look for something that could have been altered by the arrival of the first forms of agriculture, and the Gulf Stream -- the warm weather provided by the Gulf Stream would have allowed agriculture further north in Europe than at any other place on the globe for a given latitude. That would have lead to the unique situation of people having enough to eat, very far north, but not necessarily getting what Vitamin D and E that they needed. Of the Eskimo and other aboriginal groups: "People who eat a lot of raw meat or oily fish have somewhat less desperate need of the vitamin D that sunlight provides, and so don’t end up as pale as those who rely on agriculture."
- Mikeb85 4y ago
  > Eskimo and other aboriginal groups You do realize they only migrated to the far north within the last 4000 or so years right? They're also significantly paler than related groups that live closer to the equator (such as indigenous peoples in Mexico).
  - lkrubner 4y ago
    Again, your dates are badly wrong. You might want to research this subject before you comment on it. In terms of the Eskimo and other aboriginal people who migrated into or across Beringia, the relevant dates would be: "It is believed that a small human population of at most a few thousand arrived in Beringia from eastern Siberia during the Last Glacial Maximum before expanding into the settlement of the Americas sometime after 16,500 years Before Present (YBP). This would have occurred as the American glaciers blocking the way southward melted, but before the bridge was covered by the sea about 11,000 YBP." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beringia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beringia This is extremely far north, as far north as 78.0 latitude, so again, you cannot put together a coherent theory that maps skin color to latitude in any simple way, therefore you need some additional theory, beyond UV rays, to explain the unique whiteness of northern Europeans.
    - Mikeb85 4y ago
      First of all, the date people first crossed the Bering straight isn't the genesis of the Inuit people. The rest of the Americas were colonised first, probably because the arctic is so inhospitable. Proto-Inuit culture only appeared a few thousand years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_people

JJMcJ 4y ago

The two big evolutionary pressures are believed to be a balance between protection against skin cancer vs. enough sunlight for vitamin D production. And maybe a little bit about the calories needed to actually produce melanin. For Britons, if it was hotter it's likely there would less cloud cover, but that's just a guess.

lkrubner 4y ago

Your response is incoherent. Are you saying that a person in France, at latitude 48.0, gets less in UV rays than aboriginal people living north of the Arctic Circle, up north of latitude 67.0? A simple explanation based on UV rays would suggest that everyone at a certain latitude would have the same level of pigmentation and so, to repeat myself, the default a priori assumption has to be that the first people in Europe had the same level of brown skin as the other people living at similar latitudes. Again, Mongolians and Eskimos and other aboriginal people, including early American Indians, would form a reference point. And, indeed, there is evidence that Europeans were exactly this brown as recently as 8,000 years ago: https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-evolution-human-origins/white-skin-developed-europe-only-recently-8000-years-020287 https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-evolution-human-origins... So if you want to explain the whiteness that is unique to Europe, you need to look for an explanation beyond a simple mapping of latitude and UV rays. You need to look for something that could have been altered by the arrival of the first forms of agriculture, and the Gulf Stream -- the warm weather provided by the Gulf Stream would have allowed agriculture further north in Europe than at any other place on the globe for a given latitude. That would have lead to the unique situation of people having enough to eat, very far north, but not necessarily getting what Vitamin D and E that they needed. Of the Eskimo and other aboriginal groups: "People who eat a lot of raw meat or oily fish have somewhat less desperate need of the vitamin D that sunlight provides, and so don’t end up as pale as those who rely on agriculture."

Mikeb85 4y ago
> Eskimo and other aboriginal groups You do realize they only migrated to the far north within the last 4000 or so years right? They're also significantly paler than related groups that live closer to the equator (such as indigenous peoples in Mexico).
- lkrubner 4y ago
  Again, your dates are badly wrong. You might want to research this subject before you comment on it. In terms of the Eskimo and other aboriginal people who migrated into or across Beringia, the relevant dates would be: "It is believed that a small human population of at most a few thousand arrived in Beringia from eastern Siberia during the Last Glacial Maximum before expanding into the settlement of the Americas sometime after 16,500 years Before Present (YBP). This would have occurred as the American glaciers blocking the way southward melted, but before the bridge was covered by the sea about 11,000 YBP." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beringia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beringia This is extremely far north, as far north as 78.0 latitude, so again, you cannot put together a coherent theory that maps skin color to latitude in any simple way, therefore you need some additional theory, beyond UV rays, to explain the unique whiteness of northern Europeans.
  - Mikeb85 4y ago
    First of all, the date people first crossed the Bering straight isn't the genesis of the Inuit people. The rest of the Americas were colonised first, probably because the arctic is so inhospitable. Proto-Inuit culture only appeared a few thousand years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_people