Are peoples skin tones because of the weather where they are from?

[Adamjr91]

Partly genetic, partly environmental.

[kadyo's]

Serious question

Everyone from cold places is usually white

if you go to warmer climates they start to get a bit browner

In africa and australia its hot as **** and they are very dark skinned.

The answer is yes, read about the most recent about 2-3 weeks ago.

[kadyo's]

Here earl, must have been drunk. I was 2 month ago.

http://m.livescience.com/42838-europ...sequenced.html

[squealpiggy]

Serious question

Everyone from cold places is usually white

if you go to warmer climates they start to get a bit browner

In africa and australia its hot as **** and they are very dark skinned.

The short answer is no. The long answer is yes. The correct answer is it's a bit more complicated than that.

Essentially darker skin is an evolutionary advantage in especially sunny climates because it helps to prevent skin cancers and sunburn while pale skin is an evolutionary advantage in particularly dark climates because it assists in maximising vitamin D synthesis. Over time (and by that I mean hundreds or even thousands of generations) you would expect a static and isolated population to gradually develop darker skin in very sunny climates or gradually paler skin in relatively shaded climates. But that's a static and isolated population, two things that don't describe humans terribly well.

Somebody mentioned dark skinned natives who live in cold climates by which I assume they mean the Inuit. The Inuit are descended from what's called the "Paleoindians" or "Paleoamericans" who migrated over the Bering Strait between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago from the Siberian steppes. Remember what I said about thousands of generations? If each generation is around 20 years then 50,000 years is 2,500 generations and 10,000 years is just 500 generations. The Inuit culture may be just a thousand years old, evidence only going back to 1,000 CE.

So you can see that this is not a sufficient number of generations to provide for major morphological change.

Essentially populations evolve traits that are beneficial to fill an ecological niche but humans have a tendency of using their most remarkable trait, that of adaptability, to fill new niches faster than their biology can keep up. That's why road rage is a thing. We harness the energy of aeons dead trees in the form of explosive fire with the force of dozens of horses to propel metal and plastic boxes containing us and our caveman brains.

That's without even getting into the effects of sexual selection.

So if your a fat lazy, alcoholic you will pass that on to your children. Of course once you've had children you won't so go for it after that.

Well actually... you won't pass on being a fat lazy alcoholic, but if you have a genetic tendency to be fat, lazy or alcoholic (and there is evidence of a genetic basis for all three predilections) you will possibly pass that on to your unfortunate offspring even if you wait until your tubes are tied before you have kids.

[Miburo]

Evolution is comprised of random mutations that are kept or thrown away so to speak by natural selection.

So take white skin or dark skin. If you live in a hot climate, where the sun is going to be beating down on you all day long. It would make sense to have darker skin that can take the sun better, and not walk around sun burned all day.

So random mutations happened millions of years ago, and were kept by the process of natural selection to benefit the species.

Actually the skin color mutations are fairly recent, more like tens of thousands of years ago rather than millions.

[Furn]

The short answer is no. The long answer is yes. The correct answer is it's a bit more complicated than that.

Essentially darker skin is an evolutionary advantage in especially sunny climates because it helps to prevent skin cancers and sunburn while pale skin is an evolutionary advantage in particularly dark climates because it assists in maximising vitamin D synthesis. Over time (and by that I mean hundreds or even thousands of generations) you would expect a static and isolated population to gradually develop darker skin in very sunny climates or gradually paler skin in relatively shaded climates. But that's a static and isolated population, two things that don't describe humans terribly well.

Somebody mentioned dark skinned natives who live in cold climates by which I assume they mean the Inuit. The Inuit are descended from what's called the "Paleoindians" or "Paleoamericans" who migrated over the Bering Strait between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago from the Siberian steppes. Remember what I said about thousands of generations? If each generation is around 20 years then 50,000 years is 2,500 generations and 10,000 years is just 500 generations. The Inuit culture may be just a thousand years old, evidence only going back to 1,000 CE.

So you can see that this is not a sufficient number of generations to provide for major morphological change.

Essentially populations evolve traits that are beneficial to fill an ecological niche but humans have a tendency of using their most remarkable trait, that of adaptability, to fill new niches faster than their biology can keep up. That's why road rage is a thing. We harness the energy of aeons dead trees in the form of explosive fire with the force of dozens of horses to propel metal and plastic boxes containing us and our caveman brains.

That's without even getting into the effects of sexual selection.



Well actually... you won't pass on being a fat lazy alcoholic, but if you have a genetic tendency to be fat, lazy or alcoholic (and there is evidence of a genetic basis for all three predilections) you will possibly pass that on to your unfortunate offspring even if you wait until your tubes are tied before you have kids.

Numerous studies involving monozygotic twins suggest that behavioral and environmental factors effect inheritance of epigenetic expression.

In others words , if you have two identical twins, one lives a healthy life while the other does all the wrong things and both have children, the children of the "bad" twin will be more susceptible to being unhealthy.

[Trigger unhappy]

Human we're all from Africa and were originally black until some moved to colder climates and evolved into white people.

[squealpiggy]

Numerous studies involving monozygotic twins suggest that behavioral and environmental factors effect inheritance of epigenetic expression.

In others words , if you have two identical twins, one lives a healthy life while the other does all the wrong things and both have children, the children of the "bad" twin will be more susceptible to being unhealthy.

Yes but it's the tendency that is inherited, the expression is learned. It's entirely possible to inherit a tendency without expressing it.

Mind you if somebody is going to express their tendency towards lazy alcoholism they're not going to be able to wait until after their kids are raised. Take it from me, the raising of the kids is what will cause the distemper in the first place!