Evolution of Human Skin Pigment

898 Words2 Pages

Evolution of Human Skin Pigment
Have you ever wondered how and why people are different colors? This paper discusses the evolutionary theories behind diversity in human skin pigment. Though previous theories hypothesized that darker skin evolved in order to protect people from sunburn and skin cancer, the prominent theory today relates to folate protection and vitamin D production.
The prominent theory today about how and why skin pigment in humans developed with the color diversity that exists today, is that ancestral populations of humans inhabited areas with different UV radiation concentration. As a result, the effects of UV radiation put positive evolutionary pressure on skin pigment to develop for sufficient folate protection and Vitamin D production. For a long time, paleontologists have known that human ancestors had dense hair that covered their bodies. The reason that modern humans lack such covering is probably due to changes in climate and habitation choice, but for whatever reason the dense hair covering disappeared, it ultimately did, rendering the skin much more exposed to both the elements and to UV rays. Scientists believe that in response to this change in UV concentrations, the human skin became tougher, and developed a protective pigment called ‘melanin’ which protects against the effects of UV radiation.
Using Darwin’s theory of evolution via natural selection, it is reasonable to say that individuals with skin best suited to their environment would have survived and successfully reproduced. In this way, the best genes and adaptations for the surrounding environment would spread, and ultimately exist in all--or nearly all--individuals in a population and/or region. A previous theory that skin pigment dive...

... middle of paper ...

...s in his article on how vitamin D affected the evolution of skin pigment, “pheomelanin produces vitamin D efficiently, [and] its reaction with high levels of UVB….makes dangerous free radicals — which damage skin cells over time” (ScienceWriters). Furthermore, “failing to produce adequate levels of Vitamin D can cause physical deformities, including painful distension of the pelvic bones in women — and severe complications during childbirth (ScienceWriters).
Because of the necessity of folate protection and simultaneously the need to maintain sufficient vitamin D levels, it makes sense that people inhabiting areas of low or high UV radiation would consequently have lighter or darker skin. The evidence for skin pigment evolution in response to concentrations of UV radiation is therefore the most reasonable explanation for current pigment variations in people today.

Show More
Related

  • Skin Deep by Nina Jablonski and George Chaplin

    563 Words  | 2 Pages

    Anthropologists and geographers have studied and overtime come to the conclusion that distribution of skin color is not random. Darker skin color has been found to typically come from near the equator and lighter skin colors are typically coming from closer to the north and south poles. Over the years, researchers have found that darker skin colors has protected the skin from having skin cancer. Recent studies have shown that “skin color is the product of natural selection acting to regulate the effects of the sun’s ultraviolet radiation on key nutrients crucial to the reproductive success” (169).

    Read More

  • Analysis of White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro by Winthrop D. Jordan

    1182 Words  | 3 Pages

    The first chapter focuses on the first impressions between the people of different color also the reasons Africans had evolved or changed into what they now appeared to be. The section on causes of complexion was both fascinating and entertaining. Many of the theories were of the wall and far fetched. One such opinion of how Africans gained their complexion that the book gave includes an ancient Greek myth of Phaeton. This character drove a chariot into the heavens and thus altered in his appearance (p11). Though this Greek myth, probably not the truth of how Africans gained their color many did believe it probably had something to do with the sun. The theory of equatorial dwellers of Africa, this being the reason for the skin pigmentation, became illogical once Africans were compared to the Indians living in the hottest parts of the New World (p14). Some believed that the African was merely dark because they had left their colder northern climate. Experiments quickly ruled this out as a possible answer (p15). The most far-fetched and humorous theory came through the biblical illustration involving Noah. Many believed it the curse given upon Noah’s son Ham for “looking upon his father’s nakedness” (p17). Each of these contrasting views on color needed to be used in this book. For no better reason in that it showed from an initial point that the English viewed the color of the Africans as a plague. Instead of excepting that Africans may in fact be different, the English consistently made attempts to explain the dif...

    Read More

  • Hidden Colors 2: The Triumph Of Melanin

    790 Words  | 2 Pages

    Based from the film “melanin plays a role on how Africans have been able to create and developed some of the sciences that they have come to be known for”. It is also believe that melanin is a factor to soul because people with more of it moves, speaks, and acts differently than those who do not. According to a group of Africans known as the “melanin scholars” they reported a scientific base that “melanin is involved in the regulation of all psychological and physiological processes of the human body.” This makes people with more melanin stronger and smarter than those with less.² This is why, according to Welsing, whites had ambition to destroy the African race because they were inferior to their genetic superiority. In agreement to Welsing, Wade Nobles, Richard King, and other researchers/ scientists reported that whites are not entirely human since they stopped evolving with the central nervous system

    Read More

  • Couloruism in American in 1800´s: The Paper Bag test

    1634 Words  | 4 Pages

    Back in the early 1800’s, the color of one’s skin mattered amongst African Americans and Caucasian people. There was infidelity between the Caucasian slave owners and the African American slaves. Of course, the outcome of that produced a fairer toned child. In most cases the child could pass as white. The mixed toned kids got to be inside doing housework, while the dark Negroes worked in the fields, under extraneous work conditions,”their dark-toned peers toiled in the fields”(Maxwell). From the early 1800’s to modern day, there is controversy that light or bi-racial African Americans are better than dark colored African Americans. African Americans had to go through tests to see if they were able to receive priviledges that white people received,”light-skinned African Amerians receive special priviledges based off of their skin shade”(Maxwell). If an African American did not receive the priviledges similar to white people then they would try to change themselves to fit in,”African Americans are using bleaching creams so that they can make their skin lighter , just to achieve the standard beauty”(Brooke). As much as one will not one to discuss this topic, statistics shows how people are more lenient towards light and fair skin tones.Light oor fair coloredAmericans that poseess Caucasian features are prefiebly preffered.

    Read More

  • Visual Culture of the Civil Rights Movement

    706 Words  | 2 Pages

    The meaning, significance, and definition of race have been debated for centuries. Historical race concepts have varied across time and cultures, creating scientific, social, and political controversy. Of course, today’s definition varies from the scientific racism of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that justified slavery and later, Jim Crow laws in the early twentieth. It is also different from the genetic inferiority argument that was present at the wake of the civil rights movement. However, despite the constantly shifting concepts, there seems to be one constant that has provided a foundation for ideas towards race: race is a matter of visually observable attributes such as skin color, facial features, and other self-evident visual cues.

    Read More

  • Skin Cancer in Australia

    3010 Words  | 7 Pages

    Marks, R., P.A. Foley, D. Jolley, K.R. Knight, and J. Harrison. 1995. The effect of regular sunscreen use on vitamin D levels in an Australian population: results of a randomized controlled trial. Archives of Dermatology 131: 415-421.

    Read More

  • The Dangers of Tanning Beds

    922 Words  | 2 Pages

    Tanning is a commonly used by Caucasian women to cause their skin tone to darken. Melanin is what gives skin its color. Naturally, when we are exposed to sun, the production of a pigment known as melanin starts which itself acts as a deterrent to the burning effects of ultra violet rays of sun (Pakhare). Some Caucasians find it necessary to tan to increase beauty. It is not necessary to tan to increase beauty.

    Read More

  • Race: biological or cultural

    1148 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the past, races were identified by the imposition of discrete boundaries upon continuous and often discordant biological variation. The concept of race is therefore a historical construct and not one that provides either valid classification or an explanatory process. Popular everyday awareness of race is transmitted from generation to generation through cultural learning. Attributing race to an individual or a population amounts to applying a social and cultural label that lacks scientific consensus and supporting data. While anthropologists continue to study how and why humans vary biologically, it is apparent that human populations differ from one another much less than do populations in other species because we use our cultural, rather than our physical differences to aid us in adapting to various environments.

    Read More

  • Vitamin D And The Bone Disease

    2317 Words  | 5 Pages

    Since ancient times vitamin D has been the predominant cause of bone deficiencies.1 However, it was not in till the seventeenth century when both Dr. Daniel Whistler and Professor Francis Glisson made the first scientific description of a vitamin D deficiency.2 During the mid-seventeenth century there was an increase amount of children that were diagnosed with the bone disease called rickets.2 The cause of the rickets was determined to be associated to the lack of sunlight. A German researcher Kurt Huldschinsky came to the conclusion that when infants were exposed to ultraviolet light rays they became cured of rickets2. He stated that a substance in the skin was the potential source of the cure.2 In 1922, American scientist Elmer McCollum proved that when cod liver oil was heated; the beneficial effects of vitamin A in the oil were reduced.2 However, the oil remained effective in curing rickets leading McCollum to reason that a nutrient different from vitamin A was present in the oil. As a result, he named this nutrient vitamin D, which became the fourth vitamin to be discovered and named.2 Additionally, shortly after 1918, vitamin D was also discovered by an accidental experiment that included a group of scientists curing dogs affected with rickets by feeding cod liver oil to them.1

    Read More

  • Melanin

    1912 Words  | 4 Pages

    In conclusion, melanin production has played a considerably important role in human evolution. Not only does it influence color pigmentation through its protective role of defending against harmful UV rays, but also determines detrimental features such as eye-sight and hearing. Furthermore, melanin production and its evolutionary adaptions mark an important presence upon our biological systems to this day. Therefore, in the process of furthering human evolution, melanin production has played an enormous role in human evolution by selecting for several features that allow for particular adaptions according to the human's geographical location and environment.

    Read More

  • Causal Argument: Why Do People Change The Way They Look?

    1792 Words  | 4 Pages

    Rodriguez, Richard. “Complexion”. Good Reasons. eds, Lester Faigley, Jack Selzer. Boston: Longman Publishers, 2001. 441-443.

    Read More

  • Melanoma

    518 Words  | 2 Pages

    The major environmental risk factor for melanoma is overexposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun. People who have fair skin that burns or freckles easily need to be especially careful in the sun as protecting yourself against UV overexposure is an important way you can help reduce your risk of developing melanoma.

    Read More

  • Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection

    679 Words  | 2 Pages

    The color of your skin used to depend on where you live. (Before transportation became so easy.) Darker skinned people would live where it is hotter, and the sun shines more. Lighter skinned people would live in cooler, less sunny areas. This is because the darker pigments in your skin would keep you from burning.

    Read More

  • The Evolution of Human Skin Color

    1016 Words  | 3 Pages

    This meant that over time, humans lost most of their hair on their bodies, leaving their skin exposed. Sweat glands were going to help the body cool down, but they couldn’t protect the skin from harmful UV rays. This is where melanin works its magic, and it’s the reason for the diversity in skin color today. Melanin helps reduce the absorption of wavelengths into the skin (Chaplin, Jablonski, 59).... ...

    Read More

  • Marketing Plan for a Cosmetics Company

    6035 Words  | 13 Pages

    1.     The colours would be adjusted to this type of skin( a wide variety of darker colours )

    Read More

More about Evolution of Human Skin Pigment

Open Document