Why are whites, white? what is the science or geological answer?

Question

BY nature or geological or evolution or whatever.. why are whites white colored? you know what i mean. so white that we are pinkish redish because you can see our blood. I know africans are darker because of the enviornement. Africa must be quite hot. Did the whites stay out of the sun, and hide in the caves? I think RUssia was quite cold so that explains it. What about in europe?

Answer 1

It relates to the vitamin-D deficient diet of neolithic farmers and the cloudy climate of northern Europe.

Northern Europeans were probably more Mediterranean looking before the switch from hunting and gathering to farming.

You need sunlight exposure to process vitamin-D precursors into vitamin-D. If you don't get enough vitamin-D from your diet and don't get enough by sunlight related processing because your skin filters out the wavelengths needed to run the process because you're too dark your bones don't grow properly.

Your growth is stunted by vitamin-d deficiency. Not a huge deal unless you're a woman who's trying to push a normal sized babies head through a too small pelvic opening.

Skin color is controlled by only six genes, there's always some variation in even in an isolated population. In cloudy climates where the neolithic farmer's way of life was practiced, darker women were less successful at reproducing and surviving child-birth than lighter women. A fairly brutal example of natural selection. It's also the reason European women's hips are shaped a little differently from non Europeans.

Answer 2

There are actually more than just two "types" - whites and blacks. As in many species - humans have a variety and some have interbred and some have not. There is the Asian kind of skin pigmentation and then there is the Latin which are all sorts of shades between white and black. Skin colour is a function of the level of pigmentation (melanin) in the skin. I am not certain people living in hot areas are necessarily darker - it is not as though the skin charred or something! Three are pockets of fair peoples/races close to the equator (hotter there). There are roses in a variety of colours etc. etc.

Answer 3

They weren't hiding in caves, they just lived in areas with less sunlight. So they had to absorb more Vitamin D from the sun.

Answer 4

I believe it has something to do with the skin pigmentation and the relation to vitamin D, and the ability to manufacture it from sunlight. But I forget where I read that.

Answer 5

I am white because I had white parents and so did my parents.Before that I cant help you.