Why do Anthropologists cite us English as being the palest skinned people on earth?

Question

Just from observations alone, I would agree (minus most English women of course, with their fake tanning parlour orange glows and the bottled tanning dyes), but why the English. Surely there are less sunnier climes on this earth, yet those people seem to tan well enough with limited exposure to sunlight.

Emminent anthropologists Carleton Coon and William Ripley both found through their seperate research projects that the majority of the English population, that is those individuals in England who can trace their ancestry to the 5th Century Nordic invasions of Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, and not from any later waves of immigration are by far the fairest skinned human beings on the planet.

My question is why? It's cloudier in Russia and Poland, and many of these Slavic peoples are just as blond haired and blue eyed as us English, yet they seem to tan well with increasing exposure to the sun. The same is said of the Germans and the Danes.

Answer 1

We must be a race with the least number of melanocytes in our skin.

Answer 2

Sorry, but I would argue that it isn't as cloudy in Russia, Poland or Germany or Denmark. I think that the British Isles are the cloudIEst temperate region on the planet. However, they say it takes 20,000 years to go from black to white. Therefore, how much lighter could the English be today assuming they were a more "German" color (ie tans better) since the Jute invasions? It doesn't seem like a long enough time to lessen pigment inheritance due to whatever evolutionary questions there might be, like guys reproduced more with lighter skinned women, or whatever. Interesting question. Maybe somebody knows of a scientific study or paper about it?

Answer 3

Palest-skinned people:

Irish
Scottish
Welsh
English
Icelandic
Breton (northwest French)
Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish, Dutch
German, Belgian, French, Austrian, Swiss, Hungarian

Answer 4

Probably a local, populational polygenic effect. Remember skin tone is a continuous trait, influenced by many loci. ( about 6 ) So you have a continuous variation in tone. The English that you speak of may have a rather restricted group of these genes. The effect is additive for most peoples, so this is why I posit an allele frequency that is low for your type of Englishmen. You need to go further into the studies, to see if this is the case.

Answer 5

The fair Slavic peoples must carry a gene from darker skinned races that helps them tan? I have a sallow skin inherited from from my fathers side, and I believe this inherited from the Norman 1066 invasion, I tan well if I go in the sun. My youngest daughter takes after my mother for her fair skin and she tans well no problem so there must be something that protects her. Hope this helps.

Answer 6

Just a minor correction to an above responder: Everyone has roughly the same number of melanocytes, no matter where they are from or what population they belong to. People with lighter skin simply have melanocytes that don't produce as much melanin as those with darker skin.

Answer 7

interesting theory.... i can say for south Slavic or Greek, they are darker on account of Turkish blood in them. i guess all the other regions that you mentioned also had contact with some darker-skinned peoples. English probably didn't. but I like English guys. even blond and feckly they are really cute:-)

Answer 8

You might just find it funny to know, that in South Africa in our Afrikaans language we quite widely uses in stead of the expression "as white as snow" the one "as white as a Englishman". Now don't ask me how this came into use:: in the first place we have no snow here (except ocasionally in Winter on the highest mountain peaks), and then secondly I presume non-tanned United Kingdom people look a bit pale white to us (paler than ourselves that is).

Answer 9

Because when the Vikings raided, they took away the best looking English people. After a few generations, there were only ugly Brits with bad teeth left to breed.

Answer 10

I think the anthropologists are talking about skin tone without tanning.

Answer 11

I believe no, the Greenland races are the palest, due to their skin, being so close to Arttic circle. Vitamin D is what lack most.i.e. paler faces.