page_title: Light skin
section_title: Evolution
hierarchical_section_title: Light skin / Evolution
caption_attribution_description: English: Elderly Tatar man in Kazan, Russia. June 2008.
context_page_description: Light skin is a human skin color, which has little eumelanin pigmentation and which has been adapted to environments of low UV radiation. Light skin is most commonly found amongst the native populations of Europe and Asia as measured through skin reflectance. People with light skin pigmentation are often referred to as "white" or "fair", although these usages can be ambiguous in some countries where they are used to refer specifically to certain ethnic groups or populations.
  As populations migrated away from the tropics between 125,000 and 65,000 years ago into areas of low UV radiation, they developed light skin pigmentation as an evolutionary selection acting against vitamin D depletion. Based on ancient DNA analysis conducted in 2014 on human skeletal remains from western Europe, this change from dark to light skin pigmentation likely occurred only recently for at least some Europeans.
context_section_description: An abundance of clinical and epidemiological evidence supports that light skin pigmentation developed due to the importance of maintaining vitamin D3 production in the skin. As a consequence, there must have been a strong selective pressure for the evolution of light skin in areas of low UV radiation. The evidence that dark skin evolved as a protection against the effect of UV radiation is overwhelming, and research shows that eumelanin protects against both folate depletion and direct damage to DNA. This accounts for the development of dark skin pigmentation of people living near the equator but does not account for the increasingly lighter-skinned people living outside the tropics.
  In the 1960s, biochemist W. Farnsworth Loomis suggested that skin colour is related to the body’s need for vitamin D. The overwhelming positive effect of UV radiation in land-living vertebrates is the ability to synthesize vitamin D3 from it. A certain amount of vitamin D which penetrates the skin helps the body to absorb more calcium which is essential for building and maintaining bones, especially for developing embryos. Vitamin D production depends on exposure to sunlight. Humans living at latitudes far from the equator developed light skin in order to help absorb more vitamin D. People with light (type II) skin can produce previtamin D3 in their skin at rates 5–10 times faster than dark-skinned (type V) people. People living far from the equator were under evolutionary pressure to develop light skin, which allowed more penetration of UV radiation and helped to produce more of the essential vitamin D. The evolution of blond hair in some populations is related to the development of light skin, but in other populations is independent.
  In 1978, NASA launched the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer. In 1998, anthropologist Nina Jablonski and her husband George Chaplin collected spectrometer data to measure UV radiation levels around the world and compared it to published information on the skin color of indigenous populations of more 50 countries. The results showed a very high correlation between UV radiation and skin color; the weaker the sunlight was in a geographic region, the lighter the indigenous people’s skin was. Jablonski went on to prove that people living above the latitudes of 50 degrees have the highest chance of developing vitamin D deficiency. "This was one of the last barriers in the history of human settlement," Jablonski states. "Only after humans learned fishing, and therefore had access to food rich in vitamin D, could they settle regions of high latitude."
  People living far from the equator developed light skin to produce adequate amounts of vitamin D during winter with low levels of UV radiation. Genetic studies suggest that light-skinned humans have been selected for multiple times.
  Some populations who had diets rich in vitamin D were less affected by the evolutionary selection for light skin. Vitamin D3 is available in low quantities in fish and liver. Populations who lived in coastal areas or areas with access to abundant sources to seafood could get their proportion of vitamin D from food. Some Arctic populations, such as the Inuit, could retain some of their skin pigmentation in areas of low UV radiation. In the spring they receive high levels of UV radiation as reflection from the snow, and their relatively darker skin protects them from the sunlight.
caption: An older light-skinned Tatar man in Russia
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