Evo-Ed: History, Genetics, and Human Skin Color

This is part 4 of our multi-part series on Human Skin Color.

The human species has been on the global scene for about 200,000 years. Skin color hasn't been a fixed characteristic over that time. The earliest humans likely had dark skin, which was a departure from earlier ancestor species that featured light skin and coarse body hair. Dark skin, and less body hair helped early humans to effectively thermoregulate, while having the photoprotective properties that skin pigment affords. Skin color has been in constant flux in the millennia since the dawn of our species, and broadly correlates to a latitudinal gradient of sub exposure. Today, humans come in a wide and beautiful array of different skin shades and tones.

For more information on the biology of human skin color, visit www.evo-ed.org.

Support for this work was provided by the National Science Foundation's Division of Undergraduate Education program under Award No. DUE2020221