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From: "David Wilson" <>
Subject: Re: [DNA] White skin color gene
Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2006 20:58:02 -0800


One theory is that skin color is connected with hairlessness. Our close
human relatives, the chimpanzees, are asserted to be lighter-skinned under
their hair. The proposal is that the earliest modern humans in Africa were
also light skinned under theirs. When the ancestors of modern humans lost
their hair, skin darkened over the entire body to protect it. When humans
left Africa and spread east and north, the ones heading north entered an
environment in which there was less pressure to maintain dark skin, and
lighter skin re-emerged. Sexual selection pressures may then have played a
stronger rule in expansion of lighter skin than did natural selection. (For
that matter, sexual selection may have played a role in darkening the skin
of hairless hominids in the first place.)

I'm not sure I think there is merit in this argument. I'm just offering it
as one that I have encountered.

David Wilson






On 11/10/2006 6:58:25 PM, ray () wrote:


>
> Rather than my guesses, surely there are some scholarly theories
> on why light skin dominated in Europe.
>
> Ray

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