Human Skin Color and Natural Selection (660 words)

Critical thinking question:

If a friend of yours said that skin color is a valuable tool to use in classifying humans, how would you explain that variations in human pigmentation are a result of natural selection in different environments?

Human skin color varies around the world, ranging from “a very dark brown among some Africans, Australian Aborigines, and Melanesians to a near yellowish pink among some Northern Europeans” (O’Neil).

Human skin is the most visible aspect of the human phenotype (Jablonski 585). Due primarily to the presence of the pigment melanin, at least six genes control skin color. Both light- and dark-complexioned people have melanin....

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