Skin colors and latitude

South indians may be darker then some tropical africans but higher latitude, also some places in central america are lower latitude then in
either Arabia or Some parts of india, but Central american indians are consideridably lighter skinned. Can that be explained by the forest cover in central america? I mean, arabia is mostly open desert. I mean,
most people in palestine or iraq are darker then Central americans for instance. Why are central americans so much lighter skinned despite the latitude?? And how are bengalis so dark skinned while their country latitude is no lower then central-northern mexico.[This message has been edited by moelarry, 04-03-2004]

The question to look into is how long it takes to evolve new skintype to match solar input levels and when migration moved people into different locations.There was a recent show on PBS on pre-historic immigration into Australia and the US and SAmerica (become natives) with genetic data and a small discussion of the evolution of fair skin from the urals back west to europe.The show was called "The Journey Of Man"
PBS Newsletters Signup | PBSIt has some interesting information, that may help anwer your question, but I am not sure I buy all the story on it myself.

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we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

I don't think we need two threads with the exact same OP. Link to the other one is http://EvC Forum: Skin colors and latitudeClosing this one down

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