ConscientiousPoster on Nostr: Inuits have darker skin than would be expected of a people in their environment. ...
Inuits have darker skin than would be expected of a people in their environment. Speculation goes is:
A) All of their diet consists of seafood and that has significant amounts of vitamin D, which acts against any selective pressure for paler skin
B) Snow and water in general is extremely reflective so they're getting more sunlight on themselves than would initially be expected
C) They're relatively recent arrivals within their environment, the far north was uninhabited until about 12,000 years ago, so there might've not been enough time for selection pressures to cement pale skin as a dominant trait within their population
They would have pale skin if their founding stock had pale skin since there's no downsides to that, most likely it'd be a benefit rather than a detriment. Likewise, there's enough counter-acting effects granted by their environment for pale skin to not be strongly selected for. People fan out and inherit the traits of whatever race they belong to while making adaptions to whatever new environment they belong to, but it's never truly novel but instead arises from already existent genetic material and phenotypes within said population. That genetic inheritance sets the stage for any novel adaptations to develop, there's no other way of thinking about it. The guy in the Andes is going to be more similar to those geographically close to him than to someone on the other side of the world, unless those two had a more recent common ancestor than geographical proximity would predict
A) All of their diet consists of seafood and that has significant amounts of vitamin D, which acts against any selective pressure for paler skin
B) Snow and water in general is extremely reflective so they're getting more sunlight on themselves than would initially be expected
C) They're relatively recent arrivals within their environment, the far north was uninhabited until about 12,000 years ago, so there might've not been enough time for selection pressures to cement pale skin as a dominant trait within their population
They would have pale skin if their founding stock had pale skin since there's no downsides to that, most likely it'd be a benefit rather than a detriment. Likewise, there's enough counter-acting effects granted by their environment for pale skin to not be strongly selected for. People fan out and inherit the traits of whatever race they belong to while making adaptions to whatever new environment they belong to, but it's never truly novel but instead arises from already existent genetic material and phenotypes within said population. That genetic inheritance sets the stage for any novel adaptations to develop, there's no other way of thinking about it. The guy in the Andes is going to be more similar to those geographically close to him than to someone on the other side of the world, unless those two had a more recent common ancestor than geographical proximity would predict