Talk:Human skin color/Archives/2016/May

This is an archive of past discussions about Human skin color. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contradictory section

The section "Dark skin" appears to contradict itself. It says dark skin is the ancestral state of humans and dark skin is not the result of "new variations on a previously lightened population", but it also says "dark skin evolved along with the loss of body hair about 1.2 million years ago". Which is the default, light skin or dark skin? Given what I know about the skin colour of other mammals (especially other primates) I would imagine the original skin colour was light brown/beige? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.148.125.90 (talk) 06:19, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

I have reworded the text to clarify things and removed the tag. The "default" or "original" skin colour depends on what time frame you are talking about - when we became homo sapiens we had dark skin, when we were still primates we had light skin covered in hair (like chimpanzees do today), before we became mammals we had scaly skin and when we were amoeba we had no skin. When talking about modern humans or homo sapiens we are fixing the reference point at about 200,000 years ago, when our common ancestor (the first homo sapiens) had dark skin. Light skin in modern humans only evolved in about the last 20,000 years, and Europeans only became "white" as we know it today during the Bronze Age (about 5,000 years ago). Tobus (talk) 12:37, 15 May 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for you help, that's much clearer!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.148.125.90 (talk) 12:28, 16 May 2016 (UTC)

Pictures

Australopithecus Africans is not part of the accepted human timeline. Thus a reconstruction of it does not belong on this page. Further it is very misleading for the average visitor who does not know of human evolutionary development.

I am ambiguous regarding the pic of a reconstructed homo erectus, or reconstructions at all in fact. They are not necessarily factual, thus again run the risk of misinterpretation. However it is at least showing what is considered part of human evolutionary history. However my view is as the page is about Human skin color, it should show only pics or reconstructions of homo sapiens and development since that time.

Facts of Science (talk) 05:33, 21 May 2016 (UTC)

Current thinking is that the homo genus evolved from Australopithecus, so there is certainly scope to refer to it when discussing the evolution of skin colour in humans. In terms of this page though I don't think it really adds much and three images in a section of this size is probably unwarranted. The erectus image is the most relevant of the three in my opinion, as it represents the time when human pigmentation took a detour from other primates. Tobus (talk) 06:42, 21 May 2016 (UTC)