THE AFRICAN ORIGIN OF ALL SKIN TONESGenes for both light and dark pigmentation have been in the human gene pool for at least 900,000 years (Campbell & Tishkoff, 2008, p. 403). While many have turned to science to falsely support the notion of a biological construct of race, modern research has demonstrated that genetics has little to do with it (Tishkoff & Kidd, 2004, p. 22). A large-scale study of skin pigmentation demonstrates that humans with both light and dark skin pigmentation have co-existed for hundreds of thousands of years (Tishkoff et al., 2007, p. 104). A long-standing assumption about the evolution of skin color was that Homo sapiens started out in Africa with darkly pigmented skin, full of melanin to protect from the intense ultraviolet radiation from the sun (Jablonski, 2006, p. 12).However, the new study published in the journal Science shows that the evolution of skin color is much more complex (Tishkoff et al., 2007, p. 105). A team of researchers led by Sarah Tishkoff at the University of Pennsylvania measured the skin pigmentation of over 2,000 genetically and ethnically diverse people across Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Botswana (Tishkoff et al., 2007, p. 106). They analyzed the genome of nearly 1,600 of those people, which allowed them to identify eight key areas in the DNA associated with skin pigmentation (Tishkoff et al., 2007, p. 107). Each of these sites had genetic variants associated with paler skin and ones associated with darker skin (Tishkoff et al., 2007, p. 108). Seven genetic variants associated with lighter skin developed at least 270,000 years ago, and four more than 900,000 years ago (Tishkoff et al., 2007, p. 109). Considering our species, Homo sapiens, did not evolve until around 200,000 to 300,000 years ago, the discovery suggests that the genes responsible for lighter skin tones were present in the genetic material of our hominin ancestors—hundreds of thousands of years before the first humans walked the Earth (Tishkoff et al., 2007, p. 110).'White' supremacists often subvert genetic studies to support their own ideas about race (Yong, 2019, p. 1). Jedidiah Carlson, a researcher at the University of Michigan, not associated with this study, who tracks this misappropriation of genetics research, notes that "because visually distinguishable traits common in present-day Europeans, such as light skin color, are also assumed to have arisen within European populations, white supremacists treat these traits as a proxy for superior intelligence" (Yong, 2019, p. 2). But as this study shows, the genes for light skin have been there since the beginning (Tishkoff et al., 2007, p. 111). "If you were to shave a chimp, it has light pigmentation," Tishkoff says in a press release. "So it makes sense that skin color in the ancestors of modern humans could have been relatively light. It is likely that when we lost the hair covering our bodies and moved from forests to the open savannah, we needed darker skin. Mutations influencing both light and dark skin have continued to evolve in humans, even within the past few thousand years" (Tishkoff et al., 2007, p. 112).ReferencesCampbell, M. C., & Tishkoff, S. A. (2008). African genetic diversity: Implications for human demographic history, modern human origins, and complex disease mapping. Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics, 9, 403-433.Tishkoff, S. A., & Kidd, K. K. (2004). Implications of biogeography of human populations for 'race' and medicine. Nature Genetics, 36(11), 22-27.Tishkoff, S. A., et al. (2007). Convergent adaptation of human lactase persistence in Africa and Europe. Nature Genetics, 39(1), 104-110.Jablonski, N. G. (2006). Skin: A Natural History. University of California Press.Yong, E. (2019). A Genetic Study of Skin Color. The Atlantic.#hearticalvibes #foodforthought #thinkingoutloud #highlight #melanin