Evolving Skin Color

[Colors of a Woman, Estée Lauder Primer]

From GRID-Arendal:

The twin role played by the skin – protection from excessive UV radiation and absorption of enough sunlight to trigger the production of vitamin D – means that people living in the lower latitudes, close to the Equator, with intense UV radiation, have developed darker skin to protect them from the damaging effects of UV radiation. In contrast, those living in the higher latitudes, closer to the Poles, have developed fair skin to maximize vitamin D production.

[Skin Color Map, Chaplin G.©]

Well, that makes sense. Living in a mobile culture, however, I wonder to what extent it complicates the maintenance of our health. For a good example, perhaps, look at Australia. Note the Indigenous Australians and then the more prominent European-based population of Australians. Then note the level of skin cancer cases found in Australia (which happens to have the highest incidence in the world). It's not difficult to guess which ethnic division has the highest incidence rate.

While ethnic diffusion was often historically due to colonization, invasion, or enslavement, it is more recently found within the (slightly more voluntary) phenomenon of a mobile culture and the oft-resulting ethnically-mixed families. If skin color is the body's solution for dealing with UV radiation, will the body eventually evolve a new solution for our island-hopping and ethnic-mixing? Perhaps it will be as simple as a faster-reacting skin. Perhaps scientists will whip up something to accelerate that evolution. Or perhaps skin cancer and vitamin D deficiency is nature's way of telling us that we're all in the wrong place.