White people don't want to talk about it

[Xithras]

67. That first article was very widely misreported

It's incorrect to say that white skin evolved 8,000 years ago in Europe. What the actual research said was that Europeans didn't become "white" until around 8,000 years ago, when they interbred with the already-white migrants moving into Europe from the Eurasian steppe and the near east.

Basically, the current research on the origins of white skin suggests this: About 40,000 years ago, the ancestors of modern Eurasians migrated into Europe and Central Asia. These people very likely looked like modern Ethiopians. While vitamin D deficiency is an issue for people living anywhere in northern Eurasia, those on the European peninsula did not experience any significant change in skin color because they were able to acquire the vitamin from fish and other seafood, much as modern Inuit do. Further east, in the landlocked Eurasian heartland (where Russia is today) and in the extreme north, where glaciers still prevented access to the sea, solar radiation levels were lowest, and where the use of thick clothing prevented natural vitamin D production, skin began to lighten fairly quickly as a survival adaptation. Genetic studies indicate that the genes for white skin were already fairly widespread in that population 19,000 years ago, and the assumption is that those people were probably distinctly "whiter" than their neighbors at least 25,000 years ago.

Between 11,000 and 8,000 years ago, these genes began appearing further west, indicating that a population shift was taking place and that the original darker skinned Europeans were interbreeding with their eastern neighbors. White skin would have been a major reproductive advantage throughout Europe, which explains why it spread so quickly and thoroughly. Unlike their darker skinned ancestors, the Europeans with the genes for white skin would not have been dependent on trade for access to vitamin D rich foods, their health would have been less dependent on whims of weather or war, and they would have had the ability to migrate into areas of Europe that would have previously been inhospitable to people dependent on a seafood diet. In fact, the influx of white skin into the European peninsula DOES coincide with a population shift throughout Europe that transitioned it from a culture where nearly all of the population resided on the coasts (while Europe has always had an interior population, its interior numbers were relatively small until around 10,000 years ago, with the bulk of the population living within 100 miles of a coastline). Starting about 10,000 years ago, inland population numbers began to rise steadily. While this isn't provable, this inland shift can probably be attributed to the reduced dependence on ocean resources for survival as the population whitened.