Talk:Human skin color/Archives/2009/March

No such thing as black skin mutation
To do a section on "The origins of black skin" is backward it should be "The origins of white skin".The article misstates the fact that the mutation is from dark skin and kinky hair to white skin and straight hair,the first humans were black. the mutation is of the other races.
 * The skin of the chimpanzee, beneath their hair, is white --JPotter 19:47, 12 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Assuming that ancient humans and chimpanzees had the same skin color, the genes for darker skin would have to be a mutation.

Cameron Nedland 03:33, 29 December 2005 (UTC) Vehgah Not all chimps have "white" skin [http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/img/chimpanzee.jpg link]


 * All of them except Bonobos.

--65.188.253.47 21:22, 27 December 2005 (UTC)
 * BTW the article is about *Human* skin color not chimps.


 * As far as I know, we can't know for sure which was the color of the first Homo sapiens. It wasn't necessarily black, just because of the African origin, neither the same as some of the colors of chimpanzee skin. It could be even redish or purplish like orangutans, for all we know (I think). Genes determining black skin, as those which determine any skin color, arose by mutation, anyway.--Extremophile (talk) 19:24, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

And, by the way, even these apparently dark skinned chimpanzees have fair, unpigmented skin under the body hair. The "bald" spots are sometimes pigmented, varying from subspecies to subspecies, probably according to sun exposure in each typical habitat too, I guess. Human dark skin is ancestral, though, to human white skin; it's not as if white people evolved separately in Europe, never having dark skinned ancestors. --Extremophile (talk) 19:48, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

"When Hominids evolved relative hairlessness (the most likely function of which was to facilitate perspiration)" Is it not true that hominids don't have relative hairlessness over other great apes, rather we have a similar number of hairs but each hair is much less coarse in modern humans? Perhaps "... relatively finer hair ..." or similar would be preferable? Or is this venturing too far from lay english?81.141.18.176 (talk) 10:45, 30 March 2009 (UTC)