Black Colonies in the North

I've read that evolutionarily speaking white people are not predisposed to live in tropical and equatorial regions, mostly because lighter skin doesn't help you survive for long under the sun. However, why aren't there darker skinned people in the northern regions? There can't be a biological reason for that.

So make a reason for there to be a group of black people or other darker-skinned peoples living north of the Mediterranean.
 
I've read that evolutionarily speaking white people are not predisposed to live in tropical and equatorial regions, mostly because lighter skin doesn't help you survive for long under the sun. However, why aren't there darker skinned people in the northern regions? There can't be a biological reason for that.

So make a reason for there to be a group of black people or other darker-skinned peoples living north of the Mediterranean.

There is actually a reason biological reason for it. With time, in zones where sunlight is less, the amount of mellanin (sp?) in the skin of a population declines. As to exactly why this happens, I am not sure. But it does happen. There is some evidence that white Europeans descended from people who were, originally, black.
 

Nikephoros

Banned
There is actually a reason biological reason for it. With time, in zones where sunlight is less, the amount of mellanin (sp?) in the skin of a population declines. As to exactly why this happens, I am not sure. But it does happen. There is some evidence that white Europeans descended from people who were, originally, black.

I remember watching one show about Cro-Magnon vs. Neanderthal where the Cro-Magnon were black, and they were fighting white Neanderthals. But most other shows about that have white Cro-Magnons vs. darker-looking Neanderthals. I am sure that the former is more truthful.
 
Amongst other reasons is probably Vitamin D which is generated from exposure to sunlight. The lighter skin of Europeans allow them to take advantage of the lower levels of sunlight that are available in North Europe.

--
Bill
 
Sunlight on exposed skin is essential for the production of Vitamin D in the body; lack of Vitamin D leads to Ricketts and other joint problems. Sunlight on exposed skin is also a cause of skin cancer; melanin is a natural sunlight blocker that reduces the likelihood of said cancer.

Given those two facts, evolution led to a balance of melanin levles in the skin proportionate to the amount of sunlight a population recieves - that is why those whose ancestry largely lived in the tropics have dark skin where the intense light allowed sufficient Vitamin D production despite the melanin block, while as you head north or south you would end up with lighter pigmentation allowing more sunlight through to produce Vitamin D and the intensity of ultraviolet light is less, reducing the chance of skin cancer.

There are exceptions - the Inuit of the far north are descended from a migratory people whose ancestors had darker skin from when they lived in the south. They still have darker skin than their latitude would suggest as their major source of Vitamin D is from marine animals they eat.

Low-melanin level Arabs in Africa are also migrants from further north, but their cultural adaptation is loose, all-covering garments that provide the ultra-violet protection that they lack from low mealanin levels.

there are other examples that can be named, but invariably there was a relatively recent (evolutionary time-scale) migration that explains it.

It is an almost insignifigant evolutionary response to differences in sunlight intensity that has led to untold suffering due to ignorance.
 
Perhaps somehow get the Muslims to conquer Ethiopia before Byzantine North Africa. Ethiopian Christians flee to the Byzantine lands, and then to Europe when the Muslims take those lands. The Ethiopian diaspora settles in many lands, mostly but not exclusively Eastern Orthodox regions. It remains a distinct community and ethnic group though it suffer persecutions in certain times and places.
 
However, why aren't there darker skinned people in the northern regions? There can't be a biological reason for that.

There is. The more melanine you have, the more vitamines (I think it's vitamine D in particular) you must eat or you will develop rickets quite soon. Add to that the facts that vitamines aren't easy to find in the northern winters and that pure blood black africans are lactose-intolerant, thus forbiding them a great source of vitamines: milk. That's why sub-saharian africans are unlikely to establish large populations in Europe before modern times.

EDIT: Did not realize it had been already answered. I first read the question yesterday.
 
Greater Nubian migration to ancient Egypt, enough that the intermarriage of Egyptians and Nubians changes the Egyptians physically. Then the Egyptians have to spread out a bit more. Stop letting everybody come to them.

One of the trans-Mediterranean Muslim states (like the Almoravids in Morocco and Andalusia) is itself overtaken by Ghana or Songhai or Mali or one of the Western Sudanese states.

The Sahara is a huge physical barrier that makes this WI difficult.
 
This far north, a lot of foodstuffs are fortified with vitamin D. Milk, some breads, etc. It helps prevent fragile bones in many elderly, but the vitamin D supplements is also vital for the darker adoptees from the third world, who would otherwise get severe problems as they grew up.

That being said, I don't think there would be much problem in the south or central europe. The UK, Belgium, Poland etc.
 
This far north, a lot of foodstuffs are fortified with vitamin D. Milk, some breads, etc. It helps prevent fragile bones in many elderly, but the vitamin D supplements is also vital for the darker adoptees from the third world, who would otherwise get severe problems as they grew up.

That being said, I don't think there would be much problem in the south or central europe. The UK, Belgium, Poland etc.
There would still be a problem anywhere in Europe, or nature wold not ahve provided for light-skinned nitives there some thousands of years ago. Its almost completely about relative sunlight intensity, which gets notably less as you head north (or south) from the equator. Then there's the matter of cloud cover, which frankly gets quite high across temperate Europe and reduces sunlight intensity even more - ever notice the Irish are near-translucent?
 
I think part of it is that the great, post-evolutionary era migrations tended to happen from north to south, because they were motivated by declining harvests from cold weather. You don't run towards the blizzard, you see what's going on in the tropics.

Is there some event that would have triggered a mass migration north? Not just from Africa into Europe, but even from the Mediterranean into Scandanavia, or India into China?
 

ninebucks

Banned
Perhaps somehow get the Muslims to conquer Ethiopia before Byzantine North Africa. Ethiopian Christians flee to the Byzantine lands, and then to Europe when the Muslims take those lands. The Ethiopian diaspora settles in many lands, mostly but not exclusively Eastern Orthodox regions. It remains a distinct community and ethnic group though it suffer persecutions in certain times and places.

They would quickly assimilate and cease to exist as an independent ethnicity. Sure, there'd be some families within an ethnic group that would be darker than others, but that's nothing unusual. In the same way, there are many people in Eastern Europe with epicanthic folds, no doubt inherited from Asiatic settlers, but none of these people consider themselves to be Mongol-Bulgarians or what-have-you.
 
The Inuit are not the lightest-skinned people. And they are quite northerly.

Part of this is may be that they have not adapted yet. However, the Germanic and Finnic peoples of Scandinavia haven't been there long either, but are quite pale, so perhaps it is that the sunlight reflected of the snow affects skin color.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
There are exceptions - the Inuit of the far north are descended from a migratory people whose ancestors had darker skin from when they lived in the south. They still have darker skin than their latitude would suggest as their major source of Vitamin D is from marine animals they eat.
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The Inuit are not the lightest-skinned people. And they are quite northerly.
 
Part of this is may be that they have not adapted yet. However, the Germanic and Finnic peoples of Scandinavia haven't been there long either, but are quite pale, so perhaps it is that the sunlight reflected of the snow affects skin color.

Isn't that related to the biggest ammount of fat under the skimos skin, compared to other peoples?
 
While there are biological reasons that may explain why people living in the North of Europe lighter skin than those living in the Equator, those reasons aren't important enough in their own to make the existance of "Black" colonies in the north impossible (even in primitive times).

The Americas have both very hot regions and very cold regions (like Alaska or Tierra del Fuego) and in all cases the colour of the peoples was more or less the same (as far as I know).

The Americas were probably colonised somewhere between 50000 BC and 9000 BC. Yet the diverse climates and the diverse amount of light the different regions recieved wasn't an obstacle that humans couldn't overcome. ALL regions were colonised why the descendants of the same people, without experiencing a significant change in the colour of the skin. In fact, the Spanish were surprised not to find blacks in the West Indies. Ant the Fuegians weren't precisesly blonde.

Maybe this would have changed eventually. According to the Spanish "Cronistas", some Indians were darker than others. But, as the populations moved, there wasn't enough time for a group`to adjust its skin colour to a certain area. Humans move and progress waaaay faster than the rythm of evolution.

All this is to say that there's no biological reason why Blacks couldn't have established colonies in the North. There are a combination of historical and enviromental reasons that explain why that didn't happened IOTL. The biological factor wouldn't be enough to counter the "forces of history", if those had pushed history in a different direction.

If, for example, Africans had better crops, and had domesticated earlier; if Africans or Melanesians had disovered the Americas prior to the Europeans; or if a plague reduces the white population in far greater numbers than the black one, we might see Blacks "colonizing" the North and the far south. The fact that they'll recieve less light wouldn't have stopped them at all. Eventually, in tens of thousands of years, their skin might get lighter. But only in the very long run, and if these people don't move South, and no Southerners move North.
 
The Inuit are not the lightest-skinned people. And they are quite northerly.

Sunlight on exposed skin is essential for the production of Vitamin D in the body; lack of Vitamin D leads to Ricketts and other joint problems. Sunlight on exposed skin is also a cause of skin cancer; melanin is a natural sunlight blocker that reduces the likelihood of said cancer.

Given those two facts, evolution led to a balance of melanin levles in the skin proportionate to the amount of sunlight a population recieves - that is why those whose ancestry largely lived in the tropics have dark skin where the intense light allowed sufficient Vitamin D production despite the melanin block, while as you head north or south you would end up with lighter pigmentation allowing more sunlight through to produce Vitamin D and the intensity of ultraviolet light is less, reducing the chance of skin cancer.

There are exceptions - the Inuit of the far north are descended from a migratory people whose ancestors had darker skin from when they lived in the south. They still have darker skin than their latitude would suggest as their major source of Vitamin D is from marine animals they eat.
all ready answered that point
 
Isn't that related to the biggest ammount of fat under the skimos skin, compared to other peoples?

that an alternate evolutionary adaptation to the cold.

btw - "Eskimos" is considered a derogatory term, and Inuit should be used. I don't know where the word you're using comes from, but you're going to offend someone
 
that an alternate evolutionary adaptation to the cold.

btw - "Eskimos" is considered a derogatory term, and Inuit should be used. I don't know where the word you're using comes from, but you're going to offend someone

It is only derogative in some places. Eskimo is actually the official term for the language family of the Inuits, and is often used to describe any Arctic peoples out side of North America.
 
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