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Human skin color varies from the darkest brown to the lightest tints. Divergence induces distinctions in skin color among people in pigmentation, which comes from genetics and exposure to sunlight. Disparities across populations developed through natural selection because of environmental differences and regulated the biochemical impacts of ultraviolet radiation infiltrating the skin.
Many substances affect human skin color, although the most influential substance is the pigment melanin. Melanin is generated within the skin in cells called melanocytes, and it is the primary determinant of the skin color of darker-skin humans. The skin color of individuals with light skin is specified mainly through the bluish-white connective tissue under the skin surface and by the hemoglobin leaking in the veins of the skin.
There is a direct interrelationship between the geographic distribution of ultraviolet radiation and the dispersal of indigenous skin pigmentation worldwide. Areas that receive higher doses of ultraviolet radiation are typically located nearer to the equator and have darker-skinned populations. Territories distant from the tropics and nearer to the poles have a lower intensity of ultraviolet radiation, which is echoed in lighter-skinned populations.
Scientists tell that human populations over the past 50 thousand years have altered from dark-skinned to light-skinned as they migrated to other ultraviolet radiation zones and that such significant changes in pigmentation may have occurred in as little as 100 generations (~2.5 thousand years) via selective sweeps.
According to Hua Tang, Gregory S. Barsh, the highest diversity of skin color is observed within African populations.
