skin changes

does aybody know how many generations it takes for a light skin to turn to dark if one moves to Africa for example and viceversa, if a dark skin individual moves to a northern country, where sun is little.

 

A friend of one of my daughters did Social Antropology at Edinburgh Uni., and would often regale us with 'interesting factoids' and apparently - assuming that each successive generation only produced children with partners from their own ethnicity (even allowing for natural genetic mutation) - then the 'guesstimate' was around 5000 generations.

 

Goodness! What about climate change in their new environment? Has that been factored in to that equation, did she say?
Fascinating, the stuff you can learn here!

 

'Kinell, with the weather here these last few years I'm rapidly turning albino.

 

I don't think it works like that. I saw a program once about genetics, and apparently its like switches. When the science was in its infancy, animals were studied and animals of one colour were bred with the same species but different fur colour. They expect the result to be a blend of the two colour but found that something like 4 in 5 off spring had once colour, and 1 in 5 had the other colour, but none were in between.

In my family, my dad can tan, my mam can't. Both my sisters can but I can't. Yet funny enough, although I get my mam's fair skin, every other feature is pretty much a carbon copy of my dad

 

Paula, you know it's in the genes and what country you live in doesn't necessarily change anything. You may go 'paler' if you come from a Med country and move to the UK because there is very little sunshine and you may go 'darker' if you move from the UK to the Med because of the constant sunshine. Generations, in my opinion, have nothing to do with the change ... it's the individual in their immediate environment.

You know what colouring I am, ie, strawberry blonde, but my great-grandmother was Sikh and all the family was olive skinned and darked haired on my father's side of the family, not just from that link but from other links. I have lived in 'hot countries' for many years as you know, 14 in Alabama and now 12 here in Portugal in the south. It has not changed my skin colouring. I choose not to lie in the sun but maintain a golden colour from the ambience of where I live. On the other hand, my sister, who has the dark colouring from our family heritage could sit in the sun for one day and go darker than I would if I were to sit in the sun all summer.

We have lots of Portuguese friends and those from Mozambique are black and those from Angola are creamy coloured and probably get a bit paler here whereas the Mozambique folk stay black ... because that is what is in their genes.

Are you going pale or something?

 

quote -what country you live in doesn't necessarily change anything-
Not in the short term. In the short term you get illnesses etc. due to how your body responds to the changed level of vitamin D supply.
I was more referring to the gene that controls the melanin produced and it will mutate over a long time following adaptations to the environment.

 

Well if you will insist in sitting in the sunshine wearing a jumper, it's hardly surprising

 

Been there, done that - more than once. Once my arms and front and back chest were badly burned when wearing a very skimpy v-necked/sleeveless top and couldn't wear anything else for almost a week because it was the only top I had that 'fitted' the sunburn! An extremely awkward and difficult situation as I was theatre manager at the time and therefore couldn't go into the theatre! Not a good way to be able to run a department!

 

Been there, done that too Daisees ... with a bikini in Atlanta, Georgia. T'other half had a conference to attend and I went along and sat at the pool reading for several hours ... it was completely overcast but very warm. I was so sore I had to sleep in the bikini bottom as it was too painful to pull down over my thighs ... Like you, for a week I had to wear a similar sort of top/bottom ... never again ...

Still living in a hot country, I am more sensible now in my advancing years ...