PAST Lecture will focus on biological characteristics of skin colour

Universally recognised as the most important independent source of support for origin sciences research and education in Africa, the Palaeontological Scientific Trust (PAST) has been promoting and preserving southern Africa's rich fossil heritage since its inception in 1994. Whilst retaining this core focus, PAST's newest initiative, Scatterlings of Africa, is an ambitious effort to expand the organisation's mission across Africa, through its seven programmes which integrate education, research, and public outreach activities in the origin sciences.

Skin colour is a biological characteristic loaded with cultural meaning. Skin pigmentation itself is a biological adaptation that regulates the penetration of ultraviolet radiation (UVR) into the skin. It is an evolutionary compromise between the conflicting demands of protection of the skin against UVR and of production of vitamin D by UVR. This compromise represents one of the best examples of evolution by natural selection acting on the human body. In the history of the genus Homo and of our species, Homo sapiens, skin pigmentation has been a highly changeable characteristic.

Skin tones have evolved

Similar skin tones have evolved independently numerous times in response to similar environmental conditions. Skin colour is thus an entirely inappropriate characteristic for grouping people according to shared ancestry. The establishment of hierarchies of races based on preconceived notions of hierarchies of colour is a myth that has influenced the course of human history more adversely than any other. Greater understanding of how skin colour evolved and came to have social importance is therefore enormously relevant to human health and wellbeing, and the future of human societies.

Prof. Jablonski is a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at The Pennsylvania State University in the United States. She studies the evolution of adaptations to the environment in monkeys, apes and humans. Her research comprises descriptive and functional studies of living and fossil primates and theoretical studies of aspects of primate and human traits not preserved in the fossil record. In the last 15 years, she has been increasingly absorbed in studies of the evolution of human skin and skin colour.