I’ve read that East Asians developed slanted eyes or Epicanthic Folds as a way to adapt to snow blindness in the more snowy and colder regions of Asia, and I was wondering why Northern Europeans, specifically Germanic and Nordic people that lived in the colder regions of Northern Europe, didn’t develop the same genetic trait or at least something similar to it.
In: 973
I can think of two reasons:
1. Scandinavia (and even most of germany/central europe) is really far north, much further north than most people think (look at a world map and compare to east asia – most of east asia is parallel to northern africa/southern europe) so there are very few hours of sunlight in winter, and what little sunlight there is, is faint and no reason for evolution to select for protection against. Norway for example has 0 hours of sun in the north and about 6 in the south in december.
2. In addition to the few hours of faint sunlight, it is also very cloudy during winter in northern europe, further reducing the already scarce sunlight.
As far as I’ve read, what has instead been selected for, is almost the opposite; very low pigment pale skin to let the tiny amounts of sunlight in to produce vitamin D.
Latest Answers