I hear you. The reason this is a question is that society is still so skewed toward a designer led evolution system. The Great Architect is the proposed religious answer to reconciling god and genesis.
You have to change your mode of thought – its not that its advantageous or that nature designed us or we “adapted” — its just that it didn’t kill us.
People with fair skin, like Northern European redheads – wouldn’t have survived in sunny climates. But because they didn’t have to, they/we didn’t die out. Its not just about what made you successful but if it wasn’t something that stopped you from not procreating, then it doesn’t matter.
An example is male pattern baldness, heart disease, etc. If the condition occurred after the possibility of producing off-spring, then the genes will survive. Obviously, if the condition was so severe, that families couldn’t raise their off-spring that would have an impact.
Yea your premise has some misconceptions there.
Pale people get sunburnt – The rest of us with darker shades don’t need sunscreen, maybe for UV protection only.
I lived in the tropics with very intense midday sun. It’s not wise to go out without sunscreen (radiation) but I do anyway. I’ve never been sunburnt in my life so I have no idea what’s that like.
In addition to the other comments about other animals also protecting themselves in different ways, if a human get sunburnt continously our skin darkens and we develop some additional protection. That’s until we develop skin cancer that is. But evolution generally does not care what happens to us after child bearing and rearing age and evolution is generally completely fine with you drying at the ripe old age of 35 🙂
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