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.
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.
Aside from the fact that animals can get sunburnt. I think the core of your issue is that you were suddenly exposed to a lot sunlight while you were completely not used to it, if you slowly adjusted to it instead of suddenly spending a lot of time in intense sunlight while you never did that before, you would have probably been much better off.
Human skin gets darker/lighter with exposure to sunlight, as well as people evolved lighter/darker skin corresponding to the region they were living in.
Take these two factors into account, and it wouldn’t hinder them as much, cause they would be used to it, and have also evolved the skin color to deal with it.
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