Why do natives from South America do not have the same skin tones from natives of Sub-Saharan Africa even though they are on the same longitude?

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Why do natives from South America do not have the same skin tones from natives of Sub-Saharan Africa even though they are on the same longitude?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Your question seems to assume that the sun exposure is the only determination for skin pigmentation and general skin color appearance.

That is not the case, even within your own country people of the same ethnic background as yourself have different skin tones.

The native population of South America are intermixed with people of European and even Asian origin and so your assumption goes out the window right away.

The population of the planet have been moving for thousands of years but early skin pigmentation factors are still being expressed in generations to this day.

Even within an isolated twin high in the Andes Mountains you would expect people to have natural variation in skin colors. Within Africa that is also true.

Anonymous 0 Comments

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Anonymous 0 Comments

The benefits of skin tone on sun resistance/vitamin D production were overshadowed by cultural effects such as agriculture, herding and sailing.
Furthermore the natives of South America are on the evolutionary scale, completely recent, having reached there “only” 16,000 years ago.

So the peoples in South America are descended from North-East Asians, and they were pretty much the only humans in the Americas until the vikings showed up. They spread out across the continents faster than evolution could keep up, and their technology often meant they didn’t die as frequently enough for their skin tones to matter.

The black people in sub-Saharan Africa are descended from people from people who evolved black skin near the equator.
Their ability to herd animals lead them to displace the people with lighter skin in the south. There are still people with lighter skin from these original groups in pockets all over southern africa.

And it isn’t just equator to south either.
Indonesia (which is on the equator) is overwhelmingly populated by peoples who are the descendants of people whose skin tone evolved around modern day Taiwan.
They were better are sailing and fishing, so they basically pushed the dark skinned natives into the interior.