Ethics Of Being The One Who Starts

[KSK]

I agree with @kerbiloid. 

Any advantage offered by skin colour is rendered largely moot once your humans have developed even rudimentary technology (fire, clothing, basic shelter). As for habitation patterns - I would argue that technology (ability to travel over distances) and social factors (are you going to be welcomed once you get where you're going? Do you have a pressing need to move in the first place?) have a much greater impact than skin colour. Correlation does not prove causation as the saying goes.

To be honest, I would ditch the skin colour part of your original post. It's more trouble than its worth given that its also completely irrelevant to your proposed scenario.

[Spacescifi]

2 minutes ago, KSK said:

I agree with @kerbiloid. 

Any advantage offered by skin colour is rendered largely moot once your humans have developed even rudimentary technology (fire, clothing, basic shelter). As for habitation patterns - I would argue that technology (ability to travel over distances) and social factors (are you going to be welcomed once you get where you're going? Do you have a pressing need to move in the first place?) have a much greater impact than skin colour. Correlation does not prove causation as the saying goes.

To be honest, I would ditch the skin colour part of your original post. It's more trouble than its worth given that its also completely irrelevant to your proposed scenario.

 

Just making them out to be like our Earth.

[kerbiloid]

1 hour ago, Spacescifi said:

Does not have to be sunlight heat.

Any radiative heat source, fire included, should heat them up quicker.

Their heat source, fire included.

Spoiler

Pay attention, they are inside the skin tent, and it's summer (they are fishermen).

So, no UV has a chance.

When you live in cold climate, you always wear something.

Spoiler

Otzi nods in agreement

Spoiler

and his modern colleagues, urban hunters-gatherers, too

 

So, the sun rays never touch anything but face, and the skin color means absolutely nothing in sense of protection.

But to produce melatonin you need energy, so when the body has to save every joule, a white-skinned human (whose skin doesn't spend energy for the useless melatonin) can stay alive "a day" longer than his more colored bro.
So, the peoples of higher latitudes were getting lighter and lighter to be not darwin'ed out.
It was before the last, greatest Ice Age.

Then the last Ice Age began, the Glacier came, and most of them retired to the South.
Basically to the Mediterranean coastline (Balkans, Italy), to the Middle East, and Central Asia, like Kazakhstan, Altai, and Yenisei region (from where the Indoeuropean, Finno-Ugric, and most part of Mongoloid race originated).

Some part of early Europeans was blocked in the Baltic Vault, cold but not frozen.
Living there for thousands of years they got darwinized into big (low surface/volume ratio), childish-faced (small extended parts like nose and ears, don't waste warmth), and fully uncolored (no useless melatonin production).
Actually, this was just a neoteny. Their bodies stayed childish-shaped and colorless in adult age due to the lower hormonal production. So, no separate color-nose-ears evolution happened.
Just when nobody lived long, the earliest successful hunters survived and gave the children.
Probably, this biochemical factor made them more calm, lol.

When the Ice Age had finished and the Indoeuropean (Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Celtic) peoples (originally not blondes but exactly like him:

Spoiler

) and Finno-Ugric peoples migrated to the Europe from the Central Asia and Siberia, they assimilated these survivors and now we have this distribution map of the blondes:

Spoiler

Brief version: The light skin saves energy when melatonin is useless due the cold climate and clothes 24/7/365.

Edited March 22, 2020 by kerbiloid

[Spacescifi]

15 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Their heat source, fire included.

  Reveal hidden contents

Pay attention, they are inside the skin tent, and it's summer (they are fishermen).

So, no UV has a chance.

When you live in cold climate, you always wear something.

  Reveal hidden contents

Otzi nods in agreement

  Reveal hidden contents

and his modern colleagues, urban hunters-gatherers, too

 

So, the sun rays never touch anything but face, and the skin color means absolutely nothing in sense of protection.

But to produce melatonin you need energy, so when the body has to save every joule, a white-skinned human (whose skin doesn't spend energy for the useless melatonin) can stay alive "a day" longer than his more colored bro.
So, the peoples of higher latitudes were getting lighter and lighter to be not darwin'ed out.
It was before the last, greatest Ice Age.

Then the last Ice Age began, the Glacier came, and most of them retired to the South.
Basically to the Mediterranean coastline (Balkans, Italy), to the Middle East, and Central Asia, like Kazakhstan, Altai, and Yenisei region (from where the Indoeuropean, Finno-Ugric, and most part of Mongoloid race originated).

Some part of early Europeans was blocked in the Baltic Vault, cold but not frozen.
Living there for thousands of years they got darwinized into big (low surface/volume ratio), childish-faced (small extended parts like nose and ears, don't waste warmth), and fully uncolored (no useless melatonin production).

When the Ice Age had finished and the Indoeuropean (Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, Celtic) peoples (originally not blondes but exactly like him:

  Reveal hidden contents

) and Finno-Ugric peoples migrated to the Europe from the Central Asia and Siberia, they assimilated these survivors and now we have this distribution map of the blondes:

  Reveal hidden contents

Brief version: The light skin saves energy when melatonin is useless due the cold climate and clothes 24/7/365.

 

I do not agree that darker skin is at a fundamental disadvantage to white skin.

Rather I think they both have their advantages and disadvantages.

It really depends on the circumstances which decide which is advantageous at the time.

Want easy sunburns? Want to absorb heat faster? Lighter skin favors this I believe.

Don't want easy sunburns? Want to absorb heat slower? Darker skin favors this I think.

Granted I may be wrong about the heat absorption thing, but my experience around both lighter and darker folk is why I think as I do.

One tends to thrive in the cold, while another tends to thrive in the the heat.

 

 

 

 

 

[kerbiloid]

11 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

I do not agree that darker skin is at a fundamental disadvantage to white skin.

It is not an advantage or disadvantage when it's always under the clothes.
The excessive biochemical production is a disadvantage. Including the melatonin when it affects nothing.
The colder it gets and the less food you have, the more you should extinguish your fire to save fuel.
Compare the polar and desert foxes.

11 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

Want easy sunburns?

Look at them again. What sunburns? Except of the face, they are always coated, because it's cold.

11 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

Granted I may be wrong about the heat absorption thing, but my experience around both lighter and darker folk is why I think as I do.

How many of those folks live in tundra, make the fire of bush sticks (extinguishing them in evening to light again in the morning), live in a double tent with a toilet bucket inside to save the warmth and because it's -40° outside, and wash twice per life because it's cold and you have to save fuel, and eat frozen raw meat?
How many generations of them live so?

Edited March 22, 2020 by kerbiloid

[Spacescifi]

4 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

It is not an advantage or disadvantage when it's always under the clothes.
The excessive biochemical production is a disadvantage. Including the melatonin when it affects nothing.
The colder it gets and the less food you have, the more you should extinguish your fire to save fuel.
Compare the polar and desert foxes.

Look at them again. What sunburns? Except of the face, they are always coated, because it's cold.

How many of those folks live in tundra, make the fire of bush sticks (extinguishing them in evening to light again in the morning), live in a double tent with a toilet bucket inside to save the warmth and because it's -40° outside, and wash twice per life because it's cold and you have to save fuel, and eat frozen raw meat?
How many generations of them live so?

 

UV rays can and do penetrate clothing, the thicker the clothing effects the absortion rate.

What I am saying is that one does not need weather extremes to notice a difference.

 

 

[kerbiloid]

7 minutes ago, Spacescifi said:

UV rays can and do penetrate clothing, the thicker the clothing effects the absortion rate.

If UV is so intensive that penetrates this clothing,

Spoiler

this guy can have any skin color, he's dead.

Spoiler

Do you compare the thinnest human skin partially colored from outside, and the furcoat over a skin jacket?

Upd.
What contains more melatonin: a human skin or a deer skin and fur?

Edited March 22, 2020 by kerbiloid