If you put a white group in Africa, will they change skin color genetically after several generation?

Question

I'm not talking about inter-racial marriage
Im not talking about sun tan

Will heat and environment change skin color genetically after 2 or 3 generations lets say

Answer 1

Change of any population's phenotype requires more than a few generations.

Answer 2

theyll get tanned but i dont think theyll change skin color

Answer 3

Possibly if they start getting skin cancer at rates as high as those of White Australians... it might take more than 2 or 3 generations though.

Answer 4

No

Answer 5

You're talking about thousands of years, or longer. Once the trait was established, it would still take 30 generations to become permanent. The evolution of dark skin is believed to have begun around 1.2 million years ago, in light-skinned early hominid species (who had hair, but white skin like chimps) after they moved from the equatorial rainforest to the sunny savannas. In the heat of the savannas, better cooling mechanisms were required, which were achieved through the loss of body hair and development of more efficient perspiration. The loss of body hair led to the development of dark skin pigmentation, which acted as a mechanism of natural selection against folate depletion, and to a lesser extent, DNA damage. The primary factor contributing to the evolution of dark skin pigmentation was the breakdown of folate in reaction to ultraviolet radiation; the relationship between folate breakdown induced by ultraviolet radiation and reduced fitness as a failure of normal embryogenesis and spermatogenesis led to the selection of dark skin pigmentation. By the time modern Homo sapiens evolved, all humans were dark-skinned.

Answer 6

Not after a few generations, obviously.

Answer 7

Not necessarily. Evolution also works by the elimination from the gene pool of genetic traits that are unsuited to the prevailing environment. Consequently, those without the genes for high skin melatonin will be disadvantaged in a high-sun environment so, in nature, they would tend to die out, leaving only those with darker skins. They would not change in response to a dramatic change in environment, they would die out.



In reality, man made environments are unnatural so white skinned people have artificial protection from the sun and would not necessarily be greatly disadvantaged. Humans can now survive conditions, medical and environmental, that would have killed them in the past but that is because of technology rather than the evolution (unless you count the evolution of the brain that gives us the capacity to invent and discover).



Evolution tends to be a long-term process, responding to microscopic changes in environment over many years. A mutation that gives an advantage will tend to survive while a mutation that is a disadvantage will not. The sudden introduction of a non-adapted species to a hostile environment will weed out those less well able to tolerate the new environment. Any survivors with more favourable genes will reproduce with others similarly equipped so, over time, a better adapted life form may evolve.

Answer 8

No

Answer 9

No. If that was the case, white people in South Africa would be hard to find by now.

Answer 10

No, because thats not how evolution works.

Natural Selection, the process which causes changes in a race or species, happens through breeding.

Answer 11

White (Caucasian) North African Berbers can have a very pale complexion to a dark brown complexion ( from the thousands generations of hot sun in the desert) to Black African features ( from intermarriage)

Answer 12

If there was no such thing as sunscreen/clothing to prevent burns, yes. The pale ones would get cancer and die and the darker ones would survive. There is technology though, this slows down evolution because it prevents death.