TITLE:
The Puzzle of European Hair, Eye, and Skin Color
AUTHORS:
Peter Frost
KEYWORDS:
Brightness, Eye Color, Hair Color, Novelty, Sexual Selection, Skin Color
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Anthropology,
Vol.4 No.2,
May
21,
2014
ABSTRACT: Europeans,
particularly northern and eastern Europeans, are unusually colored. Their hair
can be not only black but also brown, flaxen, golden, or red, and their eyes
not only brown but also blue, gray, hazel, or green. Their skin is pale, almost
like an albino’s. This color scheme is more developed in women than in men and
seems to have been selected for its visual properties, particularly brightness
and novelty. Sexual selection is a likely cause. It favors eye-catching colors
and, if strong enough, can produce a color polymorphism, i.e., whenever a
visible feature becomes differently colored through mutation, the new color
will spread through the population until it loses its novelty value and becomes
as frequent as the original one. Such selection is consistent with 1) the many
alleles for European hair and eye color; 2) the high ratio of nonsynonymous to
synonymous variants; and 3) the relatively short time over which this color
diversity developed. Sexual selection will target women if they outnumber men
on the mate market. Among early modern humans, such imbalances resulted from 1)
a low polygyny rate (because few men could provide for a second wife and her
children) and 2) a high risk of early male death (because long hunting distances
increased exposure to environmental hazards). Sexual selection of women was
stronger at latitudes farther from the equator, where men were less polygynous
and more at risk of death while hunting. It was strongest on continental
steppe-tundra, where men provided for almost all family food needs by pursuing
herds of reindeer and other herbivores over long distances. Although this type
of environment is now fragmentary, it covered until 10,000 years ago a much
larger territory—the same area where, today, hair and eyes are diversely
colored and skin almost milk white.