Why Are Humans White?

Every modern human descends from populations with dark, melanin-rich skin — so how did we end up with the range of skin colors we see today? This video breaks down the actual biology: what melanin and melanocytes do, why humans lost their fur during persistence hunting, and how vitamin D became the evolutionary pressure that slowly reshaped skin color in low-UV latitudes. It covers Cheddar Man, the 10,000-year-old British skeleton whose 2018 DNA sequencing surprised researchers, why hunter-gatherer diets delayed the change for 35,000 years, how the arrival of agriculture removed that safety net, and the SLC24A5 mutation that swept through European populations. It also looks at why East Asian populations arrived at lighter skin through completely different genes — a textbook case of convergent evolution.