We shall discuss European prehistory in a moment. First though, let us clarify the difference between the "race" notion, as it exists in American folklore and the subject of this essay -- people's actual complexions.
Some other nations have their own "race" notions, but they all differ from the United States in those four ways. The British see two boundaries separating three "races": Black, White, and Coloured (in-betweens or biracials). In Latin America, marriages between people of different complexion are just as common as same-complexion weddings. In apartheid South Africa, people routinely switched "race" by requesting it from their local Race Classification Board. And everywhere else on Earth, your actual appearance determines your "race"; only in the United States can someone of European appearance be considered Black solely due to ancestry.
How and why America's odd "race" notion first emerged and unfolded over the past four centuries is a fascinating tale, but not the subject of this essay. We sketch it only to point out that the "race" notion did not exist anywhere on Earth before 1676 or so. Hence, it is incorrect to say that Shakespeare, Roman Emperor Pescennius Niger, Jesus, Cleopatra, Hannibal, Tutankhamen, Nefertiti, or Moses were White or Black. Those labels -- and the imaginary boundary they denote -- had not yet been invented.
On the other hand, it is proper to ask whether someone had a light or dark brown complexion. Actual complexion, not "race," is the subject of this essay.
Hair-, skin-, and eye-color all come from a body-produced substance called melanin. Africans have lots of melanin. Europeans have very little. And yet, when it comes to melanin, Europeans, not Africans are the exception. This is hard to grasp today. Europeans conquered the planet a few centuries ago, and so you see their descendants everywhere. But consider only natives, and you will soon realize that people from southern India, Andaman Islanders, Melanesians, and Australian Aborigines are all as dark as Africans, although they are only distantly related to them. On the other hand, pink skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes are virtually unknown among temperate-climate Northern Asians or Native Americans. Even Arctic Inuits (Eskimos) and Aleuts are swarthier than northern Europeans. Nobody is as pale.
And so the title question, "Where did White folks come from?" really comes down to asking, "What happened to Northern Europeans that made them so pale?" Clearly, something made folks around the Baltic who lacked melanin more successful than their darker neighbors. The complexion gradient we see across Europe from north to south today is obviously the result of prehistoric intermarriage between the melanin-deficient folks of the Baltic and the melanin-endowed population south of the Mediterranean.
Two lines of evidence, art and DNA analysis, tell when the mutation took place. Art brackets the time period of the event. DNA analysis pinpoints it so precisely that we can figure out the cause of its regional success.
Another strategy of examining art approaches the question from the other direction, "When was the first portrait of an undoubtedly fair-complexioned, European-looking person painted?" As it turns out, it was a statue painted in Egypt about five millennia ago. It depicts Prince Rahotep and his Consort Nefret, of the Old Kingdom, early Fourth Dynasty. He is brown. She is pink. For this piece and similar examples ancient art, see P.P. Kahane, Ancient and Classical Art, ed. Hans L. C. Jaffe, 6 vols., 20,000 Years of World Painting, vol. 1 (New York: Dell, 1967).
The evidence of art suggests that the mutation making northern Europeans melanin deficient happened sometime between five and six millennia ago.
For details on the when and how of the paleness adaptation, read Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi, and Alberto Piazza, The History and Geography of Human Genes, trans. Sarah Thorne (Princeton: Princeton University, 1994). This book is the most comprehensive DNA analysis yet published of the migrations and waves of human Diaspora that began about one hundred millennia ago in Africa and colonized the globe. It has become a standard reference for scholars of prehistory. It mainly covers events that transpired across the entire planet, but it spends a page (145) explaining the European paleness mutation. Here is what happened.
Vitamin D is essential to calcium metabolism. Without it, you get rickets: grotesquely bowed legs and malformed skull and chest. Human skin produces vitamin D when the sun's ultraviolet light penetrates the protective melanin layer. This means that the complexion our ancestors inherited from equatorial Africa was a delicate balance. Too little melanin (too fair a complexion) and you would get skin cancer. Too much melanin and you would not produce enough vitamin D.
As we spread out of Africa and across the globe, we moved into regions where sunlight was too weak to penetrate our skin. Fortunately, other animals also produce vitamin D and store it in their fat, just as we do. As long as we made a living by eating animals, especially animal fat, we simply consumed their vitamin D. Our own skin's inability to produce vitamin D in weak sunlight was not even noticed.
Next, about nine millennia ago, the invention of agriculture changed our diet. From then on, most of us lived mainly on grains (wheat, barley, oats). Farmers who lived around the Mediterranean and further south no longer ate vitamin D from animals, but their dark skins produced it from the bright sunlight of the region. Inuits and Laplanders who lived in the far north never switched to grains. They continue to consume mainly animal fat to this day and so acquire vitamin D despite weak sunlight. But the Gulf Stream washes northern Europe and warms the Baltic Sea. In this narrow region, the climate allowed the switch to agriculture, but sunlight was too weak to penetrate dark skin and produce vitamin D. Rickets spread through the population, as can be seen in the fossil bones of the time.
Then, about five millennia ago, a random mutation occurred along the Baltic. It suppresses melanin production and created a breed of people who could live off agriculture in the far north and still not get rickets. Their pale skins are so unprotected that even the weak sunlight of the far north can penetrate and produce vitamin D. Free from rickets, the pale ones multiplied and prospered as their rickety dark-skinned neighbors died out.
Folks remained dark in Africa. Paleness is harmful near the equator, so the pale ones never spread into Africa until the age of European expansion. Paleness offers neither advantage nor harm around the sunny Mediterranean, so people there are about a 50-50 mix between the pale European model of human being and the original African model. Nowadays, vitamin D is added to commercial foods, so rickets is rare, no matter where you live or how dark your complexion.
People with the extremely pale skin, hair, and eyes typical of northern Europeans first appeared on the world stage a mere five millennia ago -- long after cave men turned into farmers. Despite Hollywood's casting lovely, talented Darryl Hanna as a Paleolithic huntress, it turns out that "The Clan of the Cave Bear" were not White folks at all.The Four Parts of the American "Race" Notion
Draw an imaginary line on the globe from Oslo, Norway to Lagos, Nigeria. Walk along that line and you will notice that most folks at the northern end have fair (pinkish-beige) complexions, blonde hair and blue eyes. As you travel south through Netherlands, Belgium and France, peoples' skin, hair and eyes get darker. Continue south through Spain, and complexions get even darker -- almost light brown. By the time you reach the Mediterranean, hair is mostly black with reddish highlights and blue eyes are very rare. Take the ferry to Tangier and hike into the Sahara. Complexions gradually shade from medium to dark brown and hair becomes nearly black. Continue south though Mali, Upper Volta, and Dahomey and you will notice that almost everyone is dark brown with black hair and eyes. When you reach Lagos, you will find that everyone's skin is very dark indeed, with jet-black hair and eyes. Other features also change slowly along your journey: hair becomes curlier, noses become wider.
The "race" notion says that somewhere along this path lies an imaginary boundary separating White people from Black. There is no real boundary, of course; change is imperceptible at every point. A sharp "race" boundary is folklore, not fact. Nevertheless, American tradition says: (1) that a single such boundary or "color-line" exists, (2) that people should not marry across it, (3) that you cannot switch sides, and (4) that you are born on your parents' side of the line, no matter your actual appearance.Everyone Came From Africa But Only Europeans Lack Color
It seems trivial to say that our species originated in Africa and so everyone has dark brown ancestors, but there in an important subtlety here. Europeans are more recently African than most. Several waves migrated out of Africa over the past hundred millennia. The ancestors of Europeans came from Africa more recently than did the settlers of any other continent. The final wave of African migrants to populate Europe arrived only about thirteen millennia ago, long after Australia and China had been settled. In fact, DNA analysis of Africans of Bantu stock and Europeans reveals that these two groups are today genetically closer than either group is to, say, Asians or Native Americans. Complexion, like beauty, is truly only skin-deep.
Nevertheless, despite Europeans and Africans being closely related, few differences among people's appearance are as dramatic as their skin color. Observe families at the beach. Neither the contrast between fat folks and thin ones, or between tall families and short ones, catch your eye the way pale pink European-looking bodies differ from dark brown African-looking ones.Art Suggests When
Many books have been written praising the near-photographic realism of Paleolithic cave art. Few stress how seldom human figures are depicted. Very few point out that, whenever people and animals are depicted together, the hunters are routinely painted as darker than their prey. Some paleoanthropologists mention this oddity as evidence that the cave artists depicted animals realistically, but for some strange religious reason painted people much too dark. A more plausible explanation is that folks really were dark back then. The hunting scene above, showing dark-brown bowmen shooting medium-brown deer, was painted in what is now France. It dates from about thirteen millennia ago, around the time of the last Africa-to-Europe migration. Europeans had not yet lost their color as of this date.
Similarly, early Egyptian paintings depict only brown people. For example, consider the fragmentary picture of boats, at left. Examine the row of oarsmen. The picture dates from six millennia ago. Again, no European-looking people are to be seen. Of course, one could say that fair-complexioned people might simply not have reached Egypt yet by that time, but see the next example.DNA Reveals Why
As it turns out, DNA analysis shows that the dramatic change in European complexion happened around the Baltic in about 3000 B.C. -- just yesterday, geologically speaking. This was a hundred millennia after our species' emergence. It was forty millennia after the invention of culture (art, music, language, religion, fashion). It was twenty millennia after horses and oxen were painted on the cave walls of Lascaux and Altamira. It was four millennia after the invention of agriculture -- long after the "The Clan of the Cave Bear" stopped hunting and settled down to raise crops. It was centuries after the invention of writing in Sumeria. It was around the time when Egypt's Early Dynastic Period was starting.
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