Even if we originally came out of Africa, it does not mean that we were black to begin with. Honey colour was one description I have read of about people living on coastal areas. Tawny was the colour attributed to others in China, Central America, and Europe. Paintings of Egyptians in the times of the pyramids show them to be of a tawny shade. The recent finding of a relic of Neanderthal Man of Europe was described as coloured.
Perhaps of the influence of colonial writers, the colour of the early tawny Chinese, Mesoamericans, and others might have been described as black. It seems ridiculous to suggest that the early rulers of China were black. But then, in my early years in White Australia, anyone coloured, however lightly, was consistently described as black; whitish East Asians were in fact described as yellow.
It seems that ‘white’ Europeans were a relatively recent development. Were they tawny, like everyone else, before the colour change? Some writers refer to albinism, an inability to produce melanin as the cause. However, that may only apply here and there in various countries. Some of the mothers in coloured families in such places have apparently produced red-haired white-skinned children. I have seen photos on the internet showing these families. Blue eyes seem to be a separate issue.
As I mentioned in a recent post, it has been claimed that white skin resulted from genetic mutation caused by a burst of cosmic radiation which swept the globe about 41,000 years ago. A strong blast hitting the globe around the Tropic of Cancer would, if it led to a mutation causing skin de-pigmentation, affect all the people around that latitude.
The white East Asians, Central Asians, and Europeans attest to such a scenario. They are all to be found around the Tropic of Cancer (some subsequent migrations obviously excepted). Indeed, until the end of the last Ice Age, about 12,000 years ago, Europe would have been uninhabitable.
RAJA ARASA RATNAM 