Which People Have the Darkest and Lightest Skin Color

What causes the color of the skin, hair and eyes in humans? The reasons lie in the many chemical processes that take place in our body. In the skin tissues there are certain base for color, called chromogenic, which are actually colorless. When certain enzymes acting on the base color, we gets a certain color.

People whose skin is the lightest, live in northern Europe. These are Nordic (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden). Those whose skin is darkest, inhabit West Africa (Benin, Burkina Faso, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria and more…) and Australasia (Papua New Guinea). The population of South Asia is characterized by brown-yellow skin.

However, most of the inhabitants of our planet does nor white nor black or yellow skin, but countless shades between light and dark.

The native people of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, have some of the darkest skin pigmentation in the world. Icelanders and Faeroese (Faeroe Islands) are the lightest skinned.

Without the presence of substances that give color, the skin is whitish gray. Color of human skin depends on three substances or colored pigment contained in the human body.

The first of these substances is melanin, the brown color. The second is a carotene, a substance that has a yellow color. The third is called hemoglobin, and represents the red-colored substance found in the blood.

Skin color depends on the relationship between these four colors: gray and whitish, yellow. brown and red. All existing color are formed by mixing these basic colors.