In those early days of our evolution, looking at the equator, we were bombarded by high levels of ultraviolet radiation.

He knew that darkly pigmented peoples were found close to the equator lightly pigmented peoples, like himself, were found closer to the poles.

What's very, very important here is that the earliest humans evolved in high UV environments, in equatorial Africa.

We evolved as a species near the equator, and so we're very well equipped to deal with 12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness.

So, living at the equator, we got lots and lots of ultraviolet radiation and the melanin this wonderful, complex, ancient polymer compound in our skin served as a superb natural sunscreen.

And so when we look at a map of skin color, and predicted skin color, as we know it today, what we see is a beautiful gradient from the darkest skin pigmentations toward the equator, and the lightest ones toward the poles.

Distribution Plants in the family are distributed on all the southern continents South America (1 sp., Apodasmia chilensis ), Africa south of the Equator and including Madagascar (about 330 spp.