via The Sepia Rainbow:  The fascinating story of human skin By David Pacchioli on Penn State News on November 18, 2015.

Article Excerpt:

“Evolution and Prejudice

After publication of her first book on the subject, Skin: A Natural History, in 2006, Jablonski began to lecture frequently about the evolution of skin color. She found her audiences eager to hear more about how that story fit with our society’s concept of race, if it fit in at all. It’s a topic many anthropologists shy away from, but Jablonski realized that her vantage point could be uniquely valuable.

“I am talking about humans from the perspective of deep evolutionary time,” she says. “There are certain things that we can look at—patterns of pigmentation, distribution of fossils and of populations of ancient humans—that are pretty much beyond question. By looking at them, we can begin to understand how humans came to be as diverse in appearance as they are today. Then, having understood the mechanisms, we can look at what’s happened in the more recent past.”