Why do people have different colored skin?

Human skin colour can range from almost black to pinkish white in different people. In general, people with ancestors from sunny regions have darker skin than people with ancestors from regions with less sunlight. Skin colour is determined by the amount and type of the pigment melanin in the skin. Melanin comes in two types: phaeomelanin (red to yellow) and eumelanin (dark brown to black). Both amount and type are determined by four to six genes which operate under incomplete dominance. One copy of each of those genes is inherited from the father and one from the mother. Each gene comes in several alleles, resulting in a great variety of different skin colours. The evolution of the different skin colours is thought to have occurred as follows: the haired ancestor of humans, like modern great apes, had light skin under their hair. Once the hair was lost, they evolved dark skin, needed to prevent low folate levels since they lived in sun-rich Africa. (The skin cancer connection is ...  more

Human skin colour can range from almost black to pinkish white in different people. In general, people with ancestors from sunny regions have darker skin than people with ancestors from regions with less sunlight. Skin colour is determined by the amount and type of the pigment melanin in the skin. Melanin comes in two types: phaeomelanin (red to yellow) and eumelanin (dark brown to black). Both amount and type are determined by four to six genes which operate under incomplete dominance. One copy of each of those genes is inherited from the father and one from the mother. Each gene comes in several alleles, resulting in a great variety of different skin colours. The evolution of the different skin colours is thought to have occurred as follows: the haired ancestor of humans, like modern great apes, had light skin under their hair. Once the hair was lost, they evolved dark skin, needed to prevent low folate levels since they lived in sun-rich Africa.  more

The reason is that in your skin you have substances which under certain conditions and with the correct chemical processes, make color - the different shades of human skin. The amount of each different color or chromogen in your skin determine what color you are., One of these color is formed by a substance called melanin, which appears as black or dark brown when it comes into contact with sunlight, and which gives you a sun tan. Everyone has melanin in their skin, but people who olive where the sun shines all year round have more melanin in their skins than people who live in colder area, It protects them against the harmful rays of the sun. Other colors in the skin are yellow, which is caused by a similar process as black: red, which is caused by the presence of blood vessels in the skin and white which is the color of skin without any color in it. The balance of these four colors in your skin decides what color you are.  more