So in the real world, Europeans are white because first a wave of invaders spread agriculture from Anatolia, then a second wave spread pastorlism (and even paler skin) from Eastern Europe.
Thoughts?
Why Are Lithmorrans White?
That isn't why Europeans and Slavics are white in real life.
Time for an impromptu history and biology lesson!
Europeans are white because of climate. Humankind's early ancestors were all, obviously, from Africa, which is a land of perpetual summer, with mild or sometimes even no winters. Snow is unheard of for the vast majority of the continent, and the place gets a LOT of sunlight. I'm talking Florida levels of sunlight and heat. Consequently, the first humans were dark skinned because of the melanin in their skin cells, darkening their skin which deflected some sunlight and helped them remain cool (the closer you get to a pure black color, the more light you reflect, and the closer you get to a pure white color, the more light you absorb. This'll become important later so remember it. It's also why you feel hotter if you wear a black shirt instead of a white one outside).
During the migration of humans out of Africa, then spread northeast across what is now the modern day middle east, then east across the south part of Asia, until a group broke off to loop to the north and come back around to the west, across modern day Russia and towards Europe. Another group broke off from there and crossed the Russian land bridge into the America's, which is where the native american tribes came from, but that's a separate story.
What's important is that as they migrated further north, they encountered colder and colder climates. Harsher winters. Actual snow. This forced them to change and evolve, and one of the ways in which it did was that they lost the melanin in their skin.
The reason for this is the lesser sunlight and the climate. See, back in Africa, they had an overabundance of sunlight and heat. They needed the melanin in order to stay cool. Now it was a hindrance, since there was much less sunlight (the atmosphere is thinnest at the equator aka Africa, so I do mean 'less' in a literal sense. Less sunlight was getting through the atmosphere to ground level), and it was far colder. They needed to stay warm rather than keep cool. So, those individuals born with less melanin in their skin survived and reproduced more often, and natural selection bred away the melanin, turning their skin white. Or a... pale pinkish color to be more accurate. Now, instead of reflecting sunlight with dark skin, they absorbed it with pale skin, helping them stay warm.
To greatly simplify things: if it snows in an area, the native humans there will almost certainly be light skinned.
Quick Edit: The pale skin also helped them get enough vitamin D from sunlight. Which helped. Forgot that part in my original post, sorry.
Time for an impromptu history and biology lesson!
Europeans are white because of climate. Humankind's early ancestors were all, obviously, from Africa, which is a land of perpetual summer, with mild or sometimes even no winters. Snow is unheard of for the vast majority of the continent, and the place gets a LOT of sunlight. I'm talking Florida levels of sunlight and heat. Consequently, the first humans were dark skinned because of the melanin in their skin cells, darkening their skin which deflected some sunlight and helped them remain cool (the closer you get to a pure black color, the more light you reflect, and the closer you get to a pure white color, the more light you absorb. This'll become important later so remember it. It's also why you feel hotter if you wear a black shirt instead of a white one outside).
During the migration of humans out of Africa, then spread northeast across what is now the modern day middle east, then east across the south part of Asia, until a group broke off to loop to the north and come back around to the west, across modern day Russia and towards Europe. Another group broke off from there and crossed the Russian land bridge into the America's, which is where the native american tribes came from, but that's a separate story.
What's important is that as they migrated further north, they encountered colder and colder climates. Harsher winters. Actual snow. This forced them to change and evolve, and one of the ways in which it did was that they lost the melanin in their skin.
The reason for this is the lesser sunlight and the climate. See, back in Africa, they had an overabundance of sunlight and heat. They needed the melanin in order to stay cool. Now it was a hindrance, since there was much less sunlight (the atmosphere is thinnest at the equator aka Africa, so I do mean 'less' in a literal sense. Less sunlight was getting through the atmosphere to ground level), and it was far colder. They needed to stay warm rather than keep cool. So, those individuals born with less melanin in their skin survived and reproduced more often, and natural selection bred away the melanin, turning their skin white. Or a... pale pinkish color to be more accurate. Now, instead of reflecting sunlight with dark skin, they absorbed it with pale skin, helping them stay warm.
To greatly simplify things: if it snows in an area, the native humans there will almost certainly be light skinned.
Quick Edit: The pale skin also helped them get enough vitamin D from sunlight. Which helped. Forgot that part in my original post, sorry.
Hmm. Probably because the people who originally started the game are white? I don't know really as we inherited the game that way. I enjoy that two of the three "barbarian" races are white too (Charali and Hillmen), and Farins/Tubori are both mainstream and well regarded groups that aren't even remotely white. Also, while their "ethnic" appearance may average "white", we redesigned "races" to be "origins" some time ago, and it's perfectly reasonable to have any skin color or ethnic appearances in Lithmore or the other duchies. Kinda surprised we don't get more flack for our Vandagans who are described as vaguely Asian with vaguely dark skin and frequently blue eyes, but I am happy as a kitten to roll with it and let people play what they want. It's a fantasy setting, so the approach we took when fleshing things out was to take the existing framework of TI, then smash incongruous stereotypes together to create something new.
@Mystry - That was the thinking until about 2014. Then they dug up some remains of a hunter-gatherer in la Braña-Arintero in northern Spain from 7,000 years ago, and tested his DNA for (among other things) the genes associated with skin colour. His eyes were bright blue, but it turns out his skin was nut-brown like someone from southern India.
Here's how he looked:
And here's the paper: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 134643.htm
What drives selection for lighter skin in cold climates is vitamin D production. Lighter skin means you produce more vitamin D when exposed to sunlight, which is crucial in high latitudes and cold climates.
There's another source of vitamin D available though, which is dietary vitamin D, primarily from fatty fish like salmon. In societies that relied heavily on fish for sustenance, there was no pressing need for lighter skin. So hunter-gatherer societies in Europe, who relied heavily on salmon runs for their diets, had no need for lighter skin.
That changed with the adopting of farming. Suddenly diets became very vitamin D-poor, and paler skin was strongly selected for. As farming spread into Europe, those farmers brought genes associated with lighter skin with them into Europe, looking something like this:
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-italy ... 62571.html
Then another wave of even lighter skin peopled came from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe that spans the Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
Here's a paper on the subject from this year:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv ... 4.full.pdf
@Kinky - I meant the in-game explanation, not the out of game one. Obviously it's a Eurocentric game and that's ok. Common features mean common ancestry. The Vavardi-Charalin and Vavardi-Lithmorran links are clear, but what is the Lithmorran-Charalin link? Why do they share features?
Here's how he looked:
And here's the paper: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2 ... 134643.htm
What drives selection for lighter skin in cold climates is vitamin D production. Lighter skin means you produce more vitamin D when exposed to sunlight, which is crucial in high latitudes and cold climates.
There's another source of vitamin D available though, which is dietary vitamin D, primarily from fatty fish like salmon. In societies that relied heavily on fish for sustenance, there was no pressing need for lighter skin. So hunter-gatherer societies in Europe, who relied heavily on salmon runs for their diets, had no need for lighter skin.
That changed with the adopting of farming. Suddenly diets became very vitamin D-poor, and paler skin was strongly selected for. As farming spread into Europe, those farmers brought genes associated with lighter skin with them into Europe, looking something like this:
https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-italy ... 62571.html
Then another wave of even lighter skin peopled came from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe that spans the Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
Here's a paper on the subject from this year:
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/biorxiv ... 4.full.pdf
@Kinky - I meant the in-game explanation, not the out of game one. Obviously it's a Eurocentric game and that's ok. Common features mean common ancestry. The Vavardi-Charalin and Vavardi-Lithmorran links are clear, but what is the Lithmorran-Charalin link? Why do they share features?
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