that the weaker the UVR in an area, the fairer the skin. Jablonski points out that people living above 50 degrees latitude have the highest risk of vitamin D deficiency. "This was one of the last barriers in the history of human settlement," she says. "Only after humans learned fishing, and therefore had access to food rich in vitamin D, could they settle these regions."
Jablonski hopes her research will change the way people think about skin color. "We can take a topic that has caused so much disagreement, so much suffering, and so much misunderstanding, and completely disarm it," she says. "We're all the same under the skin."
Many people are "happy and relieved" when they hear about this research, she says. "All of a sudden their own coloration isn't something that was just handed to them. It isn't a social stigma. It's something that evolved in their ancestors for a good set of biological reasons. And it takes the wind out of racism and bigotry."
Jablonski received her PhD in anthropology from the University of Washington in 1981 and then went on to hold teaching positions at the University of Hong Kong (1981-1990) and The University of Western Australia (1990-1994). She has held the Irvine Chair of Anthropology at the California Academy of Sciences since late 1994. She is the author of numerous papers and books on primate and human evolution, conducts fieldwork throughout Asia and Africa, and in 2002 was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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