The recent referendum and ongoing debate about whether Britain should remain in the European Union is more about nationalism than the realities of history. The human animals who presently inhabit these islands are derived from many previous populations. The first occupations occurred when there was no English Channel and England was part of Continental Europe. These early inhabitants interbred and were diluted by those who followed. So the ‘British’ are a mongrel mob descended from the Beaker people, Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Scandinavians, Norman French, refugees from European wars, previous subjects of the British Empire and all the other folk who arrived by boat, and later, by trains and planes.

As in most countries with a complexity of racial origins, there is a big variation in the colour of skin and there is no reason to claim that the inhabitant of a pale pink skin is superior in any way to others with different skin colours. A ‘white’ skin is purely the outcome of evolution. A certain level of radiation from the sun is necessary to produce Vitamin D in the skin.  Whiter skin soaks up more radiation and results in more Vitamin D. Darker-skinned humans are at a disadvantage in the higher latitudes and more liable to vitamin deficiency which interferes with bone growth. Vice versa, whiter skins are more liable to damage from excess radiation in the countries closer to the Equator.

A dark skin is the default condition for the human animal, which is not surprising since our immediate relatives, other primates such as the Chimpanzees, Bonobos and Gorillas, all have dark skins. A recent discovery has confirmed this. The skeleton of an individual Homo sapiens found in a cave in England, who was estimated to have died about 10,000 years ago (Cheddar Man) was sampled and the DNA analysis revealed he was dark-skinned and had blue eyes. It is likely that Europe and the UK was first occupied by humans with dark skins. The loss of pigment was a retrograde step in that ‘whiteys’ have evolved to survive only in the darker, colder areas of the world.