Why so little melanin on palms and soles?

[Darren_Garrison]

@Francis_Vaughan

My favourite example is vitamin-C. We have a doubly broken gene for vitamin-C. It is very unlikely that there is any selective pressure to favour a bust vitamin-C gene.

You probably already know this, but that isn’t a specifically human/hominid break but one that happened more than 60 million years ago. (And there actually are hypothesii that it is an advantageous adaptation.)

@Francis_Vaughan

I have always wondered whether the creation of fingerprint patterns is in some way in competition with melanocytes.

Pale palms, on the other hand (okay, on both hands) is a human thing. Whyever it happened, it happened after humans split from chimps. And chimps (and gorillas) have fingerprints on their black hands.