I'm not sure if there are any research showcasing the effects humanity has had in general due to low sun exposure. From all the benefits of Vitamin D and the recent human behavorial shift leading to low sun exposure (car travel, air conditioning, sunscreens even), there are bound to be new biological or psychological changes humanity is experiencing for the first time.

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HexPhantom an hour ago | parent | next [-]

What I find more plausible is that low sun exposure is one small contributor among many

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logicchains 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

One study found a difference in mortality between the max-sun-exposure and min-sun-exposure cohorts: the second was twofold higher, which is comparable to the effect of cigarette smoking. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24697969/ . I.e. avoiding sun exposure completely is as harmful as smoking cigarettes.

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api 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I've wondered for a while if the apparently higher cognitive performance and resulting societal wealth at higher latitudes might be some kind of second order side effect from long-term selection for lower sun exposure. We already know this vitamin D is almost certainly why Northern peoples evolved lighter skin.

(I realize this is a frought topic, so please hold the race science bullcrap replies or the over-reactions in the other direction. I am not a believer in hard biological determinism or "race science," but I also don't dismiss the existence of variations. As with everything else in population genetics and biology, any variations that do exist probably have more than one cause.)

If there's any truth to this, it might be further compounded as people with darker skin spend more time indoors in the modern world. If you have darker skin you need, as far as I know, more sun to make vitamin D, which normally is not a problem if you're outdoors near the equator. Maybe darker skinned people need to be taking more D supplements.

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hax0ron3 6 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I think that the effect of vitamin D might be relatively minor if it exists at all, since between about 300 BC and 1500 AD the locus of the world's most advanced intellectual activity did not stay with the sun-washed Greeks but instead moved north to relatively sun-deprived areas.

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HexPhantom an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

The vitamin D angle seems much more plausible to me as a public-health issue than as an explanation for broad population-level cognitive differences

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georgeburdell 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Does not explain India where there is high genetic diversity and generally the South is more educated and wealthy

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bethekidyouwant 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The reason that southern India is generally richer is very complicated.

	▲	close04 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		GP was wondering if sun exposure triggers the education>wealth cycle. I’m not sure it does. Norway wasn’t particularly educated or wealthy in the ‘50s. Then they discovered they have oil and now they are both. I think a combination of good policies and ideally some preexisting wealth will trigger this upwards cycle.

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therein 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

>car travel, air conditioning, sunscreens even

And even clothing.

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throwup238 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Tailored clothing is at least 80,000–170,000 years old based on genetic clock research in body lice [1] but archaic humans have probably been wearing hides for at least a million years (there’s currently a big debate about how they managed to migrate to colder climates like Spain 800k-1.2m years ago).

I don’t think clothing is that big a factor because all humans in hot environments adapt and very little survives in the archaeological record. Many populations lived in heavily forested jungles where they was little sun exposure and those in deserts used stuff like Otjize for sun protection. Given all the ethnographic reporting from the age of exploration, tons of that clothing was probably made of feathers, cordage, bark, and other materials we wouldn’t even think of using for clothing.

[1] https://academic.oup.com/mbe/article/28/1/29/984822

	▲	ezekiel68 40 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Still, 170,000 - 1.2M years is a fairly short amount of time if we go back only to the common ancestor who begat progeny that would become Pan and Autralopithecus (around 12 million years ago). It could be that early hide wearers started a trend that, to this day, continues to interfere with natural vitamin D metabolism (while also providing many benefits).