A Wider Range of Human Skin Color--But Would The Transition Between Shades Be Natural?
Long ago, it was thought that the peoples of Europe developed white skin as a means of adapting to the low-level lighting of ice age Europe (an assumption that disregarded why the people of Asia don't look the same in the same latitude, or why the peoples inside the Arctic Circle have darker skin.) But recent evidence has shown that human whitewashing came much later than we thought and seemed tied to the advent of agriculture, the art of manipulating vitamin-D-low plant species into food. And other, similarly recent, evidence is showing that the diversity of phenotypes has more to do with individual mutations than geographic or latitudinal distribution.
In an alternate Earth, humankind had undergone more numerous mutations, some from individuals, others from admixtures with other hominid species--for argument's sake, let's say satyrs, fauns, dwarves and giants. The end result--an anatomically modern human species whose skin has spots, stripes and other natural patterns on a plain canvas (we humans have only the plain canvas), all of which feature every shade of... 3