 Over time, some people walked out of Africa and spread across the world. The branches of the family that spent thousands of years in colder places without a lot of sun eventually lost much of their melanin and turned a bunch of different shades, depending on the conditions where they were. That's how we became a species ranging from the darkest brown to the lightest pink beige, and everything in between, shades of brown with an array of yellowish and reddish tinges.