Why do Terris have dark skin?

[Mason Wheeler]

It's mentioned in one of the Wax & Wayne books (I think Bands of Mourning but not 100% sure) that Terris people are stereotypically, but not always, dark-skinned.  It's also mentioned (this one I'm sure was in Bands of Mourning) that the Hemalurgical power that they consider the most iconic is storing heat, because it allowed the ancestral Terris to survive in inhospitable mountain climates.

These two facts seem to be at odds with one another, as dark skin shows up among ethnicities that get a lot of sun.  As a general rule of thumb, the colder your climate, the lighter the skin becomes.

I know that Brandon is aware of this principle, as it's explicitly stated that in the world of White Sand, the Darksiders have dark skin because they're in a binary star system, and the sun on their side puts out a lot of UV but little light from the visible spectrum.  (This raises some interesting questions regarding orbital mechanics, but that's a whole other topic!)  So I have to wonder, do we have any WoB on this, or lacking that, any good theories?

[Shadeshadow227]

It said that SOME Terris people were dark-skinned. Not most. SOME. There's a difference between the two measurements. 

Edited November 22, 2016 by Shadeshadow227

[cometaryorbit]

Well, dark skin is an adaptation to high UV, not necessarily heat as such. The Terris lands on pre-TLR Scadrial could have been in a sunny latitude, cold only because of its elevation (like the Andes or Himalayas).

[Savanorn he/him]

I'm with cometary. I think the Terris people, in this sense, might be like inuit or nepalese people...who are really quite tan compared to the, as I understand it, rather Caucasian rest of the Final Empire.  

The real question is how much the breeding programs altered this. 

[DeadFencer]

On 11/21/2016 at 7:14 PM, Shadeshadow227 said:

It said that SOME Terris people were dark-skinned. Not most. SOME. There's a difference between the two measurements. 

How would that have happened? Skin color is generally determined based on where on the planet your ancestors lived. One would expect all the Terris to be dark-skinned, or none of them. I like the sunny latitude, cold elevation theory though.

[Kingsdaughter613 she/her]

There are variations even among small closely related populations.

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

Some very important points:

Scadrial, the planet, literally didn't exist before the shattering. it's flora and fauna didn't evolve, they were...intelligently designed...-shutters-

Normal evolutionary laws don't apply on Scadrial, it's ecosystems are all artificial and haven't been left alone long enough for meaningful natural selection to take place.

[Savanorn he/him]

On Friday, November 25, 2016 at 4:29 AM, hwiles said:

Some very important points:

Scadrial, the planet, literally didn't exist before the shattering. it's flora and fauna didn't evolve, they were...intelligently designed...-shutters-

Normal evolutionary laws don't apply on Scadrial, it's ecosystems are all artificial and haven't been left alone long enough for meaningful natural selection to take place.

Well. Thinking about it. The humans on Scadrial were made after a template. We don't know how close they were to the original and how close Scadrial is to Yolen.

It is possible they were more or less biological carbon copies of populations that were influenced by natural selection. 

[+Lewis Nethur He/Him]

16 hours ago, Savanorn said:

Well. Thinking about it. The humans on Scadrial were made after a template. We don't know how close they were to the original and how close Scadrial is to Yolen.

It is possible they were more or less biological carbon copies of populations that were influenced by natural selection. 

They were made from some type of template (I believe it's implied they are at least genetically similar to some people on Yolen), then distributed on a planet according to the whims of gods who can command the location of the planets in a solar system.  I don't think there's any reason to believe that Ruin and Preservation would feel inclined to make their distribution of people, cultures, and races reflect normal biological and social evolutionary laws of distribution.

[Savanorn he/him]

5 hours ago, hwiles said:

They were made from some type of template (I believe it's implied they are at least genetically similar to some people on Yolen), then distributed on a planet according to the whims of gods who can command the location of the planets in a solar system.  I don't think there's any reason to believe that Ruin and Preservation would feel inclined to make their distribution of people, cultures, and races reflect normal biological and social evolutionary laws of distribution.

Why not? 

I realise we're pretty deep into the territory of opinion now and there's few hard facts but...

That's like claiming that they probably weren't inclined to make their distribution of terrain follow normal patterns of geology, but we don't see square mountains or anything silly like that. Indeed, the abberant things were all the result of Rashek's meddling. 

I feel like if they were going to make a bunch of people, they'd probably make a token effort at making them appear to be a product of their environment. Grab some people designed after highlanders from Yolen and chuck them in some of the high places in Scadrial, and so on. 

[Mason Wheeler]

15 hours ago, Savanorn said:

Grab some people designed after highlanders from Yolen and chuck them in some of the high places in Scadrial, and so on. 

...and suddenly I'm imagining the Terris people speaking with Scottish accents.

[SnakeBlood he/him]

It could have something to do with Rashek's Terris breeding program. Rashek did want to hide the fact that he was Terris and making them a different ethnicity then him would be a good way to do it.

[DeadFencer]

Rashek could have, and in fact, probably did, transformed himself to look like Alendi. He wouldn't have needed to change how the Terris looked. 

[anarchitect]

I was mostly under the impression that Terris society are migrating worldhoppers given the Worldbringers/Worldsingers parallels. That would make them part of a normal biological evolution and offer an explanation to why their skin is tanned differently than the rest of Scadrial population. 

Another option is that Ati was differently tanned than Leras. Creating beings in their image that are differently tanned might just be a result of their own different origins.

[Weltall]

12 hours ago, DeadFencer said:

Rashek could have, and in fact, probably did, transformed himself to look like Alendi. He wouldn't have needed to change how the Terris looked. 

We've seen what Rashek looks like to the eyes of people burning Malatium and there's no difficulty recognizing his past Terris packman self and the Lord Ruler as being one and the same. It doesn't seem likely that he transformed himself, he just happened to be one of the Terris who could pass well enough for Khlennium to allay any early suspicion (at least, any early suspicion that he didn't overcome with the counter of 'I have a very large army so you just nod and smile') and after he finished conquering the world, nobody was around who could say he wasn't Alend.

And I don't think he transformed the Terris people either (aside from the ones who became the kandra) since they're noted to have a range of skin tones. Given how he upended the world, the only thing he really needed to do to obscure his past was enough time and he had that to spare.

11 hours ago, anarchitect said:

I was mostly under the impression that Terris society are migrating worldhoppers given the Worldbringers/Worldsingers parallels. That would make them part of a normal biological evolution and offer an explanation to why their skin is tanned differently than the rest of Scadrial population.

They're not unique, though. It's mentioned that there are other peoples on Scadrial with dark skin.

Edited November 28, 2016 by Weltall