>>37155576>As for the skin tone I’m mostly curious about why it isn’t more universal among polar peopleOh, that's an interesting question! Hmm, this is only educated conjecture, but my guess would be that, for example, the Thule people who would become Inuits could have had a phenotype that tanned more easily (they came from the russian far-east, so they're distantly related to steppe people), while the Sami had more genetic material from paler-skinned europeans. Both the Inuits and Sami moved to where they are currently fairly recently, from an evolution standpoint, so you could also theorize the Thule already were adapted to summer snow sunlight from living in Northern Russia for a long time, while the Sami are relatively "newer" to the Arctic circle. Apparently they got pushed farther North by the rise of Vikings, as well.
With digitigrade feet, I think the point of divergence between the elves and humans would have to be quite far back, millions instead of thousands of years back like the last ice age would be. But justifying them with an adaptation to a steppe lifestyle checks out. Maybe they used to live mostly in the tundra (explaining the dark skin and feet), but their populations got displaced towards the forests by the more quickly reproducing Palkyries? That would also parallel but invert the Sami and Vikings' dynamic in a neat way, too.
>>37155690Oooh, interesting, thank you.
