File:Map of skin hue equi.png

English: "distribution of the varying intensity of skin colour" (Distribuzione della Varia Intensità del Colore della Pelle), data for native populations collected by R. Biasutti prior to 1940.

The best known of these maps is that composed by the Italian geographer Renato Biasutti, which was based on von Luschan's chromatic scale. This map has gained broad circulation in several widely distributed publications (Barsh 2003, Lewontin 1995, Roberts 1977, Walter 1971), despite the fact that, for areas with no data, Biasutti simply filled in the map by extrapolation from findings obtained in other areas [1].

Plate carrée projection, coastal outline based on Image:Earth_satellite_plane.jpg. Biasutti data copied manually from :Image:Map of skin color distribution.gif

The 'white' streak across Morocco and Algeria [as in the version uploaded in 2005] was not present in the original map by Biasutti, but it appeared on later maps and has probably no basis in reality. Biasutti's own map shows an intermediate skin tone value in this band.

Based on File:Map of skin color distribution.gif (uploaded as fair use image 2 November 2004, deleted 6 November 2005), a scan of a reproduction by by Dennis O'Neil of the map "Distribuzione della Varia Intensità del Colore della Pelle" in Renato Biasutti, Le Razze e i Popoli della Terra: Volume Primo--Razze, Popoli e Culture (1959).