Can the color of skin change through generations?

[RiseofArtemis]

If a dark skinned or light skinned group of people would go and live in a different place (dark skinned people going up to Nordic lands and light skinned people going to Afrika) Would their skin color adapt through generations and become just like the one of the natives even if they stayed always within their group not mixing with any other.

Could their facial features even change and make them just like the native population.

[NamerOfStars]

Through interbreeding with the locals? Of course. Without that... not really. I mean yes, it CAN obviously happen; it DID. But that wasn't skin color adapting; that was mutants with lighter skin having a competitive advantage, since they could absorb vitamin D more easily from the rarer sunlight, so they were more likely to survive. Likewise, the longer and thinner noses white people have gave an advantage when it came to breathing colder air, since the exposure to the greater surface area of the inside of their noses warmed it up more. Over time, the mutants outbred the older design, and came to dominate the local population. This is basic natural selection. What's the problem with it happening again? Well, in addition to the time requirements, today we have clothing. And sunscreen and vitamin D-enriched food; there's really no competitive advantage any longer.

What you're proposing is closer to Lamarckian evolution, one of the theories that preceded Darwin's.

[Astarlessnightsky]

Yes, thats exactly what happened to the homo erectus. After this early humanoid left the African continent, the skin colour changed to the european pale skin. The more north the paler.