system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: Why sunscreen is so vital, when ancient humans did not wear it.

I searched and found nothing really similar to what I am asking. So basically my question is, with all the sunscreen pushing we have now, what did people do in ancient times?




It's like a crime to go out without sunscreen nowadays but what did early greeks, englishman, chinese, etc. Other melanin-lacking people do? Did they all just contract skin cancer and die or...? And why is sunscreen even necessary?




Because it seems weird to me that the human body would react so negatively to the sun- something we naturally need.
gpt
We've been gaining longer and longer lifespans the longer time goes on. We're also diagnosing things a lot more often and efficiently.

Back before sunscreen people still would have gotten skin cancer and died from it, but maybe it wasn't reported or they just attributed it as 'death by unknown causes'.

In Australia at least we have a MASSIVE hole in our ozone layer. Us white Australians really aren't suited to this sort of environment, we belong where it's cold and there's no sun most of the time. We'd still get sun there, but not so much as to cause sunburn on a regular basis.