Scientists Just Discovered That Most Europeans Had Dark Skin As Recently As 3,000 Years Ago
By Austin Harvey | Edited By John Kuroski Published March 20, 2025 Updated March 21, 2025
Analysis of 348 genetic samples taken from 34 countries revealed that, across prehistoric and ancient Europe, 63 percent of people had dark skin, 29 percent had "intermediate" skin, and only 8 percent had light skin.
Light skin is a relatively recent feature of Europeans, according to a groundbreaking new study. While prior research has shown that many prehistoric humans across the continent had darker skin tones, the results of this new study suggest that dark skin may have lasted until much more recently that previously believed — with fair skin only emerging prominently around 3,000 years ago.
Most Europeans Had Dark Complexions Well Into The Iron Age
The scientific consensus has long been that the first humans emerged in Africa and then gradually dispersed from there across the rest of the world. It’s also believed that as these prehistoric humans settled across the northern regions — what we now recognize as the European continent — their complexions eventually lightened.
Scientists have discovered that the genes that result in lighter skin, eyes, and hair emerged among early Europeans starting around 14,000 years ago, during the late stages of the Paleolithic period, or “Old Stone Age.” But a new study, published in bioRxiv, analyzed 348 samples of ancient DNA from archaeological sites across 34 countries in Western Europe and Asia, and found that these genes signifying lighter complexion were relatively sporadic until just 3,000 years ago.
Analysis of samples originating from between the Copper Age (around 5,000 years ago) and the Iron Age (roughly 3,000 years ago) found that only about half of the people in question had light or pale skin tones. And in some regions, darker complexions were more prominent until even more recently.
But how and why exactly did skin tones change in prehistoric and ancient Europe?
Why Ancient Eurasians Eventually Evolved To Have Lighter Skin
Modern humans migrated from Africa to Europe and Asia between 60,000 and 70,000 years ago, and their features gradually changed over time.
One of the biggest reasons humans genetically evolved to have lighter skin was due to the amount of ultraviolet (UV) light exposure they were getting in these new regions. With less UV light exposure in the more northern regions, humans adapted to have paler skin that could better absorb UV light to produce vitamin D.
But this happened much later in the historical timeline than previously believed, which suggests that there were additional factors at play, like diet.
The study explored this theory as well. It’s possible, even likely, that before human societies settled down and focused on agriculture, they were eating more foods that were high in vitamin D. As the human diet gradually changed, however, it became more genetically advantageous to synthesize it through the skin. More importantly, this did not happen all at once.
“The shift towards lighter pigmentations turned out to be all but linear in time and place, and slower than expected,” researchers wrote in the new study, “with half of the individuals showing dark or intermediate skin colors well into the Copper and Iron ages.”
The study’s authors also noted a “peak” in incidence of light eye pigmentation in Mesolithic times, with an accelerated change as Neolithic farmers became more prevalent across Western Eurasia.
How Additional Factors Like Sexual Selection And Genetic Drift Also Played A Role In Changing Skin Tones Over Time
These gradual changes help to explain discoveries such as the Cheddar Man, a dark-skinned, blue-eyed man who lived in Britain 10,000 years ago. When he was first found in Gough’s Cave in 1903, researchers assumed he likely had fair hair, light eyes, and paler skin, simply on the basis that he was European. A 2018 DNA analysis, however, found otherwise and concluded that he had dark skin after all.
Another complicating factor noted in the study is that lighter skin could have been prevalent in European Neanderthals well before early humans ever arrived there — which can be seen in several facial reconstructions based on remains from prehistoric Europe — meaning the genetic development of pale features is far more complex than previous research suggested.
Meanwhile, genetic advantage related to vitamin D absorption was not the only reason for this gradual shift. Certain features such as blonde hair and blue eyes likely emerged thanks to other factors like sexual selection and genetic drift, a random fluctuation in allele frequencies within a population.
Overall, the findings suggest that ancient Europeans did not rapidly develop lighter features after arriving from Africa, as previously thought, but rather that the changes happened slowly over thousands of years due to a number of different factors and took longer than just the Neolithic period to complete.
While the findings have yet to be peer-reviewed and only illustrate one part of a much larger picture, they highlight just how complex human evolution was and how much we have yet to understand, even concerning periods as recent as just 3,000 years ago.
well, when you're digging up the dead in the dirt... it sticks?
I don't believe God cares what color you were, are, nor will be. That's a pre-occupation men like who make "theories" and make a name for themselves, but otherwise.. it's all bones...there literally is no "meat" left.
Mondo, I love odd bits of information, enjoy experts being proven either right or wrong. A good story is enjoyable even regardless of being factual or not, just as long as the story is well done.
This is part of what makes living interesting and a great source of the fun in my like, in spite of a great many health issues. Even those health issues are interesting form to learn about and the process of adapting to them. I am quite amazed that this is true, and I am not the grumpy complaining person that I was as a young. I have the usual problems of getting, but I am fortunate to have learned to not let my feelings make it worse. As I said, getting older can be complex, but now do we learn to laugh or cry about it. Crying just makes us feel worse than just the problem by itself. Laughing about it in a joking way seems to work better.
So far the greatest gift of age is knowing how to make people laugh, using only my personal oddities as jokes. I learned how dangeous joking by stereotypes of others can be.
Why is it so important for Whites to have supposedly come from Africa? Now we are suppose to be wowed that our ancestors skin might have been darker. These concepts are suspiciously too politically trending for me to just accept the opinions of experts who “know” the eyes and hair coloring of a 16,000 aged pile of bone fragments.
GOG, believe whatever you choose, but it does not change the fact that all humans at some point share the same ancestors.
The concept of race is a social invention only a few centuries old. It was created to to create a phony concept of European superiority and to justify Europeans desire to take over other people.
A study of human history shows that all parts of the world have created remarkable civilizations and then crashed those civilizations, either by corruption and greed, to being by conquered by others more greedy and ruthless.
Europeans have been on top for a while, but their own long term greed and corruption will throw them to the bottom of the human heap, just like every other people. Despite their ego trip claim of superiority trip, they continue to make the same mistakes as all other people have made. Nothing will stop that, and even their claim to be special of their god will fail them as all other claims of speciality to other gods. Aimply the creative gods have never cared what human believes about the gods. Gods have no morality, and never have.
some want revisionist history so everyone is mostly white
Brown, black, and assorted people of color are the vast majority. How boring is that. I happen to see blond hair, blue eyes, and bisque skin as beautiful. Whites should breed like rabbits if we are to not go extinct.
