It seems simple: people who evolved near the equator have dark skin to protect their bodies from the sun, while people who settled closer to the poles lost melanin to take advantage of scarce sunlight. It's not quite that simple. New research shows that most European people, who settled there 45,000 years ago, had dark skin up into the Iron Age, about 3,000 years ago, when the number of pale-skinned people became the majority. Even more surprising, the genes for lighter skin didn't proliferate from mutations in northern Europe- they migrated in from what is now Turkey.
These findings come from genetic studies on individual Europeans, such as Cheddar Man, who lived 10,000 years ago, and Ötzi the Iceman, who lived 5,300 years ago, plus others even older now that we have tools to analyze degraded DNA. You might also be surprised to learn that blue eyes became common in Europe long before pale skin and hair. Read about the genetic studies that revealed what ancient Europeans looked like at ZME Science. -via Real Clear Science
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