Europeans Had Darker Skin for Far Longer Than Previously Thought, New Study Suggests
A groundbreaking genetic analysis has revealed that most Europeans retained darker skin tones until the Roman era, challenging long-held assumptions about the continent’s genetic history.
By examining the DNA of 348 individuals who lived across Eurasia over the past 45,000 years, researchers have traced the gradual evolution of skin, hair, and eye pigmentation in Europe. The study suggests that the combination of fair skin, light-colored eyes, and blonde hair was a relative rarity until surprisingly recent times.
According to evolutionary biologist Professor Guido Barbujani and his colleagues, Europeans maintained darker skin well into the Iron Age—much later than previously estimated. Their findings indicate that the shift toward lighter pigmentation occurred at a slower pace than expected, with many individuals still exhibiting darker or medium skin tones up until the Bronze and Iron Ages.
In their research paper, which is awaiting peer review, the scientists note: “The transition to lighter pigmentation was more gradual than previously thought. Half of the individuals analyzed from the Copper and Iron Ages still had darker or medium skin tones.”
Speaking to IFL Science, Barbujani explained, “We had some evidence suggesting that darker-skinned individuals persisted in Europe longer than expected.” He pointed to Cheddar Man—a 10,000-year-old Mesolithic individual from Britain known to have had dark skin and blue eyes—as an example. “What we didn’t realize was that darker skin tones were still common in Europe up until the Iron Age.”
The Iron Age, spanning roughly 3,000 to 1,700 years ago, corresponds to significant historical events such as the legendary founding of Rome and the Trojan War.
The researchers discovered that during the Paleolithic period, around 45,000 to 13,000 years ago, darker pigmentation was nearly universal. However, by the Mesolithic era, blue eyes had become more prevalent in regions like Northern Europe, France, and Serbia. One of the earliest known occurrences of lighter pigmentation was detected in the genome of a 12,000-year-old hunter-gatherer from Sweden, who exhibited a combination of fair skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes.
Yet, throughout the Neolithic period (10,000 to 4,000 years ago), dark skin remained dominant across most of Eurasia. Only a small number of light-skinned individuals were identified in Northern Europe. The real shift began in the Bronze Age when an increase in fair-skinned, blonde-haired, and blue-eyed individuals became apparent, with examples found in Britain, Hungary, Estonia, and the Czech Republic.
Even by the Iron Age, genomic data from different regions of Europe and Western Asia continued to show a mix of dark, medium, and light skin tones, further complicating the traditional narrative of pigmentation evolution in Europe.
“We identified the first instance of light skin in Mesolithic Sweden, but that was a single case among over 50 samples,” the researchers wrote. “The shift was slow. By the Iron Age, the frequency of light skin had finally matched that of darker skin. For much of European prehistory, however, the majority of individuals had darker complexions.”
This study paints a strikingly different picture of Europe’s genetic past—one in which fair skin was not the default but a relatively recent adaptation, shaped by millennia of gradual genetic and environmental change.
