I dont want to confuse people reading this who might get the timelines mixed up; the first "original" Europeans came from Africa 45,000 years ago. By 5000 years ago they would have had white features with dark skin.
www.eva.mpg.de
Light skin evolved multiple times in Eurasia beginning 30000 years ago.
If you want to go back further and make people mad the first homo species after we lost our fur were probably light skinned then we evolved dark skin in the African sun.
Modern Europeans look the way they do, PRIMARY because of the Germanic/Barbarian Invasions.
For the MAJORITY of Human History, ALL HUMANS had "Black Phenotypes", that is what the data says.
Using a "Artistic Rendition" like the one you have above means nothing.
I'm basing my position on the Cranio-Facial Data, and the Limb Proportion data, and that from Africa, all the way to Siberia showed the Original humans to have "Tropical Adaptations" (Skeletal and Cranial-Facially).
- Humanity originated in Africa, the first "Anatomically Modern Humans" had "Black Phenotypes" developed in Africa.
- Those "Anatomically Modern Humans" migrated out of Africa and RETAINED African/Africoid Morphologies for TENS OF THOUSANDS OF YEARS.
For the first 20,000 Years after the first successful "Out Of Africa" migrations, the Human populations were just essentially "African", as they had both African phenotypes, and they were damn near identical, genetically to Africans.
After the first 20,000 years, new Genetic signatures developed in "Eurasia" that would now make them classified as "Eurasian", which has ZERO barring on the Phenotype of the people.
We still have populations today that are "Black Eurasian", that don't possess any "African DNA" but are clearly "Phenotypically Black".
Based upon the most recent data Europe was Dark Skinned, until 1,700 years ago, which also just so happens to correspond with the Germanic/Barbarian Invasions.