For millennia, Europe was not white. A groundbreaking study reveals that light skin is a late evolutionary development—shaped by migrations, dietary changes, and slow adaptations. Far from simplistic narratives, the history of European pigmentation reshapes how we understand the body, memory, and our origins.
The first real europeans were not white
For decades, a dominant narrative held sway in schoolbooks: as soon as Homo sapiens arrived in Europe from Africa, they supposedly transformed under the grey Northern sky. Their skin, it was said, quickly lightened, driven by the biological need to synthesize vitamin D in low-sunlight environments. This myth (for we must now dare to call it that) long served as a scientific pillar for the idea of a naturally white Europe from the very beginning.
But a 2025 study by the University of Ferrara has cracked this foundation. By analyzing the DNA of 348 ancient individuals who lived between 45,000 and 1,700 years ago, researchers uncovered a much slower, more complex (and darker) reality than previously imagined.
The results are unequivocal: 63% of the individuals studied still had dark skin as recently as 4,000 years ago—at a time when European civilizations already knew agriculture, copper, and in some cases, writing. In comparison, only 8% of the genomes bore genetic markers associated with light skin. These numbers radically challenge the idea of a quick and universal adaptation. They remind us that genetic truths sometimes take time, while historical fictions take hold quickly.
Studying ancient genomes is like trying to read a charred poem. The words are there—sometimes amputated, sometimes confused, often silent. But thanks to recent probabilistic tools, that silence can now be broken. That’s exactly what Silvia Perretti and her team at the University of Ferrara set out to do.
Faced with fragmented DNA degraded over millennia, the researchers took a method both rigorous and bold: a probabilistic inference model capable of estimating pigmentation even from partial data. This isn’t a rough approximation—it’s grounded in comparing hundreds of genetic markers correlated with melanin production.
To test their model’s reliability, scientists compared it against well-preserved reference genomes, such as that of Ust’-Ishim (a man who lived in Siberia 45,000 years ago) and SF12 (a Mesolithic Swede). The result? The probabilistic model outperformed traditional methods, delivering robust predictions even in cases of extreme degradation.
This methodological breakthrough is a game changer. For the first time, it allows us to map skin pigmentation over 40,000 years of human history, with unprecedented precision. And in doing so, it reveals more than just biological variation—it sketches a new anthropological narrative, one where the slowness of change is as significant as its direction.
This analysis of nearly 500 ancient genomes didn’t just reveal numbers. It illuminated a history of human pigmentation that was as slow as it was surprising—and profoundly divergent from the dominant story.
For millennia, Europe was not white—neither biologically nor symbolically. Even on the eve of the Bronze Age (between 5,000 and 3,000 BCE), the majority of Europeans still had dark or intermediate skin tones. This includes iconic figures such as Ötzi, the famous Iceman found in the Alps and dated to 3300 BCE, whose skin was visibly darker than that of today’s southern Europeans.
And what about Cheddar Man, discovered in Britain and dated to 10,000 years ago? According to DNA analysis, he too had dark brown skin and blue eyes—a surprising combination, but a confirmed one. These cases aren’t anomalies. They are representative of a continent with a phenotypic palette far richer and more complex than modern reconstructions suggest.
A late turning point
The turning point came much later—beginning in the Iron Age (between 3000 and 1700 BCE)—when light skin traits began to become widespread, especially in Northern and Central Europe, where the climate intensified evolutionary pressures. In contrast, Mediterranean regions retained more pigmentation diversity, a phenomenon still visible today.
What these findings show is that the history of skin in Europe isn’t linear. It’s made of ruptures, migratory flows, and entangled legacies. It’s an evolution, yes—but more than that, it’s a tangled web of genetic stories, of light and shadow.
Skin doesn’t lighten on its own. It doesn’t change simply because the sky darkens or the sun retreats. It evolves—like everything in human biology—under pressure, but also through negotiation. And what this study reveals is that this negotiation was as cultural as it was climatic.
Diet, not just sunlight
For a long time, Mesolithic hunter-gatherers maintained dark skin, even under the dim skies of Scandinavia. Why? Because their diet—rich in fish and game—provided all the vitamin D they needed. Their skin didn’t need to depigment to compensate for sunlight scarcity. The selective pressure remained weak.
Everything changed with a transformation far more decisive than the weather: the advent of agriculture. When European populations adopted a cereal-based diet, low in vitamin D, their physiological balance was disrupted. The need to produce vitamin D through the skin became vital. At that moment, genes associated with light skin (like SLC24A5) began to be selected.
But it wasn’t the native European hunter-gatherers who introduced them. These genetic variants were brought by migrants from Anatolia, the first Neolithic farmers, who settled in Europe around 10,000 years ago. Later, other waves—from the steppes and Central Asia—further reinforced this trend.
More than biology: A story of blending
This is not just a story of biology. The history of pigmentation in Europe is an archive of migrations, a reflection of alliances, conflicts, and assimilations. Our skin carries not just melanin, but the traces of a mixed, braided, and endlessly reshaped past.
What this Italian study disrupts is not just a genetic footnote—it overturns a silent yet foundational pillar: the idea that Europe was essentially white. In truth, whiteness is recent, acquired, and above all, circumstantial. It is not an ancestral trait; it is a product of history—like languages or borders.
The fact that light skin only became dominant recently, and only in specific regions, invites us to rethink our mental map of origins. What we once believed was a quick biological adaptation was actually a slow, unstable, fragile construction. And this construction wasn’t solely natural. It was shaped by diet, by exchange, by violence sometimes—by culture, in short.
A deeper lesson
There is a profound lesson here: the biological markers we tend to sacralize—skin color, eye shape, hair texture—are temporary responses to passing circumstances. What we call “race” is often just the lingering echo of a vanished environment.
More importantly, this redefinition of biological time forces us to confront contemporary political narratives. If it becomes clear that whiteness wasn’t always the norm, then it can no longer claim neutrality. It becomes a historical fact like any other—dated, located, relative.
For Black diasporas, this is not just a scientific reversal. It’s a restitution of continuity. One that links a modern child to a forgotten Mesolithic ancestor. One that whispers that dark skin was long the dominant expression of a Europe now imagined as other. Not a footnote of history—but perhaps its deepest layer.
A living archive
What this study reveals goes beyond a genetic mutation, a frequency chart, or a revised timeline. It transforms how we look at the human body as a living archive, and at skin as a palimpsest of erased, redrawn, rewritten histories.
For far too long, dominant narratives treated light skin as a European default—a starting point. But the truth is, it was a destination. A slow drift through millennia, shaped by dietary needs, population movements, and often invisible genetic alliances.
This reversal of perspective is a call. It invites us to build a broader story—a story in which Black bodies didn’t arrive after history, but were there from the beginning. Where color isn’t a fixed attribute, but an evolving language. Where genetics doesn’t validate identity myths—it dismantles them with surgical precision.
That’s the true power of this work: it reveals what history had whitewashed. It reminds us that beneath the layers of myth, politics, and forgetting, there were men and women—dark, brown, human—who walked these same lands, under the same skies, long before Europe ever imagined itself as white.
And if you listen closely to this new story, it’s not the past that changes. It’s our place within it.
Reference study
Silvia Perretti, Guido Barbujani et al., Inference of human pigmentation from ancient DNA by genotype likelihood, preprint on bioRxiv, University of Ferrara, 2025.
Summary
Reference Scientific Source
The First Real Europeans Were Not White
