Ancient DNA from people who lived in Europe between 1700 and 45,000 years ago suggests that 63 per cent of them had dark skin and 8 per cent had pale skin, with the rest somewhere in between.

Inference of human pigmentation from ancient DNA by genotype likelihood 🏺🧪
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.01.29.635495v2.full