I agree with many of the fine points made by the people I pinged and others particularly about the oddity that the Inuits as a group seem to violat the furhter north the lighter rule, perhaps due to their diet being high in vitamine D.
In some ways I view this article as anthropromorphizing. These humans were just on the cusp of survival their entire lives. They likely were not all that picky about what they ate nor where they spread their seed. The latter being something many woman claim has not changed to this day.
I can offer an amusing alternative hypothesis to near starving, short life expectancy cave men perferring blonds, waiting around for a blond to walk by and risking not procreating. As we all know we fair skinned people do not run as fast, particularly in sprints, as our dark skinned brethren. So perhaps blonds were just slower and caught more freqently by all males? And that would explain all the dumb blond jokes as just a misunderstanding of slow and dumb someplace a few 1000 generations back?
"So perhaps blonds were just slower and caught
more frequently by all males?"
In artic species, both the prey and the hunter developed the white fur but I would imagine it is the prey that does so first and the female faster than the male. To my thinking, this would just be natural. It also would be natural that in northern European humans the infants and children of both sexes be tow heads as a population genetic fall back default setting. This will allow for faster population response if the need arises down the road of humanity.
Another thing to consider is that, in addition to the shortage of men due to hunting fatalities, women who had blond or red hair and blue or green eyes were the most desired of mates. Also, male offspring with such features were given less dangerous tasks than their darker-featured bretheren, as they were more valued. And, over generations, fair-featured men and women chose each other. Combine that with the fact that, as economic and class distinction developed in Europe, darker-featured people tended to be poorer and have higher rates of infant mortality and death during childbirth rates.
It makes sense that darker features tend to be dominant is that fair features are, when you think about it, a form of genetic mutation (ableit one found to be beautiful). And now that advances in travel have ended local orientation and intermarriage is more acceptable, it's reasonable to presume that fair-featured people could go out of existance in a few hundred years.