[blam]

"Here’s your problem ~ a currently strong hypothesis is that “white folks” just popped up one day in Europe as recently as 5,000 years ago."

Nah.

See my post #63 on this thread:

European Skin Turned Pale Only Recently, Gene Suggests

"A few genes have previously been associated with human pigment disorders -- most notably those that, when mutated, lead to albinism, an extreme form of pigment loss. But the newly found glitch is the first found to play a role in the formation of "normal" white skin. The Penn State team calculates that the gene, known as slc24a5, is responsible for about one-third of the pigment loss that made black skin white. A few other as-yet-unidentified mutated genes apparently account for the rest.

Although precise dating is impossible, several scientists speculated on the basis of its spread and variation that the mutation arose between 20,000 and 50,000 years ago. That would be consistent with research showing that a wave of ancestral humans migrated northward and eastward out of Africa about 50,000 years ago.

[muawiyah]

1/3 on just one gene ~ at the same time this last week the “Out of Africa” hypothesis took another whack with the discovery of “modern teeth” in Israel dating back many beaucoup years (400,000 years wasn’t it).

[muawiyah]

There's another problem called "red/yellow" or "brown/yellow" pigment. About 200,000 people have that kind. The others (several billion worth anyway) have the "brown/black" type of pigment.

Undoubtedly additional studies will be done that will find yet other kinds.