[Cronos]

Yes, and some people even in the U.S. refer to Italians as "blacks." Many Italians prior to large numbers of Spanish moving in, were brunette and pale and some even blond. Some Italians still are! South Italy is mostly all dark skinned and dark haired, however, particularly Sicily.

Well, that would be because in the southern tip of Italy and in Sicily, the population is mostly of Phoenician or Greek origin with influxes from Berbers. Sicily was first colonised by Phoenicians and then became a mostly Carthaginian colony with some Greeks, then the GReeks took over -- the Greeks also had colonies in Neapoli etc. (that's why the Southern Italians and Sicilians are similar in culture to Greeks -- strongly passionate people).

in the middle you have Italic peoples while Rome was on the border between the Italics and the Etruscans. The north of Italy was actually occupied by Celtic Gauls -- called Cisalpine Gaul (the southern part of France was transalpine Gaul). Hence they WERE red-heads or blondes. Then you had the Germanic conquests of northern Italy, so no wonder you'd find that people around Trentino are more Germanic than the sicilians.

[MillerCreek]

However, early Greece was also greatly far more fair than they became later, same as Italy...even to general view, the very sculptures from early Greece shows Grecians with appearances far more similar to Northern Europeans than to the Middle East, etc. Same with, for example, Ramses I in Egypt: very tall, prominent European features, red hair.

I read earlier on FR somewhere written that someone said they would not be surprised that when the First Emporer of China's tomb was eventually explored, they would not be surprised if a tall, red haired man was found there.

Most of the Mediterranean seems to have been originally populated by what we'd call today "Europeans" -- tall, flat and high foreheads, long noses, many blond and red haired individuals. They seem to have been largely supplanted over time by shorter, darker persons and the mix has resulted in what and who we see in the Mediterranean today.