Nordic looking white guy in 1st Century Judea? Yeah right.
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Yeah... North Africa/Southern Med. people were white ,, even in Egypt ,, just look at the paintings from the pyramids... Black people from farther south in Africa were generally slave labor in the north... over the millennia the races mixed and the current more or less brown people of the area resulted... Egyptian paintings depicting white people often had blue or green eyes which were made with precious or semi-precious stones which is why they are always missing from the murals...
Not true, Neidermeyer. The Egyptians were ecumenical in their slavery and free men. There were both Royalty and non-royal blacks in Egypt. However once you get into the Ptolemaic dynasties most of the Egyptian royalty was Greek. Prior to that, however, the lower kingdom sometimes had black pharaohs. They often had white slave, Semitic slaves, or even Egyptian slaves. They did not care about color. It was chattel slavery not racial slavery in the Middle East. They made slaves of conquered peoples.
You are probably correct about the interracial marriages and breeding resulting in the color of the people as well as the high melanin content. Might also have something to do with the need to resist the sun exposure.