Comment by emmelaich
The (fringe) idea that Muhammad was partly Anglo-Saxon or some sort of northerner always tickled me. He was tall, reddish hair, light skinned.
These dates sort of line up.
The (fringe) idea that Muhammad was partly Anglo-Saxon or some sort of northerner always tickled me. He was tall, reddish hair, light skinned.
These dates sort of line up.
Blue eyes and blonde hair wasn't connected historically (unlike today). The pre-Yamnaya Europeans (hunter gatherers) tended to be dark haired with blue eyes. Blonde hair and brighter skin came from the east then.
https://www.sci.news/genetics/science-european-hunter-gather... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_hunter-gatherer
Red hair appears to have originated in Central Asia. Blue eyes and blonde hair likewise also originated in Central Asia or the Middle East (but not necessarily the same places). All of these phenotypes used to be more widespread in Eurasia and North Africa. Today they're associated with Northern Europe because of the very high prevalence, but you can still find clusters of populations elsewhere with significant prevalence, and (because of their recessiveishness--it's complicated) it's not uncommon for them to pop up randomly in populations we today would never associate with those phenotypes.
Blonde hair also emerged independently in the Indo-Pacific where today you can find it among some populations in Oceania with people who have very dark skin and tightly curled hair.
Before the most recent waves of migration from Central Asia and the Middle East into Europe over the past several millennia, "native" Europeans are believed to have had very dark hair and somewhat darker skin, similar to what we might associate with some modern day Mediterranean populations.