something else that should be pointed out before i stop for the night, and this will upset people but it is true, is that the post-exile or post-captivity jews that "returned" to israel from babylon, and brought this religion that was heavily influenced by iranian zoroastrianism with them, probably interbred heavily with their iranian overlords and probably looked a whole lot more like modern russians or poles than they did like modern arabs, who have a substantive amount of subsaharan dna as a consequence of the arab slave trade. roman propaganda tells us that the ancient canaanites were darker skinned than they were, but it is extremely unlikely that they were as remotely as dark skinned as arabs are today. when the jews left israel after the roman exile and settled around the world, they were likely not very different looking than other southern european groups, meaning that this idea that they lightened their skin in europe is actually a mistake; rather, the jews that stayed in the south probably grew darker over time, due to the influx of dna from africa that occurred as a result of the arab slave trade.