the achaemenids would have actually been much lighter-skinned than most of the current iranian population, even keeping in mind that the current iranian population is actually much lighter-skinned than is presented in popular media.

 
darius would have looked sort of russian.

i was a civ player when i was young, and they were usually pretty good at this. there's a fringe group of people that want to argue that the persians were from east africa, but it's a ridiculous argument [and that's coming from somebody that readily accepts arguments of a black egypt, or at least a black egypt up until about 1000 bce]. ridiculous with a capital r. on the same level as lizard people. zero chance of accuracy. there were likely some coloured people of roughly "indian" descent in the areas under persian rule, and the persians were in control of pockets of both india and africa so there would have been coloured people in the empire in a variety of contexts. but the persians' closest living relatives would be the slavic groups of eastern europe. and their ruling elite would have been white. not arab olive. not turkic tanned. pasty fucking white.

so, you have to wonder if it's some kind of joke. black aryans. right...