Blonde hair is not common. As for light eyes, they are very common, in 30% of the Iranian population: for example, green and hazel and light brown eyes are the most common light eye colors, about 20%, blue perhaps 7%, and gray 2% .

Here are some pictures of Iranians with colored eyes

Some of our national soccer players

Majid Hosseini Green eyes

Sardar Azmon Greenish hazel eyes

Milad Mohamadei gray eyes

Reza Azadi Blue eyes

Shoja Khalilzadeh Greenish hazel eyes

Ali golizadeh Green eyes

Mortaza Pouraliganji Hazel eyes

Karim Ansari Fard Hazel eyes

Some old Iranian players

Ali Karimi green eyes

Bejman Nouri green eyes

Safar Iranpak green eyes

Mohamed Reza khalatbari green eyes

Voria Ghafori blue eyes

ghasem hadadfar green hazel eyes

Jalal Husseini Green eyes

Mohsen Bangar blue eyes

Muhammad Khordbin Hazel green eyes

Hussein Kalani blue eyes

Ali Parvin blue eyes

Some Iranian singers with light eyes

Pictures of some politicians with light eyes

Ali larijani blue eyes

Mohamed Bagher Qalibaf blue eyes

Hassan Khomeini green eyes

Mohamad Khatami blue eyes

Maryam Rajaui greenish blue eyes

Mahmood Alizadeh Tabatabai blue eyes

These are some of my friends and relatives

This is my friend is Azari who has Hazel eyes

This is my uncle he is Kurdish from Sanandaj ( از استان سنندج ) who died (happy soul) He had blue eyes

This is my friend is persian he is have blue eyes

This Is my friend is persian he have Hazel eyes

This is he Kurdish relative of mine who has gray eyes

This is my Azeri friend He has blue eyes

This is a friend of mine too he is Persian and he eyes grey

I also have light eyes. I don't want to show my picture. My eye color is hazel green

Here are some actors with light eyes

Some media and journalists and Software providers

Hamid Ismailzadeh

Arash Hasannia

Alireza Koshkhabt

Nader Talibzadeh

These are some of the people who have been killed by the regime And those who were detained because of their opposition to the regime

Some Writers

Blonde hair is not a rare feature among Iranians. Gilan and Mazandaran provinces have the highest percentage of blondes in Iran. Or maybe in the Middle East . Blonde hair is found all over Iran . and he very common in Gilan and Mazendran . Many Lurs in Bakhtiari also usually have light blond hair, like the Scandinavian type

30% of colored eyes, 5% of blonde hair

I have already explained how common blonde hair is among Iranians

You can view the answer and And Upvote on it

Iranians are diverse. We have different hair colors and eye colors. But it doesnt mean that we were mixed with Europeans. Modern day Iranians look the same as ancient Persians.

Carvings of two persian soldiers in the Palace of Darius the great. One of them is brunette and the other one is blonde.

The details of another Persian solider's face

So blonde hair and blue eyes in Iran aren't a result of invasion or colonization(Iran was never colonized by Europeans.)

Some Iranians have blonde hair

Some have red hair

Some have black hair

But majority of Iranians have brown hair and brown eyes and are a little tanned(pictures are from street interviews in Tehran)

So even though there are many Iranians with light hair and light eyes, they're still a minority. Around 5% of Iranians are naturally blonde and 25–35% have light eyes(blue-green-hazel). Majority of Iranians have darker features.

Nobody knows what was the exact appearance of the Ancient Persians.

Supposedly based on the ancient Persian sculptures their noses would have been more hooked, smaller and skinnier than their Assyrian, Sumerian & Babylonian counterparts and slightly almond shaped eyes.

Ancient Persian:

Sumerian:

Babylonian:

Assyrian:

Modern Iranian that could be similar in appearance to Ancient Persians:

Let’s look at this 2500 year old inscription from Darius I:

I am Darius the great king, king of kings, king of countries containing all kinds of men, king in this great earth far and wide, son of Hystaspes, an Achaemenid, a Persian, son of a Persian, an Aryan, having Aryan lineage.

The contemporary name of Iran (that is, Persia) is actually derived from the same root. So, it’s a tough case to make: if even the Aryans are black, who isn’t?

OK, that’s a bit unfair.

In Persian and related languages, “Aryan” was roughly a synonym for “noble” or “best” — it’s from the the same ancient root aristos in Greek, from which we get “aristocrat.” Ancient Persians used it to differentiate speakers of Iranian or Vedic languages from people who spoke other languages, and also as a marker of high status. For Darius, it’s a boast about his high birth, not about his melanin quota; when he says “I’m an Aryan” he’s saying “I’m a part of the elite of the Iranian-speaking world.”

The “racial” connotation shows up millennia later, thanks to the unfortunate influence of Arthur de Gobineau in the 1800’s. Gobineau, a reactionary defender of aristocracy — noted the fact that the root of “Aryan” is the word for “noble” or “excellent” and decided that Aryans were a racial grouping of “superior” peoples. This idea took a detour through bizarre Nazi theories about Atlantis and eventually you get the modern idea that “Aryan” and “bottle blond” were equivalent.

Nevertheless, even the Nazi’s didn’t forget who the original Aryans were: they awarded “Aryan” status in their own sense to 20th century Iranians. When you find yourself being less inclusive than Hitler, that’s probably a good sign you’re pursuing a bad theory.

Leaving aside bad racial theories from the past, there’s a very interesting laboratory experiment you can use to address this question. The Parsee community in India, which was formed by refugees from Persia fleeing the Islamic conquest after the 8th century, is kind of a time capsule letting us see what the genetic makeup of Persia looked like a thousand years ago. The Parsees practice very strict endogamy — that is, they don’t marry outside their own community. It turns out that, even though they’ve been living in India for more than a thousand years, they are actually genetically closer to the Neolithic population of Persia than many modern Iranians, having less admixture from the west and south. But there’s clear continuity between modern Iranians, the bottled-in-time Parsee community, and the evidence for the pre-historic populations of the Iranian plateau, particularly in the north and east.

And no, they don’t look very closely related to Africans.

Photo: Parsikhabar.net

If you want the usual string of pictures that accompany these kinds of questions, it’s hard to find contemporary depictions of Persians that would satisfy. There’s a lot of uncolored statuary from the Achaemenid Era (550–330 BC) but not much colored stuff until the Parthian period a couple of hundred years after Alexander the Great’s conquest.

The famous faience tiles from Persepolis might satisfy a fan of the “Black Persian” hypothesis:

This picture from the New York Times shows a modern audience with a frieze of Persian archers from the imperial palace at Persepolis, now in the Louvre Museum.

Some scholars think these archers are Elamites, rather than Persians (the Elamites are a distinct group in antiquity, centered along what’s now the southern part of the Iran-Iraq border). In any event, this piece certainly doesn’t look like fair-skinned people — whether that’s ‘black’ in your eyes is up to you.

On the other hand, the archers are a bit of an anomaly. The same archaeological site provides a good example of how Persian artists saw the difference between themselves and Africans. Here’s a court official (at right) leading a delegation bringing tribute to the Persian empire from the kingdom of Kush, in what’s now Sudan, on the southern border of Persian-controlled Egypt. The difference in height is probably exaggerated, but the artist certainly trying to portray these folks as quite distinct (his effort at depicting the giraffe, at left, is… interesting…).

Kushite tributaries bringing gifts to the Persian court, from the Apadana at Persepolis, some time after 525 BC. Photo: Richard Stone

Later Persian art, from the Parthian and Sassanian eras, is much less ambiguous. Here’s a Parthian-era Persian, from what’s now Uzbekistan:

Parthian (Persian) warrior, from about 100 BC Photo : Nicholetta Stopkofer

And a Sassanian-era mosaic from the royal palace in Bishapur:

Photo Wikipedia

And textiles from the Sassanian period portray Persians like this:

Fragment of a sixth or early seventh century Persian tapestry. Photo: Metropolitan Museum

And, for contrast’s sake here’s how an Egyptian artist depicted the war between the Persians and the Ethiopian empire of Axum in the 570’s.

Egyptian wall hanging — copying a Persian original — showing the Persians (mounted, with bows) fighting the Axumites (on foot) during their war in the Arabian Peninsula. Photo: Wikipedia

In short, it’s not impossible to understand why somebody whose only association with this subject was Google Image Search might get the wrong idea.

But it’s still the wrong idea.

No, definitively not.

In fact, ancient persians unfortunately seemed to be rather racist towards blacks and believed black people are the offspring of a demon.

Source:

• 9th Century, Book: the Bundahishn Chapter XIVB and Greater Bundahishn, Authors: Several Unknowns

Regarding the Black people "During his sovereignty, Az i Dahak (a demon) let loose a dew on a young girl and let loose a young man on a parig, and they (the female counterparts) had sex with the visible image of the male (counterparts of each other); through this new way of the action the Black people appeared." “When Fredon (iranian Hero) came, they (the Black people) rushed off from the Lands of Iran and settled on the coast of the sea. Now, after the Arab onslaught, they have again rushed to the Lands of Iran.”

Source:

• Muhammad and the Origins of Islam

…On the other hand Chosroes, Zoroastrian king of Persia, took a different position. He said to the Jews: "This is the white skin against the black race. I am closer to you than to the Abyssinians." After their victory over 'the black race' the victory poem began: "We have crossed the waters to free Himyar (southern Arabia) from the tyranny of the blacks."

And:

“When the Persian king (Chosroes) heard of this he sent Wahriz with 4,000 Persians and ordered him to kill every Abyssinianor child of an Abyssinian and an Arab woman, great or small, and not leave alive a single man with crisp curly hair.

Here is the visual representation for the above narration:

Coptic textile showing King Khusrau I and sasanian warriors fighting black Abyssinians in yemen (600–700AD)

More Art, depicting persians:

Sasanian murals in Kuh i khwaja 400 AD, Iran:

Alexander sarcophargus showing Greeks fighting Persians, 325BC (colours revealed by UV/Vis spectrometry)

Wood painting in an achaemenid Tomb found in Turkey, Tatarli Tumulus, 400–500 BC (original coulours)

Sasanian embassy in India 450 AD ( Ajanta caves, India)

Part of the Alexander Mosaic, Darius and a persian soldier (100 BC)

Mosaic of a sasanian lady with braided hair and typical floating ribbons found in Iran,300AD

Alexander and Roxane as Mars and Venus, guarded by persian solider, 200 BC Pompeji

Sasanian Princes (300AD, Iran, Shahr e Gur)

Sasanian noble men 400 AD, Hajyabad, Iran

Sasanian bust of Khusrau found in Ctesiphon (this bust's beard and hair can be compared to the above mural painting and the textile below)

Coptic textile showing King Khusrau I and sasanian warriors fighting Ethiopians in yemen (600–700AD)

Umayyad fresco showing a sasanian horse archer in typical sasanian dress and with floating ribbons, 727AD

Wall hanging depicting Sasanians, 600 AD

Stone Panel depicting two persons in sasanian dress, 600 AD

Greeks vase of a frightened Persian, 4th Century BC

Achaemenid noble man

Sasanian bust found in Susa, Iran

Sasanian Vase (500 AD, Merv)

Tissaphernes, Achaemenid Satrap, 350BC

Pharnabazos, Achaemenid Satrap, 400 BC

Coin of Xerxes showing him in his royal as well as his riding attire.

Spithridates, Achaemenid Satrap 330 BC

Amestris, Achaemenid Queen

Autophradates I, Achaemenid naval Commander

Baydad, first persian satrap in seleucid Iran

Sasanian bust, 400 AD

Sasanian King 400 AD

Sasanian bust

Sasanian Queen Boran or Azarmidokht

Sasanian bust

Sasanian plate 500AD

Sasanian King Shapur

Head of a dying Persian, Italy 200 AD

Roman marble sculpture of a dying Persian, Italy, 200 AD

Darius Vase 330 BC

Darius at Bisotun

Darius' Guard at Bisotun

Zoroastrian Sasanian Priest

More Quotes:

Sources:

• 2014, Author: Touraj Daryaee, Book: Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire by Touraj Daryaee,
• 10th Century poem “Khusraw ud Menag”, Author: Unknown

The perfect woman in the eyes of the sasanians:

“…whose body down to the toes nails is snowy white and whosee cheeks are pomegranate red..”

Source:

• 9th Century, Author: Al-Jahiz, Book: Superiority of Blacks over whites

“Therefore, if the Arabs are ruddy, then they belong to the Byzantines (Rum), Slaves (Saqaliba), Persians and Khurasanis. But if they belong to the dark-skinned peoples, then they are a sub-category of our stock. So they are called medium-complexioned and brownish-black (sumr sud) when they are classified with us, as the Arabs use the masculine gender to refer to a group consisting of females and males.”

Source:

• 10th Century AD, Author: Firdawsi, Book: Shahnama

In the Shahnama, written by the persian poet, Firdawsi, Rudaba, mother of Rustam, is described having “skin like ivory” and a face “like the moon” and a “rosy complexion”.

Source:

9th Century AD, Author: Unknown, Book: Avesta

Avesta, Anahita is described having “white arms".

Source:

2nd Century AD, Author: Sextus Empiricus, Book: Against the Ethicists

on the female beauty standard of the Ethiopians with that of the Persians:

“the Ethiopians preferring the blackest and most snub-nosed, the Persians preferring the whitest and most hook-nosed…”

Source:

2014, Author: Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones , Book: King and Court in Ancient Persia 559 to 331 BCE

“There can be little doubt that Achaemenid kings and courtiers wore wigs and false hairpieces and their images at Persepolis and other palace sites certainly suggest that false tresses ... Strabo (15.3.21) notes that hair was therefore a taxable item in the Persian Empire…”

Source:

• 1290 AD, Author: Ibn Manzour, Book Lisan al-Arab

“And the Arabs used to say about the non-Arabs with whom white skin was characteristic, such as the Romans, Persians, and their neighbors: ‘They are red-skinned (al-hamra’)…” al-hamra’ means the Persians and Romans…And the Arabs attribute white skin to the slaves.”

"Lank hair is the kind of hair that most non-Arab Persians and Romans have while kinky hair is the kind of hair that most Arabs have".

Source:

• 9th Century AD, Author: Al-Mubarrad, Book: Al Kaamil Al Mubarrad
• THE REDS AND THE BLACKS

The Arabs used to take pride in their brown and black complexion ( al-sumra wa al-saw§d )and they had a distaste for a white and fair complexion ( al-Èumra waal-shaqra ), and theyused to say that such was the complexion of the non-Arabs.

Source:

• 9th Century, Author: Ibn Abi Shaybah, Book: In Tareeq Al Madinah 3, pages 490- 491
• THE REDS AND THE BLACKS

“Uyaynatu ibn Hasn said, “Oh leader of the believers,Verily I see the non Arabs(Persians) increasing in number in your country , beware of them. He said (Ameer al Mumimeen) they have been holding onto the ropes of Islam…. Look at red (white skinned) blue eyed from them striving in the deen.”

There are so many problems with this question. I don't know where to begin.

First of all, modern Tajiks don't look more European than Iranians.

I looked at some of your comments. You are looking at cherry-picked photos of super white-looking Tajiks and comparing them with Ahmadinejad.

Ahmadinejad doesn't even look close to what an average Iranian looks like. Less than 1% of Iranians look similar to Ahmadinejad.

Many of the current government people of Iran have non-Iranian origin. They don't look like regular Iranian people, really.

This is Tajikistan:

This is Iran:

Watch these videos and look at the people. There is no difference between the skin color of Tajiks and Iranians.

Secondly, Quora User has explained this a million times already. The genetics of Iranians haven't changed in the last 10,000 years. Ancient Persians looked exactly the same as what Modern Persians look like.

I'm a Persian Iranian myself. The Ancient Persians looked the same as me. They were my ancestors.

I don't understand why so many non-Iranians are obsessed with the skin color of Iranians. These types of questions are very disrespectful.

You cannot decide what Iranians look like by looking at cherry-picked pictures on the Internet. If you really want to know what Iranians look like, travel to Iran and see for yourself.

I have noticed that non-Iranians have no idea what Iranians look like. As an Iranian myself, nobody outside of Iran has ever correctly guessed my ethnicity in my whole life.

There were some Greeks that were blonde much like today. My own mother is blonde, blue eyes, freckles etc. Modern Greeks resemble the Mycenaeans. as the Harvard study “Genetic origins of the Minoans and Mycenaeans” showed. And some of the Myceneans were blonde. Homer doesn’t speak often about the hair color of the heroes but he does mention some of them such as Achilleus or Menelaus as blonde. Rare as mentions of hair color as they may be, not only Menelaus was mentioned as blonde but also his wife, Helen.

The abduction of Helen, mosaic in Pella, Greece.

As Eurypides writes in his tragedy, Helen:

Theoclymenos Did this man bury your husband or has he left him there unburied?

Helen Unburied! Oh, how miserable is my fate!

Theoclymenos So, that’s why you’ve cut so short your beautiful blond hair?

Helen A loved one always stays loved! They live on in here, in the heart!

We see other characters in Eurypides tragedies also described as blond, for example Phaedra in the play “Hippolytus”:

Chorus
She lies afflicted, they say, in a bed of sickness and keeps indoors, with fine-spun cloths covering her blond head.

And in Medea too:

And someone kissed the hands and another the blond heads of the children. And I myself for very joy went along with the children into the women's quarters.

Sweet little children, what “joys” awaited them…

Of course these were mythological characters but it looks like the audiece in ancient Greece took it for granted that some of the characters in ancient Greek dramas would be blonde just like some in the audience would be blond. In fact there were entire cities that were famous for their people being generally blonde. Thebes is described as such in “Bios Ellados” by Heracleides Criticus, a greek writer of the 3rd century BC:

Such are the men as a whole, though some some worthy, high-minded, respectable persons are also to be found among them. The women are the tallest, prettiest and most gracefull in all Greece. Their faces are so muffled up that only the eyes are seen. All of them dress in white. Their yellow hair is tied up in a knot on the top of the head.

Goddess Hygeia (Health), 5th-4th century BC, Greece

Of course if it was noteworthy to mention that a city had mostly blond ladies it means that some Greeks were indeed blond but the majority wasn’t, much like today. Fortunately we can now find the traces of color in ancient Greek statues and the hair seems to be of a variety of colors:

Both literature and archaeological evidence deconstruct the two extreme views on ancient Greek color. Greeks were neither wholly blond and nordic nor dark haired and skinned. There was a variety of colors in ancient Greek from blond to black hair, not unlike today. The average of course leans towards the darker hair and it seems to be the case among the ancient Greeks.

According to whom? Quora User’s delusions or science?

Because genetically, there has been no shift for the last 5.000 years. Iranians are not admixed with Arabs, nor are Persians “Iranized Middle Easterners”.

“The entire gene pool has remained largely unchanged over at least the past 5,000 years, but probably rather the past 10,000 years.”

Genetically, Iranians do not cluster with any Arabic-speaking nation.

Quora User should better read the studies and charts she posts. It quite literally says the same thing. 😂

The researchers of the large genetic study conducted on Iranians in 2019 that Ral Cheva also bizarrely posted to counter me, but proving my point, compared ancient samples of Iranians from ca. 10.000 years ago to modern samples and only found small differences.

The link to the study: bit.ly/irangen

“Iranians don't all have all 4 known genetic mutations for pale skin that you find in Europeans.”

Uhm, Iranians carry the A Allele which is primarily responsible for fair skin.

The genetic heterogeneity of Iranians is described as autochthonous to the Iranian Plateau. Which means there was no influx from other parts of the region, except for Central Asia, home to other Iranic people.

In other words, Iranians all have had the same DNA for almost 5.000 years since at least the Bronze Age which means the ancient Medes and ancient Persians looked exactly like Iranians look today: Iranic Western Asians from Eurasia.

They all share the “Chalcolithic Iranian” gene with each other, which is also found in Western Eurasian populations aka Europe.

Persian woman from Shiraz photographed for the Atlas of Beauty.

Quora User, Greeks share J2 with Iranians, a Haplogroup that originated on the Iranian Plateau.

The oldest known J2a samples at present were even identified in remains from the Hotu Cave in Northern Iran, dating from some time around 9100-8600 BCE.

Unlike Arabs who have different Haplogroups (such as J1) altogether.

Iranians will resemble people of the Causasus the closest as they are in the same genetical cluster.

• Iranians Beauty Standards

Iranians absolutely adore and treasure dark eyes and dark hair.

In antiquity, we read how the ancient Iranians, with the help of plants and herbal treatments, dyed their hair a few shades darker because that has always been the beauty standard for Iranians.

Persian miniture art

Take a look at a few Iranians actors and actresses and their preparation for movie roles:

But I see, Hollyweird has played a number on you people. 😂

Ancient Iranians together with Caucasus people, were likely the first people to carry the genes for light skin and blue eyes.

Light skin people with blue eyes from IRAN and TURKEY migrated to Israel 6500 years ago:

So light skin and blue eyes were already in Iran 6500 years ago.

Although most Iranians have dark hair and eyes, there are many blue, green eyed Iranians:

The modern Iranic ethnicities, with the exception of Ossetians and Baluch, all have more or less look the same amount of “European”. Of course Europe is a vast continent with different phenotypes, and even different levels of pigmentation in its people.

Studies have shown again and again that modern Iranians have almost the same genetic admixture as their Iron Age ancestors. Basically, the last important genetic shift in Iran was the westward migration of Aryans from Oxus valley region nearly 3k years ago. Other events, including invasions, brought very little change to Iranians’ genetic pool. This atop a look at ancient Iranians’ descriptions and art (both Iranian and foreign sources) shows that ancient people of Iran looked like us modern Iranians.

For Tajiks the story is a little different. Tajiks (including Yaghnobis and Pamiris) are the last Iranians of Oxus valley where Iranian Aryans originated around 3k years earlier. Oxus valley and Central Asia has the same basal admixture as Iran, but Iranians there had more Steppish (Steppe MLBA*) admixture because they were Aryanised by a more Steppe-derived population. If you look at Sogdian and Bactrian reliefs and description it becomes clear there were more light pigmented individuals there than Iran, but it wasn’t and isn’t that obvious.

(Edit: For Pre-Aryan population of Iran and central Asia, I must add they were not “Middle Eastern” but mainly Caucasus-derived)

Scythians were Iranic but their origins lie much further north in Siberia and they are the result of Steppe Aryan admixture with native west Siberians. Their descriptions and their mummies show they were more light-pigmented than Iranians of Central Asia and Iran. Their last descendants the Ossetians continue to have the lightest pigmentation amongst Iranic ethnics.

In very basic terms:

Steppe MLBA* = Early Aryans

Steppe MLBA + pre-aryan Iranians = Early Iranians / modern Tajiks

Early Iranians + more pre-aryan Iranians = West Iranians / modern people of Iran

Steppe MLBA + west Siberians = Scythians

Scythians + native Caucasians = Ossetians

(of course it is not place to delve into more detail, but these people each admixed at varying numbers)

MLBA: Middle & Late Bronze Age

Some were then and to this day some are now. It has never really changed.

Achilles Alexander the Great , Philip Aristotle Phyrrhus were all vividly described as blond haired fair skinned people.

And in Northern Greece especially it still exists to this day.

And here are some Greeks today. Including my daughter and cousins below. Also are included some photos of Northern Greek villages.

More cousins (with their faces covered) below. The fairness and blondness is obvious as anyone can tell from the photos.

This look is quite common in many parts of Northern Greece and has a presence somewhat in central Greece.

The blondness has always existed since before Homer and it still exists to this day. It's indigenous.

This is one of the most-famous of Iranian pop singers—does she look how you imagine Iranians to look?

Iranians have a lot of different skin tones and hair, in part due to vast stretch of the Persian Empire and the fact a lot of other people of various heritage came to what is now Iran. I am not Iranian myself but I speak fluent Persian and when I talk with Iranian-Americans they presume I’m Iranian-American, which would by my appearance be fully possible:

Indeed modern Greeks being the grandchildren of ancient Greeks should look no different to them, as I have explained in a similar answer:
Yannis Gaitanas's answer to Why do modern Greeks look more Middle-Eastern and not Nordic like the ancient Greeks?

Of course, as I explained in the answer above, it’s not impossible that there is a small change throughout the centuries as blonde hair and especially blue eyes etc tend to become rarer with each generation even within a family. Some artists in the late middle ages onwards, especially after the renaissance chose mostly blonde hair to show beauty and very pale skin to show a sort of noble origin. Aristocrats that enjoyed and paid for the paintings would be pale as they didn’t work on the farms and the women especially didn’t live much outside. Keep in mind most of the art is made by and for urban people so there wouldn’t be much of the farm work we think of and gradually there would be factories too. Tanned bodies is a quite recent, 20th century trend.

Therefore, artistic depictions wouldn’t take into account how the people depicted looked like but how the people the art was made by and for look like or how they would have liked to look like. We see little angels in scenes from the Bible being blonde figures…. in the Middle east.

That’s Archangel Gabriel in Jan van Eyck’s ”Annunciation” painting from the 15th century. Does he look like a guy that you’d regularly meet in the Levant or the Netherlands? I guess the latter, perhaps that’s why these guys said “Fear not”. Of course in the late middle ages depictions of angels in other cultures and places were different. For example in byzantine art they would be depicted like that:

Michael and Gabriel, 12th century byzantine art. I mean you see it in pictures of Jesus around the world. Blonde Jesus in northern countries, darker in the south and even black Jesus in Africa. But what about depictions of ancient Greeks in modern culture? One could argue that they are whitewashed, that they are depicted as too white. And for sure, there has been white washing in tv and cinema for years but as for the depiction of ancient Greeks, there are various versions. For example we got Brad Pitt as Achilles, but we also got a black Achilles. Which one is more accurate? Homer describes Achilles of “ξανθής κόμης”, that is blonde or light colored hair, and it’s usual for women, even heroes, to have a pale complexion. Of course it wasn’t something common, as it isn’t common in Greece now either. In any case, even in the middle east, where we expect a darker than usual color, Achilles was depicted like that:

He is rather light haired and of a kinda pale skin, compared to the other guys though not to the women. Notice also how the guy on the right is kinda dark but his leg is whiter. It looks like the dark skin is a tan rather than a natural color which would explain why the women are depicted as lighter colored.

Anywaym it’s high time we saw some modern depictions. As I said the depiction of Achilles in Troy movie of 2004 was faithful to the text, closer to the Homeric Achilles than BBC’s black Achilles. And as for the rest of the heroes, my favorite movie about Odyssey is that with Arman Assante.

I speak as a Greek now, if I walk out of my door right now I’ll find a dozen guys looking like him. And It’s 02:00 in the morning, so you should get an idea how close to a modern Greek he is. And it’s not surprising since he is partly Italian. A Greek actress, on with pretty dark characteristics, Irene Papas, starred as his mother.

Another good old movie about my city’s hero, Jason, the legendary Jason and the Argonauts, depicts the heroes like that:

Again, these people would pass as modern Greeks pretty easily, and they aren’t blonde to begin with. And as for historical Greeks , they darkened up Gerald Butler to star as Leonidas. I see no effort to portray the ancient Greeks as blonde:

Even Headey, that we enjoyed as a blonde in Game of Thrones has dark hair here.

For Greek women we got to see several depictions of Cleopatra, the Greek queen of ptolemaic Egypt, They all tend to have dark hair, although Taylor had quite rare eyes, they tend to look like modern Greek women. I mean, it’s not that Greek women are as beuatiful as Gadot on average but she’s as dark and darker than most of them. And let’s not forget this production of Cleopatra.

Here, Cleopatra is obviously darker than Mark Anthony. And it’s not a surprise since Varela is Chilean and Zane is Greek. Care to see ancient Greek depictions of women? Here’s a statue of goddess Hygea (Health):

If anything I’d say modern mainstream media tend to depict the ancient Greeks as either accurate or darker. The idea of Greeks being more blonde and pale than modern Greeks started from western European art of the middle ages and eventually constructed a myth of ancient Greeks being similar to those people, in the northwest Europe. Because it suited their agenda, these northwestern Europeans considered themselves the heirs of the ancient Greek civilisation so as family they wanted to show they looked the same. This construct has collapsed after the collapse the nazis in WWII. You can see some racist nazis here and there still supporting 19th centuries theories of Fallmerayer that the good old blonde ancient Greeks were replaced by filthy dark modern Greeks. But all this has been debunked. Cinema used some “good heroic blonde” stereotypes for years and still finds it kinda convenient to whitewash for the simple reason that most popular stars are of North european origin; however there is alsoa recent trend to darken up ancient Greeks and Romans. Perhaps it’s an effort to compensate for the older whitewashing. Still,I don’t see much whitewashing of the ancient Greeks, rather the oopposite,for decades.

Blue eyes are not very common inside of Iran because although it originated somewhere in West-Asia and it exists somewhere else, these areas were already very populated unlike Europe which seemed to have faced a small reset after the arrival of Corded Ware culture and the Yamnaya people.

Blue eyes are a mutation and it is kind of a recessive trait. So you can imagine the first person with blue eyes that lived among his own tribe and community and their community among hundreds of others and how new and weird this might have been for them so although this gene spread quickly and wide, it might have just been assimilated among the other native Neolithic and Bronze Age people living in those areas as again I mentioned that it is a recessive gene and the “revert back color” was brown eyes. However, hazel and green eyed people do exist in higher numbers inside of Iran because of this admixture.

Later, after the arrival of Proto-Indo-Europeans, Neolithic Iranian farmers admixed with these and some of these Proto-Indo-Europeans had blond hair as a trait which seems to not be native to West-Asia. Blond hair unlike blue eyes is less common inside of Iran and it is actually quite rare and mostly exists among the remote tribal regions albeit lighter haired Iranians do exist in bigger cities but again not as a majority.

Image. Iranian child

Image. Iranian Qashqai children

Image. Iranian girl in Zagros mountain range

Look . Im Iranian . I live in Anzali port . (you can search it) … i have to explain you that Iran is vast … like America … Northern Iranian Are White (95%) . have light hait (40%) . have light eyes (35%) … but in center people usually are yellow … and in South that Arabs and Baluchs lives ,people are brown …

Egyptian actress Nadia Lotfi……. Blonds are very common in Ancient and Modern Egypt

The oldest person with blonde hair in Europe has been found in Russia and dated 15 000 years. Its known that the ancient hunter - gatherers of Northern Europe had blonde hair. They interbred with the incoming Indo-Europeans and Middle Eastern Farmers who had dark hair and eyes with olive skin. By the time the Celts migrated throughout Europe, they resembled modern Europeans.

Blond - Wikipedia

There are many sculptures of ancient Greeks showing them with blonde hair:

Ancient Etruscan:

There seems to have been more blondes and people with red hair in ancient Egypt:

Fagg El Gamous - Wikipedia

Youtube is NOT a good reference. Ancient Persians looked just like modern Persians and carried the same DNA.

Iranian peoples - Wikipedia

Modern Persians:

Ancient Persians:

Darius III

Because we are! and we don’t look different from them!

None in this world suffers as us modern Egyptians whom in every occasion have to explain that our grand parents are our grand parents! None in this planet have to answer questions that are disrespectful like these questions by calling us invaders, colonizers, thieves..etc.

(An Egyptian lady was insulted for saying she is Egyptian and defending her history)

It became so disturbing to see our history and culture being stolen and when we defend it, we are racists! I remember Egyptians had to do a trend saying

(Egypt for Egyptians!) yes which should be a simple fact became a struggle for us.

Now for the hundred times: Modern Egyptians who took genetic testing almost scored 90% close to ancient Egyptian samples (yes grand children descend from grand parents not visitors!). Islam is a religion not ethnicity so claiming modern Egyptians came from Arab tribes that migrated to Egypt because we are muslims is funny to be honest.

Secondly: Egyptians modern and ancient were diverse, I have lightskinned people and darkskinned people in same family so how about a whole country

Third: I am sure Every Egyptian can find a statue or drawing that lookslike him so what’s the point.

That includes me too… I hope one day I can be proud of my history without being attacked for what is a basic right for any other human

Egyptians are not a question of being black or white.. because we can be both. There are colors between black and white.

Probably the vast majority of the ancient Romans (the core, original Romans of Central Italy, not the much later, expanded notion of “civic Romanness”) were not blonde-haired, but they were white, that is, white in the same range that modern Southern Europeans like, for instance, South Italians or Greek people are. As for blue eyes, it is probable that many Romans had light eyes, but not the majority of them, as that’s what can be inferred from their own artistic depictions, and from their closest modern descendants in Italy.

Dying one’s hair blonde or red was very popular among ancient Roman women, which clearly suggests that it was considered exotic and “different”, and also that it didn’t exist naturally in most women (and, consequently, most men, too).

Some of those blonde or ginger women in Roman frescoes probably had dyed hair, but it’s certain that a minority of Romans were naturally blonde or red-haired, because we have several ancient records stressing those features in Romans of that era. There were also Roman names that basically meant blonde one, red-haired one. However, in my opinion the very fact that those names and specific mentions of blondness red-hairedness exist point to the probability that those traits were not too frequent among the ancient Romans.

Another strong indication that the average original Roman was white (but not very pale-skinned like North Europeans), brown-eyed and brown-haired is that now we have access to the amazing findings provided by the extraction and analysis of ancient DNA. Just a few weeks ago we had the release of the DNA results of Central Italians of the Iron Age and of the Imperial Era, that is, the people from whom Romans arose. They were closest to modern Southern Italians, not to modern North Italians or even Central Italians.

Other ancient Italian (including North Italian ones!) and Balkanic DNA samples (even as north as Hungary!) also confirm that a South Italian-like genetic makeup used to be very common in that broad region of Europe until the Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages.

Ancient Romans, like other ancient Southern Europeans, were most probably a mix of several different ancestral sources, mainly: Neolithic European Farmers (themselves a mix of early Anatolian farmers with indigenous West/Central European hunter-gatherers), Bronze Age steppe pastoralists (a mix of indigenous East European hunter-gatherers with Caucasian hunter-gatherers) and an additional population which brought a significant and extra Iranian/Caucasian ancestry from the Early Bronze Age onwards. That particular ancestral makeup must’ve created a population with varied features, with light hair and light eyes appearing in a non-negligible minority of the population.

It’s probable, then, that the Migration Period, with the Germanic, Slavic and Turkic migrations (and the chain migrations and displacements they caused), ended up shifting some Southern European populations more “northward”, making them a bit closer to Northern Europeans and increasing the frequency of light eyes and hair, but most of the people south of the Alps must’ve been previouly most similar to modern South Italians and Aegean (Islander) Greeks. As we know, those populations even today are mostly brown-haired and brown-eyed. If the Latins, or rather their Proto-Italic foreabears had a more northern (maybe Central European or North Balkanic) origin, it’s possible that the patricians were a bit more northern-shifted, but we just don’t know yet.

Therefore, the modern population that is most likely a good representative of the early Romans, before their expansion and admixture with other peoples, are the people that live south of the modern Lazio, which apparently received a lot of “northern” influx since Roman times.

The people of the Sintashta culture were closely genetically related to the Corded Ware culture, suggesting that the Sintashta culture represented an eastward expansion of Corded Ware peoples. The Corded Ware peoples were in turn closely genetically related to the Beaker culture, the Unetice culture and particularly the peoples of the Nordic Bronze Age.

The Sintashta people got light-skin and blonde hair from those peoples.

Facial reconstructions of Yamnaya people:

The Yamnaya were not the ancestors of the Corded Ware and Bell Beakers which shows that there is no Yamnaya genetic mix in South Asia or Tajikistan today.

Corded Ware peoples had 75% Yamnaya-like ancestry which suggests that the Yamnaya and the Corded Ware were siblings from an earlier Steppe population (Repin, Sredny Stog).

Blonde hair and blue eyes were most common among Funnelbeaker people.

Yes. Light skin originated in West Asia 28 000 years, blue eyes originated in West Asia 42 000 years ago. Blonde hair originated 16 000 years ago with the Ancient Northern Eurasians who were also West Asian in origin.

Wherever people of West Asian origin migrated, they took the genes for light skin, hair and eyes. This includes Europe, Central Asia, North Africa all the way to China.

Light skin, hair and eyes did NOT originate in Europe:

Tarim mummies of China had blonde hair from migrations of ancient West Asian people and the later Indo-Europeans who were a mix of Eastern hunter gatherers and Iranians/Caucasus people:

People like the Pastun of Afghanistan, carry West Asian MTDNA and Indo-European Y-DNA:

Kalash of Pakistan are a mix of West Asian and Indo-European origins:

North Africans are a mix of indigenous North Africans, West Asians:

The answer to this can be given very simply. In ancient Greek there was no word for “blond”. The word which is commonly alleged to mean “blond”, ξανθóς, /ksanthos/, actually means “brown” as the use of its derivative, ξανθíζω, /ksanthidzo/, at Aristophanes, Acharnians, 1047, very clearly shows — ξανθíζω there means “to turn brown” by means of roasting (i.e. meat, which does not turn yellow or blond when it is roasted). To my knowledge there is only one passage in all extant Greek literature in which an author unequivocally speaks of blond hair.

Diodorus Siculus, V 32,2.

“The women of the Gauls are not only like to the men in respect of stature, but are their equals in point of valour also. Their children at birth for the most part are πολιóς [/polios/; the word refers to hair colour], but as they grow older they change the colour to that of their parents.”

What was the colour of their parents’ hair?

D.S. V 28,1

“The Gauls are tall as to their bodies, with rippling-muscled and white skin, but they are ξανθóς as to their hair…”

The words πολιóς and ξανθóς, which we’ll leave untranslated for now, both denote a specific colour of hair; in this passage Diodorus (or more precisely, probably, his source whom he is copying, but in the current context that is neither here nor there) is discussing the common phenomenon among peoples of northern Europe whereby young children’s hair is light, but often turns darker as they age. (My own children, for example, all had blond hair initially; that of the two elder is now definitely brown.) Please note that Diodorus calls the darker colour ξανθóς and the lighter colour πολιóς. Now ξανθóς, as the passage from Aristophanes shows, means “brown”; and Diodorus is self-evidently using πολιóς to mean “blond”. The problem is that πολιóς actually means “grey” — in all other instances this word refers to the colour of old people’s hair (LSJ, s.v.). Diodorus simply did not have a word which meant “blond” in his vocabulary. He could describe the parents’ darker hair with the word ξανθóς, “brown”, but the best he could do for the lighter colour, i.e. blond hair, was “grey”. That was the closest word for a type of hair colour for which he just didn’t have a word, and there wasn’t a word for it in his language because the Greeks themselves didn’t have blond hair and (at least until they got to know Celts) didn’t know anyone who did.

Even brown hair among the ancient Greeks was a rarity, by the way, and a brown-haired person might easily pick up the name Ξανθóς in much the same way as a red-head today can pick up the nickname “red”. (Πυρρóς, “red”, exists as a name in Greek as well.) Almost all ancient Greeks had black hair; the brown-heads and red-heads among them actually attracted attention on account of their rarity.

Very unfortunately the view that the ancient Greeks had blond hair (or at all events prized blond hair) has a certain history in naïve older scholarship which was then used in perverted pseudo-scholarship which we here need not discuss; but one can easily guess its nature.

I doubt it. Most studies conclude that blonder hair as a genetic trait originated in Scandinavia, northern Germany and along the Baltic Sea Coast. It’s clear that the areas in southern Europe with the highest percentages of blonde people, are regions settled by Scandinavians, like Normany.

And I personally theorize that fewer Scandinavians and Baltics, not more, were mingling with southern Europeans in Antiquity.

The prevalence of blonde hair among the people you describe is more than likely because of their culture.

Blonde (or “golden”) hair was a strongly appreciated trait in the ancient world. The Greek tradition perceived it as an indicator of heroism. Several of the most important characters in Homer’s poems are described as fair-haired, and all of them are the ideals that later Greeks would aspire to be.

And, of course, Alexander, the superstar of the ancient world, was also blonde. So it quickly became a beauty ideal for educated elites to aspire to. It wouldn’t surprise me if even the Roman Emperors who weren’t exactly light-haired, liked to be described as such.