>>13829609White skin is older than blue eyes. While the mutation for blue eyes is 6-10k years old, Neanderthals have carried the genes for light skin for far, far longer, about 300k years. Neanderthals had a large amount of variance in skin color, ranging from something like middle Eastern looking to blonde/red hair where the nordic countries are. Interestingly OOA (out of Africa populations) didn't inherit all the skin influencing genes neanderthals had, but still a substantial amount.
Though the gene specifically producing the extremely pale skin Europeans have is new, about 5k years, before that they probably all looked like northern Italians or Sardinians, which is still very light in comparison to how humans have looked for most of history.
