Did the first original humans look more like modern-day Africans or more like Mongols? So which comes closest?

The modern anatomical person comes from Africa. Nevertheless, you can’t just say the first people looked like Africans. Because “the Africans” don’t exist. People look very different in different regions of Africa, because living conditions are very different everywhere and therefore different adaptations have been made to the environment.

One assumes that the first anatomically modern people had a light brown skin color, comparable to the skin of the San members living in southern Africa. As protection against UV radiation, a very dark skin colour has prevailed in some regions with particularly intense UV stress, for example in Sudan where the dinka live. Mutations also occurred gradually, resulting in the skin becoming brighter. Because light-skinned people were unprotected before the sun, however, their probability of survival was low and with their premature death the gene variants (allele) responsible for bright skin disappeared from the gene pool. The first people who reached Europe about 45 000 years ago were also dark-skinned and they probably stayed for several thousand years. Unlike in Africa, a mutation that led to lighter skin was, however, not a survival disadvantage in Europe because UV radiation is less intense here. In Europe, clacids did not have to die prematurely and their alleles remained in the population. Why the bright blue phenotype has prevailed in Europe and parts of Asia, is not yet fully clarified. It is very likely that sexual selection was mainly responsible for it. Apparently, light-skinned people were perceived as particularly attractive, so they planted most successfully and gradually continued to increase their share in the population. The earlier hypothesis that the bright skin should have been a survival advantage because it should have been beneficial in the production of vitamin D (vitamin D is formed in the skin, but UV light is necessary), is probably not true or should not have been the main reason. Recent studies show that people successfully survived for many generations in Europe with dark skin color and that dark skins do not suffer more frequently from a vitamin D deficiency than bright skins.