Source: Continuity and Admixture in the Last Five Millennia of Levantine History from Ancient Canaanite and Present-Day Lebanese Genome Sequences (US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health) 2017 A.D.
From the Continuity and Admixture in the Last Five Millennia of Levantine History from Ancient Canaanite and Present-Day Lebanese Genome Sequences source, “These results support population continuity in the region and suggest that several present-day genetic disorders might stem from risk alleles that were already present in the Bronze Age population. In addition, SNPs associated with phenotypic traits show that Sidon_BA and the Lebanese had comparable skin, hair, and eye colors (in general: light intermediate skin pigmentation, brown eyes, and dark hair) with similar frequencies of the underlying causal variants in SLC24A5 and HERC2, but with Sidon_BA probably having darker skin than Lebanese today from variants in SLC45A2 resulting in darker pigmentation (Table S2).”
This source reveals that some ancient Sidonians were darker than modern inhabitants of that region. We have noted in another post that the SLC24A2 marker is found in the African American population which could possibly give one an idea of just how dark some ancient Sidonians were.
More importantly, the source reveals that the ancient near east (ANE) was inhabited by both dark and light skinned peoples.
and then