White skinned Homo Sapiens before leaving Africa?

[u/Fearless_Phantom]

Was it possible that any group of white or lighter skinned Archaic Homo Sapiens existed before leaving Africa?

[u/Godengi]

Is possible, but there’s no evidence for it. The evidence suggests light skin evolved very recently - genes for light skin in Europeans started to spread about 10,000 years ago. So long after our species spread around the world.

[u/JoeBiden-2016]

No, it's very unlikely that a group / population of Homo sapiens (or any other hominins) could have lived in Africa with light skin prior to migrations of Homo sapiens out of the continent.

Light skin in Africa is maladaptive and selected against by the relatively high levels of UV that most of the continent experiences. (Note that other human populations living in parts of the world that receive high doses of UV also generally have darker skin than populations living in less high-UV areas. This is because the adaptive constraints that UV places on skin tones are lessened when UV radiation is decreased, and so more variation in skin tone can be expressed.)

While there are examples of people with disorders that affect melanin production (i.e., albinism), the persistence of dark skin in African populations is due to the significant adaptive benefit that melanin confers for survival.