Despite popular belief, the people of the ancient near east and mediterranean were pretty dark. Skin color is determined by two factors, pigment and tanning. The more pigment, the darker your skin, and the better you flesh deals with intense sunshine. Thus, in places like Africa and the Mediterranean, humans adapted to have darker skin.  And if you spent a lot of time outdoors, like they did in the ancient world, you got pretty tanned.

Also, as homo sapiens migrated north to places that didn’t have year-round sunshine, we started to lose our pigmentation. Sure, if you spent enough time in the sun, you still get tanned and “dark”, but your base skin state would be paler.

⬅  So this is technically inaccurate, but it sure does look good (Pitt looks like a buff northerner, not a Greek demigod). As for the british accents, that’s because, as Americans, anything that sounds british seems old to us. Hollywood figured that out a long time ago. A greek accent would just feel foreign and strange to us, however appropriate.

 

In Anthropology 101 you learn there is no such thing as race. It doesn’t exist. It’s a common term to try to describe adaptations pockets of civilizations have developed for their unique environments. In fact, the term Caucasian comes from a region in northern Iran/southern Russia that was under the power of the Persian Empire in ancient times.  Hardly white, as common vernacular would place the world.

And yes, contrary to popular debate, Jesus was brown. And Jewish.