According to modern studies on the skulls, the Finns are a pretty good match for the Cro Magnon European skulls, just being slighlty less robust now. It’s quite possible they commonly had ginger hair, not dark, as several European variants of ginger hair seem to date to thirty thousand years old and older. Cro Magnons were tall, strong and very muscular, much more so than the modern population of Europe who have ‘gracile’ thinner bones.
Cro Magnon type skulls, called Mechtoid skulls are also found over North Africa. Genetic evidence also supports a Eurasian back migration into North Africa ~30,000 BP. The North African ‘Cro Magnids’ differed slightly from their European cousins, with a lower sloping forehead and heavier brows, and slightly wider noses. They seem to share some affinites with the Nubian population also, but less than with the European Cro Magnons. To date, no African population has been found that has Mechtoid characteristics, suggesting they were absorbed in sub Saharan Africa into the later Bantu expansion, and in the North by the later Capsian culture.
Oranian ‘mechtoid’ skull, sans incisors. Kiffian mechtoid skull from central Niger
Cro Magnon skull (cast) from Les Eyzies de Tayac, and Mladec man.
The Mechtoids seem to me to hint at some Neanderthal ancestry, with their lower foreheads and occipital buns (you did get Neanderthals in North Africa too).
This abstract agrees with my observation with a movement North along the Nile after the Cro Magnon colonisation of North Africa, as the Mechtoids show some Nubian affinites as you move East, but not at the more western Moroccan site of Taforalt. This Negroid affiinity seem to have been more or less wiped out along the Mediterranean coast by the expansion of the Neolithic farmers from West Asia, who heralded the beginning of the Capsian culture.
The Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene Populations of Northern Africa.
COLIN P. GROVES AND ALAN THORNE 1999
We studied three northern African samples of human cranial remains from the Pleistocene/Holocene boundary: Afalou-bou-Rhummel, Taforalt, and Sudanese Nubia (Jebel Sahaba and Tushka), and compared them to late Pleistocene Europeans and Africans. Despite their relatively late dates, all three of our own samples exhibit the robusticity typical of late Pleistocene Homo sapiens. As far as population affinities are concerned, Taforalt is Caucasoid and closely resembles late Pleistocene Europeans, Sudanese Nubia is Negroid, and Afalou exhibits an intermediate status. Evidently the Caucasoid/Negroid transition has fluctuated north and south over time, perhaps following the changes in the distribution of climatic zones.
A mainly caucasoid piopulation in North africa is also supported by this ancient DNA study.
Mitochondrial diversity in the Taforalt population (circa 12,000 BP, Morocco): a genetic approach to the study of the peopling of North Africa.)
The population exhumed from the archaeological site of Taforalt in Morocco (12,000 years BP) is a valuable source of information toward a better knowledge of the settlement of Northern Africa region and provides a revolutionary way to specify the origin of Ibero-Maurusian populations. Ancient DNA was extracted from 31 bone remains from Taforalt.The HVS1 fragment of the mitochondrial DNA control region was PCR-amplified and directly sequenced. Mitochondrial diversity in Taforalt shows the absence of sub-Saharan haplogroups suggesting that Ibero-Maurusian individuals had not originated in sub-Saharan region. Our results reveal a probable local evolution of Taforalt population and a genetic continuity in North Africa.