"The First Swedes", a new documentary by the SVT national broadcaster, has been met with critical reaction and backlash ahead of its airing.
According to SVT, the first modern people who entered today's Sweden were dark-skinned hunter-gatherers who followed the migrating reindeer.
Mattias Jakobsson, a professor of genetics at Uppsala University and a researcher of the Atlas project, which aims to map the genome of Sweden's early population, stressed that unlike present-day Swedes, their ancestors had dark skin, as a legacy of their African origin.
"They look was quite similar to the people that at that time lived in today's Luxembourg, Spain and Germany. Their look would be quite unusual today, blue eyes with dark skin."
Shortly after their arrival, they blended with people from today's Russia, who brought along a more modern technique for manufacturing tools and arrowheads, SVT reported.
The new population group lived off seal hunting and fishing and had a lighter skin colour, which made it easier to absorb vitamin D in northern latitudes. Over the subsequent centuries, the two groups effectively melted together, producing some of Europe's most diverse populations at that time.
READ MORE: Actor's Comparison of His Native Sweden to Africa Goes Viral (VIDEO)
Several thousand years later, about 6,000 years ago, the first farmers arrived in today's Sweden from present-day Turkey and Syria, bringing with them the agricultural knowledge, pushing the original population farther north, SVT reported.
However, the report triggered strong reaction on social media, with many Swedes accusing SVT of deliberate propaganda aimed at whitewashing the present-day mass immigration with tales of diversity.
"The indoctrination continues. Of course, these were the Africans coming," one user wrote.
Ikväll gjordes reklam på SVT för faktaserien "De första svenskarna" som har premiär om några dagar. De som kom efter istiden för ca 10 000 år sedan alltså. Några av dem var tydligen mörka med blå ögon. Indoktrineringen fortsätter. Såklart det var afrikaner som kom! @svt pic.twitter.com/j9EoNsvgmJ
— Ointressanta Statusuppdateringar (röstar AfS) (@OintressantaS) 14 февраля 2019 г.
"The BBC has been doing this for a long time, for homogeneous Sweden to be portrayed as populated by black people is too outlandish to be true," journalist Ingrid Carlsson tweeted.
READ MORE: Swedish TV Warns 'Dark-Skinned' People, Muslims of Vitamin D Deficiency
"A leftie once informed me that the evil Swedes came to Sweden and drove the indigenous Sami people away from southern Sweden. Obviously, she did not know when or where the Swedes came from," another user wrote sarcastically.
"Wow, SVT open with their racism against Swedes. Now, imagine a film about Africa with white people," another user chimed in.
Meanwhile, the dark-skinned man from the SVT announcement was quickly turned into a meme.
— Carl Af Finspång 🌮 (@CarlAfFinspang) 17 февраля 2019 г.
Another user posted a photoshopped image of Dagens Nyheter, one of Sweden's largest dailies, with the mock headline "Vikings were African gays" and caption "Expert: Swedes are dumb and don't exist".
— Hästkraft69 (@hastkraft69) 18 февраля 2019 г.
Last year, the BBC made waves with its groundbreaking analysis of Cheddar man, Britain's oldest complete skeleton from 10,000 years ago, by claiming that the man had dark skin.
Some users were quick to recall this in connection with the Swedish research.
Remember #Cheddarman?
— Borna *Smirk* Volkov (@Bokiteshan3) 15 февраля 2019 г.
Well it turns out that…
He's Swedish now.
😂 pic.twitter.com/smDLJGKnMm
