Red hair is the rarest natural hair color in humans. The non-tanning skin associated with red hair may have been advantageous in far-northern climates where sunlight is scarce. Studies by Bodmer and Cavalli-Sforza (1976) hypothesized that lighter skin pigmentation prevents rickets in colder climates by encouraging higher levels of vitamin D production and also allows the individual to retain heat better than someone with darker skin. In 2000, Harding et al. concluded that red hair is not the result of positive selection but of a lack of negative selection. In Africa, for example, red hair is selected against because high levels of sun harm pale skin. However, in Northern Europe this does not happen, so redheads can become more common through genetic drift.
Estimates on the original occurrence of the currently active gene for red hair vary from 20,000 to 100,000 years ago.
The melanocortin 1 receptor (MC1R) regulates pigmentation in humans and other vertebrates. Variants of MC1R with reduced function are associated with pale skin color and red hair in humans of primarily European origin. We amplified and sequenced a fragment of the MC1R gene (mc1r) from two Neanderthal remains. Both specimens have a mutation that was not found in approximately 3700 modern humans analyzed. Functional analyses show that this variant reduces MC1R activity to a level that alters hair and/or skin pigmentation in humans. The impaired activity of this variant suggests that Neanderthals varied in pigmentation levels, potentially on the scale observed in modern humans. Our data suggest that inactive MC1R variants evolved independently in both modern humans and Neanderthals.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17962522/
A DNA study has concluded that some Neanderthals also had red hair, although the mutation responsible for this differs from that which causes red hair in modern humans.
As the population in northern Turkey expanded, they and other newcomers from the Sahara migrated to the east coast of the Black Sea and populated the area today called Georgia. Almost the entire north coast of the Black Sea was under control of the blond tribe. Only the west coast, on both sides of the mouth of the Danube, was under the control of the redheaded Celts, but they were landlubbers, having never lived in contact with the sea. They had been the southern neighbs of the blond tribe in the Sahara and had been ferried by the Shardana to the mouth of the Danube river, the valley of which they occupied in time, and then took possession of the Alps. The blond-headed sailors controlled the entire Black sea, much to the annoyance of the later Hittites.
http://www.faculty.ucr.edu/~legneref/bronze/seapeopl.htm#rhnegativepopulation
Two studies have demonstrated that people with red hair have different sensitivity to pain to people with other hair colors. One study found that people with red hair are more sensitive to thermal pain (associated with naturally occurring low vitamin K levels), while another study concluded that redheads are less sensitive to pain from multiple modalities, including noxious stimuli such as electrically induced pain.
The unexpected relationship of hair color to pain tolerance appears to exist because redheads have a mutation in a hormone receptor that can apparently respond to at least two types of hormones: the pigmentation-driving melanocyte-stimulating hormone (MSH), and the pain-relieving endorphins. (Both derive from the same precursor molecule, POMC, and are structurally similar.) Specifically, redheads have a mutated melanocortin-1 receptor (MC1R) gene that produces an altered receptor for MSH. Melanocytes, the cells that produce pigment in skin and hair, use the MC1R to recognize and respond to MSH from the anterior pituitary gland. Melanocyte-stimulating hormone normally stimulates melanocytes to make black eumelanin, but if the melanocytes have a mutated receptor, they will make reddish pheomelanin instead. MC1R also occurs in the brain, where it is one of a large set of POMC-related receptors that are apparently involved not only in responding to MSH, but also in responses to endorphins and possibly other POMC-derived hormones. Though the details are not clearly understood, it appears that there is some crosstalk between the POMC hormones; this may explain the link between red hair and pain tolerance.
There is little or no evidence to support the belief that people with red hair have a higher chance than people with other hair colors to hemorrhage or suffer other bleeding complications. One study, however, reports a link between red hair and a higher rate of bruising.
There is an anecdotal impression that redheads experience more perioperative bleeding complications than do people with other hair colors. We, therefore, tested the hypothesis that perceived problems with hemostasis could be detected with commonly used coagulation tests. We studied healthy female Caucasian volunteers, 18 to 40 yr of age, comparable in terms of height, weight, and age, with natural bright red (n = 25) or black or dark brown (n = 26) hair. Volunteers were questioned about their bleeding history and the following tests were performed: complete blood count, prothrombin time/international normalized ratio, activated partial thromboplastin time, platelet function analysis, and platelet aggregation using standard turbidimetric methodology. Agonists for aggregation were adenosine diphosphate, arachidonic acid, collagen, epinephrine, and two concentrations of ristocetin. The red-haired volunteers reported significantly more bruising, but there were no significant differences between the red-haired and dark-haired groups in hemoglobin concentration, platelet numbers, prothrombin time/international normalized ratio, or activated partial thromboplastin time. Furthermore, no significant differences in platelet function, as measured by platelet function analysis or platelet aggregometry, were observed. We conclude that if redheads have hemostasis abnormalities, they are subtle.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16368849/
Medieval beliefs
Red hair was thought to be a mark of a beastly sexual desire and moral degeneration. A savage red-haired man is portrayed in the fable by Grimm brothers (Der Eisenhans) as the spirit of the forest of iron. Theophilus Presbyter describes how the blood of a red-haired young man is necessary to create gold from copper, in a mixture with the ashes of a basilisk.
Montague Summers, in his translation of the Malleus Maleficarum, notes that red hair and green eyes were thought to be the sign of a witch, a werewolf or a vampire during the Middle Ages;
Those whose hair is red, of a certain peculiar shade, are unmistakably vampires. It is significant that in ancient Egypt, as Manetho tells us, human sacrifices were offered at the grave of Osiris, and the victims were red-haired men who were burned, their ashes being scattered far and wide by winnowing-fans. It is held by some authorities that this was done to fertilize the fields and produce a bounteous harvest, red-hair symbolizing the golden wealth of the corn. But these men were called Typhonians, and were representatives not of Osiris but of his evil rival Typhon, whose hair was red.
During the Spanish Inquisition, people of red hair were identified as Jewish and isolated for persecution. In Medieval Italy and Spain, red hair was associated with the heretical nature of Jews and their rejection of Jesus, and thus Judas Iscariot was commonly depicted as red-haired in Italian and Spanish art. Writers from Shakespeare to Dickens would identify Jewish characters by giving them red hair, such as the villainous Jewish characters Shylock and Fagin. The antisemitic association persisted into modern times in Soviet Russia. The medieval prejudice against red-hair may have derived from the Ancient biblical tradition, in relation to biblical figures such as Esau and King David. The Ancient historian Josephus would mistranslate the Hebrew Torah to describe the more positive figure of King David as ‘golden haired’, in contrast to the negative figure of Esau, even though the original Hebrew Torah implies that both King David and Esau had ‘fiery red hair’.
Present tribes:
Red hair is most commonly found at the northern and western fringes of Europe; it is centered around populations in the British Isles and is particularly associated with the Celtic nations.
Ireland has the highest number of red-haired people per capita in the world with the percentage of those with red hair at around 10%.
Great Britain also has a high percentage of people with red hair. In Scotland around 6% of the population has red hair; with the highest concentration of red head carriers in the world found in Edinburgh, making it the red head capital of the world. In 1907, the largest ever study of hair colour in Scotland, which analysed over 500,000 people, found the percentage of Scots with red hair to be 5.3%. A 1956 study of hair colour among British Army recruits also found high levels of red hair in Wales and in the Scottish border counties of England.
In Italy, red hair is found at a frequency of 0.57% of the total population, without variation in frequency across the different regions of the country.In Sardinia, red hair is found at a frequency of 0.24% of the population.Victorian era ethnographers considered the Udmurt people of the Volga Region in Russia to be “the most red-headed men in the world”. The Volga region still has one of the highest percentages of redheaded people.
Red hair is also found amongst the Ashkenazi Jewish populations. In 1903, 5.6% of Polish Jews had red hair. Other studies have found that 3.69% of Jewish women overall were found to have red hair, but around 10.9% of all Jewish men have red beards. In European culture, before the 20th century, red hair was often seen as a stereotypically Jewish trait: during the Spanish Inquisition, all those with red hair were identified as Jewish. In Italy, red hair was associated with Italian Jews, and Judas was traditionally depicted as red-haired in Italian and Spanish art. The stereotype that red hair is Jewish remains in parts of Eastern Europe and Russia.
The Berber populations of Morocco and northern Algeria have occasional redheads. Red hair frequency is especially significant among the Riffians from Morocco and Kabyles from Algeria, respectively.
Past tribes:
Several accounts by Greek writers mention redheaded people. A fragment by the poet Xenophanes describes the Thracians as blue-eyed and red-haired. The ancient peoples Budini and Sarmatians are also reported by Greek author to be blue-eyed and red-haired, and the latter even owe their names to it.
The Budini (Ancient Greek: Βουδίνοι; Boudínoi) was a group of people (a tribe) described by Herodotus and several later classical authors. Described as nomads living near settled Gelonians, Herodotus located them east of the Tanais river (which is usually assumed to correspond with modern Don River) beyond the Sarmatians.
The Budini are a great and populous nation; the eyes of them all are very bright, and they are ruddy. They have a city built of wood, called Gelonus. The wall of it is three and three quarters miles in length on each side of the city; this wall is high and all of wood; and their houses are wooden, and their temples; for there are temples of Greek gods among them, furnished in Greek style with images and altars and shrines of wood; and they honor Dionysus every two years with festivals and revelry. For the Geloni are by their origin Greeks, who left their trading ports to settle among the Budini; and they speak a language half Greek and half Scythian. But the Budini do not speak the same language as the Geloni, nor is their manner of life the same. The Budini are indigenous; they are nomads, and the only people in these parts that eat fir-cones; the Geloni are farmers, eating grain and cultivating gardens; they are altogether unlike the Budini in form and in coloring. Yet the Greeks call the Budini too Geloni; but this is wrong. Their whole country is thickly wooded with every kind of tree; in the depth of the forest there is a great, wide lake and a marsh surrounded by reeds; otter is trapped in it, and beaver, besides certain square-faced creatures whose skins are used to trim mantles, and their testicles are used by the people to heal sicknesses of the womb.
Herodotus, with an English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920.
The pharaoh’s mummy reveals an aquiline nose and strong jaw. It stands at about 1.7 metres (5 ft 7 in). Gaston Maspero, who first unwrapped the mummy of Ramesses II, writes, “on the temples there are a few sparse hairs, but at the poll the hair is quite thick, forming smooth, straight locks about five centimeters in length. White at the time of death, and possibly auburn during life, they have been dyed a light red by the spices (henna) used in embalming…the moustache and beard are thin…The hairs are white, like those of the head and eyebrows…the skin is of earthy brown, splotched with black… the face of the mummy gives a fair idea of the face of the living king.”
In 1975, Maurice Bucaille, a French doctor, examined the mummy at the Cairo Museum and found it in poor condition. French President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing succeeded in convincing Egyptian authorities to send the mummy to France for treatment. In September 1976, it was greeted at Paris–Le Bourget Airport with full military honours befitting a king, then taken to a laboratory at the Musée de l’Homme.
The mummy of Ramesses the Great
The mummy was forensically tested by Professor Pierre-Fernand Ceccaldi, the chief forensic scientist at the Criminal Identification Laboratory of Paris. Professor Ceccaldi determined that: “Hair, astonishingly preserved, showed some complementary data — especially about pigmentation: Ramesses II was a ginger haired ‘cymnotricheleucoderma’.” The description given here refers to a fair-skinned person with wavy ginger hair. Subsequent microscopic inspection of the roots of Ramesses II’s hair proved that the king’s hair originally was red, which suggests that he came from a family of redheads. This has more than just cosmetic significance: in ancient Egypt people with red hair were associated with the deity Set, the slayer of Osiris, and the name of Ramesses II’s father, Seti I, means “follower of Seth”.
In Asia, red hair has been found among the ancient Tocharians, who occupied the Tarim Basin in what is now the northwesternmost province of China. Tarim mummies have been found with red hair dating to the 2nd millennium BC.
Reddish-brown (auburn) hair is also found amongst some Polynesians, and is especially common in some tribes and family groups. In Polynesian culture reddish hair has traditionally been seen as a sign of descent from high-ranking ancestors and a mark of rulership.
Lucan in his Pharsalia (c. 61 AD) described Ligurian tribes as being long-haired, and their hair a shade of auburn (a reddish-brown):
First of the long-haired nations, on whose necks
Once flowed the auburn locks in pride supreme. “
The Gebelein predynastic mummies are six naturally mummified bodies, dating to approximately 3400 BC from the Late Predynastic period of Ancient Egypt. They were the first complete predynastic bodies to be discovered.
Since 1901, the first body excavated (EA 32751) has remained on display in the British Museum. This body was originally nicknamed Ginger due to his red hair; this nickname is no longer officially used as part of recent ethical policies for human remains.
To be continued…
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