How did readheads came to be?

Question

As we see everyday evolution has made Man look different from each other in many ways. My question is what may be the possible causes for the existence of redheads, with all the existing difference between them (freckles/no freckles, different ranges of red hair, etc.)?

I'm one of them BTW

Answer 1

Loss of melanin, though not as much as blondes.

Necessary as your ancestors moved from sunny Africa to less sunny Northern climes. It's to do with vitamin D production in the skin.

Answer 2

it's a Celtic thing the Ancient Gauls were redheads

Answer 3

It's a Celtic thang.

Answer 4

Red hair is (usually) a result of a partial loss of function on the MC1R gene. There's at least five seperate mutations that cause red hair in Europeans. One mutation has an estimated date of 80,000 years, one at about 30,000 years old (yes, I know this is a Neanderthal time frame).

All the red hair mutations also lighten skin colour substantially, so their main funtion was probably to allow vitamin D synthesis in the skin. This worked fine while the base skin colour was an Asian tan, but once the European pale skin mutation happened about 8,000 years ago you are looking at skin that can't tan and a world of sunburn. So red hair is probably less common than it was.

http://mathildasanthropologyblog.wordpre...