Where did red hair originate from?Recently an Anthropologist has suggested?

Question

that according to the results of his research Neanderthal man might have had red hair! Could that be so, do you think? Could this suggest that red hair may have originated from this source?

Answer 1

There is a mountain of evidence to suggest that essentially no interbreeding happened between Neanderthals and H. sapiens.

Answer 2

the north!! very common!! Scotland has the ihighest population in the world!! definitly neanderthal!! Also in some eastern countries red hair has found to be common!!

Answer 3

The pigment that causes red hair can actually be found in all populations (although not in all people).  However, it cannot be expressed in hair that has a lot of melanin (brown/black hair).  It's covered up by the darker color.  It'd be sort of like if you used a red dye and a black dye on your hair at the same time - you wouldn't see the red at all.

Therefore, we only "see" red hair in populations with light hair color.

As far as Neandertals - well, it's an interesting hypothesis, but it's unsubstantiated and untestable at this time.

Answer 4

Who knows?! Most of us of European origin have some red in our hair. We're all such a mixture of races anyway (and it's hard enough tracing your own family tree), so who knows?

Answer 5

They've found a variant of the MCR1 gene in the Neanderthal genome that would have caused gingerness, but it's not the one that modern humans carry.

But a lot of anthropologists do think that Europeans could have picked up some hair and eye colour genes by a very limited amount of interbreeding with Neanderthals. As yet we've not found conclusive proof though. Also, the gene for Rhesus negative blood types possibly has a Neanderthal origin.

I'd just like to correct Stormsinger1 a tiny bit. You will see red hair in dark populations, just not often as it is a recessive gene and you need two copies, one from each parent. I've seen a black kid in London with blue eyes and ginger hair. The same goes for blond hair.

Answer 6

It was believed that the first writing originated with the ginger haired Neanderthals. It started in idle moments when they used sticks of charcoal to play dot to dot on each others freckles. Not many people know that????

Answer 7

However yellow and brown hair still make orange!

or any combination vise versa.

Answer 8

It's an interesting question, not least because it has died out once and will die out again shortly.  Roman historians certainly report the Celts in Prehistoric times having red hair.  Similarly the Bayuwari, who lived in Southern Germany, had it.  Then you got the guys in Scotland, who might be celts but might be something else.  MY sister has it, but neither of the kids, and it needs to be in both parents to be passed on. As for the Neanderthal, they seem to be changing views on these guys now, such that it appears they lived alongside homo sapiens for a long time.  I think a lot of it is unproved.

Answer 9

There has been no categorical statement to this effect -- just a suggestion that long ago Neanderthal man may have been red headed.  http://www.dhamurian.org.au/anthropology...

It is all very tentative and reaching so far back into human history that everything has to remain in the realms of speculation.

Answer 10

It is certainly possible that we obtained some genes from the Neanderthals.  Cold or northern adapted  features seem most likely like light skin, maybe more hair including facial, and lighter colored hair.  I believe the normal dark hair is made of two kinds of melanin.  One has a reddish tinge.  It doesn't seem that it would be very difficult to maintain a relatively small amount of that pigment.  In other words, it wouldn't be very difficult or unlikely to evolve separately.