Why were Caucasians the only race of people to develop vastly different shades of color in their hair?

Question

Is it an evolutionary thing? Why would Caucasians develop red, blonde, and brown shades when the rest of the world was--for all intensive purposes-- dominated by shades of black?

Answer 1

Well I'm sure that people in the middle east,central, and south asia have different colored hair as you go through the equator, its just that they haven't dispersed throughtout the world.  ex) blondes in afghanistan, bruette syrians.

Answer 2

v interestin. i tot of this before too. same thing for eye color, all the rest of us r lik black or v dark kinda brown. y r only the caucasians havin all the light pigments in them. even for the chinese, they hav fairness in skin only.

Answer 3

I think it would have to do with intermarriage within various local tribes. I personally think it isn't all that farfetched to think that Neanderthals could have contributed these characteristics.

Answer 4

Hate to say this about my own ancestors. But they were geographically isolated, so inbreeding occurred more. Look at the evolution of domestic animals. As they were more removed from the wild animals there colors became more pronounced and varied.

Answer 5

Could this be that some Caucasians are only permitted to see only the differentiation of color in the eyes of only the Caucasians?

Answer 6

I could think of a couple of possibilities, but they are just abstract theories.

1. The caucasian race all started as pale blonds and the different shades of red and brown are various degrees of dilutions of DNA from the darker races that got mixed in later.

2. The religious fundamentalists and the evolutionists are BOTH wrong, and humanoid life here on earth was transplanted from elsewhere in the universe.  

If this were ever found to be the case, then each hair and skin color might represent a different race from a different sector of space.

As bizarre and "Twilight Zone" as that sounds, there ARE certain snippets of evidence that, if looked at objectively, make it seem at least somewhat more logical.

Have you ever REALLY looked at the different genetic prototypes to be found WITHIN the caucasian race?  Though they are pretty mixed up by now, some distinctive differences are still evident.  I am talking about distinctions like the height of the Nordic blond types, the freckled complexions of the Celtic redheads, etc.  And speaking of Celtic redheads, notice that a huge percentage of them have a distinctive facial structure that you don't see in other genetic prototypes, too.    

And then there's the matter of ethno/specific diseases like sickle-cell anemia and Tay-Sachs.

Not meant to be a definitive answer, just some interesting food for thought.

Answer 7

Possibly because they are the farthest along in evolutionary ladder.   In spite of what Sarah200 says, it is true that in general all other races have black or nearly black hair.  The few isolated exceptions do not change this basic fact.   No other race comes remotely close to the degree of different shades of hair color, or eye color that whites have.

Answer 8

Less pigment in blonde hair

Answer 9

I don't know but maybe it has something to do with the other eye and hair shades resulting from less melanin, like light skin color?

Monarch Butterfly, if we came from another world you think we'd have 98% of our DNA in common with chimps? Any animal that came from another planet would be obvious for what it was - a complete outsider, the result of a totally different evolution history. It would use different amino acids, it probably wouldn't use DNA, its bones would probably be made out of something other than calcium, it might not use iron hemoglobin, all its organ structures would be different etc. It probably couldn't even survive in our ecosystem: it wouldn't be able to get nourishment from our plants and animals. There's no way an alien organism could have slipped into Earth's food chain without it being blindingly obvious to us by now, especially if that organism was us.

Answer 10

Not being a geneticist, I can't give a definitive answer, but I can venture a guess. I believe there are a few factors at work.

1) Europe is traversed by both rivers and mountains, and thus, though it's the smallest continent, it packs in an awful lot of diversity (culturally and linguistically, too) into a small package. Different looking groups could develop in relative isolation.

2) This allowed for recessive traits to be expressed - it's my understanding that certainly dark eyes and also probably darker hair and skin are the dominant genes and thus the winning phenotype in most cases.

3) Fairer skin allows for different expression of various pigments, like red hair. (Maybe. I don't know.)

Answer 11

My personal hypothesis (backed by some genetic researchers) is that due to a longer association with the Neanderthal, Europeans picked up more of their genes.

Some anthropology students will immediately quote a partial sequencing of Neanderthal mtDNA some years back to proclaim the Neanderthal contributed nothing to the H. sapien gene pool, but recent discoveries have identified at least one gene (associated with brain development) that was "introgressed" into the sapien genome in the middle east about 37,000 yrs ago.

70% of the World's population now have this gene & it is very rare in Sub Saharan Africa.  The complete sequencing of the Neannderthal Genome (target date 2 yrs for the 1st draft) will give us better clues as to how many genes the Europeans inherited from Neannderthal, if any.  I suspect we will find the Neanderthal was blonde or red headed with blue eyes.

Bruce T. Lahn of U of Chicago led the team that found the gene in question & John Hawks , U of Wisconsin, has written extensively on this gene that is 1.1 million yrs old but suddenly appeared in a species that is only 200K yrs old.

The gene in question is microcephalin or MCPH1 as it is refered to in the world of genetics.

Update:

The 2nd link is to a secure server & might not let you in, so here is another... sorry if you weren't able to access it. Here is another.

Update:

Because Neanderthal lived in the colder northern climate for at least 300K yrs before the arrival of Sapiens, it is likely they developed genes to deal with that climate long before contact with Sapiens.  Asians living in cold climates for longer than Europeans did not develop the lighter hair,eyes or extremely light skin of northern Europeans... therefore I think the Neanderthal had very light skin, eyes & hair.  Chuckle, they may have had red hair as one does not find the "ginger gene" in Sub Saharan Africa.

edit:

Does anyone ever read links to objective & verifiable scientific data... or do they come into Yahoo with opinions cast in concrete, regardless of what scientific data offers as evidence?

Answer 12

Black stands out quite clear in THE ICE WORLD.  So those icemen who had the genes for black hair and skin, all got eaten up by wolf, bears and other prehistoric animals.  Those who had the genes for creating multi-color hair and pale or pink color body thrived.  You guys are the descendants of these people.  That’s how all you icemen are so vibrantly colored from head to toe!

Answer 13

good question. did you know that redheads are the smallest minority on the planet.

Answer 14

Hair color and skin color are both strongly linked (they're both on the same 4-6 genes).  

Interestingly, the genes for red hair (which is pigmented by keratin rather than melanin) are found in all populations.  They simply can't be expressed in dark-haired people because the dark hair physically masks the red.

Skin color has "natural selection" pressures, but hair color generally does not.

We started out in Africa, which means that we started with dark-colored skin to protect ourselves from the sun.  Our hair was also dark by corrolation.

As some groups moved northward, there was selective pressure on skin color to become lighter, so that Vitamin D could be absorbed easily from the weak sunlight.  Generally, hair color became lighter as well.

However, because hair color is NOT under heavy selection, in some groups hair and skin color became un-linked.  Therefore, we have some populations of people that tend to have pale skin and dark hair.  All those Europeans with different hair colors interbred repeatedly over time, and European hair color became much more varied and unpredictable.

And no matter WHAT a previous poster said, Europeans are NOT "more evolved" than Africans.  The whole notion is ridiculous and shows a distinct lack of basic biological knowledge.  (There's no such thing as "more evolved.")

Answer 15

greatest genetic diversity