Origins of Red Heads

Red Hair…Origins
By Ginger Malone

Origins of Red Hair

In the UK red hair is generally associated with people of Celtic descent, i.e Scotland and Ireland. It is believed the people of Scotland came from 5 different ethnic groups who occupied or invaded northern Britain in the dark ages. In all of recorded history, red-haired people have never been mentioned as a group except by the Romans.

The 'Picts' where foes who the Romans fought and were described as having red-hair and 'large limbs' by Roman historian Tacitus. Modern historians with the help of anthropologists have placed red-hair as a unique characteristic belonging to the Picts, who were characteristic to what is now regarded as Scottish.

As far as the world-wide distribution of red-hair is concerned, it would be fair to say that the majority may well have descended from this North-Western European region, although as with all variations between people, mutations in genes can occur and be maintained in any population provided there is no detrimentus effect to the populations growth.

Scotland has the highest proportion of redheads of any country worldwide with around 13% of the population having naturally red hair. A further 40% of Scots carry the Mc1r variant gene which results in red hair. Ireland has the second highest population of naturally redheaded people in the world, amounting to about 10% of its inhabitants.

The results of a 2001 study, by University of Edinburgh and University of Oxford teams of geneticists led by Harding and Rees caused some to speculate that the gene responsible for red hair may have originated among the Neanderthals some 100,000 years ago.[1] Red-haired people would then be descendents of Neanderthal admixtures to Cro-Magnon, and would have spread from the area of Neanderthal-Cro-Magnon contact.

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