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The Sunday Times - Britain
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-896567,00.html
November 16, 2003
The future looks black for redheads
Jonathan Leake, Science Editor
AFTER centuries of jokes and cruel remarks, redheads may have the last
laugh. Natural selection will turn those with ginger hair into an
exotic and desirable rarity in the next 100 years.
Scientists are warning that racial mingling will reduce the number of
people with red hair, consigning the likes of Nicole Kidman, Chris
Evans and Charlie Dimmock to history. Blondes are also likely to
disappear although they will linger for slightly longer because there
are more of them, according to researchers.
The reason, they say, is that people of different races are mixing and
inter-marrying at a rate never seen before because of globalisation
and migration. Natural blondes and redheads will be prized as never
before.
Such striking hair colours are already becoming exceptional when seen
as part of the global population, said Dr Desmond Tobin, who
researches hair cell biology at Bradford University.
As the amount of migration, inter-marriage and mixing increases we
will see them all but disappear, he explained.
He was speaking at a conference organised by the Oxford Hair
Foundation, a research centre which also heard that although about a
third of British women sport blonde hair, most get their colour
straight from a bottle. Only about 3% are naturally blonde, said
Tobin.
The proportion of redheads is even smaller at about 1%-2% except in
Ireland and Scotland where it is estimated at up to 8%.
The proportions of both hair colours are already thought to have
declined, particularly over the past 50 years.
However, Nicky Clarke, a hair stylist whose clients include red-headed
Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, and blonde Denise van Outen, said
natural blondes and redheads inspired thousands of his customers to
seek similar colours for their own hair. It would be sad to lose that
diversity, he said.
Scientists see such changes as evolution at work but others see the
loss of redheads and blondes as a step backwards.
Quite why humans evolved red or blonde hair is considered one of the
mysteries of human evolution. Although humans probably evolved in
Africa 1m-2m years ago, red and blonde hair appeared only once humans
had settled in Europe possibly as recently as 20,000 years ago.
The genetics of red and blonde hair are also complex. For example, one
of the main genes for hair colour has 40 variants but only about six
cause red hair.
People must inherit two of these six genes one from each parent to
have red hair.The chances of this are always small which is why there
are so few redheads. The best chance occurs in stable rural
communities with a common ancestry where people carrying the genes are
likely to meet and have children.
This is probably how redheads took hold in Scotland and blondes became
common in Scandinavia.
However, such communities are now rare and face influxes of newcomers
reducing the chance that any two parents will each have the genes
needed to produce red or blonde hair in their children. In cities the
chances are far smaller.
Jonathan Rees, the professor of dermatology at Edinburgh University
who discovered the gene for red hair, said: Blondeness appears to
follow similar patterns of inheritance.
In the past, redheads and blondes in concentrated communities have
thrived. Some researchers suggest that many ancient societies,
including the Romans, prized redheads and blondes as mates meaning
that they could choose the fittest partners.
However, while blondeness is still prized in western Europe and
America, the global trend appears to be moving in a different
direction.
Earlier this month Newsweek magazine featured the Canadian-born model
Saira Mohan on its cover, declaring her coffee-coloured skin and dark
hair to be the new global face of beauty. Mohan, the magazine
reported, owed her fusion of western and eastern beauty to an ancestry
that could be traced back to India, Ireland and France.
Tobin said: The genes for red and blonde hair could spread in sparsely
populated areas like ancient Scandinavia or Britain but now they are
simply being swamped.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-896567,00.html
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