Red-Haired Neanderthals

[dragon wench]

Right on cue along with the "Erasing Ethnicity" thread...

Red-haired Neanderthals? Possibly, scientists say - CNN.com

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The image of Neanderthals may need a revision: scientists say at least some of these extinct hominids could have had fair skin and red hair.

Researchers studying the DNA of Neanderthals found a mutation in two individuals that can affect skin and hair pigmentation, they reported in Thursday's online issue of the journal Science.

The mutation reduces the function of a gene known as MC1R.

In modern humans, when a slightly different mutation reduces the function of that gene the result is red hair and fair skin, according to the team led by Holger Roempler of Harvard University and the University of Leipzig, Germany; Carles Lalueza-Fox of the University of Barcelona, Spain and Michael Hofreiter of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig.

Neanderthals lived in Europe and Asia about 400,000 years ago. They were replaced by early modern humans. Researchers have long debated whether the two groups mixed together, though most doubt it. The last evidence for Neanderthals dates from at least 24,000 years ago.

Scientists are working to analyze Neanderthal DNA -- the blueprint of life -- taken from ancient remains. They hope it will help them better understand these ancient people. As part of this process, last year researchers discovered that Neanderthals also had the gene known to influence speech in modern humans.

The two fossils studied in the hair-color research were found in Italy and Spain.

I love the mirror image of the mullet...

[Ferrick]

Very interesting finds indeed. I just hope they don't rush their findings to prove a theory. As for the mullet there is now proof why it will never die. It is the genetic make-up of a portion of modern humans. They can't help themselves...

[VonDondu]

I don't know much about genetics, but in my experience, the gene for red hair is very robust. My paternal grandmother had red hair, and even though my father doesn't have red hair (he had blond hair when he was kid but it changed to dark brown--almost brunette--when he got older, like his father), you can see the effect of the red gene in my hair: the dark brown hair on my head has a light red sheen, and there are individual red hairs scattered on my arms and legs which are almost invisible among the darker hairs. My brother has hair like my father and my paternal grandfather (blond when he was a kid and then dark brown later in life). His wife is Chinese, and her hair is a little bit lighter and finer than usual (it's not as thick and dark as the rest of her family's, so maybe she has a recessive gene). Their daughter (my niece) has hair that is best described as "reddish brown". It's definitely in the medium brown category, but there's even more red in it than there is in mine. My nephew has light brown hair, but it's not reddish (maybe it will get darker when he's older). It just goes to show that genes for hair color don't follow the stereotypical patterns most people take for granted. Blond/brunette/red is a pretty artificial distinction.

I'm not surprised that people lack the imagination to envision prehistoric people with some other hair color besides black. I'd be a lot more surprised if prehistoric people did NOT have a big variety of hair colors. Heck, they probably even paid attention to cosmetics and fashion just like we do (within their own means, of course).

My brother and his family live in a community that has a lot of "diversity", and mixed-race couples are not unusual. In my own community, I guess there's a lot of what you might call "social segregation"--not literal segregation, but not much socializing between the various races. I don't know which type of community is the "norm" in human history, but human genes certainly don't care about such boundaries, and they're likely to pop up in all sorts of combinations. There's just no such thing as racial/genetic purity, no matter what sort of artificial distinctions people try to impose on themselves.