Posted on 02/26/2006 11:56:29 AM PST by wagglebee
THE modern gentleman may prefer blondes. But new research has found that it was cavemen who were the first to be lured by flaxen locks.
According to the study, north European women evolved blonde hair and blue eyes at the end of the Ice Age to make them stand out from their rivals at a time of fierce competition for scarce males.
The study argues that blond hair originated in the region because of food shortages 10,000-11,000 years ago. Until then, humans had the dark brown hair and dark eyes that still dominate in the rest of the world. Almost the only sustenance in northern Europe came from roaming herds of mammoths, reindeer, bison and horses. Finding them required long, arduous hunting trips in which numerous males died, leading to a high ratio of surviving women to men.
Lighter hair colours, which started as rare mutations, became popular for breeding and numbers increased dramatically, according to the research, published under the aegis of the University of St Andrews.
“Human hair and eye colour are unusually diverse in northern and eastern Europe (and their) origin over a short span of evolutionary time indicates some kind of selection,” says the study by Peter Frost, a Canadian anthropologist. Frost adds that the high death rate among male hunters “increased the pressures of sexual selection on early European women, one possible outcome being an unusual complex of colour traits.”
Frost’s theory, to be published this week in Evolution and Human Behavior, the academic journal, was supported by Professor John Manning, a specialist in evolutionary psychology at the University of Central Lancashire. “Hair and eye colour tend to be uniform in many parts of the world, but in Europe there is a welter of variants,” he said. “The mate choice explanation now being put forward is, in my mind, close to being correct.”
Frost’s theory is also backed up by a separate scientific analysis of north European genes carried out at three Japanese universities, which has isolated the date of the genetic mutation that resulted in blond hair to about 11,000 years ago.
The hair colour gene MC1R has at least seven variants in Europe and the continent has an unusually wide range of hair and eye shades. In the rest of the world, dark hair and eyes are overwhelmingly dominant.
Just how such variety emerged over such a short period of time in one part of the world has long been a mystery. According to the new research, if the changes had occurred by the usual processes of evolution, they would have taken about 850,000 years. But modern humans, emigrating from Africa, reached Europe only 35,000-40,000 years ago.
Instead, Frost attributes the rapid evolution to how they gathered food. In Africa there was less dependence on animals and women were able to collect fruit for themselves. In Europe, by contrast, food gathering was almost exclusively a male hunter’s preserve. The retreating ice sheets left behind a landscape of fertile soil with plenty of grass and moss for herbivorous animals to eat, but few plants edible for humans. Women therefore took on jobs such as building shelters and making clothes while the men went on hunting trips, where the death rate was high.
The increase in competition for males led to rapid change as women struggled to evolve the most alluring qualities. Frost believes his theory is supported by studies which show blonde hair is an indicator for high oestrogen levels in women.
Jilly Cooper, 69, the author, described how in her blonde youth she had “certainly got more glances. I remember when I went to Majorca when I was 20, my bum was sore from getting pinched”.
However, Jodie Kidd, 27, the blonde model, disagrees with the theory: “I don’t think being blonde makes you more ripe for sexual activity. It’s much more to do with personality than what you look like. Beauty is much deeper than the colour of your hair.”
Film star blondes such as Marilyn Monroe, Brigitte Bardot, Sharon Stone and Scarlett Johansson are held up as ideals of feminine allure. However, the future of the blonde is uncertain.
A study by the World Health Organisation found that natural blonds are likely to be extinct within 200 years because there are too few people carrying the blond gene. According to the WHO study, the last natural blond is likely to be born in Finland during 2202.
Light skin is an adaptation to production of vitamin D in the skin in lower-light conditions.
In intense sunlight dark skin is necessary to reduce the amount of UV in the skin (cancer), but the farther north a group migrated the lighter the skin had to be to provide the same amount of vitamin D.
Then there were those in the Mediterranean, with intense sun in the summer and more favorable winters, so they developed tanning ability to take advantage of both conditions.
The exception is the Arctic north; no amount of sunlight will provide the vitamin D you need, and you couldn't do much sunbathing anyway (frostbite you know). Their skin color reverts to a more average color.
Isn't adaptation fun? Course, it takes thousands of years.
When you reduce melanin in the skin it is reduced in hair and eye color as well (if I remember my Human Races class from many years ago).
Sa'ami definitely changed their diet by adding reindeer to the normal table fare (although they each, supposedly, continue to carry around a fish for "emergency use" for dinner no matter where they might be).
The Inuit changed their stature ~ they really are short. Dwarfism is common with them. In fact, it's also common with the Sa'ami.
This archaeologist/anthropologist takes offense at your blanket condemnation.
Are you just anti-science or what?
Prisoners?
That's interesting, thanks!
One specifies melanin to the front, and that gives you hazel or green eyes. Another puts it on the back and that gives you gray eyes.
If you have no melanin on either side, you get blue eyes.
Although there's some logic to the brown, hazel and gray eyes having certain advantages under certain standard light conditions, there's really no logic to the blue eyes since the absence of melanin in the iris defeats one of the primary purposes of the iris, namely to protect the retina from too much light.
Light skinned, yes, but dark hair and eyes. I lived in Alaska for about six years and had many Aleut friends. I've also traveled in China, many with fair skin, but dark hair and eyes. Mexico has a surprising number of natural blondes.
I am a blue-eyed, blonde Dane.
I think if this wonderful planet survives long enough, all peoples will meld into the same color.
"So perhaps blonds were just slower and caught
more frequently by all males?"
In artic species, both the prey and the hunter developed the white fur but I would imagine it is the prey that does so first and the female faster than the male. To my thinking, this would just be natural. It also would be natural that in northern European humans the infants and children of both sexes be tow heads as a population genetic fall back default setting. This will allow for faster population response if the need arises down the road of humanity.
But it still looks like dark skin does have a huge correlation with brown eyes?
Any links for further study?
I know of folks with blue eyes who tan and those with green eyes who don't.
You seem very knowledgeable about many things.
I travel alot and something that has puzzled me is eggs. The nearer the equator, the darker the yolks. In Brazil, the yolks of eggs are deep orange. In Canada, a very pale yellow. The yokes in Texas are are a deeper yellow than those produced here in the Dakotas.
I know this is a rather silly and unrelated question, but I am curious.
Just a random thought from this very cluttered blonde mind.
Where do they get this stuff? You certainly can't make it up. And scientists wonder why they lack credibility. This is all speculation as far as I can see from the article.
I always knew there was a difference in the taste of brown eggs and white eggs. Science told us they were IDENTICAL, right down to the % of fat. Subsequently Science told us that brown eggs had more Omega 3 fatty acid than did white eggs. Even later Science told us that human beings can taste fat with fat sensing nerve endings in their tongues.
I am certain that eventually Science will admit that some of us can taste the difference between brown eggs and white eggs.
What's made up about that?
These aren't traditional scientists. You need to be able to discriminate the article as pop pyschology.
LOL........Science is amazing. It just keeps reinventing itself.
There is a taste difference between brown eggs and white.
I've had farm eggs (brown)here in NY that have had very deep gold yolks. Yet it seems that the white eggs always have lighter colored yolks.
Who lives in the East then?
More brunettes. But ya' gotta' drive further, eh?!
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