Posted on 02/26/2006 5:18:06 PM PST by mathprof
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.
What's GGG?
Surely light hair and eyes have more to do with making the most of available sunlight in a colder part of the world (e.g., for conversion to vitamin D) than with 'attracting men'. Saying that women evolved larger-than-neccessary breasts to attract male attention (a la Desmond Morris) is one thing-that's a sex linked trait. But men have blond hair and blue eyes too, so that makes the theory rather silly, IMO.
Because if they dragged them by the foot, their [ahem] would fill up with dirt...
"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."
At which point red-heads trully will rule the world...
This is just more printed tripe.
That's why they were cave men. The babes wanted to keep 'em in a safe place, so they'd be comfortable and happy and ready for love.
Some of us are still living in such circumstances.
Doesn't make sense. In order for a person to have blue eyes, both parents must have the allele.
So some cave dude player ain't gonna sneak up on a babe and say "Hey, howya doin..." just because she MIGHT have blue eyed children, and then, only if he's got the gene as well.
wow intresting list.
good spellin huh...
The first is that it tries to evoke special rules to account for natural selection spreading a mutation to a population too fast to be the cause of the change. That's one hypothesis. The other hypothesis is that random mutation may just not explain human (or other species) variation in the spans of time in which it is supposed to have occurred.
Another oddity here is the lack of mention of war, which claims the lives of about 25 percent of young males in primitive cultures. Hunting may have its hazards (ask the VP), but warfare and wife-stealing were the main economic activities for primitive man, as they were in the Amazon jungle as late as the 1960s.
And most is the speculation on why men like blondes. It may not actually be universal, but simply an artifact of modern times, when being blonde is associated with being Northern European, and hence more high-status and healthier that a non-blonde. But the estrogen explanation for the spread of blonditude seems hopelessly flaky as a hypothesis: Blondes are randier? That doesn't explain anything, even if it were true.
Randiness in females does not make them more able to reproduce successfully. They can only have one kid at a time, no matter how randy they are. If their darker-haired sister has a better provider for a husband, her kids will survive better, even if she isn't as randy.
Randiness in males does indeed produce more offspring, since a man reproduces, so to speak, in a few minutes, and it doesn't prevent him from having another child by a second (or third) wife at the same time.
This business about the last blonde being born in 2202 is just too funny. Leave it to a liberal to ignore the importance of individual actors in history. Yeah, the blondes will die out—unless they wipe out the competition. Natural selection speculation leads to some really silly stuff in the hands of Sunday supplement writers.
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How does this guy explain so many northern animals that also have blond/white hair? It's not JUST for camouflage purposes. For that matter, some of the animals have blue eyes.
More clothing in a cold climate (as well as less sunlight) might also lead to selecting for reduced melanin to increase vitamin D production.
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