Why do some people have blonde hair and some have brown?

zbeckabee

Hair color is the result of pigmentation due to the presence of the chemicals of melanin. In general, the more melanin, the darker the hair color. Usually, the color of children's and adults' hair varies from pale yellow (blonde) to deep black. The ethnic distribution of colors has historically varied by geographic area. For example, deep brown and black prevail in the Middle East, North Africa, and Southern Europe, and even darker shades occur in East Asia, South Asia, as well as tropical (Sub-saharan) Africa and The Americas; lighter brown is more common in western, central and eastern Europe, yellow/blond in northern Europe, and reddish in the British Isles. However, considerable differences in hair color and texture exist between individuals of similar ethnicity, and immigration and global travel have greatly increased the diversity of hair characteristics in many countries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hair_color Nov 25 06, 7:12 PM

Baloo55th

There is an isolated area where blond(e) hair occurs well away from Europe. Aborigines in Australia normally have dark hair, but there are blonde aborigines. This is not due to racial intermixing, and was documented when the first European settlers arrived. (Blonde is normally a description of females; males with very pale hair are blond. All down to French adjectives agreeing...) Nov 25 06, 7:21 PM

Master_Algie

Blond hair is common in infants and children, so much so that the term "baby blond" is often used for very light-colored hair. Babies may be born with blond hair even among groups where adults rarely have blond hair, although such natal hair usually falls out quickly. Blond hair tends to turn darker with age, and many children born blond turn from anything between a light brown to even black before or during their teenage years. Lighter hair colors occur naturally in humans of all ethnicities, as rare mutations, but at such low rates that it is hardly noticeable in most populations, or is only found in children. In certain European populations, however, the occurrence of blond hair is more frequent, and often remains throughout adulthood, leading to misinterpretation that blondness is a European trait. Based on recent genetic information, it is probable that humans with blond hair became distinctly numerous in Europe about 11,000 to 10,000 years ago during the last Ice Age. Before then, Europeans had dark brown hair and dark eyes, which is predominant in the rest of the world. A long standing question has been why certain populations in Europe evolved to have such high incidences of blond hair (and wide varieties of eye color) so relatively recently and quickly in the human evolution timescale? If the changes had occurred by the usual processes of evolution (natural selection), they would have taken about 850,000 years. But modern humans, emigrating from Africa, reached Europe only 35,000-40,000 years ago. Canadian anthropologist Peter Frost, under the aegis of University of St Andrews, published a study in March 2006 in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior that says blond hair evolved very quickly at the end of the last Ice Age by means of sexual selection. According to the study, the appearance of blond hair and blue eyes in some northern European women made them stand out from their rivals at a time of fierce competition for scarce males. The study argues that blond hair was produced higher in the Cro-Magnon descended population of the European region because of food shortages 10,000-11,000 years ago. Almost the only sustenance in northern Europe came from roaming herds of mammoths, reindeer, bison and horses and finding them required long, arduous hunting trips in which numerous males died, leading to a high ratio of surviving women to men. This hypothesis argues that women with blond hair posed an alternative that helped them mate and thus increased the number of blonds. According to the authors of The History and Geography of Human Genes (1994), blond hair became predominate in Europe in about 3000 BC, in the area now known as Lithuania, among the recently arrived Proto-Indo-European settlers (Lithuania is still the country that has the highest percentage of people with blond hair); it is thought the trait spread quickly through sexual selection into Scandinavia when that area was settled because men found women with blond hair attractive. Fair hair is a stereotypical characteristic of the people of Northern Europe, particularly in the Netherlands, the Nordic countries and Russia and for this reason very pale hair is often referred to as Nordic blond. Apart from Europe, blond hair of darker shades is present (though not nearly as common) in various regions such as the Middle East, seen amongst Syrians, Lebanese, Persians, Kurds, and other Iranians in Iran,Afghans and certain areas of Pakistan. Generally, blond hair in Europeans is associated with paler eye color (blue, green and light brown) and pale (sometimes freckled) skin tone. Strong sunlight also lightens hair of any pigmentation, to varying degrees, and causes many blond people to freckle, especially during childhood. Aboriginal Australians, especially in the west-central parts of the continent, also have a fairly high instance of yellow-brown hair. The trait among Indigenous Australians is primarily associated with children and women and generally the hair turns to a darker brown color as they age. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blond Real blonds normally have the most slender individual strands of hair, and thus more hairs on their head (this disregards the length of their hair, of course). Darker hair is thicker in relation, and then red hair tends to come thickest. As for the blond/blonde issue, I think adding the E in feminine circumstances is old and silly. We don't differentiate between sailor and sailore, eh, or in too many other words. The trouble is - which do you use in unisex terms? This would favor one gender in the matter. I'm a blond. =D Nov 25 06, 7:44 PM