Redheaded people - a historical rarity Redheaded people are rarer than brunettes or blondes. This can be explained biologically, but there are also historical reasons for this phenomenon.

redheaded

Redheaded - the biological facts about red hair

Hair color is inherited recessively through the mutated MC1R gene. With a redheaded child, both parents very likely had blonde or red hair and therefore carried mutated MC1R genes, because MC1R determines which color pigments are mainly produced. If you are redheaded, there were redheads among your ancestors too, both parents carried these genes, and you took the 1 in 4 genetic chance. By the way, the MC1R gene is also responsible for sun-sensitive skin, which is why redheads usually get sunburned faster than people with other hair colors. What was evolution trying to show with that? If you're going to be redheaded, then completely red in the sun too?

Redheads = witches?

In the Middle Ages, people with red hair were feared because the color red stood for the devil. But that wasn't the only reason. Only one to two percent of the world's population is redheaded. That makes them a minority and rare. In the Middle Ages, among other things, these two facts were combined, and that is how the witch hunts came about. Another theory says that in the Middle Ages, redheads more often had medical knowledge and an interest in magic than people with other hair colors, and that this is why they were so feared and persecuted. Historically, however, this theory can be neither proven nor disproven. What can be proven is that the witch hunts reduced the share of the redheaded population in the Middle Ages, and that this is another reason why there are fewer redheaded people today.

Redheaded Scots

Around four percent of Europeans are redheaded. And the country with the most redheads is Ireland, right? Wrong, because only about ten percent of the population there are redheaded, while in Scotland 13 to 14 percent have this hair color. The Romans already described the Celts and Germanic peoples as redheads. This could explain the concentration of red manes on the northern European islands. The Romans built the limes in England, and as a result there was hardly any mixing of Roman genes (dark-haired types) with the northern redheaded types. And later, too, the Vikings fought the southern countries from their northern islands and Scandinavia. So for thousands of years there has been a border between the redheaded north and the brunette south in Europe.