Tuesday 16 October 2012

Genetic Strands.

I wonder how Ireland has managed to retain a certain genetic separateness between the raven haired Gael and the red haired Norse, while we in England have got all mixed up and become almost universally mousy.

6 comments:

andrea kiss said...

Very interesting question. I heard a few years back that before too much longer the genes for red hair will have died out. I was telling the owner of a company that i worked for about it and he laughed a big, hearty, loud laugh and said, "NOT IN IRELAND THEY WON'T!" (His ex wife was Irish and he visited her family there a lot.)

JJ said...

The pictures of you at the zoo partly prompted that post. I've noticed that truly black hair seems to be a lot commoner in America than it is in Britain, probably because of the greater south European mix, I expect.

andrea kiss said...

All of us in the pics have very dark brown hair. My dad and brother and some other people in my family have truly black hair, though. Actually, i don't see it often other than among Asian Americans and Native Americans and also Hispanic Americans, but they are Native descendants as well. Oh, and some black people have black hair.

JJ said...

You don't say.

andrea kiss said...

Not all black people have black hair.

:P

JJ said...

I think it depends on what you mean by 'black people.' as far as I know, the African gene is always black haired (apart from the very rare albino.)