Amazing blonde blacks live in Melanesia. What does modern science say about the "Nordic race"? Or why black people have blue eyes

Incredible Facts

Genes are an amazing and highly unpredictable thing. They will tell you things about you that you don't know about yourself.

Sometimes genes give out something that shocks us. And we can only wonder what surprises nature brings.

There are several thousand genes in the genotype and it happens that they appear very unexpectedly.

For example, twins born may differ from each other, like heaven and earth, or a dark-skinned parent has a completely white child.

Here are 18 fascinating cases where genes showed yourself in the most amazing way:

How genes are expressed

1. Lovely blue eyes

Dominant genes can create unique beauty traits such as piercing blue eyes that are too good to be true.

Take a look at this black girl with incredible blue eyes.

Many people think that such beauty is the merit of contact lenses, or the girl uses Photoshop to give such a color to her eyes.

Again, many people have misconceptions about the typical features of each race.

To refute all suspicions, the girl provides evidence in the form of her childhood pictures. The same blue eyes are clearly visible on them, in addition, the same color of the eyes of her mother.

2. Different shells of the eyes

Do you notice something unique and different about this red-haired girl?

Pay attention to her eyes. Different membranes of the eye are caused by heterochromia, a condition in which, as a result of an excess or absence of melanin, the eyes have a different color.

This disease can affect hair and skin.

3. Asian with blond hair

It is a common misconception that all Asian women have long dark hair.

The woman on the right is half Asian, half European. Her almond-shaped eyes and reddish hair look extremely unusual. This unique cultural mix is ​​the result of the unpredictability of genes.

4. Twin brothers, as different as heaven and earth

Certain genetic traits can cause twins to look like they're from different planets.

Take a look at model Niall DiMarco, who looks like a real Italian, but his twin brother Niko looks more like an Irishman.

Such surprises are sometimes presented by genes.

5. Dissimilar twins again

Interracial marriages can produce unexpected beautiful children that will blow your mind.

Believe it or not, these two girls are twin sisters. Lucy on the left has white skin, straight red hair, and blue eyes that she inherited from her fair-skinned father.

But Maria has curly dark hair, brown eyes and dark skin. This appearance went to the girl from a dark-skinned mother. This is how genes suddenly appeared in twin girls.

6. Dark-skinned blond

Some people dye their hair and wear contact lenses to look beautiful.

This young man needs neither. He is an African with light eyes and hair. And all this was given to him by nature.

The young man is clear evidence that blond-haired and blue-eyed Africans exist.

Amazing Genes

7. Eyelashes growing in two rows

This rare disorder that causes abnormal eyelash growth is called distichiasis. A rare genetic disease in which eyelashes grow in 2 rows.

8. White mulatto

This pretty girl has a European mom and a dark-skinned dad.

9. Such different sisters

When people from two different cultures create a family, the genetic mix can give the most unpredictable results.

It is hard to believe that these two girls are sisters. Their father is European and their mother is from Argentina.

As a result, one sister was born with blond hair and blue eyes, and the other with dark hair and dark skin.

10. Albinos from generation to generation

Before you is not a family of Finns, as it might seem at first glance. They are actually an Indian family.

Such an unusual appearance of the members of the Pullan family is due to albinism, a genetic disorder that has been passed down for three generations.

The disease is caused by processes that reduce the amount of melanin produced.

11. Guy with different eyebrow colors

Poliosis is a disease characterized by partial depigmentation or graying of the hair. This guy with the disease looks weird and a little quirky.

Poliosis can affect both hair and eyebrows and eyelashes.

12. Child with poliosis

The girl was born with a white strand of hair, like her mother.

She is the fourth generation of a family with this unique trait caused by poliosis.

13. And in this family, almost all redheads

They say that redheads may soon disappear altogether. You can't say anything about this family.

The only non-red-haired members of the family are the grandmother and aunt.

14. Birthmarks confirming kinship

Remember how in Indian cinema, relatives found each other by birthmarks? Sometimes this happens in real life too.

Identical birthmarks give out kinship.

15. White child with a black father

There is no doubt that they are father and son.

But the combination of genes that created this magnificent child, arranged in such a way that the baby inherited the color of the mother's skin.

16. Guy with a white eyebrow

Genetic conditions such as Waardenburg syndrome can create interesting hair color combinations.

This disease can cause some facial anomalies, such as unusual hair pigmentation, different eye colors, or congenital deafness.

17. Coincidence of moles

And sometimes moles can be found in the same places. What's this? Blood relatives or kindred spirits?

18. Such different sisters

These sisters were born in a mixed marriage and are polar opposites when it comes to looks. Genetics did their best: one of the girls inherited the traits of an Italian parent, and the other - an Irish one.

As a result, one girl is endowed with fair skin and bright red hair, while the other is the owner of swarthy skin and dark eyes and hair.

Approximately a quarter of the population of Melanesia in the Solomon Islands archipelago has an extremely unusual feature - dark skin combined with blond hair. Located east of Papua New Guinea in Oceania, the archipelago consists of a thousand islands and is home to over half a million Melanesians. They have the darkest skin in the world outside of Africa, but many have blond afros growing on their heads.

This rarity excited the minds of scientists and experts in genetics for many years. Until recently, heredity was blamed for everything: the Melanesians allegedly inherited the "blonde" gene from their European ancestors - the British, Germans and Australians, who owned the islands for hundreds of years. In the 19th century, the islands were under German jurisdiction, in 1893 the islands came to Great Britain, and at the beginning of the 20th century, the British, together with the Australians, grew coconut plantations there.

But the locals do not agree with the version about genetics, although it seems reasonable. They insist that their blond hair is the result of a fish-rich diet and sun exposure. But both theories are far from the truth. Random mutations may be responsible for the secrets of Melanesian blondes, according to a recent study.

Sean Miles, a geneticist at the New Scotland Agricultural College, noted that the blond hair of all Melanesians has the same shade. This means that hair color is regulated by genes. Miles and his colleagues decided to find the gene, and for this they took samples of saliva and hair from 42 blond islanders and 42 dark-haired natives.

Both groups had completely different versions of the TYRP1 gene, which codes for a protein involved in pigmentation. Hair color is determined by just one amino acid in the protein - arginine instead of cysteine.

25% of the population of the Solomon Islands are carriers of the mutated gene. This means that blondes can inherit their hair color from both parents. Anthropologist from Temple University in Philadelphia Jonathan Friedlander noted that the mutation most likely arose by chance in one person. This seems to be true, because the indigenous population of the islands was quite small.

Dark-skinned blondes are a mystery that geneticists are struggling with April 13th, 2017

A traveler who comes to Melanesia can be truly shocked: only here you can meet a large number of dark-skinned people with blond hair. Scientists have long tried to find out the reason for such an atypical appearance. Researchers of the 19th century said that the hair of the islanders was dyed with coral lime. Others suggested that the hair faded quickly from the tropical sun and sea salt water in which the locals splashed. The more cunning suggested that the brightening was due to a diet rich in fish.

Finally, as usual in such cases, there was some discussion about the admixture of European blood.

Melanesia is an island group in the Pacific Ocean, which includes New Guinea, Fiji, Vanuatu and other states. Among the inhabitants of the islands, every tenth is blond. Taking into account the fact that the population of Melanesians is about half a million, the phenomenon can be called typical and widespread. Interestingly, along with blond hair, the Melanesians inherited jet-black skin from their ancestors.

The main version put forward by genetic scientists for several years was heredity. They recalled that the British and Germans lived on the islands in the 19th and 20th centuries, growing coconut plantations here.

In fact, back in the middle of the 20th century, serious anthropologists wrote that blond hair color repeatedly arose independently in isolated populations almost all over the world. Blond Australian Aborigines, Indians, Evenks, highlanders of the Caucasus, Atlas and Hindu Kush are known. The influence of European admixture was reasonably rejected in all these cases, and the appearance of relatively fair-haired populations was associated with the effects of the founder and the bottleneck (see about them on our portal). The European blond hair is unique only in its vast range and high frequency of occurrence.

However, it is one thing to talk about genetically automatic processes, and another to find a specific gene responsible for lightening hair. This is what an international group of geneticists has done. The case of the Melanesians is remarkable in that they have only two variants of hair color: black and white. Therefore, the researchers immediately assumed the presence of only one simple mutation in one gene. It remains "only" to find it and confirm the guess. To do this, they had to collect saliva and hair samples from 1209 islanders. Of this wealth, however, only 43 "blonde" and 42 "brunette" went into business - grants are also not rubber. The rationale for the article, of course, was found to be more solid: they say, since all the phenotypes are literally one or two and miscalculated, is it worth spending extra effort?

Among the islanders, 10% are blond, but 26% have a recessive mutation in the protein synthesis gene that determines hair pigmentation. The result has already been tested on 918 Melanesians of the Solomon Islands and 941 inhabitants of other parts of the planet. The "Solomonic" mutation turned out to be simple, but is not found anywhere else in the world. The notorious ubiquitous Vikings of Thor Heyerdahl apparently sailed past Melanesia (hurried to Easter Island or South America?); on the other hand, the Melanesians also did not particularly disperse from their tropical paradise.

In Europe, blonde hair color is usually determined by a whole combination of genes, but in the Solomon Islands, blondes are distinguished by a single TYRP1 gene located on the ninth chromosome.

Such a gene mutation does not occur in Europe; this is an original feature of the population of Melanesia. In general, the structure of the human genome turns out to be very different in different populations - the same properties can be encoded by different genes.

Well, the assumptions made more than half a century ago have been brilliantly confirmed. Blond hair blond hair strife! Isolation and polymorphism work wonders. It remains for geneticists to analyze the genes of Kabils, Mandans, Arandas, Evenkis and Hanzas ...

Interestingly, scientists explain a large number of blondes by the fact that blond women are more attractive to men, and most often marriages are concluded with them.

Unlike light hair color, blue eyes in all people are due to a single gene mutation that occurred at some point between the 8th and 4th millennium BC. All blue-eyed people on the planet have a common ancestor who lived in those days. Previously, blue-eyed people simply did not exist.

Here we have examined the ideas of racists, who connected the giftedness of people and entire nations with the color of skin and eyes. However, since those times science has stepped far forward, and if in the XIX century. external signs of a person seemed unchanged, then genetics says that all human data change through mutations that affect its genes.

In nature, such a concept as albinism (from the Latin albus - “white”) is known - when, in violation of the production of melanin pigment, which is responsible for the color of the skin, hair, iris, animals are born “discolored”. This phenomenon can be observed in a wide variety of animal species (penguins, crocodiles, lions, etc.).

Sometimes such individuals are born to dark-skinned people (whether African blacks or American Indians) - outwardly they are absolutely similar to their parents, only their skin and hair are pale white. And their eyes are blue. As Alexander Verzin, head of the scientific-experimental department of the State Institution IRTC “Eye Microsurgery” named after Academician S. N. Fedorov, noted: “Negroes with blue eyes are found, but extremely rarely. And usually these are albino blacks, whose skin is light.”

In the book "Peoples. Races. Culture”, written back in 1971 by the well-known anthropologist N. N. Cheboksarov and biologist I. A. Cheboksarova, noted: “Many features of a person, including racial characteristics, arose through mutations.

Thus, for example, there is reason to believe that our ancestors had the comparatively dark brownish skin, black hair, and brown eyes that are characteristic of most races today. The most depigmented racial types - blonds with light eyes - most likely appeared by mutations, concentrated mainly in Europe near the shores of the Baltic and North Seas.

For a long time this assumption remained a hypothesis, which, nevertheless, caused violent convulsions of racists of all stripes.

And in early 2008, scientific confirmation followed. “A group of scientists from the University of Copenhagen discovered a genetic mutation that took place 6-10 thousand years ago and is the cause of the eye color of all blue-eyed people living on the planet today.

“Originally, we all had brown eyes,” says Prof. Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine. "But a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene on our chromosomes created a 'switch' that literally turned off the ability to form brown eyes."

The OCA2 gene codes for the so-called P protein, which is involved in the production of melanin, the pigment that gives color to our hair, eyes, and skin. The “switch”, which is located in the gene adjacent to OCA2, however, does not “turn off” the gene completely, but rather limits its action by reducing the production of melanin in the iris - and brown eyes “turn” into blue. The effect of the "switch" on the OCA2 is very definite. If the OCA2 gene were completely destroyed or turned off, people would have no melanin in their hair, eyes, or skin at all—a phenomenon known as albinism.”

The eyes of a mother and son from the Burusho tribe in northern Pakistan.

Professor Eiberg is a well-known scientist, the author of more than 250 scientific articles, he has been working on this problem since 1996. A detailed report of Danish scientists on their research was published in the authoritative scientific journal Human Genetics.

At the end of the article it is noted: “The mutations responsible for blue eyes most likely occurred in the Middle East or in the area northwest of the Black Sea region, a significant movement of the agricultural population from there to Northern Europe took place in the Neolithic, approximately 6- 10 thousand years ago." (By the Middle East, Eibert is referring to northern Afghanistan, where the blue-eyed Kalash now live; “that place could have been the northern part of Afghanistan,” he told reporters from the British newspaper Telegraph.

Both the date and place of the mutation are, of course, conjectural - they are not recorded in the genes in any way. When the place of the mutation that led to the appearance of blue-eyed blondes is called Northern Europe, the shores of the North and Baltic Seas, or the mountains of Northern Afghanistan, this is due to the presence in these regions in historical time of large isolated populations with such a recessive (suppressed by others) genotype.

N. N. Cheboksarov and I. A. Cheboksarova also write about this: “Genetic drift, which caused an increased concentration of recessive mutations of skin, hair and iris depigmentation, on the outskirts of the ecumene, along with negative selection, played a significant role in the formation of various racial types of light Caucasians (blonde) Northern Europe.

Similar processes of concentration of recessive light-colored genes are observed in some isolated populations living in natural geographical conditions that exclude the influence of natural selection on depigmentation.

So, for example, on the basis of personal observations during the 1924 expedition to Afghanistan, N. I. Vavilov noted a rather high percentage of people with gray and blue eyes among the Nuristanis (kafirs) - a small Iranian-speaking people living in a remote mountainous area at an altitude of 3- 4 thousand meters above sea level "Vavilov himself noted that "Kafiristan, embracing a significant part of Afghanistan, is already the most ideal insulator, in which the most ancient driven peoples still live."

H ethnicity in Pakistan, inhabiting the mountains of the southern Hindu Kush.

Germany and Scandinavia, too, have long been the same area isolated from the rest of the world.

The cultural, economic and political dominance of Western Europe is by no means a phenomenon of the entire world history, but only a small (on its scale) period from about 1750 to 1950, at which time other countries and peoples, be it India or Africa, became the object of its colonial expansion.

Here we have examined the ideas of racists, who connected the giftedness of people and entire nations with the color of skin and eyes. However, since those times science has stepped far forward, and if in the XIX century. external signs of a person seemed unchanged, then genetics says that all human data change through mutations that affect its genes.

In nature, such a concept as albinism (from the Latin albus - “white”) is known - when, in violation of the production of melanin pigment, which is responsible for the color of the skin, hair, iris, animals are born “discolored”. This phenomenon can be observed in a wide variety of animal species (penguins, crocodiles, lions, etc.).

Sometimes such individuals are born to dark-skinned people (whether African blacks or American Indians) - outwardly they are absolutely similar to their parents, only their skin and hair are pale white. And their eyes are blue. As Alexander Verzin, head of the scientific-experimental department of the State Institution IRTC “Eye Microsurgery” named after Academician S. N. Fedorov, noted: “Negroes with blue eyes are found, but extremely rarely. And usually these are albino blacks, whose skin is light.”

In the book "Peoples. Races. Culture”, written back in 1971 by the well-known anthropologist N. N. Cheboksarov and biologist I. A. Cheboksarova, noted: “Many features of a person, including racial characteristics, arose through mutations.

Thus, for example, there is reason to believe that our ancestors had the comparatively dark brownish skin, black hair, and brown eyes that are characteristic of most races today. The most depigmented racial types - blonds with light eyes - most likely appeared by mutations, concentrated mainly in Europe near the shores of the Baltic and North Seas.

For a long time this assumption remained a hypothesis, which, nevertheless, caused violent convulsions of racists of all stripes.

And in early 2008, scientific confirmation followed. “A group of scientists from the University of Copenhagen discovered a genetic mutation that took place 6-10 thousand years ago and is the cause of the eye color of all blue-eyed people living on the planet today.

“Originally, we all had brown eyes,” says Prof. Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine. "But a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene on our chromosomes created a 'switch' that literally turned off the ability to form brown eyes."

The OCA2 gene codes for the so-called P protein, which is involved in the production of melanin, the pigment that gives color to our hair, eyes, and skin. The “switch”, which is located in the gene adjacent to OCA2, however, does not “turn off” the gene completely, but rather limits its action by reducing the production of melanin in the iris - and brown eyes “turn” into blue. The effect of the "switch" on the OCA2 is very definite. If the OCA2 gene were completely destroyed or turned off, people would have no melanin in their hair, eyes, or skin at all—a phenomenon known as albinism.”

The eyes of a mother and son from the Burusho tribe in northern Pakistan.

Professor Eiberg is a well-known scientist, the author of more than 250 scientific articles, he has been working on this problem since 1996. A detailed report of Danish scientists on their research was published in the authoritative scientific journal Human Genetics.

At the end of the article it is noted: “The mutations responsible for blue eyes most likely occurred in the Middle East or in the area northwest of the Black Sea region, a significant movement of the agricultural population from there to Northern Europe took place in the Neolithic, approximately 6- 10 thousand years ago." (By the Middle East, Eibert is referring to northern Afghanistan, where the blue-eyed Kalash now live; “that place could have been the northern part of Afghanistan,” he told reporters from the British newspaper Telegraph.

Both the date and place of the mutation are, of course, conjectural - they are not recorded in the genes in any way. When the place of the mutation that led to the appearance of blue-eyed blondes is called Northern Europe, the shores of the North and Baltic Seas, or the mountains of Northern Afghanistan, this is due to the presence in these regions in historical time of large isolated populations with such a recessive (suppressed by others) genotype.

N. N. Cheboksarov and I. A. Cheboksarova also write about this: “Genetic drift, which caused an increased concentration of recessive mutations of skin, hair and iris depigmentation, on the outskirts of the ecumene, along with negative selection, played a significant role in the formation of various racial types of light Caucasians (blonde) Northern Europe.

Similar processes of concentration of recessive light-colored genes are observed in some isolated populations living in natural geographical conditions that exclude the influence of natural selection on depigmentation.

So, for example, on the basis of personal observations during the 1924 expedition to Afghanistan, N. I. Vavilov noted a rather high percentage of people with gray and blue eyes among the Nuristanis (kafirs) - a small Iranian-speaking people living in a remote mountainous area at an altitude of 3- 4 thousand meters above sea level "Vavilov himself noted that "Kafiristan, embracing a significant part of Afghanistan, is already the most ideal insulator, in which the most ancient driven peoples still live."

H ethnicity in Pakistan, inhabiting the mountains of the southern Hindu Kush.

Germany and Scandinavia, too, have long been the same area isolated from the rest of the world.

The cultural, economic and political dominance of Western Europe is by no means a phenomenon of the entire world history, but only a small (on its scale) period from about 1750 to 1950, at which time other countries and peoples, be it India or Africa, became the object of its colonial expansion.