The Elder Statesman

By BILL DUNCAN
The View From Here

It is amazing what you can learn from reading. Archaeologist David Miles in his book “The Tribes of Britain,” says the majority of redheads in this world originate from the genetics of Scotland and Ireland. He said the Roman historian Tacitus noted how surprised the Romans were when they invaded Great Britain in A.D. 43 and discovered redheaded natives.

The information intrigued me because I am tracing my Scottish heritage. I was especially interested when Miles wrote that even today the largest redheaded population in the world is in Scotland. The red hair, he said, is generally associated with people of Celtic descent located mainly in Scotland, Ireland and Wales.

There might be one or two red heads in my Highland Scot heritage, but I am unaware of any. Anthropologists trace red hair as a unique characteristic that belongs to the tribe of Picts. Romans invading what is now Scotland encountered the ferocity of the Pict warriors. According to Miles as far as the world-wide distribution of red hair, it would be safe to say that the majority are descendents of the North Western region of Europe from which the tribes migrated to the British Isles.

Scientifically, the genetics behind red hair is due to the varied amounts of the chemicals eumelanin and phaeomelanin which are produced by melanocytes, the color cells in the pigmentation of both skin and hair. Eumelanin is the brown/black melanins while phaeomelanin is the red/yellow melanins. Looking at me today, one would not suspect as a young boy I was towheaded and even into manhood I had wavy blond hair, which means I have my share of phaeomelanin chemicals.

This is not necessarily a good thing. The primary function of melanin is to protect against ultra violent rays from the sun. Most blonds and redheads have risk factors for melanoma, a deadly skin cancer. Thirty years ago, I was diagnosed with malignant melanoma and told I had roughly three months to live. I beat the odds.

The fact I was born in the deep South and grew up in Florida no doubt contributed to my melanoma diagnosis, but genes were part of the mix and the Augustinian monk Gregor Mendel’s law on the principal of physical characteristics of hereditary or what Sam Shuster described as the “role in the genetic haystack of life.” Science has dived into that haystack by studying mice for centuries. Mice were cross-bred by scientists to understand how genes behaved.

Mice with yellow hair have long been of interest to mouse geneticists and an Oregon scientist, Dr. Roger Cone, one of the founders of Znomics, Inc. of Portland, in 1990 cloned the gene that led to this characteristic. It was discovered that people with red hair have variants of this gene. Most redheads have one of the chromosomes from their mother and one of the chromosomes from their father.

The studies of red hair and sun sensitive skin has taken on a new dimension in this era of climate change. A light skinned person has a major risk of facing most forms of skin cancer, yet a person with dark skin is perhaps a hundred times less likely to get melanoma or a range of other skin tumors. Melanin is an effective sunblock.

According to Jonathan Rees, professor of Dermatology at the University of Edinburgh, this Celtic gene is the reason for not only bright red hair, but all the variations, especially strawberry blonde and auburn hair. He adds there is much more to discover about genes involved in skin and hair color and the health of the largest organ in our body – the human skin.

(Bill Duncan can reached by writing to P.O. Box 812, Roseburg, OR 97470)

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