Are all (natural) redheads descended from Irish and/or Scotish cave people?
I won’t judge but Wikipedia does have a good article on the origins of red hair including the cause and worldwide distribution. Red hair isn’t exclusive to Ireland or Scotland by any means.
Red hair, also known as orange hair or ginger hair, is a human hair color found in 1–2% of the world population, appearing with greater frequency (2–6%) among people of Northern or Northwestern European ancestry and lesser frequency in other populations. It is most common in individuals homozygous for a recessive allele on chromosome 16 that produces an altered version of the MC1R protein.
Red hair varies in hue from a deep burgundy or bright copper, or auburn, to burnt orange or red-orange t...
Thanks for the interesting link. Shagnasty. It led me to this;http://genome.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD020874.html .
There is a widespread curiosity about red hair, and we are often asked questions about colouration – only some of which we have answers to. When were the first red heads? (Red-haired variants of the MC1R gene probably arose about 20-40 000 years ago.) What is the genetic relationship between bright red, strawberry blonde and auburn hair? (Not entirely clear as yet.) And is the red hair gene a ‘Celtic gene’ – as is widely supposed? (Not really, but it is safe to say that – a few rare exceptions aside - all red heads are MC1R variants that derive from European populations; the prevalence of these alleles is highest in Celtic countries.
Makes sense.