A man in a skirt....
D and I have been watching travel videos to decide which sites we are really interested in seeing on our trip. They were showing some kind of game event thing in Scotland where these men were picking up and throwing over these huge log things and throwing axes around and all. And these were big burly men doing all these manly things all the while
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Redheads constitute approximately four percent of the European population.[7] Scotland has the highest proportion of redheads, as 13 percent of the population has red hair and approximately 40 percent carries the recessive redhead gene.[8] Ireland has the second highest percentage; as many as 10 percent of the Irish population have red, auburn, or strawberry blond hair.[9] It is thought that up to 46 percent of the Irish population carries the recessive redhead gene. Red hair reaches frequencies of up to 10 percent in Wales.[10]
Red-hair is found commonly amongst Ashkenazi Jewish populations.[11]
In the United States, anywhere from two to six percent of the population is estimated to have red hair. This would give the U.S. the largest population of redheads in the world, at 6 to 18 million, compared to approximately 650,000 in Scotland and 420,000 in Ireland.
Red or reddish-tinged hair is also found in other European populations particularly in the Nordic and Baltic countries as well as parts of the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany, Russia and South Slavic countries and Albania.
The Berber populations of Morocco[12] and northern Algeria have occasional redheads. Red hair frequency is especially significant among the Kabyles from Algeria where it reaches 4 percent [13][14].
In Asia, darker or mixed tinges of red hair can be found sporadically from Northern India, northern Middle East (such as Iran, Lebanon and the countries of the Levant) and in rare instances on Island of Hirado, Japan[15] and the South Pacific. Red hair can be found amongst those of Iranian descent, such as the Pashtuns, Persians, Lurs and Nuristanis.
In Argentina and Brazil people with red hair also make up a small portion of the population.
The pigment pheomelanin gives red hair its distinctive colour. Red hair has far more pheomelanin than other hair colours, but far less of the dark pigment eumelanin.
The genetics of red hair, discovered in 1997, appears to be associated with the melanocortin-1 receptor (MC1R), which is found on chromosome 16. Red hair is associated with fair skin colour due to low concentrations of eumelanin. This lower melanin-concentration has the advantage that a sufficient concentration of important Vitamin D can be produced under low light conditions. However, when the UV-radiation is strong (like in the regions close to the equator) the lower concentration of melanin leads to several medical disadvantages - one of them is the higher rate of skin cancer.
The MC1R recessive variant gene, which gives people red hair and fair skin, is also associated with freckles, though it is not uncommon to see a redhead without freckles. Eighty percent of redheads have an MC1R gene variant,[17] and the prevalence of these alleles is highest in Scotland and Ireland. The alleles that code for red hair occur close to the alleles that affect skin colour, so it seems that the phenotypic expression for lighter skin and red hair are interrelated.
The pale skin associated with red hair may be of advantage in far-northern climates where sunlight is scarce. Studies by Bodmer and Cavalli-Sforza (1976) hypothesized that lighter skin pigmentation prevents rickets in colder latitudes by encouraging higher levels of Vitamin D production and also allows the individual to retain heat better than someone with darker skin.
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