Study: Prehistoric Redheads

The Neanderthal man may now have a new nickname: “Ginger.”

Some Neanderthals had red hair and pale skin, according to recent research conducted by Holger Römpler, a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Evolutionary and Organismic Biology, and a host of international colleagues.

Römpler and his collaborators extracted DNA from the bones of two Neanderthals, a 43,000-year-old Neanderthal from El Sidrón, Spain, and a 50,000-year-old from Monti Lessini, Italy.

Looking at the cells of the Neanderthal bones, the researchers discovered a specific DNA mutation which could lead to red hair and pale skin.

“It took me almost two months to convince myself I found the first Neanderthal-specific variant at the first attempt in the first gene I selected for,” wrote one researcher, Carles Lalueza-Fox of the University of Barcelona, in an e-mail.

Römpler, who splits his time between Harvard and the University of Leipzig, could not be reached for comment.

While anthropologists already suspected that Neanderthals may have had red hair and pale skin, the recent scientific discovery provides the first concrete evidence to support this hypothesis.

“Some paleoanthropologists have guessed that in Neanderthals it could be the same. But of course, the beauty of our study is that we prove it directly from the genes, a kind of color under the skin approach,” Lalueza-Fox said.

While Neanderthals followed a different evolutionary path to their redheaded appearance than modern humans, their pale skin and red hair provided certain advantages comparable to that of northern Europeans today.

At high altitudes, where there is less UV radiation, homo sapiens have light skin to help absorb sufficient Vitamin D for healthy bones.

Red hair has no apparent evolutionary advantage, although some have suggested that it could be useful for sex selection, according to Lalueza-Fox.

“From experience, the Darwinian fitness of redheads is exceptionally high,” redhead Scott M. McKinney ’09 joked. “Red hair for humans is like the peacock’s train. Let’s just say, being a redhead hasn’t hurt.”

—Samuel P. Jacobs contributed to the reporting of this story.