Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

I have this question that's been nagging at me for years. I just tried to look up some information on the internet and couldn't find anything, so I thought I'd ask here and see if anyone knows ...

My dad has (had, at this point) a very unusual hair color. It was sort of a blue-black. He inherited it from his mother's side of the family, and they called it "dark brown," but I can't ever remember seeing a trace of brown in it. He is also, definitely, a fair-skinned Caucasian, and has gray-blue eyes.

I've only seen a few other people in my life with this hair color and genetic combination, so I have to assume it's a recessive trait.

The question is, WHERE does it come from? Is it Welsh, Celtic, Nordic, Germanic .... WHAT???

I was able to easily find a site linking red hair to the Celts. Everybody knows this.

But what about this "black" hair thing?

If you know the answer, please help out.

My guess is that the trait was picked up from the natives in India or maybe somewhere in the Mediterranean, from some culture that the Caucausians conquered/assimilated or some such some thing. But I don't have any evidence to back this up

The "black-haired caucasians" found their roots in....


damned if I know, just thought I'd take this opportunity offered to be funny, you know, before someone else did, or tried...

any hawaii connections that might connect him to the pacific expansion?

dark hair and grey-blue eyes... just beautiful most of the time! but I´m afraid I don´t have the answer for what you are asking.

There is a site/messageboard nordic.net. or nodish.net or something like that (I'm sure a search of google will pull up the right name) that has some very talented racial profilers on it.

As you'd expect with a site that deals with racial profiling there are a number of hardline racists on the site, so it's heavy going for anyone of a politically sensitive disposition, but if you put the politics aside they do have some very able anthropologists and profilers there who can take a description, or photograph, and give you some very accurate information on locations of roots etc.

There are no connections to the Pacific Islanders, or Aryans, unless they go WAY WAY back. Aryans is a possibility.

As for the Mediterraneans -- Mediterraneans definitely have Dravidian or Aryan roots.

And I don't know if a Mediterranean throwback is involved here. Could be.

One thing I did find out after I posted -- my dad sent a genetic sample a long time ago to some group investigating the root origins of our prime male ancestor. Up till now, I've only heard my dad's reports of those results. I hadn't seen the response he got or anything else. By accident, I came across the website where all of the genetic information submitted (48 respondants so far) was posted. I located my dad by our common ancestor, and found out that his genetic background is predominantly Welsh. In fact, if I am reading the ratios right, he is the MOST Welsh volunteer for the study, so far.

That's interesting to me. On the maternal side, he had a family with the last name "Wales." On the male side, the Bonds come from Southern England, mostly. We tracked them back there several generations, but many of the people (about 50%) who have donated genetic material to the study have Welsh roots.

So, I'm just guessing, but this "black" hair thing could have been a Welsh trait. (?????)

aren't the welsh normans? meaning french? how far back does one go? we're all african, in the end...

knip wrote:aren't the welsh normans? meaning french?

Celts, the Normans, from France, colonized England and pushed the Celtic welsh into what is now wales, although there seems to be more than one type of celt as the Welsh/scottish/irish celts appear not to be related to the southern French/Spanish celts, as closely as was originally thought.

It's probable that the Welsh/Scottish/Irish, were another grouping that intermixed with Celts who moved up from the south making a new subgrouping.

how far back does one go?

I gave up on the subject because the further you went back, instead of becoming easier as you would expect, it became harder and more complicated.

Just breaking down some of the Scandinavian peoples brings you to 20 or 30 sub-groupings, of what are in turn only sub-groupings of other races.

I think you could go on forever breaking it down until you reached the conclusion that each of us makes up our own unique sub-grouping of mankind.

we're all african, in the end...

The latest scientific findings are actually starting to question that.

There never has actually been any evidence to back up this "out of Africa" theory, as the word theory suggests, and with modern findings putting people from other parts of the globe in situ millenia ahead of the theoretical timeline all bets are off again.

It's still probable that we all originated from one central location, but it's also still possible that there was seperate development in different locations.

The latest scientific findings are actually starting to question that.

There never has actually been any evidence to back up this "out of Africa" theory, as the word theory suggests, and with modern findings putting people from other parts of the globe in situ millenia ahead of the theoretical timeline all bets are off again.

certainly it appears you understand this better than me, but from what i know, there is in fact evidence of the 'out of africa' theory, in the form of carbon-dating that shows an expanding population originating in africa

like most science, no eveidence is perfect, and as with most science, today's facts are true until changed by better facts...but respectfully, i think you undersell the facts behind the 'ouit of africa' theory

i am aware of certain claims of much earlier civilizations in the americas that would dispute this theory, but i have also read pieces that provide good reasons why the 'facts' backing these up are less reliable than other 'facts'

if you know of more, i would appreciate being pointed in its direction

It's still probable that we all originated from one central location, but it's also still possible that there was seperate development in different locations.

that is certainly true (see the 'facts' vs. 'facts' discussion above)

knip wrote: i am aware of certain claims of much earlier civilizations in the americas that would dispute this theory, but i have also read pieces that provide good reasons why the 'facts' backing these up are less reliable than other 'facts'

if you know of more, i would appreciate being pointed in its direction

I assume you refer to either clovis man, or kennewick man, both remarkable finds in recent times, although neither really change any theories on the origins of man, merely put the "wrong" people in the "wrong" place at the "wrong" time, to confuse the acedemics.

A religious friend of mines swears that the purpose of Kennewick man was to prove god had a sense of humor.

The finds I was actually refering to were a tool find in Europe around a month ago, which puts some form of modern man in Europe well before he should have been (although that's not to say he couldn't have left africa at an earlier date than first forecast) && a mystery find in China, it's some sort of bone/skull find that is reputed to be as significant as Peking man, but the chinese in their usual manner are not realising to much data as of yet.

I have just briefly looked for a paper that my friend wrote on Kennewick man, that's published somewhere on the net, but as usual I'm hopeless in remembering urls and addresses so I couldn't find it I'm afraid.

understood...i couldn't point too accurately at the stuff i've read, either

with the little bit of reading i've done, 'out of africa' makes sense to me...but maybe the flat earth would have made sense to me 900 years ago, too, hehe

abcrystcats wrote:I have this question that's been nagging at me for years. I just tried to look up some information on the internet and couldn't find anything, so I thought I'd ask here and see if anyone knows ...

My dad has (had, at this point) a very unusual hair color. It was sort of a blue-black. He inherited it from his mother's side of the family, and they called it "dark brown," but I can't ever remember seeing a trace of brown in it. He is also, definitely, a fair-skinned Caucasian, and has gray-blue eyes.

I've only seen a few other people in my life with this hair color and genetic combination, so I have to assume it's a recessive trait.

The question is, WHERE does it come from? Is it Welsh, Celtic, Nordic, Germanic .... WHAT???

I was able to easily find a site linking red hair to the Celts. Everybody knows this.

But what about this "black" hair thing?

If you know the answer, please help out.

à
I call my self a mut... I was under the impression that most people have lost thier orgin that are in north america, most people I know donèt really know their roots--I am english, scotish, dutch, and who knows, maybe a bit nativeamerican--maybe...I donèt know, and I was under the impression not many people did--look at Jim Jarmchès hair though (Coffee and ciggarette director) what is that fucked up white hair about

Yeah, it's sort of true, Axanderdeath, but don't just GIVE UP on it. My family hasn't. OK, we're not Mormons or anything like that, determined to trace our ancestry back to Adam and Eve, but we've found out some things.

I was under the impression that most people have lost thier orgin that are in north america, most people I know donèt really know their roots--I am english, scotish, dutch, and who knows, maybe a bit nativeamerican--maybe...

We have discovered that we have NO Native American blood, but plenty of English, some Scottish, some Irish, and plenty of German origins too. When you say "English" though, what do you mean? The English are themselves a huge polyglot of French (Norman), Saxon, Celt, Welsh, Pict (who are THEY?), and even Mediterranean and Indian origins. It's interesting to me, tracing it all back.

It may seem like a waste of time to some, but I want to know WHERE my dad got his weird BLACK hair, considering that, as far as I know, he's a WASP with ancestry going back literally to the Mayflower.

I don't agree with Knip who said we all come from Africa. My general understanding is that homo sapiens (men) developed simultaneously in various places all over the globe. Africa was one major place. Europe was another. India was another.There may have been four or five or six major places where men (as we know them, anyways) evolved, inspired by the environment and so on. How human beings evolved and developed in those places led to peculiarities, differences.

I'm not totally absorbed by the differences, since I think that Man , as a creature, is extremely adaptable and amenable to change. I don't think biology is destiny, and I don't necessarily think that just because African men evolved in different surroundings than Asian men or Caucasian men that it makes them inferior or superior. I think all men develop in response to their surroundings, and they do it fairly quickly. Like, within a few generations.

This is just about where the hair color came from.


This is not about sociobiology. And even if it was, biology is not destiny, for anyone.

This is about a weird hair color. Is it Welsh? Is it ... what???

I just found out about the gypsies. Did you know where gypsies came from? They were North Indians who mysteriously migrated into Europe, for god knows what reasons. That might explain the complexity and loveliness of gypsy music, do you think? Hitler annnihilated the gypsies, along with everyone else who he stupidly thought was non-Aryan. The gypsies were the closest TRUE Aryans in Europe at that time, so he blew it. If I was a gypsy, I' d be interested in learning where gypsies got their ideas, their culture, their music, their genetic traits.

As a generally English and German person, I'm interested in finding out the same things about my background. Luckily, no one has annihilated my culture yet, so there's some chance that I may learn a bit of it.

Right now, I am trying to learn about this hair color. Discovering the Welsh part is thrilling. That explains a LOT, since the Welsh were known for exagerration and colorful language and a unique, crude and imaginative view of the world. I'm not held to that, like a definition, but curiosity leads me to seek answers in my genetic background, as well as in other things.

Who ARE we? We're genetic as well as environmental, as well as self-determining. Some of who are is inherited material. I want to know WHAT inherited material there is, inside me.

This is all about a hair color, though. A sort of weird "black"-brown. If anyone who reads this website lives in the UK, they might be more familiar with the hair color than I am, and might be able to tell me what it is associated with.

Is it Welsh, Celtic, perhaps German or what? My dad's hair was a sort of black that had an almost bluish tinge. He had a normal (for a Caucasian) hair thickness. He didn't have strong, or long-growing hair. It wasn't the type of black you associate with Indians or Hispanics, that way. It was a normal thickness, but, well, BLACK. He never colored it. It had a very slight wave. When I was little, my hair was kind of like his, only a distinct shade lighter. As I got older, my hair progressively lightened to medium brown. It was never quite HIS hair because it was never BLACK, but it was very dark when I was a toddler.

Where does this weird black hair come from? Anyone from the UK know what I am talking about?

I don't agree with Knip who said we all come from Africa. My general understanding is that homo sapiens (men) developed simultaneously in various places all over the globe. Africa was one major place. Europe was another. India was another.There may have been four or five or six major places where men (as we know them, anyways) evolved, inspired by the environment and so on. How human beings evolved and developed in those places led to peculiarities, differences.

although i'm aware some believe this, i also know this is a definite minority...most in science who are not influenced by religious or racial biases support the out of africa theory...it seems to me that, in the face of all the evidence as we currently know it, believeing anything other than the out of africa explanation is speculation (wishful thinking?)...i'm afraid i just don't get it...i would suggest that if you're reading people who are espousing things other than out of africa, that you google their names and do some research...my experience is that most of these guys have also posted to or written for racial explanation sites


it's a lot easier for these guys to say blacks are lazy and whites are not if they can prove they're not related, you see...