THE modern gentleman may prefer blondes. But new research has found that it was cavemen who were the first to be lured by flaxen locks.
According to the study, north European women evolved blonde hair and blue eyes at the end of the Ice Age to make them stand out from their rivals at a time of fierce competition for scarce males.
The study argues that blond hair originated in the region because of food shortages 10,000-11,000 years ago. Until then, humans had the dark brown hair and dark eyes that still dominate in the rest of the world. Almost the only sustenance in northern Europe came from roaming herds of mammoths, reindeer, bison and horses. Finding them required long, arduous hunting trips in which numerous males died, leading to a high ratio of surviving women to men.
The study itself and some of the ancillary findings (the Japanese study where the blonde gene is thought to have arisen 11k BP) are certainly interesting. However, the scenario about blondes being far more attractive to men, men getting killed hunting, etc., seems more like one of the "just-so" stories usually created to "explain" a particular trait (Gould and Eldridge's spandrels again). It seems as if a trait like this were to become truly fixed in a population, it would have to be far more functional in nature than simply a 'gentlemen prefer blondes' issue. No doubt the reading on the distribution of hair and eye colors geographically will be worthy in and of itself.
Do we really need another Scarlett Johanssen picture to demonstrate what a blonde cave-woman might have looked like?
Yes, I believe we do:
Artists' conception of what the first blonde northern European female might have looked like:
