They called us the Gingernuts, my cousin and I. Born only six weeks apart and living in the same city, we were in the same class right through our schooldays. By the age of 7 we knew that we were cursed with flaming red hair; teachers occasionally mistook us for twins while some of our classmates lumped us together as a pair, stereotypically naming us after biscuits.
Thankfully we always knew we were different from each other. We didn’t even think about our gingersnap similarity. I was the blue-eyed one covered in freckles while she had brown eyes and darker skin tone that tanned a bit in the sun. She was outspoken – bold as brass. I was shy and a scaredy-cat. We were each other’s best friends; occasionally she was my best enemy if she got to sit beside granny in the car. We just happened to be born into a family where red hair pops up all over the place – siblings, parents, grand-parents. True, everyone has a different shade of red, leading to various comparisons amongst ourselves about who was more bright orange, deep auburn, copper, pale strawberry or – heaven forbid – “carrot top” but red is definitely the default hair colour in our family.
In the UK our pillar boxes are bright red to make them to stand out, but what we didn’t know – at that tender age – that the rest of the world tended to view what is on top of our heads as dangerous. Curse or blessing? Fewer than two percent of all human beings have reddish-brown hair. Scotland has the highest number of redheads per capita (13%) followed by Ireland and Wales. Redheads are therefore definitely in a global minority, so myths and legends about ginger hair[1][2] have persisted for thousands of years. There’s a fair degree of fascination, discrimination and stigma associated with our unusual mop[3], and here are only just a few examples.
Stereotyping
The Egyptians apparently offered gingers as sacrifices, so unlucky and dangerous did they consider red heads to be. Herodotus wrote about the Budini, a tribe in the region that the Greeks called Scythia who had “blue-grey eyes and red hair.” In medieval times, red hair was heavily associated with Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus Christ to the pharisees while in Eastern Europe red hair was associated with vampires. Between the 15th and 18th centuries, thousands of redheads were deemed to be witches; routinely stripped and searched for “the mark of the devil” – and boy! were there plenty of freckles for Inquisitors to choose from – before being burned for stealing hell’s fire. British superstitions? A black-haired man bearing gifts and crossing your threshold at New Year will bring you luck until the next Hogmanay. But heaven help you if it’s a red-haired woman who first enters your home. A year’s worth of bad luck will be your lot.
Ginger stereotypes persist in fiction. My unconventional, red haired mum loved Astrid Lindgren’s post WWII-character Pippi Langstrump (Longstocking). Like my big cousin, Pippi is a playful, unpredictable, rule-breaking red-head; only Pippi was an orphan with her own home, a sackful of inherited gold coins and a pet monkey. With her boundless energy Pippi turns the tables on bullies and pompous adults and I think that even today’s children need more rebels like her. Even at the age of 95, my mum still has bad-ass traits like Pippi! Another bringer of joy from my childhood – Anne of Green Gables – was the red-haired, freckle-faced orphan who was adopted by the Cuthbert siblings who lived on Prince Edward Island (Canada). Far from perfect, often impulsive Anne Shirley made mistakes but always learned from them. I love the way that Anne embraces life with enthusiasm! I‘ve always tried to copy her ability to see the world as beautifully full of opportunities. I choose to be happy.
On the other hand…… In 2013, in an episode of South Park – a satirical cartoon series with (mainly) child characters – a main protagonist Eric Cartman’s hair was dyed red in his sleep after he invented “kick a ginger kid day”. Suffice it to say that police ended up being called into a school in England after several students were attacked by schoolmates for having red hair[4]. Since then, the Anti-Bullying Alliance have held an annual red hair day festival in London to promote pride in being ginger.
Some think we’re hot-headed, after all Henry VIII could qualify as one of the tempestuous and bad-tempered kings in history. His sharp-tongued daughter Elizabeth I, similarly, ginger, was famously stubborn and single-minded although arguably changed people’s minds because red-hair became fashionable in Tudor times. Other re-heads who made notable contributions to our world include Emperor Nero, Erik (Thorvaldsson) the Red, Alexander the Great, Winston Churchill, Antonio Vivaldi and Vincent van Gogh. More recently, however, there’s some genetic and genomic evidence that the Egyptian royal line – Pharaohs and even Cleopatra – may have had naturally auburn hair [5] [6] [7]. Or was it henna or some similar pigment used during embalming? Questions, questions…
The “Ginger Gene”
Unsurprisingly, science has things to tell us about red headedness. Early ideas about being conceived during menstruation or birthed during orange – red – pink sunrises have been robustly debunked. They are nonsense, but DNA analysis reveals that a few Homo neaderthalensis carried the “ginger” gene more than 40,000 years ago[8]. No-one has definitive evidence but the gene may have evolved in the Volga region, or Western Asia. There’s little doubt today that red hair and pale skin is a common trait amongst Scandinavians, along with really high prevalence in the regions of northern Europe where Celts and Vikings roamed the lands. The genetics of red hair amongst all of the “gingernuts” across the world like with mutations – changes – within the part of a cell membrane that responds to MSH; it’s a protein known as the melanocortin-1 receptor or MC1R for short. The key role of this receptor is that it determines people’s skin and hair colour.
Sit awhile and let me tell the story of how and why inherited defects in MC1R signalling processes are bad news; they result in red-hair, fair skin, UV sensitivity and associated risk of melanoma. Since the purpose of this piece is to focus on the “ginger gene” and human skin pigmentation, we need to examine something called a-melanocyte stimulating hormone. We can call it MSH because that’s what lots of physiologists do! It comes from the pituitary gland in the brain – the conductor of the endocrine (hormone) orchestra.
Melanocytes and Melanins
So…. Back to the “ginger gene”. Did you know that you have some special cells called Melanocytes? They are scattered through the bottom layer of the epidermis of human skin (the stratum basale)[9]. Typically, there are about 1500 of them per square millimetre; that’s somewhere between 5 and 10% of all the cells in this layer. MSH is their controller; these cells are like little factories for making melanin – the pigment that absorbs light and protects skin from ultraviolet (UV) radiation. After making the melanin, the cells are busy loading it into little packages (called organelles) that are known as melanosomes[10] and then transporting it to neighbouring keratinocytes (skin cells). In this way, a UV-protective layer is established, making skin tone darker and enhancing the skin’s ability to resist injury from UV light. The dark, brown-black form of melanin is called eumelanin; a quick rule of thumb is that the more melanosomes in your skin, the more eumelanin – nature’s sunscreen – a person is able to make.
Now here comes the difference! People who have naturally red hair carry at least two copies of a mutation (genetic change) in melanocortin-1 receptor (MC1R) – a protein that is normally found in the cell membranes of skin and other cells. At least 80% of redheads have these variations, so some call it the “ginger gene”. Yes, indeed 21st century Molecular biology confirms that we gingernuts are different from brunettes, blondes and everyone else!
A reduced ability to make eumelanin is at the root of our hair colour, fair skin, decreased tanning ability, freckling and increased sensitivity to UV radiation that’s characteristic of redheads. Our MC1R mutations (which may be complete or partial) mean that our bodies produce very low concentrations of eumelanin, making our skin very pale and translucent. Instead of eumelanin we produce more phaeomelanin, a yellowish pigment, in varying amounts depending on the “mix” of mutations and variants we have inherited. Hence there are never two shades of red hair that are the same and the ability to form freckles seems to depend on the number(s) of variants. Red hair never really goes grey or silver like brunettes and blondes do; often the hair darkens to a brownish colour which fades to increasingly pale strawberry blonde….. but there’s always a touch of red.
Why? Most scientists think that modern humans originated in the Great Rift Valley of Africa and then, over many, many years, people gradually migrated north to populate Europe, Asia and the Americas. Probably the migrants had the functional (normal) variant of MC1R and, we think, accordingly dark skin and hair. Maybe much as displayed by those with indigenous African ancestry today? But as people moved north, the levels of solar radiation fell; geneticists think that there was less selective pressure and so dysfunctional variants began to become more frequent.
Benefits?
There is, however, one evolutionary benefit to being poor at making eumelanin. And it’s nothing to do with entrenched ideas about fiery temperaments or difficult behaviours. Can you guess? The lower concentration of melanin confers the advantage of being able to make sufficient vitamin D under low light conditions. Great news if you live in the northern hemisphere in the winter. Sunshine on your shoulders can be great for our well-being. It cheers us up! And vitamin D is an essential factor for lots of body processes.
There are downsides of the inability of very fair skinned people to tan? Some think that different forms of the gene for MC1R can act as a “switch” that determines whether a redhead has the ability to tan or simply to burn within about 15 minutes of being exposed to sunlight. There’s a bit of an argument amongst the science geeks about why our folic acid levels get higher as we age, also about rather weird pain thresholds and response to anaesthetics, but about one thing the science is clear.
Variant Melanocytes are not very good at repairing themselves so the lifetime risk of melanoma and other skin cancers is much higher then non-redheads. And it gets higher the greater and longer our exposure to UV light. Bas Luhrmann was right. Wear sunscreen. It works.
[1] Sarah Hutto and Slackjaw 12 totally true myths about redheads [Online: https://medium.com/slackjaw/12-totally-true-myths-about-redheads-14cbb55955fc]
[2] NR Scott (2018). An Esoteric History of Red Hair. A fun read that’s independently published. Available in paperback and Kindle editions from Amazon.
[3] Colliss Harvey, J. (2017) Red: a natural history of the redhead. Allen & Unwin
[4] Walker, P (2013) Police called in to school over ‘kick a ginger kid day’. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/oct/18/police-called-school-kick-ginger-day
[5] Egypt Museum. Mummy of Ramses II. Online: https://egypt-museum.com/mummy-of-ramesses-ii/
[6] Manchester University (2010) Was the great Pharaoh Ramesses II a true redhead? Press Release online: https://www.manchester.ac.uk/about/news/was-the-great-pharaoh-ramesses-ii-a-true-redhead/
[7] Wilkinson, CM., Saleem, S.N., Liu, C.Y.J., Roughley, M. (2023) Revealing the face of Ramesses II through computed tomography, digital 3D facial reconstruction and computer-generated Imagery. Journal of Archaeological Science, 160, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2023.105884. Accessed online:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305440323001644; January 3rd, 2026]
[8] Bradt, S (2007) DNA reveals Neaderthal redheads. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2007/11/dna-reveals-neanderthal-redheads/
[9] You can also find melanocytes in the eye, the inner ear, in the meninges and brain, in vaginal epithelium, in bones and your heart. The precise fate of these melanocytes depends on their location and function, but I’m ignoring all of them for now because we’re thinking about red hair, fair skin and associated physiology.
[10] Christina Wasmeier, Alistair N. Hume, Giulia Bolasco, Miguel C. Seabra; Melanosomes at a glance. J Cell Sci 15 December 2008; 121 (24): 3995–3999. doi: https://doi.org/10.1242/jcs.040667
