Melanesians: Black people with naturally blonde hair

For many years, people have attributed blondes with Caucasians. But these unique Melanesians of Solomon Islands have ultered the narrative. Find out more about the black people with naturally blonde hair – Melanesians.

Black people with naturally blonde hair

Melanesians are black island people in the south pacific. They migrated well over thousands of years ago, long before blacks came to Americas as slaves.

Melanesia is a sub-region of Oceania extending from the western end of the Pacific Ocean to the Arafura Sea, and eastward to Fiji. The region is mostly constituted of the islands in the north and northeast of Australia, including the countries of Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Island, and New Caledonia.

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The first known use of the name Melanesia was by Jules Dumont d’Urville in 1832 to imply an ethnic and geographical group of islands different from Polynesia and Micronesia.

The indigenous melanesian people were known for their practice of cannibalism, head-hunting, kidnapping and slavery, just like the Asmat tribe. However, through their contact with Europeans, the population is now predominantly Christian. Nevertheless, more than 90% still lead rural lives.

The Melanesian people of the Solomon Islands grab attention when it comes to dark skin and blond hair.

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Although the native Melanesian population of the islands have the darkest skin tone outside Africa, between 5 and 10% of this population have bright blond hair.

Some theories claim that they got their blonde hair from sun and salt whitening, high fish intake, or genetic heritage from mixed-breeding with Americans/Europeans who founded the islands.

In a research, a geneticist from Nova Scotia agricultural college in Canada, Sean Myles, conducted a genetic analysis on saliva and hair samples from 1209 Melanesian Solomon Island residents. From his comparison 43 blond Islanders and 42 brown Islanders, he found that the blondes carried two copies of a mutant gene which is present in 26% of the island’s population.

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The Melanesian people have a native TYRP1 gene which is somewhat responsible for the blonde hair and melanin, which is totally different from that of Caucasians as it doesn’t exist in their genes.

It is a recessive gene and is more familiar with children than with adults, causing their hair to darken as the child grows.

This further proves the theories that black Africans were the first homo sapiens and that all races came out of the black African race.