Red-haired people have fascinated and provoked since time immemorial

Hair the color of fire will definitely not be missed in a crowd. However, they gave their wearers exceptionality more in the bad than in the good. They attracted unwanted attention.

Although many men’s eyes rested fondly on the beauty with alabaster skin, bright red hair and green eyes, the minority difference caused prejudice. And because of them, red-haired people of both sexes often lost their lives.

There are about two percent of redheads in the world, slightly more than the average in Europe. You will find most of them in the north: thirteen percent among the Scots, ten percent among the Irish. It has its reasons. To understand them, let’s recall a little biology.

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Hair color is influenced by the pigment melanin, especially its two main types: the brown-black eumelanin, which protects the body from harmful ultraviolet radiation, and the lighter yellow-orange pheomelanin. Their combination, different amount and different density of distribution in the hair fiber then create different colors and shades of hair.

Everything is controlled by the MC1R gene, which acts as a switch: it regulates the production of the dark pigment eumelanin and thus defines the color of the skin, hair and eyes of a particular individual. To make it not so simple, there are about seventy mutations of this gene, with several of them completely turning off the production of eumelanin.

If an individual with suppressed eumelanin production has enough pheomelanin, they are born with red hair and often green, gray or blue eyes. If he has little of both pigments, he will be blond. Both variants are usually associated with light skin color.

Our ancestors living in North Africa had dark skin, dark eyes and dark hair. The high content of eumelanin represented an adaptive advantage: it allowed survival under the hot sun. Fifty thousand years ago, however, people began to migrate north from Africa and settle in colder areas.

Don’t dye your daughter’s hair red, you are foreshadowing the fires of hell for her!

And in more northerly areas, the reduction in sunlight became a disadvantage because it prevented the body from synthesizing vitamin D. It is produced in the skin exposed to ultraviolet radiation and is essential for bone mineralization, muscle strength, immunity and nervous system function.

“Originally, the rare variant of the MC1R gene, responsible for fair skin, allowed sunlight to be absorbed more easily, so its carriers were healthier and had more offspring. This contributed to its expansion,” states RNDr. Michaela Schierová from the Department of Genetics and Microbiology, Faculty of Science, Charles University.

In Africa, however, the light variant of the gene remained rare. The ancient Egyptians associated it with the sun and with the gods, which brought considerable problems to red-haired people.

As recorded by the high priest and historian Manehto in the third century BC, in a cyclical rite associated with the god Usir, red men were burned annually and their ashes scattered by fans around the area.

“We may suppose that the victims represented the very spirit of the fertility god and ruler of the underworld, Usir, who was thus annually re-slain, dismembered, and buried in their persons to revive the seed of the earth. Similarly, the ancient Romans always sacrificed red puppies in the spring so that the grain would turn red and golden in the summer,” states Scottish anthropologist James George Frazer in the book The Golden Bough.

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In this context, the fact that the mummy of the most powerful Egyptian pharaoh, Ramses II, also has red hair aroused great interest in this context. Great. However, British anthropologist Caroline Wilkinson has recently put this into perspective.

“He had orange hair, which was caused by applying henna dye to aging white hair follicles. Many Egyptians dyed their hair with henna; a personal habit preserved by mummification. However, this does not indicate that Ramses II. he was red-headed in his youth, as some authors claim,” she said in an article published in December 2023 on the Journal of Archaeological Science website.

Also in the ancient world, admiration and contempt clashed in the approach to red-haired people. While in Homer’s Iliad, the greatest Greek hero Achilles is red-headed, the philosopher Aristotle proclaims a few centuries later: “Those who have blond hair are brave; the lions bear witness to this. But those with reddish hair have a bad temper; the foxes testify to that.”

The ancient Romans associated red hair with the image of fierce warriors due to the Celtic tribe of the Gauls. “Their tall figures, long red hair, huge shields, extraordinarily long swords; even more their songs when they go into battle, their war-cries and dances, and the terrible clang of their weapons, when they clash their shields against each other as their fathers did before them – all this terrifies and terrifies the enemy,” writes the historian Titus Livius in his History.

The Romans believed that red slaves, which they imported from Gaul, but also from Ireland, Scotland and Thrace, would bring them luck. Their higher value on the market corresponded to this. While the price of an ordinary slave hovered around five hundred denarii, roughly the annual consumption of a family of three, skilled individuals and redheaded slaves were worth up to three times that.

The milk of red-headed women who are fond of wine and too fond of love has a sour smell

And when it came to a young, beautiful, red-haired slave girl, her price could reach tenfold. The slave owner made a quick return on his investment, as the demand for red-haired prostitutes was high. And according to them, even Roman ladies began to lighten and dye their hair: with cinnamon, honey, lime juice, chamomile and, of course, the proven henna.

A few centuries later, however, everything was different in Europe. The religiously tense Middle Ages did not share the admiration for bright hair color and considered the visual minority difference to be a sign of the devil.

Two well-known medieval writings come from different times and settings: the Secretum Secretorum, a tenth-century Arabic treatise purporting to be advice that Aristotle allegedly addressed to the Macedonian king Alexander the Great, and the mid-twelfth-century Proverbs of Alfred, a collection of sayings attributed to the Anglo-Saxon king Alfred To the great. Both agree on one thing: Don’t trust redheads! Human imagination then added a lot of prejudices and superstitions to this advice. The blood of red men was one of the ingredients necessary to turn copper into gold. Their fat was considered poisonous. And the urine of red-haired boys was added to the gold paint on the stained glass windows to give it a reddish tint.

Many organized Christians even believed that redheads had no soul. Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Christ, also had red hair! Even death was not allowed to him, when he committed suicide, he turned into a vampire. That’s why all vampires burn silver – just as thirty silvers burned Judas’ palm…

The absurd superstition survived into the twentieth century. “In Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania, there are believed to be vampires with red lips, called the Children of Judas. These, the most vile of all, kill their victim with a single bite or kiss that drains all the blood from it at once. Her poisoned flesh is then marked with the devil’s stigmata: three hideous scars in the shape of XXX, meaning thirty silver,” describes occultist Montague Summers in his 1928 book The Vampire, His Kith and Kin.

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Red-headed women fared even worse than men: the church looked upon them as witches, whose sexual appetite ranged from simple promiscuity to communion with demons. “Don’t dye your daughter’s hair red, you are foreshadowing the fires of hell for her!” St. Jerome urged mothers.

The widely accepted medieval prejudice that red-haired women are promiscuous persisted into modern times. It is also evident in the file Des maladies de la grossesse from 1785, in which the doctor Nicolas Chambon advises women on the choice of breastfeeding.

“Breast milk must be sweet and have a pleasant smell, which indicates a good temperament. However, it has a sour, smelly and bad smell in red-haired women who like wine and are too fond of love. Very often it can cause small ulcers in the child’s mouth with its heat and causticity,” he warns.

However, as the centuries progressed, the French were able to appreciate the attractiveness of red-haired women. Their sensual scent was described by Augustin Galopin in Le parfum de la femme from 1886 as follows: “Redheads have the strongest natural scent of all women, that of ambergris and violets. The scent of ambergris is extremely strong at first, as if it came straight from the stomach of a sperm whale, but as it ages, it takes on an earthy sweetness.”

One can hardly resist the impression that the venerable Monsieur Galopin had an impressive personal experience with some redhead.

Even modern times are not free of nonsense about red-haired people. Among them is the speculation that ancient civilizations were founded by red-headed sailors who survived the destruction of Atlantis. That their DNA is of extraterrestrial origin and comes from red-haired Lyrans. Or that Jews and redheads have more Neanderthal genes than the general population and the Nazis subconsciously tried to eradicate the Neanderthal genetic heritage.

If adults can come up with such nonsense, what is it like among children? As you might expect: redheads are often bullied in schools. It starts with mockery already in kindergarten: Zrzi, zrzi, what’s wrong with you? The red stick, the one I regret the most!

Redheads have the strongest natural scent, that of ambergris, which takes on an earthy sweetness

Primary and secondary schools are not much better. In 2008, English students declared Kick a Ginger Day. They were inspired by an episode of the series South Park, in which the authors referred to the medieval superstition about redheads without a soul. However, the intended joke unexpectedly started a series of attacks on red-haired students in the United States, Canada and England. In response to this, Kiss and Ginger Day, which is celebrated on January 12, was created a year later.

Whether they’re met with admiration or silly prejudice, redheads today are proud of their fiery hair. They meet every year in the French Châteaugiron, the Irish Crosshaven, but mainly in the Dutch Tilburg. The Roodharigendag festival there, the largest of its kind in the world, dates back to 2005, when the painter Bart Rouwenhorst was looking for fifteen redhead models for his painting. In the small town of Asten, around one hundred and fifty interested parties gathered for him and they were so enthusiastic about it that they started a tradition.

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