Genealogy /
Red Hair - recessive gene from Poland? [108]
The Vikings spreading the gene around makes a lot of sense, as red hair evolved in far north climates to deal with small amounts of Vitamin D, and the Vikings spread their gene pool around northern Europe quite a bit, through simple settlement or raping and pillaging. I know I got part of the recessive gene from my scots-irish side, and the Vikings had quite a bit of red hair too... and they invaded a lot of the baltic, and Poland too. I guess if I go far back enough I'm descended from the Viking invaders. There is red hair in Northwestern Germany (where my Grandma is from), though my Grandma says it wasn't in her family for at least the generation dating back to my great great grandparents. The only other possibility is Polish red hair genes mixing with my scottish or irish genes to give me red hair. I havn't faced much red hair discrimination here in America, maybe due to my physical size or simply because no one thinks anything of it due to the large percentage of scots-irish where I live, easily 75% of the population. (My Polish grandpa is a mountain of a man, and I inherited his genes for that part). I guess I am a werewolf or witch as well, as I have deep green eyes with red hair. I assume that was inherited from my German side, as the only person with green eyes in my family is my German grandma and cousins. Otherwise everyone on both sides of my family has blue eyes. I think I have inherited more of my dad's side of the family, as I am much more similar to the German/Polish side than my mom's irish/scottish side in terms of physical size (I'm already 3 inches taller than anyone on that side, and I'm still growing at a fast clip at 18! i'm around 6'1 right now), and I have a big German nose, and I have a wide eastern European face similar to my Polish Grandpa's. Sorry for the wall of text.. I had a lot of things to respond to.