I will be very interested to see a map of the occurrence of this in Australia, as I don't recall seeing any blond-haired Australian Aborigines, ever. I lived there for 45 years, including around 18 in Darwin.

there are almost none in the northern half of the territory. i suspect that one thing to take into account is that the absolute numbers are very small as the highest frequencies are found in the deep desert where population densities are rather low. the spatial distribution would probably give one the wrong impression because so many aboriginals are to be found in the north and northwest (from what i gather) where blondism is unknown.

Thanks. Isn't it fascinating that until now Google had no access to detailed information on the only non-Caucasian instance of blonde people in the world? You would think people would be interested in something like that. This just shows how strong is the brainwashing is that we are supposed to ignore our lying eyes and remain oblivious to the obvious that nobody until tonight had ever put the facts about this interesting phenomenon on the Web.

There are also some isolated examples of blondness in some Pacific islanders, IIRC.

I remember reading about the blond abos. They are in the wrong place for the 'Dutch sailor' idea. I think this is just a bit of folklore, like the idea that dark Irish are descended from Spanish sailors from the wrecks of the Armada, or that dark Cornish are descended from Phoenecian tin-traders.

A better question is: does anyone have any pictures of blonde aboriginals?

are these two blond?

http://www.azfoto.com/graphics/o.../ aborigines.jpg

not by the standard in the text (there are pictures, their hair is whitish).

David B says:


I remember reading about the blond abos.


David, that is a very insensitive way to refer to Australian Aborigines. Back in the 1930 when white farmers were shooting them, they were referred to that way, and when redneck Aussies refer to them in a pub, they also "abos."

Check out this amazing tribal map of the Aboriginals:

http://www.samuseum.sa.gov.au/ ti...aries_intro.htm

Yes, I was also under the impression that "abo" is a slur, rather like "Jewboy." The first and last time someone used the word "Jewboy" to my face was in the Montreal youth hostel. The person who used it was an English girl. She didn't mean to hurt me, but it really did.

i expect it would, as you're not a boy

RichardSharpe,

As an Australian of european heritage who also has lived in the "bush" for a number of years, I wouldn't necessarily agree that "abo" is a slur. Now if you use "Jacky Jacky" or "Coon" that is another matter completely. "Abo" is just short hand for aboriginal and Australians shorten many words. Some people on the east coast refer to them as "Murrays" or "Kouris" with reference to local tribal groups, but this is not correct for everyone of aboriginal heritage not of those groups.

I can vouch for the fact that you do get a number of aboriginals in Western Australia (esp. the desert regions) with the blond hair. However it is not like european blonde hair and I too am doubtful of the Dutch sailor stories. It looks to the casual observer like bleached dark brown hair, as though it is sun streaked, as it has darker roots than the tips.

The fact that there are no blonde aboriginals in Northern Australia (especially Cape York) would most likely be due to interbreeding with the Torres Strait Islanders north of Cape York.

Redheads tend to have a great amount of pheomelanin, but almost no eumelanin. Ash blonde people are the reverse, while golden blonde individuals tend to be somewhere in the middle.

If Ash blondes were the reverse of redheads (i.e. high levels of eumelanin and almost no pheomelanin) then wouldn't they have black hair?

Interesting abstract:

Relationship of melanin degradation products to actual melanin content: application to human hair


Methods not only for characterizing but also for quantitating melanin subtypes from the two types of melanin found in hair--eumelanin and pheomelanin--have been established. In relation to testing for drugs of abuse in hair, these methods will allow for correction of drug binding to specific melanin subtypes and will serve to improve drug measurement in hair. 5,6-Dihydroxyindole (DHI) and 5,6-dihydroxyindole-2-carboxylic acid (DHICA) make up the majority of the eumelanin polymer while benzothiazene units derived from 2-cysteinyl-S-Dopa (2-CysDopa) and 5-cysteinyl-S-Dopa (5-CysDopa) compose the majority of the pheomelanin polymer. Our results show that: (1) pyrrole-2,3-dicarboxylic acid (PDCA) and pyrrole-2,3,5-tricarboxylic acid (PTCA), markers for DHI and DHICA units, respectively, are produced in 0.37 and 4.8% yields, respectively, when melanins are subjected to alkaline hydrogen peroxide degradation, (2) 3-aminotyrosine (3AT) and 4-amino-3-hydroxyphenylalanine (AHP), markers for 2-CysDopa and 5-CysDopa, respectively, are produced in 16 and 23% yield, respectively, when subjected to hydriodic acid hydrolysis, and (3) that black human hair contains approximately 99% eumelanin and 1% pheomelanin, brown and blond hair contain 95% eumelanin and 5% pheomelanin; and red hair contains 67% eumelanin and 33% pheomelanin. These data will allow deeper investigation into the relationship between melanin composition and drug incorporation into hair.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entr...5& dopt=Abstract

If Ash blondes were the reverse of redheads (i.e. high levels of eumelanin and almost no pheomelanin) then wouldn't they have black hair?

right, i just meant pheomelanin since all the people i'm talking about in the post have lots of eumelanin. but you are correct, will fix that ambiguity/confusion.

The "dutch factor" is also mentioned as the cause of blue eyes in afrobrazilians in Northern Brazil, that, for a while, was a dutch colony.
¿In this case, what do you think about the theory?

There are a lot of indigenous people of blond hair in Melanesia: Salomón Islands, etc.
The white race possibly descends of the Australian race

best site
http://www.flowers-shop.org/

good site
http://www.pokkers.org

nice site
http://www.pregnancy.net.in

i wish someone would post some pictures of blonde aboriginals here! surely someone must've travelled to central australia and posted the pics on flickr etc

the two posted above are the closest i've seen on the whole web!!
email me if you have anything please...

Here are some blondies:
http://focusmag.infopop.cc/eve/f...53/m/ 5651073771

Razib, Thanks for the post. I quoted some of your information in a book I just published. It may offer a plausible explaination for the blond genes in Australia, especially in central Australia.

I was originally researching four unusual arc-shaped plateaus I had located in satellite imagery at the geographical centers of Asia, Australia, Africa, and N. America when I stumbled on the fact that 5000-year old blond mummies had been discovered at Urumqi, China (the geo-center of Asia). This made me wonder if there were any occurances of blond Aboriginals in Australia, and that is when I found your posting with the amazing high percentage of blondes concentrated near the geographical center. I then went on to find a blond native Indian population discovered in 1804 at the exact geo-center of America. Too bizarre to be a coincedence.

If interested in learning more details, you can use the "search inside" feature at Amazon to read random pages of the book. Just search "Alan Moen" in Amazon and you'll find it.

Too bizarre to be a coincedence.

How can anything be 'too bizarre' to be a coincidence?

I noticed that there were recent comments on this very old thread, so I checked it out. I see that my jocular reference to 'abos' was criticised a long time ago. I didn't respond at the time because I didn't read the comments then. I take the opportunity now to say that I didn't intend the term in any derogatory sense. I might similarly refer to the French as Frogs, or the Welsh as Druids. But I suppose I would be roasted for that too.

I guess anything is possible, but the odds of similar arc-shaped plateaus at the geographical center of four continents, and evidence of ancient blond-haired people being found in the same location seems way too unlikely to be a coincedence of nature.

Here is a short YouTube video showing satellite images of the four locations.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y...h? v=YJ0NnwfsuMQ