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The Europe section is based almost entirely on 19th and early 20th century sources, including the controversial Carleton Coon. Another source is ladepeche.fr, a regional tabloid. I wanted to delete all of this, but figured I would be flagged for being too WP:BOLD in light of my recent edits. Also, it would leave us with virtually nothing for the Europe section. So I'm sitting this down here until I can find reliable sources for any info on this hair color in Europe. Which shouldn't be too difficult. - Hunan201p (talk) 20:32, 30 January 2022 (UTC)
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Can somebody add a wikilink to pigmentation for the word pigmentation in Prevalence/Europe? 72.23.45.110 (talk) 20:19, 19 November 2022 (UTC)
@TylerBurden: My edit was reverted, so I figured we should discuss this. [4] There are already 16 images in this article. There doesn't need to be that many per MOS:IMAGERELEVANCE. There is already a relevant linked wikimedia commons category linked at the end of the article if people really need to see endless pictures of people with blonde hair. [5] I figured that getting rid of a black and white photograph would be the least controversial to remove from the article. While you can see that his hair is light, you can't tell from the photograph itself if it was a light brown or some other lighter pigment. I don't really see the point.
In my opinion, the most relevant images (because of their variety and illustrative purpose to the article) are:
Clovermoss🍀 (talk) 15:06, 28 January 2023 (UTC)
The section on Africa seems a bit out of place compared to the others. The other regional sections discuss the indigenous/autochthonous presence of blond(e) hair but the Africa section seems to be exclusively external in source.
The first paragraph mentions blonds, but only as they exist in the South African European descended immigrants. While demographic change can surely be used to justify inclusion, why not have a section on North America?
The primary issues is with the second paragraph. The second paragraph only makes mention of mummies, also existing at a time of increased outside influence and in one color segregated grave, more likely indicating familial connection than presence of the hair color in Africa. This isn't even to mention the troublesome issue with hair color and human remains, where it isn't uncommon for the hair to lighten over the millennia. Take for example red-haired mummies in the Americas where there exists no evidence of a mutated MC1R or other cause for the hair color. There has been some work done by Dr. Janet Davey with donated hair and wigs but such was limited and couldn't replicate thousands of years of aging. It's just overall a very limited and specious inclusion that sticks out.
Could the section be amended to include extant examples of blond(e) hair, particularly in immigrants outside South Africa? Or a section on the Americas for that matter. Additionally, there are certainly more examples of living blonde Africans (albeit from Albinism) than blonde mummies and there is no mention of them, either. The Egyptian example given is a singular outlier that ultimately might not have even been lighter in hair color and could very well represent foreign influence. It's a tenuous inclusion in absence of more relevant and representative information. Prime Paladin (talk) 06:11, 13 February 2023 (UTC)
User @Tylerburden keeps editing in completely bogus claims regarding the hair colour. He has cherry picked a couple of badly researched sources that are not related to the subject of this article. I suspect his motivations to be ideological. We have mosaics from both the era of Berenice II and Alexander the Great showing them with dark hair. NoMoreBu11 (talk) 17:09, 23 March 2023 (UTC)
How come only the spelling "blond" is used? It's a gender-specific word. I know that "she was blond" is wrong (should be "blonde"); I would think that "she had blond hair" would also be wrong. Is there any good argument for not doing this? Herostratus (talk) 04:13, 22 May 2023 (UTC)
The redirect Ice Blonde has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2023 May 27 § Ice Blonde until a consensus is reached. Jay 💬 14:04, 27 May 2023 (UTC)
Maybe it’s a regional or age thing, but I very, very rarely see the “blond” spelling (and even then usually from people much older than me). Maybe some places it has gendered spelling but it absolutely does not where I have lived my whole life (California). 45.49.10.103 (talk) 06:09, 6 September 2023 (UTC)
ROME NEVER CROSSED THE RHINE. THIS ARTILCLE IMPLIES THAT. THAT IS INCORRECT BY 100 % 2600:8800:8692:4200:C1A7:821C:7FF7:9DA2 (talk) 04:54, 10 October 2023 (UTC)
@TylerBurden: you blanket reverted me on [20:21 15 February 2024], with the explanation that the article "is not a competition of attractiveness".
Well, in this article, there is a notion that blonde women have been considered especially attractive, particularly during the Middle Ages, but also in modern times.
However, reliable research has critically examined this notion, and found that heterosexual men generally rank blonde women as less attractive than women with darker hair colors, in spite of the purported hype.
V. Swami, et al. hypothesize (p. 430) that British participants would show a preference for blonde women based on research about their over-representation in popular media over the previous four decades. Yet contrary to their expectations, British subjects generally selected dark-haired women as ideal. They cite other research, namely Rich and Cash (1993), to suggest that blonde women might not have been as over-represented in the media as previously believed, and that their results may be explained by the popularity of brunette women in popular media.
A very similar conclusion is reached in Wortham, et al 2018. They note (p. 34) the same research dating back to the 1960s to suggest that blonde women are over-represented in fashion magazines. However they note (p.37) that research on preferences is inconclusive, citing studies to show that brunette women are actually considered more attractive, in general. This includes Swami's research. Wortham et al. found that blonde women were generally regarded as less attractive than brunette women.
On page 49 they discuss their findings. Similar to Swami, et al, they observed that brunette women are actually the majority of fashion models, contrary to research from decades prior that found that blonde women were the majority. They likewise cite Rich and Cash (1993), showing the decline of blonde women in the fashion industry. They suggest that this may explain why brunette women are generally preferred.
Jacobi et al. (1994) examined hair color preferences based around the findings of Rich and Cash (1993). Like the previous authors, they found that there was a general preference for brunettes, and in their conclusion they wrote: "Furthermore, most men do not personally prefer the very thin, blonde, blue-eyed, large-busted image of many female fashion models."
By introducing these sources to the article, I am not creating a 'competition between hair colors', as you suggest. I am creating a balanced representation of the research that has critically examined the topic of blonde women's attractiveness, which is a key focus point of this article. The article in its previous state had a non-neutral point of view, which only championed blonde women, in spite of research to the contrary.
And in Central Asia, which was colonized by Russians, blonde women are considered unattractive and cannot represent a beauty ideal (Fierman, 1991), to the extent that Russian educators struggled to convince local students otherwise (Kriendler, 1993). In East Asia, blonde hair is considered unattractive on women, and blonde immigrant women report that their hair color is denied in the Asian beauty ideal (Lundstrom, 2014).
Clearly, blonde women are considered downright unattractive in other parts of the world, despite the wholesale export of European culture to the rest of the world in the last century. Without these perspectives, the article pumps up blond hair in a way that is inconsistent with Wikipedia's policy on neutrality. We should deliver the whole body of research to the reader. Red Book Librarian (talk) 07:01, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
TylerBurden's blanket revision of my contributions undid improvements that weren't related to the topic of blonde women's attractiveness in contemporary society.
I removed a great deal of content from this article that does not verify. For example, I removed the claim that Mary Magdalene is portrayed as blonde in medieval Gothic paintings, which was cited to Schiller pp. 155-158.
Yet, as I explained in my edit summary with a URL link, Schiller pages 155-158, Schiller doesn't say anywhere that Mary was blonde.
Please respect the suggestion at WP:MASSR that editors generally should not blanket-revert content that is not disruptive. That in of itself is disruptive and causes the other editor inconvenience. Red Book Librarian (talk) 07:01, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
"In the 1960s and 1970s, research showed that blonde women were over-represented in Western popular media.[1] However, research in Western countries has found that men in western countries generally find dark-haired women more attractive than those with blonde hair, and blonde women may not be over-represented in modern popular media[2][3][4]"
This section contains outdated information. Specifically, the idea that the KITLG allele for blond hair originated in ANE (Ancient North Eurasian) and spread into Europe with WSH (western steppe herders) has been significantly challenged by more recent research papers and sequencing. This section should be updated for the following reasons:
1. Alleles for blond hair have been found in several populations not harboring ANE/WSH ancestry. Individuals of the neolithic Globular Amphora culture are predicted via HIrisPlex-S panel to have blond hair, with all sequenced individuals possessing the G allele of rs12821256 coding for light colored hair, notably found on the KITLG gene (see supplementary table 4)[1]. This culture predates the arrival of ANE-bearing western steppe herders from the east; this Early European Farmer population did not carry steppe related ancestry [2]. Blond hair was again inferred in Anatolian Neolithic/Early European Farmers, notably the Linear Pottery Culture of North and Central Europe (see page 22 of supplementals) [3]. In terms of autosomal ancestry, Linear Pottery is on the same ancestral cline as Globular Amphora. Blond hair was present in the Neolithic of Anatolia (Turkey) at Barcın, Chalcolithic Southeastern Europe (Romania at Bodrogkeresztur), Chalcolithic of the Levant (Israel), and a Minoan from Lasithi [4]. Thus, blonde hair was already present in the European continent before the arrival of steppe groups.
2. The presence of the KITLG pre-allele in a single ANE sample does not necessarily indicate its origin in the ANE population. It is true that the oldest example of KITLG rs12821256 was found in the Afontova Gora ANE individual. However, as already stated, this mutation appears in farmer populations which did not contact ancient north eurasians or steppe pastoralists. Logically, this mutation must have originated in an ancestral population that gave descent to many West Eurasian groups, including European and West Asian neolithic farmers and Ancient North Eurasians in order for members of the Globular Amphora Culture to have the G allele. Therefore, blonde hair
3. There are a number of alleles encoding for light hair coloring, but this section only focuses on a single allele: rs12821256. It is misleading to simplify the genotype behind light colored hair to only one mutation. The aforementioned HIrisPlex-S panel examines several high impact SNPs encoding hair color in addition to rs12821256. Even if steppe pastoralists did carry rs12821256 into Europe and elsewhere, we cannot in good faith say that blond hair as a general phenotype was brought to Europe with steppe pastoralists because without considering all genetic mutations encoding for this trait.
4. Many of the sources provided in this section predate the papers I have cited here or reference outdated information. At the very least, new information should be included to balance out the old. Recently released papers from the past few years have analyzed thousands of new skeletal samples, notably from Isof Lazaridis and David Reich.
I believe it is extremely relevant to include the above information in order to be objective and comprehensive. Noleb (talk) 06:56, 6 March 2024 (UTC)
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Please see my above post for an explanation of the following edits.
Please change:
Geneticist David Reich said that the hundreds of millions of copies of this SNP, the classic European blond hair mutation, entered continental Europe by way of a massive population migration from the Eurasian steppe, by a people who had substantial Ancient North Eurasian ancestry.[1][a 1]
Ancient North Eurasian admixture is present in mesolithic fossils from Northern Europe, and is linked to the prediction of blond hair in stone-age Scandinavians by ancient DNA analysis.[2]
Gavin Evans analyzed several years of research on the origin of European blond hair, and concluded that the widespread presence of blond hair in Europe is largely due to the territorial expansions of the "all-conquering" Western Steppe Herders; who carried the genes for blond hair.[3][a 2]
A review article published in 2020 analyzes fossil data from a wide variety of published sources. The authors affirm the previous statements, noting that Ancient North Eurasian-derived populations carried the derived blond hair allele to Europe, and that the "massive spread" of Yamnaya steppe pastoralists likely caused the "rapid selective sweep in European populations toward light skin and hair."[4]
to this:
The precise genetic origin and spread of blond hair into its present-day distribution is a topic of debate amongst population geneticists.
Geneticist David Reich said that the hundreds of millions of copies of this SNP, the classic European blond hair mutation, entered continental Europe by way of a massive population migration from the Eurasian steppe, by a people who had substantial Ancient North Eurasian ancestry.[1][a 3] Ancient North Eurasian admixture is present in mesolithic fossils from Northern Europe, and is linked to the prediction of blond hair in stone-age Scandinavians by ancient DNA analysis.[2] Gavin Evans analyzed several years of research on the origin of European blond hair, and concluded that the widespread presence of blond hair in Europe is largely due to the territorial expansions of the "all-conquering" Western Steppe Herders; who carried the genes for blond hair.[3][a 4] A review article published in 2020 analyzes fossil data from a wide variety of published sources. The authors affirm the previous statements, noting that Ancient North Eurasian-derived populations carried the derived blond hair allele to Europe, and that the "massive spread" of Yamnaya steppe pastoralists likely caused the "rapid selective sweep in European populations toward light skin and hair."[4]
In contrast, geneticist Isof Lazaridis in his 2022 paper showed that blond hair did not spread into Europe with steppe pastoralists carrying Ancient North Eurasian ancestry. Regarding the genetic history of light hair, eyes, and skin, the authors state that "aspects of this phenotype were distributed in the past among diverse ancestral populations and did not coincide in any single population except as isolated individuals, and certainly not in any of the proposed homelands of the Indo-European language family. The study analyzed thousands of newly sequenced ancient samples and identified genetic mutations for blond hair in individuals belonging to the neolithic Linear Pottery Culture of North and Central Europe, the Neolithic of Anatolia (Turkey) at Barcın, Chalcolithic Southeastern Europe (Romania at Bodrogkeresztur), Chalcolithic of the Levant (Israel), and a Minoan from Lasithi. These populations did not carry Ancient North Eurasian ancestry. Furthermore, Lazaridis noted that blond hair was virtually absent amongst the earliest steppe pastoralist groups such as the Yamnaya and Afanasievo cultures, but nominally higher in later steppe groups possessing Early European Farmer ancestry such as the Bell Beaker Culture. Lazaridis concluded that the prevalence of blond hair across ancient samples was "in reverse relationship to steppe ancestry, and thus inconsistent with the theory that steppe groups were spreading this set of phenotypes."[5]
A 2019 study examining the neolithic Globular Amphora Culture found that all tested individuals carried the mutated allele rs12821256 of the KITLG gene encoding for blond hair.[6] Notably, these Early European Farmers did not possess ancestry from Indo-European steppe pastoralists, and therefore lacked ancestry from Ancient North Eurasians.[7]
Noleb (talk) 03:31, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
References
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