Blond hair was previously associated with Caucasians, but Melanesians of the Solomon Islands are one of the few groups with blonde hair outside of Europe.
Melanesians are black island people from the South Pacific who migrated thousands of years ago, long before slaves came to the Americas.
Melanesia is an Oceania subregion that stretches from the western end of the Pacific Ocean to the Arafura Sea and eastward to Fiji. The region includes the countries of Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Island, and New Caledonia, as well as the majority of the islands immediately north and northeast of Australia. Jules Dumont d’Urville coined the term Melanesia in 1832 to refer to an ethnic and geographical grouping of islands distinct from Polynesia and Micronesia.
Until recently, the indigenous Melanesian people, like the Asmat tribe, practiced cannibalism, head-hunting, kidnapping, and slavery, but with contact with Europeans, the population has become predominantly Christian. However, more than 90% live in rural areas.
When it comes to dark skin and blond hair, the Melanesian people of the Solomon Islands are of particular interest. The Solomon Islands are an independent state within the British Commonwealth and are located in the South Pacific, in the heart of Melanesia, just northeast of Australia, between Papua and Vanuatu.
Despite the fact that the indigenous Melanesian population of the islands has the darkest skin outside of Africa, between 5 and 10% have bright blond hair.
There are several theories as to how they got their blond hair, including sun and salt whitening, a high fish intake, and genetic heritage from mixed-breeding with the Americans/Europeans who founded the islands.
Sean Myles, a geneticist from Canada’s Nova Scotia Agricultural College, conducted a genetic analysis on saliva and hair samples from 1209 Melanesian Solomon Island residents. He discovered that the blondes carried two copies of a mutant gene that is present in 26 percent of the island’s population after comparing 43 blond Islanders and 42 brown Islanders. Melanesian people have a native TYRP1 gene that is partly responsible for blond hair and melanin and is completely different from Caucasians because it does not exist in their genes.
It is a recessive gene that is more prevalent in children than in adults, with hair darkening as the individual matures.
This lends credence to the theories that black Africans were the first Homo sapiens and that all races descended from them.
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