Where Does The Red Hair Gene Come From. One of the very first features suggested as having a neanderthal origin was red hair. The red head gene is recessive and usually jumps a generation.
As well as having red heads in diana s family her father and brother charles father was also a red head or at least a strawberry blonde. The gene for red hair is recessive so a person needs two copies of that gene for it to show up or be expressed. The gene that causes red hair to occur is a recessive gene meaning it must be present twice for red hair to form or in other words inherited from both parents.
One of the very first features suggested as having a neanderthal origin was red hair.
Red hair alleles may have survived in the local gene pool though but cannot be expressed due to the lack of other genes for light hair pigmentation. Last medically reviewed on september 18 2018. The vikings maybe brought a few red hair genetic variants over with them but the majority of redheads were already here red hair is caused by v60l allele the ginger gene. Though about 1 2 of the general world population has the red hair gene that percentage rises to 2 to 6 percent north of the equator.