I don’t mean “black” as in Afro-textured hair obviously. I mean hair that’s the color black. [This survey](https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Eye-color-prevalence-across-Europe-and-Central-Asia_tbl1_330098152) that was done on Northern European hair and eye colors didn’t even include black hair as an option, so it made me curious if it’s really that uncommon in Northern Europe.
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They say the first settlers in Estonia who came from Urals looked Asian (so had black hair I guess) and we got our language from them. Blue-eyed blonds game later and started to dominate the looks. So nowadays black hair is not so common but Estonians still have quite diverse looks.
Umm, that survey clearly says “eye color”. Not hair color.
Black hair isn’t uncommon in Northern Europe.
Black hair – whether it’s an accurate term or not – is not common. It’s typically an african and asian trait.
I think black hair is the most common in Spain, but the real problem would be to identify who is it considered a native ancestor
Black hair and black eyes are quite uncommon in England but tends to be a bit more common in Scotland and Wales. I’ve met quite a few Welsh people who look surprisingly Mediterranean (Tom Jones is a particularly extreme case – I’m convinced he must have some non-White ancestry) as Wales was quite isolated from later migrations of people to Britain from continental Europe and so are one of the most genetically distinct people in Britain (people from the Orkneys are the most distinct, probably because of Nordic ancestry).
I’ve mistaken two work colleagues for having Maghrebi ancestry when it turned out they were basically 100% French. The combination of dark hair, eyes and skin is just way less common among English people and doesn’t really fall that well into the White English Overton window.
Depends on what you mean by black. There are many people who would often be described as having black hair, but it’s usually very very dark brown and different from the type of more jet black that many people in Asia or Africa have. Colin Farrell would be a good example.
>This surveythat was done on Northern European hair and eye colors didn’t eveninclude black hair as an option, so it made me curious if it’s reallythat uncommon in Northern Europe.
Well the survey was not only done on Northern European hair and it is a literature review on different works on pigmentations in Europe and Central Asia.
If you had bothered to look into it, you would have seen that the main reason that black is not an option, is that the authors of that review merged black and brown to one category without stating a particular reason despite the original source of hair categories having a black option and stating that ca. 5% of all Danish “Caucasians” examined were black haired.
In Poland? 5% at most and even then it may just be dark brown dyed black in most cases.
Raven black hair is quite rare, on the contrary, brown hair, more or less dark, is very common.
Not common at all really. I haven’t really seen any Swede with naturally black hair.
There’s a news reader , Annechien Steenhuizen, who has black hair who went on a program where they map your genealogy and it turns out although they always thought they must have had some Spanish or Indonesian ancestry her entire father’s side of the family that has the black hair is actually entirely european and her family tree can only be traced to one non-dutch ancestor on her mothers side.
They even did a DNA test that showed she has no asian ancestry in her genes
https://cbg.nl/kennis/verborgenverleden/annechiensteenhuizen/#:~:text=Annechien%20laat%20een%20foto%20zien,Spanjaard%20in%20de%20stamboom%20zitten.
Idk what tribe would count as native..
The stone age people? The bronze age societies? The Roman settlements, the Celts, the Slavs, mixed with some germanic neighbours and leftovers from roman settlements..?
But anyways, it is rare to see people with natural black hair. Most have brown hair with various shades. It is very common for kids to be blonde, then slowly get darker color when they grow up. Some also stay blonde. Eyes can be dark brown, blue, green..
From the top of my head, I would say I know more gingers than people with truly black hair. Don’t know the statistics, but I know that gingers are not that common.
Not very common although my dad and his brother have black hair but it was blonde when they were born and changed colour as they aged. And the only ancestry they have is English and Irish (unless my nan is hiding something lol). Every other dark haired person has just very get dark brown hair.
Black hair is not common. Dark-blond or light-brown is most common. We also have people with light blond hair or dark-brown and insignificant number of unicorns who are redheads. Black hair is very rare.
I’m English and both my parents had black hair – I don’t though.
Black hair is not overly common but dark brown/brunette more so.
As in Afro-hair, not common at all. Perhaps slightly wavy hair can be common, but the curls, texture and thickness that you would find in black hair is not common. As for the color, brown is much more common than black. I have dark, brown hair with light eyes (blue/greenish), for instance.
True black? Probably only if there’s some Mongol/Tatar/Romani etc genes down your genealogic tree. As another person mentioned, rarer than redheads.
Not that uncommon. However, most people have brown or dark brown hair.
Less so black hair, but very dark brown is really common, like so dark it sort of looks almost black when it’s short.
We’re stereotyped as a bunch of gingers (and indeed we do have the highest number per capita) but the dark hair/blue eyes/pale skin combination is more common.
It’s the base coloration for all humans, so it would be what number remains when you subtract every other.
Why is done that way? Blond hair and blue eyes are mutations that developed around the Baltic states and north of of the Black sea (don’t remember which was which). It started spreading through Europe and Asia. Other combinations are those mutations in different appearances. E.g. green eyes are people with both dominant genes for brown and blue eyes.
The study shows the spread of this new mutations over the basic (brown eyes, black hair). That’s the only point. there are plenty of mutations that could be tracked that way but those are readily apparent and easy to understand to model how such mutations spread over time.
Neandertals apparently evolved too red hair and blue eyes but the genes in the Europeans seems not related to them, that is, is not part of the DNA we carry from our Neandertal ancestors (which are also shared with Asian populations).