Blond Hair in the Solomon Islands

Naturally blond hair occurs in approximately 5–10 percent of the Indigenous population of the Solomon Islands. The trait is especially noticeable among children because blond hair may darken with age.

When these photographs were taken in 2006, blond hair in Solomon Islanders was sometimes attributed to European ancestry, prolonged sun exposure, or diet. A genetic study published in Science in 2012 found that the principal cause is instead a locally occurring variant of the TYRP1 gene, which encodes a protein involved in pigmentation.

The variant is inherited recessively, meaning that an individual generally needs to inherit it from both parents for blond hair to develop. Researchers found no systematic difference in European ancestry between blond- and dark-haired participants. The identified variant was absent from the European genomes examined in the study, demonstrating that blond hair developed independently in the Solomon Islands and Europe.