Ryan Bridge: Congratulations to the redheads

A special good morning to all the redheads listening. 

There's some new Harvard research that's come out about human evolution and it mentions you. I'll get to you in a sec.

Conventional wisdom says that homo sapiens (us) basically stopped evolving when we emerged 300,000 years ago. We reached peak human.

It took us about seven million years to evolve from looking more like Apes. It took us four million years to walk on two legs, which is one of things that makes humans. More recently we learnt how to use tools, language. 

But once we stopped hunter-gathering, roaming round looking for food, and settled down to farm our own and build cities and civilisations, natural selection wasn't such a big deal. 

But that's not true. 

They looked at DNA from 16,000 people over 10,000 years, some from ancient burial sites and modern ones from the UK Biobank.

We used to think natural selection was changing just a dozen genes, they now reckon it's hundreds. 

Coeliac disease is now more common. You might think why? Who doesn't love pasta and oats? You'd think evolution would edit out coeliac diseases. 

No, because the gene actually increases your resistance to a bunch of germs and bacteria. So, you're less likely to die, more likely to live longer. The longer you live, the more likely you pass that gene onto your kids. That's how natural selection works.

The gene for narrow waists have become more common because we didn't need to store as much fat post-hunter-gatherer days (though you wouldn't know it walking through the supermarket).

And redheads, the red hair gene, MC1R, it's become more common in recent history. 

It's popular. More gingers than ever before. Congratulations.

The only mystery is why as there's no obvious survival advantage, other than looking fabulous, I suppose.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
And a very special good morning to all the redheads
listening to the show this morning. Lovely to have you
tuning in. There's a new Harvard research come out about
human evolution and it mentions you quite specifically, so I'll
come back to that a second. I'll come back to
you in a second. But conventional wisdom says that Homo sapiens,
that's us, we've been round about three hundred thousand years. Basically,

(00:20):
we stopped evolving as soon as we came into being.
We reached pete human and then we know, let's give
up tools down, go home. We don't need to evolve anymore.
It took us about seven million years to evolve from
looking more like apes. It took us four million years
to walk on two legs, which is one of the
things that makes humans humans. And more recently, we learned

(00:41):
how to use tools and language. That took a while.
Some of us still not that great at it. But
once we stopped hunter gathering, you know, roaming around looking
for food and settle down to farm our own food
and build cities and build civilizations and all that good stuff,
natural selection wasn't such a big deal. But that is
not true. They looked at DNA this study from sixteen

(01:03):
thousand people over ten thousand years, some from ancient burial sites,
some from modern DNA banks like the UK Biobank. So
we used to think natural selection was changing just a
dozen genes. Now they reckon it's hundreds of genes in
modern times. You know Celiac disease that's now more common.
And you might think, why, who doesn't love pasta and oats, right,

(01:27):
you'd think evolution would edit out something like Celiac disease,
But no, because the gene actually increases your resistance to
a whole bunch of germs and bacteria, so you're less
likely to die, You're more likely to live longer, and
the longer you live, the more likely you are to
pass that gene onto your kids. That's how natural selection works.

(01:48):
The gene for narrow wastes has become more common. This is,
according to the research, because we didn't need to store
as much fat. You know, when we were hunting gathering,
we had to store a lot of fat because we
didn't know when the next meal was coming. Now we're farming,
we don't need to do it. Although you wouldn't know
that walking around the supermarket and checking out people's bellies.
Would you, redheads? It's your time to shine. The redhead gene,

(02:09):
the MC one R. It's become more common in recent history.
It's popular, more gingers than ever before, more gingers than
you can shake a stick at. Congratulations. The only risk
mystery in this whole story is why there is no
obvious survival advantage to being a ginger other than I

(02:29):
suppose looking fabulous. For more from Early Edition with Ryan Bridge,
listen live to News Talks at B from five am weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio