Enjoy Red-Hot Ginger Vibes All Year Long with the 'Fire Island 2025' Calendar

One thing fans of ginger lads don't need to worry about is that red-haired people are rapidly headed for extinctions. Sensational reports that we find ourselves on the eve of a ginger apocalypse get the science wrong. Those rumors are based on the assumption that because red hair is the result of recessive genes from both parents, the ballyhooed "dilution effect" of more dominant genes crowding out ginger traits in an inevitable, and imminent, end result. But that myth overlooks the fact that people will continue to carry recessive genes, and to mix and mingle, just as they have ever since ginger lads appeared on the scene an estimated 30,000 – 80,000 years ago.

Another fallacy about gingers is that red hair in humans is the result of our ancestors mating with Neanderthals tens of thousands of years ago. Not so, say researchers; while modern humans do retain genetic traces of Neanderthals and other now-extinct branches of humanity, our ginger forebears got their attention-grabbing locks from a different mutation than did the red-haired fellows among our late Neanderthal cousins.