Androgenic Hair - Across Populations

Across Populations

According to Ashley Montagu who taught anthropology at Princeton University, the "Mongoloid, "Bushmen" and "Negroid" are less hairy than the "Caucasoid" and Montagu said that the hairless feature is a neotenous trait.

Rodney P.R. Dawber of the Oxford Hair Foundation and Clinical Lecturer in Dermatology said "Mongoloid males" have "little or no facial or body hair" and Dawber also said "Mediterranean males are covered with an exuberant pelage".

Anthropologist Arnold Henry Savage Landor described the Ainu as having hairy bodies.

C.H. Danforth and Mildred Trotter of the Department of Anatomy at Washington University did a study using army soldiers of European origin where they concluded that dark-haired white men are generally more hairy than fair-haired white men.

H. Harris who published in the British Journal of Dermatology said American Indians have the least body hair, Chinese and "Negroes" have little body hair, white people have more body hair than "Negroes" and Ainu have the most body hair.

Milkica Nešić et al. of the Department of Physiology at the University of Niš, Serbia, said the "frequency of hair" in "peoples of the Caucasus" is "significantly higher than" in "Negroid populations".

Eike-Meinrad Winkler and Kerrin Christiansen of the Institut für Humanbiologie, Hamburg, Germany, did a study using Kavango people and !Kung people of body hair and hormone levels to investigate the reason Black Africans did not have bodies as hairy as Europeans. Winkler and Christiansen concluded the difference in hairiness between Black Africans and Europeans had to do with differences in androgen or estradiol production, in androgen metabolism, and in sex hormone action in the target cells.

Valerie Anne Randall of the Department of Biomedical Sciences, University of Bradford, said beard growth in Caucasian men increases until the mid-thirties due to a delay caused by growth cycles changing from vellus hair to terminal hair. Randall said Caucasian men and women are hairier than Japanese men and women even with the same "total plasma androgen levels". Randall says that the reason for some people being hairy and some people not being hairy is unclear, but that it probably is related to differing sensitivity of hair follicles to 5α-reductase.

Stewart W. Hindley and Albert Damon of the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University said "Caucasians" are hairier than "Negroids" and "Mongoloids". Hindley and Damon said different groups of people have differing percentages of members with mid-phalangeal hair: Andamanese 0%, Eskimo 1%, American "Negroes" 16% or 28%, Ethiopians 25.6%, Mexicans of the Yucatan 20.9%, Penobscot and Shinnecook 22.7%, Gurkha 33.6%, Japanese 44.6%, "various Hindus" 40-50%, Egyptians 52.3%, Near Eastern peoples 62-71%, "various Europeans" 60-80%.

Anthropologist Joseph Deniker said the "very hairy" peoples are the Ainus, Iranians, Australian aborigines, Toda, Dravidians and Melanesians while Deniker said the American Indian, Bushmen, West African, Mongol and Malay people are "glabrous" (not hairy). Deniker said hairy peoples have thicker beards, eyelashes and eyebrows, but Deniker said hairy people tend to have fewer hairs on their scalp.