For several years, blond hair was said to be connected to Caucasians but the Melanesians of Solomon Islands are one of the few tribes in the world with blonde hair outside Europe.
Melanesian people of Solomon Islands are black island people in the south pacific that moved over thousands of years ago, long before the blacks that came to the Americas as slaves.
Melanesia is a subregion of Oceania stretching from the western end of the Pacific Ocean to the Arafura Sea, and eastward to Fiji. The region includes most of the islands directly north and northeast of Australia, including the countries of Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Vanuatu, Solomon Island, and New Caledonia. The name Melanesia was first used by Jules Dumont d’Urville in 1832 to indicate an ethnic and geographical grouping of islands distinct from Polynesia and Micronesia. Until recently, the indigenous Melanesian people were cannibals, head-hunting, kidnapping and slavery, just like the Asmat tribe, but after contact with Europeans, the tribe is now predominantly Christian. However, more than 90% lead rural lives.
The Melanesian people of the Solomon Islands comes to dark skin and blond hair and are located in the South Pacific, the very heart of Melanesia.
Although the indigenous Melanesian population of the islands possess darkened skin outside of Africa, between 5 and 10% have bright blond hair. There have been numerous theories on how they got their blond hair — from the sun and salt whitening, high fish intake, or genetic heritage from mixed-breeding with Americans/Europeans who founded the islands.
A geneticist from Nova Scotia agricultural college in Canada, Sean Myles, conducted a genetic analysis on saliva and hair samples from 1209 Melanesian Solomon Island people comparing 43 blond Islanders and 42 brown Islanders, he found that the blondes carried two copies of a mutant gene which is present in 26% of the island’s population. The Melanesian people have a native TYRP1 gene which is partly responsible for the blond hair and melanin and is distinct to that of Caucasians as it doesn’t exist in their genes.
It is a recessive gene and is more common in children than in adults, with hair tending to darken as the individual matures.
This contributes to the theories that black Africans were the first homo sapiens and that all races came out of the black African race.