The question of when natural blondes will disappear has long been a topic of debate. In the popular science community and the media, it was widely believed that this phenotype was doomed to extinction in the foreseeable future. However, there is no precise timeline, especially when it comes to continents, and the forecast was based on hearsay rather than serious research.

Origin of the Forecast

The most famous date is the year 2022. According to this legend, the last natural blonde will be born then, presumably in Finland. This forecast appeared at the beginning of the first decade of the twenty-first century and was attributed to a study by the World Health Organization. However, it later turned out that the WHO did not conduct or publish such studies. It is likely that the information was taken from a German women's magazine that cited an imaginary anthropologist from the WHO.

Scientific Perspective

The scientific community views the forecasts of the complete extinction of blondes with great skepticism. The key argument is genetics. Light hair is a recessive trait. This means that it can \"hide\" in the genotype and not manifest externally for many generations, but it can manifest again under certain combinations of genes.

Geneticists emphasize that genes do not disappear on their own. They can disappear either as a result of chance or if possessing this gene gives a significant evolutionary advantage, which is not the case for blondes.

Geographical Distribution

Blondism is a racial characteristic that is almost exclusively found in European peoples. It is predominantly found in Northern Europe — in Scandinavia, the Baltic countries, in England, Northern France, Germany, and the Baltics. The distribution of blondes is uneven: for example, in Germany, this percentage decreases from north to south.

According to more recent data, the percentage of blondes varies even within Europe: in the Netherlands, they account for seventy-one percent of the population, in France — only twelve percent. Outside of Europe, only small groups with partial signs of blondism are found, for example, in Northern Africa or West Asia.

Why Are Blondes Becoming Fewer?

Although it is not possible to speak of complete extinction, their share in the world population is indeed decreasing. If the number of blondes has decreased from forty-nine to fourteen percent of the world's population over the past fifty years, this is not due to the \"extinction\" of the gene, but to demographic processes.

The main reason is the higher population growth in regions where dark hair is dominant. At the same time, in traditionally \"light-haired\" countries of Europe, fertility is significantly lower. Thus, the blonde gene statistically \"dissolves\" in the overall mass of dark-haired population of the world, remaining in the gene pool at the same time.
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