The Myth of Red Haired Mummies

Varying from corpse to corpse, and of course royal mummies had stronger salts and longer, greater care taken into the process of mummification. The mummy I showed with the nappy hair she wasen't royalty so the salt did not change the texture and color of her hair. There has been evidence of cortex keratin oxidation in ancient Egyptian hair presumed to be the result of the strong alkaline ontent in natron used. The Hair of Earlier Peoples, Don Brothwell and Richard Spearman p427-436 in Science in Archaeology, eds. D Brothwell and E Higgs 1963 Hair is largely made up of the fibrous protein keratin. This substance is extremely resistant to decomposition and enzymatic digestion, mainly owing to the presence of disulphide cross linkages of the amino acid cystine. These join together the long polypeptide chains of the molecule. If the crosslinkages are broken by reduction or oxidation, altered keratin is readily attacked by proteolytic enzymes. This resistance of keratin explains durability of hair in ancient burials...These changes can occur on the living animal; thus atmospheric weathering of the fleece of sheep results in loss of cystine from the exposed tips of the fibres. Permanent waving alters keratin cross linkages, and these changes have been detected using florescence microscopy. It is probable that if the preparations employed during mummification contained reducing or oxidizing agents or alkaline substances the hair keratin would be damaged... Normal human hair had a bluish-green florescence with acridine orange but permanently waved hair had a reddish florescence with associated fractures of the fibres...Hair bleached with hydrogen peroxide also showed this change due to oxidation of the keratin... in some samples such as predynastic Egyptian hair the whole hair was altered in this way. Potential change to hair color can be explained more scientifically by examining the chemistry of melanin which is responsible for hair color in life. All hair contains a mixture in varying concentration of both black-brown eumelanin and red-yellow phaeomelanin pigments, which are susceptible to differential chemical change under certain extreme burial conditions (for example wet reducing conditions, or dry oxidising conditions). Importantly, phaeomelanin is much more stable to environmental conditions than eumelanin, hence the reactions occurring in the burial environment favor the preservation of phaeomelanin, revealing and enhancing the red/ yellow color of hairs containing this pigment Potential change to hair color can be explained more scientifically by examining the chemistry of melanin which is responsible for hair color in life. All hair contains a mixture in varying concentration of both black-brown eumelanin and red-yellow phaeomelanin pigments, which are susceptible to differential chemical change under certain extreme burial conditions (for example wet reducing conditions, or dry oxidising conditions). Importantly, phaeomelanin is much more stable to environmental conditions than eumelanin, hence the reactions occurring in the burial environment favor the preservation of phaeomelanin, revealing and enhancing the red/ yellow color of hairs containing this pigment. http://www.archaeology.org/interactive/hierakonpolis/field/hair.html http://www.endingstereotypesforamerica.org/ http://mali.pwnet.org/history/history_mali_empire.htm Examining hair with a sensitive chemical technique called Fourier transform Raman spectroscopy, Wilson discovered that ***the strong bonds in the keratin --- the protein that makes up the hair --- were often weakened.*** 'This increased porosity raises the possibility of contamination,' he says. The team found hair that had been invaded by threads of fungus and in one case with iron salts from an iron coffin. UNQUOTE These chemicals only "straigtened" the hair, ("weakening of keratin bonds"-is used in African American hair relaxers)