Caucasians have the highest hair density among the ethnicities studied. Black people have the lowest. Asian people have hair density that falls somewhere in between.
Hair density.
According to HealthGuidance, Caucasians have the highest hair density, averaging approximately two hundreds strands of hair per square centimeter.
A gene variation of EDAR that arose about 30,000 years ago seems to give some people thicker strands of hair. More than 90% of Han Chinese, 70% of Japanese and Thai people, and 60% to 90% of Native Americans carry the “thick hair" version of the gene.
Most people of East Asian descent have thick, straight hair. This corresponds with a SNP (rs3827760) in the EDAR gene which is involved in hair follicle development. The ancestral allele of this SNP is the A-allele.
It's thick.
The reason Asian hair tends to be thicker is that it has around 10 layers of cuticles. Cuticles are the small areas around the inner protein structure of your hair–they are there to protect those proteins.
The thickest strand of human hair is 772 micrometres (0.03 inches) and was plucked from the beard of Muhammad Umair Khan (Pakistan), in Lahore, Punjab, Pakistan, as verified on 3 March 2021. The hair was discovered on Muhammad's chin as part of his beard.
Asian hair, usually smooth and brown to black in color, grows perpendicular to the scalp. It has the fastest growth rate with about 1.4 centimeters per month. Asian hair has a rather round and uniform shape. Nevertheless, the density of Asian hair is the lowest of the 3 ethnic groups.
The cuticle layer in Asians is thicker with more compact cuticle cells than that in Caucasians. Asian hair generally exhibits the strongest mechanical properties, and its cross-sectional area is determined greatly by genetic variations, particularly from the ectodysplasin A receptor gene.
A 2005 study in the journal International Journal of Dermatology also found a difference among races in the rate of hair growth. For example, Asian hair grows the fastest, while African hair grows the slowest.
Genetic factors appear to play a major role in determining hair texture—straight, wavy, or curly—and the thickness of individual strands of hair. Studies suggest that different genes influence hair texture and thickness in people of different ethnic backgrounds.
Japan, Spain and Sweden are widely known for having people with healthy hair, but there are also other countries like India, France and Russia that are also known for helping people keep their hair natural and not messing with any artificial coloring.
According to Personal Health via the New York Times, Caucasians are the hairiest ethnic group, with Semitic and Mediterranean people being the hairiest out of all Caucasians.
Hair follicles come in different shapes and sizes, affecting hair texture and width. Some people have wider follicles-and therefore, thicker hair strands-than other people. Genetics influence hair thickness, but other factors like hormones and age are important factors, too.
Certain races have higher rates of hair loss compared to others. Caucasians have the highest rates out of all the ethnic groups. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Native American Indians, Inuits, and Chinese have the lowest rates.
In general, however, the highest rates of male pattern baldness are found among Caucasian men. The second highest rates belong to Afro-Caribbeans. Native Americans, on the other hand, do not struggle much with male pattern baldness. As mentioned, pattern baldness is genetic, that is, hereditary.
While the numbers are different according to different surveys, it appears that either Greece, Macedonia, or the Czech Republic has the highest rate of baldness in the world. These nations each have over 40% of men with acute hair loss.
But the evolutionary reasons why hairiness varies with ethnicity are unclear. Caucasian people are generally hairier than the Japanese, for example, even though testosterone levels are the same. The difference seems to be in how sensitive the hair follicles are to those testosterone levels.
Sex: Male hair grows faster than female hair. Age: Hair grows fastest between the ages of 15 and 30, before slowing down. Some follicles stop working altogether as people get older. This is why some people get thinner hair or go bald.
Curly hair is not certain to a race or ethnicity, it appears all over the world in many forms. White, brown, black and everything inbetween! There is also a scale on which curly hair is classified (2a-4c).
Although Middle Eastern and Indian hair is typically thicker and fuller in comparison to other hair types, there are still many people who suffer from hair loss who have this type.
You see, the women of the Red Yao tribe have some of the longest hair in the world – as in their hair is almost the same length as their height!
There are plenty of blue-eyed Asians. This probably happens when the traditional blue-eyed allele comes into a family from a (possibly very distant) European ancestor. Blue eyes then resurface in a child generations later if they inherit the allele from both parents.
Geneticists at the University of Tokyo and several other institutions in Japan, Thailand, and Indonesia have now used the HapMap to explore why Japanese and Chinese people have thick hair: The cross-sectional area of East Asian hair fibers averages about 30% larger than that of Africans and 50% larger than that of ...
Because hair can be grouped into three different racial groups it can be used to identify if it came from someone of European, Asian, or African ancestry. As such, hair can be used to exclude people of certain racial group as suspects or as having been at a crime scene.
As a plastic surgeon sees it, there are structural reasons that people age differently. “Asians have a wider bone structure than a typical Caucasian face,” Dobryansky notes. “The soft-tissue loss is seen and felt to a lesser extent because of the wider structure.