Another Genetic Quirk of the Solomon Islands: Blond Hair

[4th law of robotics]

8. Depends

they say it's a different mutation from the ones Europeans have.

Ok, but if it is also caused by a recessive allele (I didn't see that in the article) that means that to have 10% of the population expressing it about 42% of the population is carrying but not expressing this trait (assuming there is no selection against the heterozygous folks).

That's remarkably high for a random mutation if it has no selective pressure on it.

It would be interesting to find out when it started in relation to when the island was settled. If it just happens that one of the islands original families had it and they had a small starting population with limited immigration/selection it could simply be a founder-effect.

If it happened later that would suggest it is being selected for.

Of course if it's a dominate mutation then that changes things entirely. But typically dark hair is dominant to all other types.