Red hair is a recessive genetic trait caused by a series of mutations in the melanocortin 1 receptor (MC1R), a gene located on chromosome 16. As a recessive trait it must be inherited from both parents to cause the hair to become red.Click to see full answer. Then, how is red hair passed down?The redhead gene is recessive and can skip several generations. The gene for red hair is recessive, so a person needs two copies of that gene for it to show up or be expressed. That means even if both parents carry the gene, just one in four of their children are likely to turn out to be a redhead.Also Know, is red hair a sign of inbreeding? No. It’s an unusual trait, that’s all. Redheads are no more inbred on average than any other person, give or take a couple percent. Keep in mind that humans are all relatively closely related thanks to genetic bottlenecks in the past in which humanity came close to extinction. Moreover, what are the chances of having a child with red hair? There is a 50% chance that the children will have red hair, and a 50% chance that the children will be brown-haired carriers of the red gene.Where does the redhead gene come from? All in the Genes Instead, the origins of red hair have been traced back to the Steppes of Central Asia as much as 100,000 years ago. The haplogroup of modern redheads indicates that their earliest ancestors migrated to the steppes from the Middle East because of the rise of herding during the Neolithic revolution.