Question: I recently met my birth mother? for the first time and I'm not sure how much to believe... She kept contradicting herself as the meeting progressed.  So I'm asking this question since I'm not sure if she was honest with me. She told me that my biological father is Italian(but she couldnt remember his name). I dont recall ever having met or seen a person of Italian descent that has naturally red hair.  Is is possible and I havent seen it or what? My adopted family thinks she's just lying to me.

Answer: Wow, it has to be so interesting to find out about family, especially since they don't feel like family. However in response to your question about the honesty, she may not be 100% sure who your dad is.  But if she is saying that he is a red headed Italian, that is totally possible, and he is most likely from Northern Italy.\n\nHere is a clip from a study done on the decent of Italians...  \n\n. . . we should not neglect the researches of Woltmann (1905). Woltmann studied portrait paintings, busts and written descriptions, to ascertain the physical features of the great men of the Italian Renaissance. He revealed that many of the individuals in question, such as Leonardo da Vinci, Tasso, Galileo, etc., were of Germanic descent, and that they possessed Nordic racial characteristics. The results of his investigations, were as follows: of the 125 men whose eye colour could be discerned, 102 had blue, blue-grey or blue-green eyes; 18 had brown or brown-grey eyes; and 5 had eyes of mixed pigmentation. Of the 108 men whose hair colour could be accurately determined, 68 had blond or red hair; 26 had brown hair; and 14 had black hair. [Woltmann (1905) 143-144.] Woltmann also discovered that most of the noble families who ruled over much of Northern Italy, produced blond individuals throughout their generations. Such families as the d’Este of Ferrara, the Bentivoglia of Bologna and the Sforza of Milan, were all largely blond-haired and blue-eyed. [Woltmann (1905) 42-49.]
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