Human Heredity 11th Edition by Michael Cummings

Exercise 11

Was Noah an Albino?
The biblical character Noah (along with the Ark and its animals) is among the most recognizable figures in the Book of Genesis. His birth is recorded in a single sentence, and although the story of the Ark and a great flood is told later, there is no mention of Noah's physical appearance. But other sources contain references to Noah consistent with the idea that Noah was one of the first albinos mentioned in recorded history.
Noah's birth is recorded in the Book of Enoch the Prophet, written about 200 BCE. This book, quoted several times in the New Testament, was regarded as lost until 1773, when an Ethiopian version of the text was discovered. The text relates that Noah's "flesh was white as snow, and red as a rose; the hair of whose head was white like wool, and long, and whose eyes were beautiful." A reconstructed fragment of one of the Dead Sea Scrolls describes Noah as an abnormal child born to normal parents. This fragment also provides some insight into the pedigree of Noah's family, as does the Book of Jubilees. According to these sources, Noah's father (Lamech) and his mother (Betenos) were first cousins. Lamech was the son of Methuselah, and Lamech's wife was a daughter of Methuselah's sister. This is important because marriage between close relatives is sometimes involved in pedigrees of autosomal recessive traits such as albinism.
If this interpretation of ancient texts is correct, Noah's albinism is the result of a consanguineous marriage, and not only is he one of the earliest albinos on record, but his grandfather Methuselah and Methuselah's sister are also the first recorded heterozygous carriers of a recessive genetic trait.
The frequency of the major allele for albinism is higher in smaller populations than in larger ones. Why might this be so?