Blue Eyes
by Dave Weller
According to a Danish researcher, if you have blue eyes, you’re related to a common ancestor. He found that every blue-eyed person descended from one person whose genes mutated some 6,000 to 10,000 years ago. Before that, everyone had brown eyes. Geneticist Hans Eiberg says that blue eyes occur when the human default – brown eyes – is turned off.
Brown eyes are caused by the pigment melanin, which also gives color to hair and skin, and builds up in the eyes. The blue-eye mutation shuts off the gene that produces melanin in the eyes. That one mutation now exists in 300 million people!
Eiberg says that the mutation is extremely specific: All people with blue eyes have the exact same genetic variation, and anyone with brown or green eyes do not. As a result, the mutation must have been passed down from a single person.
Comments
Wow this is amazing and it makes me feel special for having blue eyes lol im a mutant still my sister might be an even more mutant for having green eyes.Anyway i knew a portion of that but not that lol.
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huh, i’ve got green eyes. they say it’s the rarest eye color… it’s a mix of blue and yellow eyes. i wonder how green eyes happened to come around? i’d like to hear about that. i used to have sky blue eyes but they changed when i turned one. they still have blue but it’s more of a green now. they’re pretty and i’m proud of them
According to genealogists, if you go back about 1000 years and choose any single individual, all living people will share that ancestor. There have been so many intermarriages during that time that everyone shares common ancestry as recently as 1000 years ago.
I agree about the genetics of blue eyes/brown eyes, but what you (they) fail to mention is that brown-eyed people can also carry the recessive blue-eyed trait.
Not so special after all! And yes, I have blue eyes.
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Great information. I’m going to link back to it….