All those who have blue eyes seem to have a common ancestor

Jun 27, 2013 20:41 GMT  ·  By

A new study conducted by Danish researchers indicates that all blue-eyed people actually have a common ancestor, which means they are all related.

According to the study’s findings, this unknown common ancestor of all the blue-eyed people anywhere in the world lived about 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, Fox News reports.

What this means is that, as fascinating as they might be, blue eyes are actually an evolutionary quirk, and a recent one at that.

Just to put things into perspective, perhaps it should be mentioned that we modern humans, i.e. Homo sapiens sapiens, emerged around 200,000 years ago.

So, yes, blue-eyed gals and guys are quite a novelty for the species. Luckily for them, they are a well-liked one.

“Originally, we all had brown eyes. But a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a ‘switch,’ which literally ‘turned off’ the ability to produce brown eyes,” Professor Hans Eiberg of the University of Copenhagen said.

According to the researches, the switch in the DNA regulates the pigmentation of the eyes, hair and skin. If the mutation had completely deactivated the OCA2 gene, all blue-eyed people would be albinos, they said.

The research included 155 people from a large Danish family, but also several blue-eyed people born in Turkey and Jordan. The same mutation has been noticed in all of the study participants, the researchers explain.