Doctor weighs in on mind-blowing theory that every blue-eyed person is a descendent of one single human
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A doctor has had their say on the theory everyone with blue eyes descends from one person.
I mean, on the face of it, it's a pretty outlandish claim, but apparently it's true, they've done research and everything.
It's common knowledge that blue eyes are much rarer than brown eyes, with Healthline estimating that between just eight and 10 percent of the world's population have them.
Feel special? You should do.
Speaking to Wired about the phenomenon, Dr Neville Sanjana explained that we can trace the mutation back thousands of years.
"All current evidence points to an event about 6,000 to 10,000 years ago that resulted in a mutation in a gene called OCA2," he said, responding to a disbelieving reader. "OCA2 is responsible for a protein called melanin in our eyes.
"That mutation occurred in Europe and all blue eyed people today are distantly related to that founder from 10,000 years ago.
"But it's not the only gene that's important for eye colour, there're about eight genes that we know about
that contribute to eye colour in humans.
"And even if you have the brown eyes version of OCA2, sometimes you can end up with blue eyes. And that's due to the contributions from those seven other genes."
But how do they know that it all links back to a common ancestor? Well, because every single person on the planet that has blue eyes has the exact same mutation, that's how.
Although there’s still a lot more research that needs to be done, it’s thought that the mutation could have spread when humans migrated from Africa to Europe, which would go some way to explaining why mainly people of European descent seemingly have blue eyes.
The discovery was originally made back in 2008 by a team of researchers at the University of Copenhagen.
The study also looked at the variation in other less common eye colours, such as green, which backed up the idea of one person originating the blue-eyed gene.
Author of the study, Professor Hans Eiberg, from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, told Science Daily: "Meanwhile, people who have green eyes can be explained by the fact they have a reduced amount of melanin in the iris, which is very different to those with blue eyes.
"From this, we can conclude that all blue-eyed individuals are linked to the same ancestor.
"They have all inherited the same switch at exactly the same spot in their DNA."
So there you have it.
