A team of researchers from the University of Copenhagen has just shown that all people with blue eyes come from a common ancestor that lived between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, in the Neolithic period.
Brown is the natural color of human eyes and is due to the pigment melanin. Its production is regulated by a gene called OCA2 , which is also responsible for coloring hair, skin and eyes. Professor Hans Eiberg has spent the last decade studying this gene and the evolution in blue eye color of individuals from different parts of the world. And it has come to the conclusion that, during our evolution, a genetic mutation blocked the production of the pigment melanin in the eyes and led to the appearance of the color blue. The surprising thing is that this mutation took place only once, in a single individual , and was passed on from generation to generation thereafter.
As Eiberg suggests in the journal Human Genetics , it is likely that this common ancestor lived north of the Black Sea, between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. In addition, he points out that the results indicate that the evolution of individuals with blue eyes has been "very correct" since "a mutation in a single person has become 300 million copies in 150 million people ."
