All blue eyed people are genetically originated from human who lived in the Black Sea regions sometimes between 6 to 10,000 years ago.
A mutation in a gene called OCA2 occured nearly 8,000 years ago. It can be related to an ancestor from the Black Sea region.
Dr. Hans Eiberg claimed that untill this time, every human being was brown eyed.
What research says about this phenomenon?
A team of researchers from Copenhagen University traced a single mutation that caused the typical phenomenon of blue eyes.
Eiberg said:
“A genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the formation of a ‘switch,’ which literally ‘turned off’ the ability to produce brown eyes,”
When blue-eyed peoples from Jordan, Denmark and Turkey were studied, their genetic difference was traced back to the maternal lineage according to Eiberg’s team.
The brown melanin pigment is still dominant. However, following the last Ice Age, Europeans developed this rare mutation that differentiated them from the rest of the human beings.
95% of Europeans in Scandinavian countries have blue eyes. They are also found to have a greater range of skin color and hairs.
Comparatively, Europe has a wider variety of hair color and skin pigment than is found in any other continent in the world. These mutations are recent as Europe was colonized only a few thousand years ago.
Through interbreeding, the brunette with blue eyes was evidenced about 25,000 years ago. Researchers attribute this to ancient interbreeding with Neanderthals.
Although no Neanderthal DNA has been found in modern Homo Sapiens-Sapiens mainstream science clings to this theory as fact because they have not come up with anything better.
How did this occured so fast?
“The question really is, ‘Why did we go from having nobody on Earth with blue eyes 10,000 years ago to having 20 or 40 percent of Europeans having blue eyes now?”
John Hawks of the University of Wisconsin-Madison said. “This gene does something very good for people. It urges them have more kids.”