Single ancestor traced back for blue-eyed people

The University of Copenhagen out of Denmark has managed to trace the genetic lineage of blue-eyed individuals all the way back to a separate ancestor. By studying various folks from distinctly different countries like Jordan and Turkey, they discovered that everyone had brown eyes in the beginning.

However, at some point in our history, a switch was triggered which caused brown eyes to transition to blue. The way that happened was

that the amount of melanin in the iris became “diluted” as they put it. that switch appears in the same genetic spot for each person, linking back to a common ancestor. The scientists referred to that as a mutation of the “OCA2 gene” which toned down the amount of melanin produced.

It just goes to show you that mutations such as these can produce beautiful results!

Original post by Adams Briscoe