A surprising study conducted by a group of researchers reveals how all blue-eyed people in the world out there are linked to each other.
Apparently, every single blue-eyed person has the same mutation that came from a singular human who lived between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago.
A recent study by Additional Science GCSE says that blue eyes are a recessive gene, meaning that you need to have two of them for the color to become apparent.
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However, if you are wondering where exactly these genes come from, then one study revealed that they can all be traced to one single person.
It is a known fact that blue eyes are much rarer as compared to brown eyes and it is estimated by Healthline that between 8 and 10 percent of the world's population have blue eyes.
With these new claims by scientists, this rarity actually makes sense now.
According to scientists, the genetic mutation came from a singular human who lived between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago.
Researchers have tried to discover what caused this change by studying the OCA2 gene, which determines the level of brown pigment in the human eye, for many years.
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This eventually led to the discovery that the genetic mutation that results in blue eyes is from an entirely different gene called HERC2, which completely turns off the OCA2, and 'dilutes' brown into blue.
This brings us to the question of how they know that it all links back to a common ancestor.
Well, this is because all blue-eyed people have the same mutation.
A lot more research needs to be done on this topic. Initially, scientists have discovered that this mutation might have spread when humans migrated from Africa to Europe.
This could partly explain why it seems that mainly people of European descent have blue eyes.
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This surprising discovery was actually made back in 2008 when a research team from the University of Copenhagen initially tracked down the mutation.
Not only this but the study also looked at the variation in other less common eye colors, such as green, which further proved the idea of one person originating the blue-eyed gene.
The 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."
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"They have all inherited the same switch at exactly the same spot in their DNA," he concluded.
Now we know that blue-eyed people share the same ancestor, meanwhile, green-eyed people have reduced melanin in their iris leading to this distinctive color.
