All blue-eyed people can be traced back to one ancestor who lived 10,000 years ago near the Black Se

[emad]

SNIP:

According to a team of researchers from Copenhagen University, a single mutation which arose as recently as 6-10,000 years ago was responsible for all the blue-eyed people alive on Earth today.

The team, whose research is published in the journal Human Genetics, identified a single mutation in a gene called OCA2, which arose by chance somewhere around the northwest coasts of the Black Sea in one single individual, about 8,000 years ago.

The gene does not "make" blue in the iris; rather, it turns off the mechanism which produces brown melanin pigment. "Originally, we all had brown eyes," says Dr Hans Eiberg, who led the team.

And most people still do. The finding that a rare mutation, probably dispersed in the rapid wave of colonisation that followed the end of the last ice age, highlights one of the great mysteries of human evolution: the oddness of Europeans
ENDSNIP

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/technology/technology.html?in_article_id=511473&in_page_id=1965

[soothsayer]

1. If one person's eyes mutated, why couldn't others?

[RC]

2. Shh, now. Don't question the experts

:sarcasm:

[trotsky]

4. Some more information can be found in another report.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/01/30/scieyes130.xml

His findings are the latest in a decade of genetic research, which began in 1996, when Prof Eiberg first implicated the OCA2 gene as being one of those responsible for eye colour.

“They have all inherited the same switch at exactly the same spot in their DNA. From this we can conclude that all blue-eyed individuals are linked to the same ancestor,” said Prof Eiberg, who reports the work in the journal Human Genetics.

Sometimes those crazy closed-minded scientists really DO know what they're talking about. Wild, huh?

[Occulus]

14. Wait a minute, though.

My eyes aren't blue or brown; they're anywhere from a silvery-green to a muddy green. And yes, as an adult, my eye color has been known to undergo subtle changes between those greenish extremes.

Am I a mutant or something? I knew there was something familiar about Swampy's "Lizard People" pictures, but....

[Nihil]

15. Same here ...

... but with me it goes from grey to very green (matching my mood
apparently: grey=angry/cold, grey/green=normal, green=happy/keen/...).

:shrug:

[Thor_MN]

16. Mood eyes?

I hope this wasn't a result of a freak accident where you lost a couple rings back in the 70's...

[trotsky]

18. There are multiple genes at work.

Here's a good summary:

http://www.medterms.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=25003

Eye color: The color of the iris. The genetics of eye color are complicated. Eye color is polygenic. It is determined by multiple genes. The eye color genes include EYCL1 (a green/blue eye color gene located on chromosome 19), EYCL2 (a brown eye color gene) and EYCL3 (a brown/blue eye color gene located on chromosome 15). There are clearly other genes that influence eye color. The once-held view that blue eye color is a simple recessive trait has been shown to be wrong. The genetics of eye color are so complex that almost any parent-child combination of eye colors can occur.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

8. They could.

But then they would have been traced back to several ancestors instead of one if that had happened.

[Ready4Change]

11. No reason they can't.

But mutations are far rarer than most people imagine. And the time over diversification and evolution happens are far longer than most people imagine. And even viable mutations fail for unrelated reasons aren't passed on.

So, in the 10,000 years since this blue eye mutation took hold, it's possible several other blue eyed mutations happened, but failed to pass on. And new strains of red hair appeared, and some failed, and one with 10 fingers on a hand was a dismal failure, and the upside down nose mutation drowned, and maybe someone with perfect disease resistance was eaten by a tiger before passing on the trait, and...

[yawnmaster]

20. some mutations that have survived...

amazingly, the head up the butt mutation has survived and is expressed fairly often. I wonder when that mutation occurred.
Also, the phallic shaped head mutation is occasionally observed. I believe the phenotype is called "dickhead".

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. Well, I've been tracing my family tree for 30 years

interesting addition to it, if true. But why a mutation from only one individual? Isn't blue eyes a recessive trait? How did one person result in bringing forth all the blue eyed folk? My parents both had blue eyes, as do my brother and myself. My brother, who married brown eyed women, has all brown eyed children. Don't quite understand how this one person brought forth all the blue eyed ones works.

[trotsky]

5. Think back to Mendel's pea plants.

One individual has a recessive gene. It gets passed to half their offspring, and half of those, and so on. Eventually two people with that recessive gene, who share that common ancestor, have a child together - who gets two recessive genes and has blue eyes.

[Thor_MN]

10. Hey cousin, I think they are talking about cousin grandpa.

If blue eyes are the result of a single, one time, mutation, then we are certainly cousins.

For that mutation to have persisted, your and my family trees are family wreaths way back when. Essentially at some level, cousins had to have had children together. Almost makes me wonder if at one point, a group of blue eyed people were banished together and driven to the west. I'm not sure that I buy the theory that blue eyes were unusual enough to make one a desireable mate regardless of anything else. At least I haven't had any women throwing themselves at me staring into my blue eyes.

[macllyr]

6. Connection with "Black Sea Biblical Flood" ?

8000 years ago is supposed to be the time of a huge prehistoric flood ("biblical flood" ?) when the Black Sea freshwater lake was filled with salty water from the Mediterranean. 150 000 square km were flooded, including whatever early agricultural civilization had developed there. Interestingly, the north of the Black Sea have been suggested as the region were lived people speaking the proto Indo-European language 7000-8000 years ago. More, after the flood, agricultural techniques diffused west and east of the Black Sea.

see : en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Sea_deluge_theory

And now, we have a single OCA2 mutation, responsible for blue-eyed phenotypes (adaptation to northern latitudes ?), and which is found today at various frequencies in most caucasian populations. And this "blue" OCA2 allele appeared in the same region, around the Black Sea (which was a lake 8000 y.a.)....

We need H.G. Wells' Time Machine to check all that.

Mac L'lyr

[Igel]

9. Vinca culture?

Going for the lower endpoint of the date range.

Ivanov may be on my committee, but I never did buy the Ivanov-Gamkrelidze POV.

What's interesting is Cavalli-S.'s compendium. It shows a clear gene gradation from the Black Sea north and west, so there was population transfer (albeit very small transfers over short distances). There's also a genetic continuum from east to west, putatively Indo-European, but maybe not ... in any event, it's younger than the SE-NW gradient. OCA2 seems to have a gradient running in the opposite direction. So I wonder why they picked near the Black Sea as the site for the mutation.

[zbdent]

7. wasn't me ... my eyes are hazel

and my time machine is still in the testing stages ... it only works going forward ...one second at a time ...

[sakabatou]

12. Watch as all the fundies scream

"That's fucking Eve!"

[supernova]

13. So, was this person blue-eyed

or did s/he just carry the mutation?

supernova <-- deep marine blue

[Thor_MN]

17. Could be either, but safe to say that the first few generations after the mutation carrying the gene

were brown eyed. Then some cousins (anywhere from 1st to xth) hooked up and the blue eyes started showing up in numbers.

[yawnmaster]

19. perhaps earlier

depending on on the promiscuity of the mutant carrier, it may have well showed up in the 2nd generation (even assuming that 100% siblings didn't mate). I think it is very possible that half-siblings could well have mated, causing the phenotype to appear in the second generation. Of course, what do I know of their actual mating habits?