Genetic research indicates that the mutation that caused blue eyes probably occurred between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago with an individual in northern Europe. The mutation essentially “turns off” the iris's ability to produce melanin. Generations and millennia later, the world has millions of people with blue eyes.
Scientists believe that it is possible to trace all blue-eyed people back to a common ancestor, who likely had a genetic mutation that reduced the amount of melanin in the iris. Most people with blue eyes are of European descent.
Your children inherit their eye colors from you and your partner. It's a combination of mom and dad's eye colors – generally, the color is determined by this mix and whether the genes are dominant or recessive. Every child carries two copies of every gene – one comes from mom, and the other comes from dad.
The Vikings had various eye colors, although the predominant eye color was blue or gray. However, Irish Vikings had predominantly brown or hazel eyes, and some Viking settlements were much more diverse than others.
In Ireland blue eyes are most common in Connacht, where 53% people have them.
The ethnic Miao people of Guizhou province from China, a subgroup of Hmong people, have been described as having blue eyes and blonde hair.
Blue is the second most common eye color globally, with an estimated 8 to 10 % of people having blue eyes. A majority of these people are of European descent, however, Black people can be born with blue eyes even though it's pretty rare.
Both parents have to pass along the blue eye gene in order for their child to have blue eyes. That doesn't necessarily mean that the parents themselves have to have blue eyes; it's possible they carry the gene, but it is recessive. However, a blue-eyed child is almost certain if both parents have blue eyes.
This is because you each only have blue versions to pass on to your children. That means that your kids will most likely all have blue eyes. So once dominant traits like dark eyes aren't passed on to the next generation, they can be "lost." Genes can be passed on from generation to generation.
We found that green is the most popular lens colour, with brown coming in a close second, despite it being one of the most common eye colours. Although blue and hazel are seen as the most attractive eye colours for men and women they are surprisingly the least popular.
When broken down by gender, men ranked gray, blue, and green eyes as the most attractive, while women said they were most attracted to green, hazel, and gray eyes. Despite brown eyes ranking at the bottom of our perceived attraction scale, approximately 79% of the world's population sports melanin-rich brown eyes.
Hazel eyes have also been voted as one of the most attractive eye colours and can, therefore, be argued to have the best of both worlds, health and beauty. Green eyes are incredibly rare, which may be the reason as to why some believe this to be the most attractive eye colour.
Blue will always be recessive. If both parents have a blue allele, it is likely that the child will have blue eyes. However, if one parent has green eyes and the other blue, your child will most likely have green eyes, as green is dominant over blue.
Blue eyes. This is the next most common eye color, encompassing about 10% of the population. While blue eyes are more sensitive to light during the day, people with blue eyes tend to see better at night – unless there are bright lights.
Flexi Says: Two brown-eyed parents (if both are heterozygous) can have a blue-eyed baby. If both the parents have brown eyes, then there is generally a 25% chance for their child to have blue eyes. Because both the brown-eyed parents have a recessive blue-eye gene and can pass it to the next generation.
There are plenty of blue-eyed Asians. This probably happens when the traditional blue-eyed allele comes into a family from a (possibly very distant) European ancestor. Blue eyes then resurface in a child generations later if they inherit the allele from both parents.
“The mutations responsible for blue eye colour most likely originate from the north-west part of the Black Sea region, where the great agricultural migration of the northern part of Europe took place in the Neolithic periods about 6,000 to 10,000 years ago,” the researchers report in the journal Human Genetics….
Approximately 8% to 10% of the global population have blue eyes. A 2002 study found that the prevalence of blue eye color among the white population in the United States to be 33.8% for those born from 1936 through 1951, compared with 57.4% for those born from 1899 through 1905.
The rarest natural hair colour is red, which makes up only one to two percent of the global population. You commonly see these hair colours in western and northern areas of Europe, especially Scotland and Ireland. However, natural redheads may not exist for much longer.
Finland. The people of Finland have one of the highest concentrations of blond hair in the world. In large portions of Finland, 80% of the population has blond hair (and a full 89% of the population has blue eyes).
It turns out most Vikings weren't as fair-haired and blue-eyed as legend and pop culture have led people to believe. According to a new study on the DNA of over 400 Viking remains, most Vikings had dark hair and dark eyes.