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.
Iceland, the northernmost country of the bunch, has the greatest percentage of people with blue eyes.
It's a common belief that all babies are born with blue eyes, but this is actually a myth. A baby's eye colour at birth depends on genetics. Brown is also common, for example, but a newborn baby's eyes can range in colour from slate grey to black.
The color of babies' irises actually depends on melanin, a protein secreted by special cells called melanocytes that also give your baby's skin its color. Babies whose heritage is dark-skinned are usually born with brown eyes, whereas Caucasian newborns tend to be born with blue or gray eyes.
“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….
Determining the rarest eye color... not so straightforward
Green is the rarest eye color of the more common colors. Outside of a few exceptions, nearly everyone has eyes that are brown, blue, green or somewhere in between. Other colors like gray or hazel are less common.
Eye color is directly related to the amount of melanin in the front layers of the iris. People with brown eyes have a large amount of melanin in the iris, while people with blue eyes have much less of this pigment. A particular region on chromosome 15 plays a major role in eye color.
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.
Melanin is the dark pigment occurring in the hair and the iris of the eye. Melanin is responsible for tanning, freckling, and changing of hair and eye color. Caucasian babies are born with hardly any melanin, resulting in light blue eyes and cream-colored skin.
Although the traditional blue-eyed allele is rare in Asian populations, there are still a considerable number of people who have it.
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.
"Don't only Caucasians have blue eyes?" No. From your wikipedia link: Blue eyes contain low amounts of melanin... Blue eyes are most common in Northern Europe and Central Europe and to a lesser degree in Southern Europe,North America and southern Central Asia; Afghanistan is a notable example.
"In Australians of European ancestry, the percentage of eye colours are 45 percent blue-grey, 30 percent green-hazel and 25 percent brown. If you're considering non-European ancestry it is the almost completely brown eye colour."
In the United States, blue eyes are becoming less common. In the 1950s, more than half the population had blue eyes. Now, it is estimated that one in six babies has blue eyes.
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.
Eagles are thought to have the best eyesight of all; their eyes are as many as eight times sharper than ours. We don't do too badly either. Our vision is four to seven times as sharp as those of cats and dogs and 100 times sharper than that of a mouse or fruit fly!
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.
Fact: Two blue-eyed parents can have a child with brown eyes, although it's very rare. Likewise, two brown-eyed parents can have a child with blue eyes, although this is also uncommon.
The child inherited two blue genes; although neither parent had blue eyes, it was still part of their DNA. Blue eyes can skip a generation. In other words, this child's grandparents' eyes were probably blue.
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.
Legendary actress Elizabeth Taylor's eyes were famous for being stunningly beautiful and distinct. Widely known for having the most striking eyes in Hollywood, Taylor had what appeared to be rare natural purple eyes.
Violet Eyes
This color is most often found in people with albinism. It is said that you cannot truly have violet eyes without albinism. Mix a lack of pigment with the red from light reflecting off of blood vessels in the eyes, and you get this beautiful violet!