Every blue eyed person on Earth is a descendant of one single human

Your family might be a bit bigger than you realised

It was a research team from the University of Copenhagen who discovered blue-eyed beings all come from the same person. Researchers were trying to find out what caused the change in eye colour all those years ago by studying the OCA2 gene, which determines the level of brown pigment in a person's eye.

The study, published in 2008, discovered that the genetic mutation that creates blue eyes is actually from a completely different gene, HERC2. This gene completely turned off the OCA2 gene, and dilutes brown eyes to blue.

Scientists realised that every single blue-eyed person has the same mutation, which led them to believe that they all descend from the same person. It is thought the mutation could have spread when humans migrated from Africa to Europe - though there is still a lot of research to be done.

Researchers also looked at less common eye colours, such as green, which enabled them to understand why people have this colour eye, and also supported the idea that one person was the origin of the blue-eyed gene.

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Social image credit: Egor Litvinov/Pexels