Scientists Make an INCREDIBLE Discovery: All People in the World with BLUE EYES Have One Thing in Common

If you’ve ever wondered why some people are blessed with blue eyes, one study might finally provide the answer.

Scientists believe they have solved this mystery, and it seems everything traces back to just one person. Before a particular European appeared, all humans had brown eyes, according to experts from the University of Copenhagen. However, this individual completely changed the situation 6,000 to 10,000 years ago due to a genetic mutation, reports LAD Bible.

As you might remember from biology class, blue eyes are the result of a recessive gene — meaning a person must inherit two such genes for blue eyes to appear.

However, until recently, few people knew where these genes came from, until scientists in Denmark investigated this topic further. Professor Hans Eiberg from the Department of Cellular and Molecular Medicine led the study, which was conducted back in 2008.

"Originally, we all had brown eyes," he said to Science Daily.

"But a genetic mutation that affected the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes led to the creation of a kind of switch that literally turned off the ability to produce brown eyes," he added.

For a long time, scientists tried to determine what caused this change by studying the OCA2 gene, which determines the amount of brown pigment in the human eye. However, it turned out that the mutation that creates blue eyes is linked to a completely different gene — HERC2. This gene turns off OCA2, reducing melanin production in the iris, thus "diluting" the brown color into blue.

So how did the researchers determine that all this could be connected to a common ancestor? Simply — every person with blue eyes in the world carries this same mutation. Although much more research is needed, it is believed that the mutation spread with the migration of people from Africa to Europe, which would explain why blue eyes are most common among people of European descent.

The 2008 study also looked at differences in other, rarer eye colors, like green, further supporting the theory of a single original carrier of the blue eye gene.

"People with green eyes have a reduced amount of melanin in the iris, but in a different way than those with blue eyes. Based on this, we can conclude that all blue-eyed people are connected to the same ancestor. They all inherited the same genetic switch at the same location in their DNA," explained Professor Eiberg.