• News
  • Film and TV
  • Music
  • Tech
  • Features
  • Celebrity
  • Politics
  • Weird
  • Community
  • Advertise
  • Terms
  • Privacy & Cookies
  • LADbible Group
  • LADbible
  • SPORTbible
  • GAMINGbible
  • Tyla
  • UNILAD Tech
  • FOODbible
  • License Our Content
  • About Us & Contact
  • Jobs
  • Latest
  • Topics A-Z
  • Authors
Facebook
Instagram
X
Threads
TikTok
YouTube
Submit Your Content
Every blue-eyed person is a descendant of one single human

Home> Community

Updated 12:51 14 Apr 2023 GMT+1Published 12:50 14 Apr 2023 GMT+1

Every blue-eyed person is a descendant of one single human

If you've got blue eyes, then you can trace your lineage all the way back to this one person who lived 6,000 years ago

Joe Harker

Joe Harker

Featured Image Credit: Geoff Smith / Alamy Stock Photo/Tim Whitby / Alamy Stock Photo

Topics: Weird, Science

Joe Harker
Joe Harker

Joe graduated from the University of Salford with a degree in Journalism and worked for Reach before joining the LADbible Group. When not writing he enjoys the nerdier things in life like painting wargaming miniatures and chatting with other nerds on the internet. He's also spent a few years coaching fencing. Contact him via [email protected]

X

@MrJoeHarker

Advert

Advert

Advert

Everyone in the world with blue eyes can actually trace their lineage back to one person who lived thousands of years ago.

If you go back far enough up your family tree, you'll probably find out that you're related to some pretty interesting people.

Unless your entire family has spent all of eternity living in a cave far removed from civilisation, then there's a pretty good chance that at some point at least one of your ancestors was important enough to have their own Wikipedia article.

No matter who you're related to, it's still you that makes you unique but there's still traits you'll have in common with plenty of people around the world.

Advert

Some people are able to find pretty much exact copies of themselves by just wandering around in the big wide world, but for most, it's more just a similarity of characteristic.

Someone living thousands of years ago was the first blue-eyed human, now there are hundreds of millions of them.
Pexels

Take eye colour for example, there's a bit of an urban myth going around that when a baby is born they're always blue-eyed.

It's simply not true, though it is true that the eye colour a baby is born with isn't always the one they'll have as they grow up.

Advert

However, everyone who keeps their blue eyes shares a common ancestor who lived between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago.

That's a pretty wide window of time to try and pin down one life but, thanks to researchers, it's been worked out that this one person is the common ancestor of millions of people around the world.

And here's the science-y bit, in our eyes there's something called the OCA2 gene, which determines the level of brown pigment in them.

Blue-eyed people have a gene called HERC2 which shuts off the OCA2 and results in a person developing blue eyes.

Advert

This common ancestor lived thousands of years ago and every blue-eyed person has the same gene.
Linda Parton / Alamy Stock Photo

Every blue-eyed person in the world has the HERC2 gene, with this exact same mutation being passed down through generations and scientists have concluded that it all came from one original person.

The work was done by a team of researchers from the University of Copenhagen, which identified the initial mutation and realised that it was present in everyone with blue eyes.

So if you've got blue-eyes and know someone else who does, you now know that if you go far back enough you're actually family, though the same could be said for any number of strangers you pass on the street.

Advert

Since this common ancestor lived several thousand years ago, it's also probably safe to summarise that you are distantly related enough not to feel obliged to stick between eight and 10 percent of the world's population on the Christmas card list.

Choose your content:

18 hours ago
19 hours ago
a day ago
2 days ago
  • 18 hours ago

    YouTuber legally dies in order to get $50 refund from airline and explains how he did it

    He went through all the stress of 'dying' for the sake of getting back just 50 bucks

    Community
  • 19 hours ago

    Huge debate sparked after Boomer says 'life gets real' for Millennials when they pay for one particular thing

    'This dude's rage is real'

    Community
  • a day ago

    Doctors made shocking side effect discovery after man who’d smoked for decades complained about chronic cough

    In case you needed another reason to quit...

    Community
  • 2 days ago

    Active man, 54, diagnosed with cancer after unrelated basketball injury revealed shocking symptom

    'There was an elevation of protein that was present in both my urine and my blood'

    Community
  • Every blue-eyed person is a descendant of one single human
  • 'Most disturbing website on internet' can find every single picture that exists of you
  • Someone has found footage of every single time Trump says he'll do something 'in two weeks' and the results are baffling
  • AI creates 'average person' in every single US state and it's massively divided opinion