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Blue-eyed people share single ancestor living 10,000 years ago: study
MarZutra:
http://www.thespec.com/News/CanadaWorld/article/317579
Blue-eyed people share single ancestor living 10,000 years ago: study
January 31, 2008
Steve Connor
The Independent
(Jan 31, 2008)
Everyone with blue eyes alive today --from Angelina Jolie to Mats Sundin --can trace their ancestry back to one person who probably lived about 10,000 years ago in the Black Sea region, research has found.
Scientists studying the genetics of eye colour have discovered that more than 99.5 per cent of blue-eyed people who volunteered to have their DNA analyzed have the same tiny mutation in the gene that determines the colour of the iris.
Hans Eiberg and colleagues at the University of Copenhagen are not sure when the mutation occurred, but other evidence suggested it probably arose about 10,000 years ago when there was a rapid expansion of the human population in Europe as a result of the spread of agriculture from the Middle East.
"The mutations responsible for blue eye colour most likely originate from the northwest 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.
Eiberg said that brown is the "default" colour for human eyes which results from a buildup of the dark skin pigment, melanin. However, in northern Europe a mutation arose in a gene known as OCA2 that disrupted melanin production in the iris and caused it to become blue.
Variations in the colour of people's eyes can be explained by the amount of melanin in the iris, but blue-eyed individuals only have a small degree of variation in the amount of melanin in their eyes, Eiberg said.
"From this we can conclude that all blue-eyed individuals are linked to the same ancestor. They have all inherited the same switch at exactly the same spot in their DNA."
Men and women with blue eyes have almost exactly the same genetic sequence in the part of the DNA responsible for eye colour. However, brown-eyed people, by contrast, have a considerable amount of individual variation in that area of DNA.
Eiberg has analyzed the DNA of about 800 people with blue eyes, ranging from fair-skinned, blond-haired Scandinavians to dark-skinned, blue-eyed people living in Turkey and Jordan.
"All of them, apart from possibly one exception, had exactly the same DNA sequence in the region of the OCA2 gene. This to me indicates very strongly that there must have been a single, common ancestor of all these people."
It is not known why blue eyes spread among the population of northern Europe and southern Russia.
Explanations include the suggestions that the blue eye colour either offered some advantage in the long hours of daylight in the summer, or short hours of daylight in winter, or that the trait was deemed attractive and therefore advantageous in terms of sexual selection.
mord:
So blueeyed Jews originated in Europe? :o ???
MarZutra:
No, probably the product of rape during their years of exile within the Gentile anti-Jew nations... That's what I'd say, especially during the Crusades, different pogroms and, of course, the enlightened "Jew"s desire to intermarry.... But then again, I don't know...lol
mord:
--- Quote from: MarZutra on January 31, 2008, 10:35:38 AM ---No, probably the product of rape during their years of exile within the Gentile anti-Jew nations... That's what I'd say, especially during the Crusades, different pogroms and, of course, the enlightened "Jew"s desire to intermarry.... But then again, I don't know...lol
--- End quote ---
Well since it's 10,000 yrs ago maybe some of these people went south
MarZutra:
Oh, forgot to mention that I love your little picture. Very good and fitting towards todays realities... O0
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