Every blue-eyed individual in the world may trace their ancestry back to a single person who lived thousands of years ago.
If you look far enough back in your family tree, you’ll undoubtedly discover that you’re linked to some fascinating folks.
Unless your entire family has spent all of eternity living in a cave far from civilization, there’s a strong possibility that at some point in history, at least one of your ancestors was important enough to have their own Wikipedia page.
No matter who you’re related to, you always make yourself unique, yet you’ll share traits with many people worldwide.
Some people can locate nearly exact replicas of themselves by simply going around in the big wide world, but for the most part, it’s more of a likeness of characteristics.
Consider eye color. There’s an urban legend that when a kid is born, he or she is always blue-eyed.
It’s just not true, though it is true that the eye color a kid is born with isn’t always the same as the one they’ll have as an adult.
Everyone who retains their blue eyes, however, has a common ancestor who lived between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago.
That’s a rather large time span to try to pin down one life, but due to experts, it’s been determined that this one person is the common ancestor of millions of people worldwide.
And now for the science part: the OCA2 gene affects the amount of brown pigment in our eyes.
Blue-eyed persons have a gene called HERC2 that turns off the OCA2 gene, resulting in blue eyes.
Blue-eyed person
Every blue-eyed person on the planet carries the HERC2 gene, with the same mutation passed down through generations, and experts have concluded that it all originated from a single person.
A team of researchers from the University of Copenhagen detected the initial mutation and discovered that it was present in everyone with blue eyes.
So, if you have blue eyes and know someone else who does, you now know that if you go back far enough in your family tree, you’re actually relatives, but the same could be said for any number of strangers you pass on the street.
Given that this shared ancestor lived many thousand years ago, it’s probably safe to conclude that you’re distantly related enough not to feel obligated to include between eight and ten percent of the world’s population on your Christmas card list.
