Blue eyed people may have a common ancestor

Eye color can be changed in a matter of few minutes, thanks to colored contact lenses. However, can the eye color that you are born with help you to discover something about youself? Or in other words, can eye color help people to trace their lineages or track their ancestral roots?

At least people with blue eyes can, if new research is to be believed. According to this article in LiveScience, a recent study has found that people with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor.

 Professor Hans Eiberg and his team of scientists at the University of Copenhagen, after analyzing the DNA of around 800 blue eyed individuals of different races, came to the conclusion that almost all blue-eyed individuals can be linked to the same ancestor who lived some 6,000 and 10,000 years ago. 

Originally, we all had brown eyes, Prof. Eiberg explains. Variation in the colour of the eyes from brown to green can all 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, which occurred due to a tiny mutation in the gene thousands of years ago.

Incidentally, the outcome of this research has sparked so much interest in the media that leading newspapers, portals, social networking sites and forums are all replete with references to top Hollywood and Bollywood actors Angelina Jolie and Aishwarya Rai. Coincidentally these two beauties are blue-eyed and hence the topic with a scintillating headline like Aishwarya and Angelina may have a common ancestor is grabbing most of the readers’ attention.