USA Today: Blue-eyed people all related to each other (duh, but there is a story here)

In USA Today today Elizabeth Weise tells readers if they have blue eyes, they may be related to every other blue-eyed person in the world. To be tediously literal about such things, there is more than a shred of chance they are related to every brown-eyed, or black-skinned, or seven-foot-tall, or anything else’d person in the world (not to mention blue monkeys, blue-footed boobies, and blue-green algae). But the catchy lede gets soon enough to a real story – that all blue-eyed people seem to have a rather recent, common ancestor.

Weise gets to the story a week or so later than did several non-US outlets. A University of Copenhagen professor and his team set it off. They report that a mutation just 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, by necessity in just one person, explain all the blue eyed people on the planet. (Of course, the recessive gene had to carom about, with a kiss of incest, in some small clan until double copies came together to make a blue-eyed person). Nearly identical versions of the gene are now found in traditional peoples in lands from Europe down to the Near East and across to India. It marched quite a way (largely, one supposes, by various conquering armies and traders’ marketing sorties).

Other stories:

Sydney Morning Herald Louise Hall reports the Black Sea as a possible center of the gene’s spread; Register (UK) Lester Haines ; Der Spiegel Andrew Curry says this means all these blue eyes are also kin to Brad Pitt, Sinatra, Ms. Jolie to the right there, etc ; Xinhua ;

Grist for the Mill:

Univ. of Copenhagen Press Release ; Human Genetics journal Article ;

pic source ;

-CP