Apparently, it was a small change at the time, but it has left a lasting effect. Sometime between six and ten thousand years ago, a mutation in the HERC2 gene affected its neighboring OCA2 gene’s role in producing the protein that generates melanin. The result: Blue eyes.
Now, I’m a brown-eyed guy who married a girl with gray/green/blue eyes (I’m not good at determining colors—all three colors seem to be in there, depending on the ambient light). Anyway, she doesn’t have brown eyes. We have one clearly blue-eyed child and two brown-eyed children, but the children of our three children have blue or light-colored eyes. That doesn’t seem to be very significant, of course, but it might yield a little lesson about our place in the Cosmos and our relationship to its nature.
According to Hans Eiberg (I’m not making up his name) and other researchers, some ancestor started the whole blue-eye thing within the last ten millennia.* So, there’s a common ancestor for all blue-eyed people. I’m trying to picture that. Imagine the stir in the tribe. “She has blue eyes! She has blue eyes!” Would the tribal elders have proclaimed her “special” simply because of that slight difference in her appearance? Probably.
We’re like that, you know. We make big deals over little differences. Of course, ten millennia after the mother of all blue eyes (or father, we don’t know) there are millions of blue-eyed people, so that particular “difference” makes little difference. Blue-eyed people are, in spite of their recessive gene, relatively common.
By projecting ourselves into the deep past, we can imagine that the first blue-eyed person caused quite a stir. Why? Because regardless of our claim to open-mindedness and sophistication, we are often repelled or frightened by differences. Differences, which in themselves are indications of the complex nature of our cosmos, often frighten us, repel us, amaze us. Yet, in this cosmos, we should expect and celebrate differences as cosmic reflections.
Maybe the family and neighbors treated the first blue-eyed person with respect born of fear. We know that she (he) survived; the proof lies in my wife, one of my children, and my grandchildren. I would rather think that the blue-eyed child’s survival was the product not of fear but rather of open-mindedness. Now, wouldn’t that be something if our ancient ancestors showed a bit more openness to differences than we seem to show as their descendants?
Is it time to see all our differences as manifestations of a complex universe? And since we all manifest some difference here or there, is it time to think of everyone as a representative of the true nature of the universe?
* Hans Eiberg, Jesper Troelsen, Mette Nielsen, Annemette Mikkelsen, Jonas Mengel-From, Klaus W. Kjaer, Lars Hansen. Blue eye color in humans may be caused by a perfectly associated founder mutation in a regulatory element located within the HERC2 gene inhibiting OCA2 expression. Human Genetics, 2008; 123 (2): 177 DOI: 10.1007/s00439-007-0460-x Online at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080130170343.htm
Now, I’m a brown-eyed guy who married a girl with gray/green/blue eyes (I’m not good at determining colors—all three colors seem to be in there, depending on the ambient light). Anyway, she doesn’t have brown eyes. We have one clearly blue-eyed child and two brown-eyed children, but the children of our three children have blue or light-colored eyes. That doesn’t seem to be very significant, of course, but it might yield a little lesson about our place in the Cosmos and our relationship to its nature.
According to Hans Eiberg (I’m not making up his name) and other researchers, some ancestor started the whole blue-eye thing within the last ten millennia.* So, there’s a common ancestor for all blue-eyed people. I’m trying to picture that. Imagine the stir in the tribe. “She has blue eyes! She has blue eyes!” Would the tribal elders have proclaimed her “special” simply because of that slight difference in her appearance? Probably.
We’re like that, you know. We make big deals over little differences. Of course, ten millennia after the mother of all blue eyes (or father, we don’t know) there are millions of blue-eyed people, so that particular “difference” makes little difference. Blue-eyed people are, in spite of their recessive gene, relatively common.
By projecting ourselves into the deep past, we can imagine that the first blue-eyed person caused quite a stir. Why? Because regardless of our claim to open-mindedness and sophistication, we are often repelled or frightened by differences. Differences, which in themselves are indications of the complex nature of our cosmos, often frighten us, repel us, amaze us. Yet, in this cosmos, we should expect and celebrate differences as cosmic reflections.
Maybe the family and neighbors treated the first blue-eyed person with respect born of fear. We know that she (he) survived; the proof lies in my wife, one of my children, and my grandchildren. I would rather think that the blue-eyed child’s survival was the product not of fear but rather of open-mindedness. Now, wouldn’t that be something if our ancient ancestors showed a bit more openness to differences than we seem to show as their descendants?
Is it time to see all our differences as manifestations of a complex universe? And since we all manifest some difference here or there, is it time to think of everyone as a representative of the true nature of the universe?
* Hans Eiberg, Jesper Troelsen, Mette Nielsen, Annemette Mikkelsen, Jonas Mengel-From, Klaus W. Kjaer, Lars Hansen. Blue eye color in humans may be caused by a perfectly associated founder mutation in a regulatory element located within the HERC2 gene inhibiting OCA2 expression. Human Genetics, 2008; 123 (2): 177 DOI: 10.1007/s00439-007-0460-x Online at https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080130170343.htm
RSS Feed