Where do green eyes come from?

reply to post by asmeone2


I have green eyes and very dark, almost raven-like, black hair. My father has green eyes, darker then mine, and my mom light-brown so...

Only thing I can think of is that when I was a baby, until ~5 years old, I had very light-brown hair, almost blond...go figure...

Wow, who knew ATS had such a collection of gorgeous women?


Someone asked about a brown eyed parent always producing brown eyed kids? The answer to that is no, at least not for caucasians. I am brown eyed, but my father is blue eyed from two blue eyed parents while my mother is brown eyed from two brown eyed parents, so I have the recessive gene for blue eyes. My wife is blue from two blue parents, so our kids have a 50-50 chance either way. My son has blue eyes which sometimes seem very green, but either way, he clearly received my recessive gene.


I am interested to hear more about eyes changing colors, or fading in particular, as that is what has happened to mine. They now would most likely be called hazel, although they were dark brown when I was younger. At times now they seem sort of golden, which is a bit odd, but hey, what are you going to do?

Iris also contains melanin. If the body is exposed to UV rays... melanin production increases... Your skin becomes dark, but other melanin containing parts of the body, takes time before they can produce melanin to protect the body from UV.

answers.yahoo.com...

this could explain, in some cases, the change of eye colour, however only in a long period of time

The bottom line is that both of the changes you describe are widely reported. For example, in one study, 15% of Caucasians had some lightening or darkening in eye color at puberty. In fact, this study showed there was probably some unknown gene or genes involved in the eye color change.

What is surprising to me is that eye color doesnÂ’t change more often. Eye color is determined by lots of different genes but it all boils down to how much pigment you have in the front part of your iris at any one time. Lots of pigment means brown eyes, a little bit, blue eyes. Other colors come from intermediate amounts of pigment.

The genes involved in eye color determine how much pigment gets made, how quickly it is degraded and where in your iris to put it. In other words, eye color is an ongoing process that is not necessarily set in stone.

So all that has to happen to change eye color is to change the final amount of pigment in your eye. How could that happen?

Remember, genes are just recipes for proteins. When eye color genes are on, proteins that make and degrade eye color pigment are made. The amount of pigment in your eye is determined by how good these proteins are at their job and how many of these proteins are doing their jobs. For example, you get the same amount of pigment if you make a little bit of a good protein or lots of a mediocre protein.

The most likely explanation for a change in eye color is to change the amount of pigment producing proteins made. There are lots of cases where something in the environment changes the amount of protein that is made.

Now, back to your questions. An eye color change at puberty doesnÂ’t seem farfetched considering all the genes that get turned on and off when a child turns into an adult. In fact, maybe the 15% of people whose eyes change color at puberty have an eye color gene that responds to the sex hormones associated with puberty.

As for eyes changing color at various times as an adult, we need to say that there is something in the environment affecting one or more of the eye color genes. There are lots of examples of things in the environment influencing how much a gene is turned on. Stress, for example, is known to affect genes important for the immune system. IÂ’ve also read about certain foods affecting eye color.

I hope this helped. The bottom line is that eye color is the result of a constant process of pigment creation and destruction. As I was writing this, I began to wonder if most people have small changes in their eye color genes but that it is unnoticeable. For example, my blue eyes are most likely due to defective eye color proteins. So if their expression were changed, there would be no change in eye color. The same probably holds true for dark brown eyes where any changes are too subtle to notice. It may be that only those on the cusp with, for example, hazel color eyes can notice these subtle changes.

www.thetech.org...

This seems fairly resonable

[edit on 5/10/08 by Ghost147]

[edit on 5/10/08 by Ghost147]

reply to post by Ghost147




You stole one of my sources from the first page of this thread!!! I am hurt, I am angry, I am disappointed.....

did i? sorry im trying to cover 8 large scale topics at the same time. i, like you, are getting swamped with sources. i cant keep track of them anymore.

reply to post by Ghost147


I was joking. I linked it on the first page but didn't quote the contents of the article. More people will see yours than mine because they don't have to click on the link.

It's all good....

reply to post by asmeone2

did-a-chuck?
lol
anyway, i think u are right, they won't change totally w/out a medical reason. my eyes are a shade of green/hazel, and this is not my imaginatin, other people brought it to my attention first, my eyeschange shades quite noticeably, sometimes becoming closer to yellow.
did-a-chuck, did-a-cheen, not to worry, your eyes are green!

anyway!

I think i have a solution to one of my questions on this topic. As I stated before, my eyes always seem to change in "lightness", They seem to be the highest contrast right when i wake up for a short while, then start to fade slightly to a point which fading seems to come to a hault. Also, when i wake up, i have a fairly prodominant black ring around the iris (not fully complete)

However, lets say im out tanning after a few minutes of the brightness, my eyes then change contrast again, but in the sence that they are then really bright blue and light blue streaks, instead of when i wake up, being dark blue with whiter streaks.

This, logically, would be because of the melanines, correct?

however, what doesnt seem to make sence is that it should be the oposite way around, being that they would become darker in the sun, and brighter once I wake.

i have green eyes dark hair, my dad has green eyes and so does 80% of my dads side of fam in Italy.

good question, ive been wondering the same thing.

anyone know the answer?

Originally posted by Enigma Publius
reply to post by asmeone2

 

did-a-chuck?
lol
anyway, i think u are right, they won't change totally w/out a medical reason. my eyes are a shade of green/hazel, and this is not my imaginatin, other people brought it to my attention first, my eyeschange shades quite noticeably, sometimes becoming closer to yellow.
did-a-chuck, did-a-cheen, not to worry, your eyes are green!

Maybe from sunlight too.

BTW, the did-a-chee? is in reference to the Lobstrosities from the Dark Tower books.

I read an interesting article in National Geographic recently about how Neanderthals and Homo Sapiens most likely inter-bred instead of the former simply dying out. One of the traits they noted for Neanderthals were Green-Brown Eyes. Here is an excerpt from what was stated:

"Late breaking news about early humans' appearance kept our Neanderthal story team hopping. Genetic studies released before the Kennis brothers started work on their figure indicated that the hominids likely had red hair, so blue seemed a reasonable choice for her eye color.

Then after the figure's completion, a study by Hans Eiberg and colleagues at the University of Copenhagen indicated that blue eyes first showed up as a single mutation 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, at least 18,000 years after Neanderthals' extinction.

The figure's blue eyes had to change. But what color should they be instead? Plain brown would be a safe pick, experts told us, but a greenish-brown color could have also occurred. So our Neanderthal woman's gaze was digitally changed - to hazel."

This excerpt is from a description of how Adrie and Alfons Kennis, both artists, created a realistic replica of what a Neanderthal woman would appear like in real life. It is from the October 2008 Edition of National Geographic Magazine ("The Other Humans- Neanderthals Revealed").

Bottom line, it seems that Green eyes most likely came about somewhere inbetween Brown and Blue Eyes. Hazel was most likely the first stepping stone forward from Brown, then came Green, and finally it ended with Blue.

reply to post by asmeone2

It's interesting to me that green eyes are spread over several ethnic groups, wheras blue/brown eyes tend to be confined to certain demographics.

Well, ya see, there was this thing called the crusades, and there were these two groups, christians and muslims, that had deep issues with one another...

So deep, that they not only tried to wipe each other off the face of the planet, they raped one anothers women...the blue eyed europeans and the brown eyed southerners created quite a mix of DNA - and all for the cause of a religious sect...


This is not the only reason, but a definite contribution none the less.

reply to post by chapter29


What tha...

i don't mean to snap at you, put please save that for CiR... I started this thread as a break from that kind of religious stuff!

reply to post by TheAgentNineteen


So green eyes were the stepping stone?

I wonder how come there are so few today, then?

reply to post by asmeone2


That in no way was supposed to be a religious post...if you read my profile you will see that organized religion ercks me.

I am simply stating something that contributed to the eyes gaining a green pigment...

I really don't see how my previous post deviated from your question.

Sorry if it was too much for your palate...

I've got green eyes so that would be awesome if I was somehow part "Alien" lol, but I too have questioned what exactly makes my eyes green, they were primarily blue in my earlier childhood and at somepoint which i can't remember they faded green

This may be a little crazy, but what if green and blue eyes were a sign of interbreading from past alien species?


I mean, has anyone ever seen a monkey with green eyes or blue eyes, as far as I know all monkeys are brown eyed, what if the alien interbreeding was what set of this whole "more or less melatonin" or whatever, I mean its just odd that eyes are different in color, I can't say any are better or worse, but a lesser known fact about hitler is that he believed in an alien species and he believed blue eyes/blonde hair was the 'perfect race', I'm not saying I think hitler was a good man but maybe he was on to something about eye color being of another species mixed into mankind, maybe even a species created by alien races to be "perfected", I know this doesn't stand true to all blue eyed people as I'm sure there are many that are less than perfect, but really, is it all that hard to conceive that we may be different depending upon eye color?

I just wanted to provoke thought other than the "norm" which is "we are all the same on the inside" which I now believe is completely false. Its true that all races of all ethnicities are in fact somewhat different in their body structure and growth, everything from the ability to counter certain sicknesses etc to the specific structure of the body and color of the skin. I get the idea that "well we are all the same at 'heart and mind'" but its pretty astonishing how much a species such as mankind has so many really diverse physical attributes
I'm not saying that anyone is better than the other, but its just interesting that we are told in school "we are all the same on the inside" when in fact every body is almost completely unique compared to another, even within their own ethnicities etc

reply to post by MaynardisGod


I'd say it's a strech... but can't be ruled out.

Cats exhibit green, blue and yellow eyes. Birds also display a similar range.

So I guess we humans aren't the apple in the ALien's eye...

im gonna go ahead and guess that blue and green eyes are a defect somehow in evolution. only a source will tell! *runs off to find source.... /food.*

I remember reading something many years ago (I don't remember exactly when so don't quote me on anything) that some gypsies were weary of people with blue eyes. I remember something about that some thought that people with blue eyes could look into your soul. I think it was some random spiritual website or something. Sorry I can't be more informative. But thought it might be randomly interesting.