The Earth is older than 10,000 years, but not blue eyes....

Here's another reason why we don't want to piss off the Danes with illegal rendition flights out of Greenland: they might stop doing interesting science.

Once again confounding Young Earth Creationists, a University of Copenhagen study has used the so-called mitochondrial clock in DNA passed down exclusively through the female line to determine that the original mutation for blue eyes in gene OCA2 occurred just 6-10,000 years ago.

This places the mutation well after most parts of the planet (with the possible exception of the Pacific Islands) had already been settled by modern humans, and potentially after the development of agriculture and emergence of the first towns.

The implications of this are pretty intriguing: (a) it reinforces the idea that evolution is an ongoing process, with significant changes occurring right up to the dawn of recorded human history; and (b) indicating that our current superficial ethnic divisions into what Western Culture labels as "races" is not only ephemeral, but also has hardly prevented the world-wide spread of such an obvious trait in only a few millennia.

Cool stuff.

Comments

Anonymous said…

Well, Victor Mair at U Penn found mummies in China that are caucasians that are about 6,000 years old with bright blue lapis lazuli covering their eyes. So perhaps it originated in China.

February 1, 2008 at 9:10 PM

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