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Scots Are Ol' Blue Eyes, Says Study - The Herald

Scots have the highest rate of the gene that causes blue eyes in the UK. A study of 12,000 people's DNA found 57% in southeast Scotland have the OCA2 gene associated with blue eyes, compared to 48-49% elsewhere in the UK and Ireland. The gene is most common in areas settled by Angles from Denmark, suggesting historic migration influenced the high rate of blue eyes in southeast Scotland today. Overall about half of people in Britain have blue eyes.

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53 views3 pages

Scots Are Ol' Blue Eyes, Says Study - The Herald

Scots have the highest rate of the gene that causes blue eyes in the UK. A study of 12,000 people's DNA found 57% in southeast Scotland have the OCA2 gene associated with blue eyes, compared to 48-49% elsewhere in the UK and Ireland. The gene is most common in areas settled by Angles from Denmark, suggesting historic migration influenced the high rate of blue eyes in southeast Scotland today. Overall about half of people in Britain have blue eyes.

Uploaded by

michaelthomasperry1776
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Scots are ol' blue eyes, says study


22nd August 2014

SCOTLAND

Scots are ol' blue eyes, says study

By David Leask

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SCOTS are the blue-eyed boys and girls of Britain.


A major new study of the DNA of the British Isles has found the highest level of the gene that causes
the light iris colour in Edinburgh, the Lothians and Borders.

Fifty-seven per cent in the south-east of Scotland have the OCA2 gene, compared with 48 per cent and
49 per cent in the rest of the country - a figure that also happens to be the average for the UK and
Republic of Ireland.

Scots and Irish are also more likely to have blue eyes than others, especially the southern English.
The blue-eye gene was just 35 per cent in south-west England, 41 per cent in east England and 45 per
cent in Wales.

Alistair Moffat, managing director of ScotlandsDNA, the firm that crunched numbers of an
enormous sample of 12,000 people who know their ancestry, said: "In Scottish terms, what we think
is that the West is more Celtic, with links to Ireland and Iberia, and the east more Germanic, with
links to Sweden, Germany, Poland and the Baltic states.

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"This is only a hypothesis but links with the Baltic and patterns of immigration may explain how
many blue eyed people there are in south-east Scotland."

The Lothians - once part of ancient kingdom of Northumbria, were settled by Angles from Denmark,
which is roughly as blue-eyed as Scotland.

But places where blue eyes are more common than not are in a swathe of territory running across
northern Germany, northern Poland, all three Baltic states, Finland, central Sweden and much of
northern Russia."

Edinburgh recently also emerged as the most "ginger" place in Britain - although Udmurts, a minority
in northern Russia, claim to have the most red-haired people on the planet. However, ginger hair
appears to be a remnant of ancient Scottish DNA. ScotlandsDNA has still to look at distribution of fair
hair, which, like blue eyes, is focused on the Baltic.

Overall across Britain, the eye colour breakdown is 48 per cent blue, 30 per cent green and 22 per
cent brown. "We were surprised," said Mr Moffat. "A lot of people think blue eyes are much rarer than
they are."

His report added: "It may be that blue eyes are like the peacock's tail. It doesn't confer any
evolutionary advantage for the peacock except that it gets him more mates."

The eye colour research will be unveiled at the Who Do You Think You Are? show at the SECC in
Glasgow next weekend.
SCOTLAND

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