The evolution of Darwin's theory

200 years after his birth, scientists are analyzing DNA in an effort to keep pace with increasingly rapid changes among humans and solve the mysteries behind blue eyes and our other differences.

By Karen Kaplan
LA Times

February 8, 2009

Blue eyes are typically associated with beauty, or perhaps Frank Sinatra. But to University of Wisconsin anthropologist John Hawks, they represent an evolutionary mystery.

For nearly all of human history, everyone in the world had brown eyes. Then, between 6,000 and 10,000 years ago, the first blue-eyed baby was born somewhere near the Black Sea.

For some reason, that baby's descendants gained a 5% evolutionary advantage over their brown-eyed competitors, and today the number of people with blue eyes tops half a billion.

"What does it mean?" asked Hawks, who studies the forces that have shaped the human species for the last 6 million years.

(More here.)