What's the story with...eye color? 

From The Herald
11 February, 2008

By Alexander McWhinnie

It has been a staple of countless cheesy discos and weddings for more than 30 years but now researchers have discovered that Crystal Gayle's song Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue was on to something after all: brown eyes did, indeed, turn blue sometime between 6000 and 10,000 years ago.

A single mutation in an individual probably living in the region north-west of the Black Sea is now thought to be the origin of blue eyes. According to scientists in Denmark, the trait then spread with the large migrations of people seeking new agricultural land at the end of the last Ice Age.

The discovery would also explain why blue eyes are restricted to the peoples of northern Europe and southern Russia. Around 8% of the planet's population is blue-eyed. "Originally, we all had brown eyes," said Professor Hans Eiberg of the University of Copenhagen, part of the research team who conducted the study. "But a genetic mutation affecting the OCA2 gene in our chromosomes resulted in the creation of a switch, which literally turned off the ability to produce brown eyes."

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Note:  this study appears to be based entirely  upon modern DNA, but we can expect ancient DNA researchers to begin testing for the OCA2 "blue eyes" mutation in Neandertal and ancient "modern human" specimens soon!