Iberian DNA and the Evolution of Hazel Eyes... [15:00]

YouTube ^ | March 23, 2025 | Celtic History Decoded

[SunkenCiv]

Only around 5% of the world’s population have hazel eyes. Yet a 2009 study found that 55.2% of their Spanish cohort had hazel-green eyes. This eye color is also more common in Portugal than the global average. But why is there such a concentration of hazel eyes in the Iberian peninsula compared to most other parts of the world? And is the evolution of hazel eyes connected to the genetic history of Iberia? Now there are a two main types of hazel eyes. 

Iberian DNA and the Evolution of Hazel Eyes... | 15:00 
Celtic History Decoded | 48.5K subscribers | 456,464 views | March 23, 2025 

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:25 Hazel Eyes
1:07 Iberian Peninsula
2:04 Genetics of Hazel Eyes
4:14 First Person with Hazel Eyes?
6:43 Iberia and Hazel Eyes
8:11 Get Member-Only Videos
8:42 The Genetic History of Iberia
12:55 Main Haplogroups of Iberia Today
14:45 Become a Member

[central_va]

I have hazel.

[Prince of Space]

I have blue-green eyes, with one greener than the other. An eye doctor once told me mine were the first truly blue-green eyes he’d ever seen. I’m Irish, Welsh, Scottish and British, and both parents had blue eyes. My husband has brown eyes, however, and only our third child had blue eyes, to my mother’s consternation.

[Jamestown1630]

I think I saw somewhere today that at least 16 chromosomes have been identified as having something to do with eye color, and that an individual’s eye color can have nothing to do with that of the parents. (I’m the only person in my immediate family or among my grandparents who have green eyes.)

The link in post 20 mentions a place in China where most people have green eyes and blond hair.

[central_va]

According to Marine folklore the best snipers have pale gray eyes.

[SaxxonWoods]

Very cool, I’m male, have hazel eyes and women love them, both men and women have referred to them as “devil eyes”. My father is from a 1,000+ year-old village where his surname originated. His family home has been dated back 600 years due to the arch design in what is now in the basement but was the only level originally.

[one guy in new jersey]

“...evolution...”

No.

[one guy in new jersey]

Let her go.

You ruffian.

[Texan5]

My eyes were hazel green when I was little-they changed gradually to the color of river water-green with a bit of gray-and have stayed that way. My grandfather had eyes the same color-so do several of my cousins. My brother has hazel brownish eyes, like my mom did. I’m Hispanic- ancestors were Spanish Basques from the Pyrenees...

[Pelham]

The hazel eyes in the picture look just like mine. My father had blue eyes, my mother had brown.

My ancestry is largely British Isles. No Iberian ancestry that I know of. Maybe France and Corsica count.

[MeanWestTexan]

I do, too. I keep them in a jar.

j/k

[MeanWestTexan]

“but I’m wondering WHY people with NO genetic connection to those two nations have hazel eyes too”

The Portuguese sailors surely had a lot to do with that.

[Jamestown1630]

It’s thought that the green-eyed, blonde people in an area of China may owe their coloring to the survivors of a Roman battle going back to the first century BC - the ‘Lost Legion of Crassus’.

If a genetic influence can be that old, I doubt many people can know who all their ancestors may have been or where they traveled back then.

https://www.warhistoryonline.com/ancient-history/romans-china-lost-legions-carrhae.html

[MS.BEHAVIN]

I have green eyes.
My late Mom was green eyed with dark red hair.
My Dads eyes were a deep dark brown.
His hair was black.

My brother has gorgeous hazel eyes.
Both of us had dark brown hair that
became very light in summer.

Our ancestors came from France and landed on the
Gaspe Peninsula.

I have an Irish great grandmother on my Mom’s side.
My dad’s folks were from the Brie province in France.
My Mom’s side has not been investigated much
(I started on it too late!)

[nopardons]

In LANDLOCKED Hungary and Poland?

Don't guess, nor assume!

[nopardons]

That’s true; the Ancient Romans and Greeks ( Alexander ) went almost everywhere! But I doubt that they had hazel eyes coloring.

[Jamestown1630]

Well, my point is that eye color is genetic, and genes go where people do.

The video on hazel eyes seems to indicate that brown eyed and blue eyed people in the Iberian area seem to have first intermixed 8 to 6 thousand years ago; and that’s where the hazel eyes started. Then people moved around.

[nopardons]

LOL...oh YOU to? :-)

We are members of that same club, I see.

[nopardons]

Yes, it’s true!

[US_MilitaryRules]

I have green eyes also. 64 years old. Parents are, Greek father and adopted mother, but she was a strawberry blonde red head with lots of freckles! lol Pretty sure she had a lot of Irish in her.

[nopardons]

Well my maternal grandparents AND my parents were composed of one with hazel eyes and one with gray/green/blue eyes and the other with brown eyes and the gray/green/blue changeable eye color and NOT A ONE set of their progeny had hazel eyes!

I've been crazy for genetics since I first learned about Mendel, when I was 15, so this is not a new thing fro me and I have done pages of this kind of thing for as far back as I can go, down to the present. And both I and the progeny also married different colored eye individuals and OUR respective progeny has followed the past's; not another hazel nor green eye in the bunch.