I should first point out that blonde hair and blue eyes are prevalent only in certain parts of Europe - northern France, northern Germany and Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, etc.), primarily.
Perhaps the most plausible theory is that blonde hair and blue eyes arose because of a mechanism called sex selection. This is where males and females choose as their mates those who have one unusual physical characteristic, not necessarily associated with "fitness" per se but simply something unusual.
Finland. Finland has the highest blond hair population by percentage of the total population. Nearly 80% of the population has blond hair, and an astounding 89% of the population has blue eyes. Blond hair and blue eyes are one of the rarest combinations in the world.
Naturally-occurring blond hair is primarily found in people living in or descended from people who lived in the northern half of Europe, and may have evolved alongside the development of light skin that enables more efficient synthesis of vitamin D, due to northern Europe's lower levels of sunlight.
Posted Sept. 22, 2020, 5:35 a.m. It turns out most Vikings weren't as fair-haired and blue-eyed as legend and pop culture have led people to believe. According to a new study on the DNA of over 400 Viking remains, most Vikings had dark hair and dark eyes.
As a result of the relatively low levels of sunlight for most of the year, humans in Scandinavia began to develop symptoms of vitamin D deficiency: namely lighter skin and hair colour. No fellas around? With the sun rarely making an appearance through the Danish winter, it's easy to see how this theory makes sense.
A study found that in the United States 16.6% of the population has blue eyes. The study also found that 28.3% of the population has blonde hair and that 9.3% of the population has blonde hair and blue eyes.
Green: Bright Blonde
Green eyes are the rarest eye color around.
As the population grows and people have babies, the genes for less melanin will become more common. That makes the link between lighter eyes, hair, and skin tighter. So that's why you see people with blond hair typically have blue eyes!
Red- or blonde-haired Vikings? Genetic research has shown that the Vikings in West Scandinavia, and therefore in Denmark, were mostly red-haired. However, in North Scandinavia, in the area around Stockholm, blonde hair was dominant.
“We didn't know genetically what they actually looked like until now,” Willerslev added. He said the new research “debunks” the traditional image of blond Vikings, as “many had brown hair and were influenced by genetic influx from the outside of Scandinavia.”
Those ferocious seafaring warriors that explored, raided and traded across Europe from the late eighth to the early 11th centuries, known as the Vikings, are typically thought of as blonde Scandinavians. But Vikings may have a more diverse history: They carried genes from Southern Europe and Asia, a new study suggests.
Scientists believe that it is possible to trace all blue-eyed people back to a common ancestor, who likely had a genetic mutation that reduced the amount of melanin in the iris. Most people with blue eyes are of European descent.
Through DNA testing, it is possible to effectively trace your potential inner Viking and discover whether it forms part of your genetic makeup or not. However, it's not 100% definitive. There's no exact Nordic or Viking gene that is passed down through the generations.
Some sources, such as Eupedia, claim that in central parts of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Finland, 80% of the population is blonde, with natural fair-haired people in other Baltic Countries (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and other parts of Scandinavia) making up 50-79% of the population.
Do all blonde people share the same blonde ancestor? No, they don't. Blonde hair seems to have appeared more than once in humans. Which means that different blondes trace back their blonde hair to different ancestors.
The reason has roots in evolutionary psychology. Both blonde hair and blue eyes are recessive traits, so both parents must carry the gene for blonde hair to pass it on to their kids.
True blonde is also a rare hair color, and the Daily Mail reports that only 12.7 percent of women have pure blonde hair, and only 9.9 percent of men do. Surprisingly, many of the genetic differences identified by the researchers correlated with factors other than pigmentation like hair texture and growth.
While only 1 in 5 Caucasian adults have blue eyes in the United States, most are born blue-eyed. Their irises change from blue to hazel or brown during infancy.
There's a little genetic tweak that makes the combination of red hair and blue eyes the rarest of them all. The same Nature study mentioned above found that another gene variant, HERC2, interacts with both the MC1R gene and the OCA2 gene—and it can shut off the redhead gene while expressing blue eyes and blonde hair.
Green is considered by some to be the actual rarest eye color in the world, though others would say it's been dethroned by red, violet, and grey eyes. Green eyes don't possess a lot of melanin, which creates a Rayleigh scattering effect: Light gets reflected and scattered by the eyes instead of absorbed by pigment.
A couple of years ago, scientist determined that BLUE EYES was a MUTATION that occurred around 6,000 years ago and it stems from A BLACK MALE AFRICAN ORIGIN. They report several archeological proofs puts this event around the BLACK SEA AREA.
Approximately 10.7% of the Greek population is blond-haired and 14% is blue or green-eyed.
It is not uncommon to see Italians with lighter eye and hair shades. Italians have all different eye colors including brown, hazel, green, and blue. There are blonde, brunette, and red-haired Italians. The more North you move in Italy the more frequently you will see Italians with blue eyes.
This is a great question! From a first pass we might conclude that blue eyes and blonde hair are recessive.