Brown eyes are common in Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, West Asia, Oceania, Africa and the Americas. Light or medium-pigmented brown eyes can also be commonly found in South Europe, among the Americas, and parts of Central Asia, West Asia and South Asia.
Originally, all humans had brown eyes. Some 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, a genetic mutation affecting one gene turned off the ability to produce enough melanin to color eyes brown causing blue eyes. This mutation arose in the OCA2 gene, the main gene responsible for determining eye color.
Australians of European ancestry have about 25 percent brown eyes while those of non-European descent almost all have brown eyes. If you include hazel eyes (sometimes called hazel brown eyes), the prevalence is even higher. This high prevalence doesn't mean all brown eyes look the same.
Eye Color Statistics From Most Common to Most Rare
Dark Brown: East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Africa. Lighter Brown: Europe, West Asia, and the Americas.
According to estimates, 70–79% of the world's population have brown eyes, making it the most common eye color worldwide. In fact, the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) state that everyone on Earth had brown eyes around 10,000 years ago.
Benefits of Brown Eyes
People with brown eyes tend to be at lower risk for eye cancer, macular degeneration, and diabetic retinopathy. An additional benefit of brown eyes is that the higher melanin levels may protect the brain's nerves from damage due to noise.
We found that green is the most popular lens colour, with brown coming in a close second, despite it being one of the most common eye colours. Although blue and hazel are seen as the most attractive eye colours for men and women they are surprisingly the least popular.
They Are Less Prone to Certain Eye Diseases
The sun can cause severe eye damage and result in eye diseases like cataracts and macular degeneration. But because brown eyes have more melanin, it's safe to say that if you have brown eyes, you are less likely to get these types of eye diseases.
Europeans, particularly northern and eastern Europeans, are unusually colored. Their hair can be not only black but also brown, flaxen, golden, or red, and their eyes not only brown but also blue, gray, hazel, or green.
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One of the study's main findings was that gray eyes are both the rarest and the statistically most attractive eye color, with hazel and green following closely behind. Conversely, brown eyes are the most common color yet the least attractive to the survey's respondents.
Aussies might have any combination of brown, blue, hazel, amber, or green eyes. Some Aussies even display more than one color within the same eye.
"In Australians of European ancestry, the percentage of eye colours are 45 percent blue-grey, 30 percent green-hazel and 25 percent brown. If you're considering non-European ancestry it is the almost completely brown eye colour."
Aussie eyes have been seen that are golden, lemon yellow, amber, light brown, dark brown, green, orange, and blue. On very dark individuals they may even appear black.
Of all eye colors, brown seems to be the only one that could be called “advantageous” from a survival perspective. While more research is needed, darker irises are linked to a number of health benefits, including these: Reduced risk of macular degeneration. Lower melanoma risk.
Green Eyes
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.
There are plenty of blue-eyed Asians. This probably happens when the traditional blue-eyed allele comes into a family from a (possibly very distant) European ancestor. Blue eyes then resurface in a child generations later if they inherit the allele from both parents.
While blue eyes used to be the least common colour and were seen as a rarity, 48% of the British population now have blue eyes. This is followed by green eyes at 30%, with a mere 22% of the British population having brown eyes.
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.
People with brown eyes have more melanin present in their iris, which insulates connections between brain cells and can cause them to fire more rapidly than their light-eyed counterparts.
If you have a darker eye color, your eyes can often withstand high glare lights better than light colored eyes can. This is thanks to the greater amount of pigment and melanin in your iris. You could potentially be better at driving at night because your eyes allow for less light to reflect and cause glare.
The allele for brown eyes is the most dominant allele and is always dominant over the other two alleles and the allele for green eyes is always dominant over the allele for blue eyes, which is always recessive.
A recent survey conducted by CyberPulse, a division of Impulse Research Corporation in Los Angeles uncovered this colorful research. Intelligence was the number one trait associated with brown, the most common eye color in the U.S., by 34 percent of respondents.
Blue eyes are crowned the sexiest among men and women
According to our research, blue is the sexiest eye colour, as the majority of the world's sexiest people, both male and female, have blue eyes.
When broken down by gender, men ranked gray, blue, and green eyes as the most attractive, while women said they were most attracted to green, hazel, and gray eyes. Despite brown eyes ranking at the bottom of our perceived attraction scale, approximately 79% of the world's population sports melanin-rich brown eyes.