# most common eye color among n american caucasians **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [May 23, 2005, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150 "2005-05-23T20:05:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Cerowyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/82dd89/32.png) [@Cerowyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cerowyn)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2005, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/21 "2005-05-24T20:24:00Z")
Red hair found in [Gaelic] Celtic populations comes from Scandinavian influences; it is not a traditionally Celtic trait. The “prototypical” Celtic genetic stock is pale skin and dark or black hair. Nor are Celts albinos; they _do_ have melanin. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2005, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/22 "2005-05-24T20:30:15Z")
> [@mark tween](#): > > Of course. They are a mixture of of several. The original europeans were celts. And they had red hair and freckles. Asian invasions changed the landscape of course. The _original_ Europeans may have been any number of people, but it’s certainly not clear that they were Celts (and that’s not even a particularly likely hypothesis by anything I’ve heard.) ---
**Author:** ![Perderabo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a183cd/32.png) [@Perderabo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Perderabo)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2005, 8:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/23 "2005-05-24T20:41:10Z")
I always read those little sheets that come with prescription drugs. Some eyedrops I’m using can permanently change my eye color to brown. So apparently there is more to eye color than genetics. ---
**Author:** ![Queen\_Bruin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/e274bd/32.png) [@Queen\_Bruin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Queen_Bruin)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2005, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/24 "2005-05-24T20:46:55Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > Celtic language_s_, and what’s your source on that? Are you saying that the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family is an offshoot of the Germanic branch? To my knowledge they’re not even particularly closely related. The Celts once inhabited much of Europe and no doubt they traveled across the Alps at times, but that’s not to say that they’re particularly closely related to Germans or to Germanic people. Yeah, I always thought that the Celtic languages were rather close to Latin, although I’d be interested in more information. ---
**Author:** ![mark\_tween](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/22d042/32.png) [@mark\_tween](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mark_tween)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2005, 9:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/25 "2005-05-24T21:22:08Z")
> [@Cerowyn](#): > > Red hair found in [Gaelic] Celtic populations comes from Scandinavian influences; it is not a traditionally Celtic trait. The “prototypical” Celtic genetic stock is pale skin and dark or black hair. Nor are Celts albinos; they _do_ have melanin. I’ve heard the opposite. Scandinavians have type 2 skin and celts have type 1 skin, and have little or no melalin, and so which makes them fairer. No they are not albinos, they just have a different polymer, made up of another amino-acid, called cysteine. Which gives them the red hair. ---
**Author:** ![Cerowyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/82dd89/32.png) [@Cerowyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cerowyn)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2005, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/26 "2005-05-24T21:23:37Z")
> [@The Sausage Creature](#): > > Yeah, I always thought that the Celtic languages were rather close to Latin, although I’d be interested in more information. The Celtic languages are not close to Latin. The closest that the Celtic group of languages gets to Latin is that both the former and the Italic languages (of which one is Latin) are descended from Indo-European. Modern Celtic languages survive in two groups: Brythonic (Breton, Cornish and Welsh) and Goidelic (Gaelic [Irish, Scottish and Hiberno-Scottish] and Manx). ---
**Author:** ![mark\_tween](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/22d042/32.png) [@mark\_tween](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mark_tween)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2005, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/27 "2005-05-24T21:27:42Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > The _original_ Europeans may have been any number of people, but it’s certainly not clear that they were Celts (and that’s not even a particularly likely hypothesis by anything I’ve heard.) Of course they weren’t only ones, they were just the largest group at one time. ---
**Author:** ![Cerowyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/82dd89/32.png) [@Cerowyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cerowyn)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2005, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/28 "2005-05-24T21:35:31Z")
> [@mark tween](#): > > I’ve heard the opposite. Scandinavians have type 2 skin and celts have type 1 skin, and have little or no melalin, and so which makes them fairer. No they are not albinos, they just have a different polymer, made up of another amino-acid, called cysteine. Which gives them the red hair. Humans without melanin (note the spelling) are called albinos. Cysteine is an amino acid found in the stomach lining and in the immune system, not the skin. I am not aware of any scientific taxonomy for skin “type 1” or “type 2.” However, I will concede that my reference to red hair not being a Celtic trait might have been hasty. My lone RL reference is not backed up by searches on the web. Reasonably authoritative sites indicate that it is believed that red hair is in fact an ancient Celtic feature. ---
**Author:** ![Cerowyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/82dd89/32.png) [@Cerowyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cerowyn)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2005, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/29 "2005-05-24T21:37:08Z")
> [@mark tween](#): > > Of course they weren’t only ones, they were just the largest group at one time. Actually, the short-lived Celtic dominance of Europe fragmented mostly because they were numerically inferior to the natives. On most of the continent, they were never a majority, nor even a significant minority, of the population. ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2005, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/30 "2005-05-24T21:46:28Z")
> [@mark tween](#): > > The original europeans were celts. Huh? Are you saying the first people to set foot in the continent were Celtic? And how do you show this (and how do you even define this)? ---
**Author:** ![mark\_tween](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/22d042/32.png) [@mark\_tween](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mark_tween)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2005, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/31 "2005-05-24T23:27:23Z")
> [@Cerowyn](#): > > Humans without melanin (note the spelling) are called albinos. Cysteine is an amino acid found in the stomach lining and in the immune system, not the skin. I am not aware of any scientific taxonomy for skin “type 1” or “type 2.” > > However, I will concede that my reference to red hair not being a Celtic trait might have been hasty. My lone RL reference is not backed up by searches on the web. Reasonably authoritative sites indicate that it is believed that red hair is in fact an ancient Celtic feature. Yes, they have dermatologist webs sites that have such info, and some will tell you that Cysteine is what makes them red. Your skin, as well as detoxification of your body, requires cysteine. The skin type rating is from the The American Academy of Dermatology and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2005, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/32 "2005-05-24T23:41:39Z")
> [@The Sausage Creature](#): > > Yeah, I always thought that the Celtic languages were rather close to Latin, although I’d be interested in more information. Ok. So there’s a language. We today only know it as “Proto-Indo-European”. We don’t know where it was spoken, or when - somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago, in Western Asia is about the nearest I’ll hazard. Now, PIE was spoken by a group of people who gradually split apart and became the ancestors of many of the tribes in Europe. The Celts, the Germanic tribes, the Slavs, the Italic people, the Greeks, and even the Aryans of India (among others.) Each of those is a separate branch off of PIE, and each branch is composed of several languages. Not enough is known to definitively say which branches are closer to which others. There are some old theories that link the Celtic branch to the Italic branch, but they’re not seriously believed anymore. No, the Celtic languages are not rather close to Latin - certainly, there is zero mutual intelligibility between them. > [@mark tween](#): > > Yes, they have dermatologist webs sites that have such info, and some will tell you that Cysteine is what makes them red. Your skin, as well as detoxification of your body, requires cysteine. The skin type rating is from the The American Academy of Dermatology and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Link to it, then. And a cite arguing that it’s particular to Celts. Meanwhile, cysteine is an amino acid that’s present in most or all proteins. It’s responsible for the sulfur-sulfur bonds that give protein its third-level structure. Cysteine is responsible for the basic physical characteristics of most proteins; it’s not a pigment in the skin, although it probably is present in skin pigments. ---
**Author:** ![mark\_tween](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/22d042/32.png) [@mark\_tween](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mark_tween)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2005, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/33 "2005-05-24T23:42:34Z")
> [@Cerowyn](#): > > Actually, the short-lived Celtic dominance of Europe fragmented mostly because they were numerically inferior to the natives. On most of the continent, they were never a majority, nor even a significant minority, of the population. interesting, I remember it was because of the romans and the and other rival barbarian invaders. It could be that ‘Gaul’ was probably just a reference to all lands not within the roman empire., and it just lumped celts and other groups together as ‘gauls.’ ---
**Author:** ![mark\_tween](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/22d042/32.png) [@mark\_tween](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mark_tween)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2005, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/34 "2005-05-25T00:17:09Z")
Link to it, then. And a cite arguing that it’s particular to Celts. Never said it was particular to celts, They just have more of it, and makes their hair red. ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2005, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/35 "2005-05-25T00:26:20Z")
> [@mark tween](#): > > Link to it, then. And a cite arguing that it’s particular to Celts. > > Never said it was particular to celts, They just have more of it, and makes their hair red. Sorry, kiddo, that’s just not how amino acids work - especially cysteine, since like I said it’s present in virtually all proteins and responsible to a very large extent for their shape. It makes about as much sense to claim that Celts have more of it as to claim that they have more water in their bodies. ---
**Author:** ![Queen\_Bruin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/e274bd/32.png) [@Queen\_Bruin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Queen_Bruin)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2005, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/36 "2005-05-25T00:42:12Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > There are some old theories that link the Celtic branch to the Italic branch, but they’re not seriously believed anymore. > > No, the Celtic languages are not rather close to Latin - certainly, there is zero mutual intelligibility between them. That was pretty much all I needed to know (I’ve had a basic PIE primer already in Latin 101 - which is where I heard that the Celtic and Italic languages are more similar to each other than either to Germanic). Thanks for the info, I’ll go dig up more on my own, lest I hijack this any more than has already been done. ---
**Author:** ![mark\_tween](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/22d042/32.png) [@mark\_tween](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mark_tween)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2005, 1:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/37 "2005-05-25T01:54:17Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > Sorry, kiddo, that’s just not how amino acids work - especially cysteine, since like I said it’s present in virtually all proteins and responsible to a very large extent for their shape. It makes about as much sense to claim that Celts have more of it as to claim that they have more water in their bodies. Excal…um, i was just told that by a teacher and a dermatologist, it’s not my deduction. But sure, there are others stories out there about how they got their red hair, such as it was just a ramdom genetic accident. I guess it’s just a theory of someone’s, and never said it was gospel…so there. ---
**Author:** ![Zabali\_Clawbane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/ecd19e/32.png) [@Zabali\_Clawbane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zabali_Clawbane)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2005, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/38 "2005-05-25T04:55:05Z")
> [@mark tween](#): > > Of course. They are a mixture of of several. The original europeans were celts. And they had red hair and freckles. Asian invasions changed the landscape of course. How do you explain the Picts then? Those who are known as “dark Celts” or “Dark Irish”? ---
**Author:** ![Excalibre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@Excalibre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Excalibre)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2005, 5:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/39 "2005-05-25T05:31:10Z")
> [@Zabali\_Clawbane](#): > > How do you explain the Picts then? Those who are known as “dark Celts” or “Dark Irish”? I didn’t think it was known for certain whether or not they were actual Celts. ---
**Author:** ![Zabali\_Clawbane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/ecd19e/32.png) [@Zabali\_Clawbane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zabali_Clawbane)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2005, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150/40 "2005-05-25T06:37:22Z")
> [@Excalibre](#): > > Celtic language_s_, and what’s your source on that? Are you saying that the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family is an offshoot of the Germanic branch? To my knowledge they’re not even particularly closely related. The Celts once inhabited much of Europe and no doubt they traveled across the Alps at times, but that’s not to say that they’re particularly closely related to Germans or to Germanic people. I’m unable to find the exact article I’d read on this subject, but I did find quite a few others. This Wikipedia [article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanic_language) isn’t nearly as in depth as what I’d read, but it shows how the linguists found the Germanic roots(way back) in the “Scots” language. (I’d understood that they had found similar links in Welsh, but may have misremembered) [Some](http://www.american.edu/TED/iceman.htm) believe this mummy is evidence that people had trade routes across the Alps over five thousand years ago. (Which is about how far back they placed the proto-Germanic roots.) Not the most recent article on this mummy btw, [here](http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1458198.stm) is another. > [@](#): > > Dr. G.F. Mitchell of Trinity University writes in essay “Prehistoric Ireland” that the first colonists arrived in Ireland around 6000 B.C., **from Scandinavia** via England. England and Ireland were connected to both each other and the continent at this time, and shortly after would break apart, beginning the separate evolution of their languages. Around 3000 BC the neolithic colonists arrived and began tilling the land. The Celtic people rose in Europe around 600 BC and reached Ireland around 150 B.C., bringing with them their language and knowledge of iron-working. [This](http://www.geocities.com/Athens/8319/Gaelic.html), is what I was thinking of when I stated the Celtic language has “Germanic” roots, I mistook there, it’s proto-Germanic I believe. **Excalibre** , my comments about the Picts and “Dark Irish” were seperate, twofold. The Picts were described as short, with dark hair and dark eyes, and today there is what is called the “dark Irish” or “dark Celt”, which means dark hair at the least, if not also dark eyes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-common-eye-color-among-n-american-caucasians/305150.md?page=3)