My fully Chinese grandfather has blue eyes?

Question

I'm pure chinese and i'm visiting my relatives in Beijing and I recently discovered that my grandfather has blue eyes. Like, the pupil is black but the iris is sky blue. He is not blind, but he's 75. He has lived in China all his life and has only Chinese ancestry. Can anyone give me a professional explanation on why he has such eyes?

Answer 1

the Afghans of the Pathan origin (they are Asians)....have blue,green,violet,brown eyes....

...God knows maybe they are of the lineage of Alexander the Great and his army...coz historically these people had reached there....

...who knows a few of them had reached China....many moons ago....and down the line is your grandfather.....

Answer 2

There are Caucasian minorities in China. They are Muslims.

Or your grandfather is albino.

Answer 3

Here's the best explanation I found:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?...

Eyes lose some colour as people age.

Nevertheless, that'd be neat if he had blue eyes when he was young.  Something to remember about population genetics; there's no population that is completely pure-bred (the only ones are those island ones).

To provide an simplified example: Alexander invaded India around 320 BC...That's about 2300 years, or about 700 generations.  The number of potential direct ancestors somebody born today might have had in 320 BC...2^700 = 5.26 x 10^210 > all the people that have ever lived.  The point of this illustration is to show that any of Alexander's men  with a child in 320 BC is likely a direct ancestor of every single person in India today.  So even one intermarriage between East Asian and South Asian populations a long time ago had a very high chance of passing on "European" alleles.  While I'm sure dark eye alleles in China are above 99%, I'm also sure it's less than 100%.  It shouldn't be impossible that on very rare occasions, that those few blue eye alleles meet and produce blue eyes.

Answer 4

Blue eyes were originally the result of a genetic mutation in the Mediterranean area. If no one else in your family has blue eyes, perhaps it was the result of a mutation. Genetics are very complicated!

Answer 5

Blue eyes are not actually blue.  They lack pigment like brown eyes and when light hits them they appear blue.  It's possible that a genetic mutation occured or that the pigment in the iris of his eyes degraded.  It's also possible that his parents are both recessive carriers of the gene for blue eyes.  You might ask if his eyes have been blue all his life or not.

Answer 6

Migration is not a new concept - just different reasons in different century. As ADI mentions, caucasians had reached the tips where China/Afghanistan/Pakistan's boarders meet. An isolated individual or two left behind, had no choice but to mingle well with the locals. They really, honestly adopted the local customs, language, food etc., really assymilated well as if he/she was one of them. In turn, locals absorbed this isolated person in their community. Over centuries, the descendents lost the caucasian look, but some of the genetics characteristics showed up, skipping a few generations. On the other hand, if there was a large group left behind, they adopted to the surroundings as much as they could, but retained some of their customs - thus giving rise to a minority group. If you travel thro' small towns/villages and spend some time there, you will notice minute differences in small group behaviors. In any case, just the way we all identify ourselves as Americans, they associated themselves with the geographic location. Ancient times, people did not talk about their migrations like we do.

"A Pair of Blue Eyes" by Hardy may be situated in England, but could be seen in other parts of world.

Enjoy your trip.

Answer 7

Your grandfather is full Chinese and his ancestors are Chinese. But, his parents might have carried a recessive trait that had the genes for blue eyes. However, the expression of genes in brown eyes are dominant over the expression of genes of blue eyes. There has to be a way in which probably there was a mixture of your ancestors. Maybe your grandfather's parents, or their parents carried this recessive trait. It is most likely that your grandfather's siblings probably only had brown eyes. But when your grandfather was a zygote, mitosis was occurring and differentiation took place. He received the blue-gene trait from his parents, even though his parents had brown eyes. A recessive trait is a trait or characteristic that is hidden or not shown or given the expression of in a particular organism. But, even though your grandfather has blue eyes, it doesn't necessarily mean that his kids would have blue eyes. It all depends on the genes and what expressions they give out............I hope that helped!

Answer 8

It is most probable that his mother had an extramarital affair with a British bloke. In many places you can see the remains of past colonialism or foreign invasions in the way people look - examples of blue eyes can also be seen in some places in the Middle East where you can sometimes see Arabs with blue eyes (some are also red heads). The phenotype is usually present for one generation only.

Answer 9

OMG! that's REALLY cool!!

i don't have a professional explanation to ur question but i do have a guess. I learned in school that blue eye color is recessive, so perhaps ur grandfather's greatgreatgreat....grandparents were somewhere from europe and the blue eye allele got passed down to later generations but was never expressed until ur grandfather