Distribution of light hair and eyes in Europe

[The first two maps have been taken from eupedia, which has colourized the maps contained in a paper by Peter Frost (2006)]

[a map from Carleton Coon (‘The Races of Europe’), attributed to ‘Elmer Rising’ (1939)]

[map produced by Bertil Lundman (1965)]

[map created with 23andme data on a simple scale of more blue eyes to more brown]

From the paper “DNA-based eye colour prediction across Europe with the IrisPlex system.” These samples are drawn from specific regions, so they don’t necessarily represent the whole country.

For example, the northern Italy sample has higher proportions of blue eyes than it would if it included southern Italy. The sample from Northern Ireland has higher proportion of blue eyes than I would expect based on other measurements of Ireland and Britain.

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[A world map of predicted eye colour based on genetic variants, from IrisPlex: A sensitive DNA tool for accurate prediction of blue and brown eye colour in the absence of ancestry information (2011)]

[A world map of predicted hair colour based on genetic variants, from The HIrisPlex system for simultaneous prediction of hair and eye colour from DNA (2013)]

[Distribution of eye colours, based on phenotypes, from Further development of forensic eye color predictive tests (2013)]

by: Alicia Costa Fresneda