Which eye color is the rearest? For example brown eyes are the most common: Over half the people in the world have them. In fact, about 10,000 years ago, all humans had brown eyes. Scientists speculate that their elevated levels of melanin helped protect people from the sun’s damaging rays. But as people moved from the sweltering climates of Africa and Asia to the cooler environments of Europe, there was less need for this protection. About 75 percent of eye color is due to one gene, OCA2. It makes melanin, a substance in your body that produces hair, eye and skin pigmentation. If you inherit two nonfunctional copies of the OCA2 gene from your parents, you will go on to develop blue eyes. But if you have at least one functional copy, your eyes will be darker, on the spectrum of green, hazel or brown. At some point, you’ve probably wondered what the rarest eye color is. The answer is green, according to the American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO). Only about 2 percent of the world’s population sport this shade.
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