possibility check: more diverse eye colours in humans

[Tripwire]

Again, I'd like to refer to ancient Persian texts.....texts from an era, btw, long before any European had ever even conceived of the place, let alone visited it.

Nonsense. People had been moving around and interbreeding with each other long, long before those Persian texts had been written. A quick look at the diversity of y-dna and mt-dna lineages in Eurasia tells us that.

Also, I'm still waiting for a source on blue-eyed Melanesians.

 

[Incognito]

Not eye-color related, but if you get a race with a chromosome 22 mutation, they may have some… interesting eyes .

 

[phx1138]

So why is adding pigment unlikely? Given we're talking about a different environment than OTL, are there no changes that would lead to it being credible? Or even a survival advantage?

 

[CaliBoy1990]

Nonsense. People had been moving around and interbreeding with each other long, long before those Persian texts had been written. A quick look at the diversity of y-dna and mt-dna lineages in Eurasia tells us that.

Yes, but from within Asia; as far as we know, no major eastward migrations of Europeans occurred before the time of the Greeks.

@Zuvarq: Maybe so, but, the area that makes up today's Romania is west of that, not north.

 

[CaliBoy1990]

So why is adding pigment unlikely? Given we're talking about a different environment than OTL, are there no changes that would lead to it being credible? Or even a survival advantage?

I suppose it could happen; maybe an Ice Age tribe in Siberia sees the birth of an individual who happens to get the blue-eye gene and he somehow becomes prominent; maybe he's a skilled hunter or great leader; this might convince some women to have children with him, I would suspect.

 

[Zuvarq]

Yes, but from within Asia; as far as we know, no major eastward migrations of Europeans occurred before the time of the Greeks.

@Zuvarq: Maybe so, but, the area that makes up today's Romania is west of that, not north.

Indo-Europeans arose in Central Asia, not Romania. The westernmost estimate is in Ukraine and the easternmost in India or Xinjiang.

 

[The Professor]

So why is adding pigment unlikely? Given we're talking about a different environment than OTL, are there no changes that would lead to it being credible? Or even a survival advantage?

Because it involves changing all the pathways that lead to producing the current pigment melanin which is involved in more than just eyecolour - skin colour, hair colour, hearing, and others I can't recall.
There's more than just a single gene involved in all this.
It's why the mutations that have arisen are minor modifications - tending towards reduction or increase in the deposit - since large modifications tend to be disadvantageous - albinos have issues with deafness for example.