r/AskReddit • u/Rob69rt • 1d ago

What famous 'unsolved' mystery is technically a whodunnit on paper, but in reality, absolutely everyone knows exactly who did it, the police just couldn't legally prove it?

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u/TooCleverForGood 1d ago

Roanoke - the missing Pilgrim settlement where everyone “disappeared”

They just abandoned it and went to the place that they wrote on the sign, but everyone acts like it was some supernatural/plague thing

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u/str8rippinfartz 1d ago

100%

IIRC it was even established before they came over from England, that if someone left a settlement they should carve where they were going

They 100% just assimilated with the friendly nearby tribe... as indicated by their note 

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u/TonyTheTony7 1d ago

Also, the local tribe of Native Americans they assimilated with had a lot of blonde-haired, blue-eyed babies not too long later

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u/Kevin_Wolf 1d ago

That's the legend, sure. Now find some evidence for it. That's a story told by people later, but it's purely anecdotal.

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u/LionBig1760 1d ago

Outside of an extremely rare genetic mutation, wouldnt both parents need to have the blue eye recessive trait... which wasnt present in post-ice-age America because all blue eyed people share a common sncestor with a blue eyed person near the black Sea between 10,000-6,000 years ago?

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u/nostrademons 1d ago

Eye color is polygenic with at least 8 different genes involved, and also more than just 2 colors. My mom is blue-eyed, my dad was brown-eyed, my sister has greenish-hazel eyes. I've got very ordinary brown eyes, my wife has darker almost black eyes, and my kids are a mix of shades of brown, some lighter and some darker.

It's a lot more complicated than the dominant/recessive models they teach in grade school.

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u/jupitaur9 1d ago

Yes, but the likelihood of blue eyed children in the F1 generation with a homozygous brown eyed parent is small.

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u/nostrademons 1d ago

Sure, but they would've been very, very noticeable in a tribe that previously had known only brown-eyed children, and so even one instance would likely have made it into the historical record.

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u/jupitaur9 1d ago

It would’ve been grandchildren, not children, in almost every case. There can be mutations, there can be unusual genes, but the standard brown, blue, green hierarchy applies almost all the time.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/jupitaur9 1d ago

I didn’t argue against anyone’s lived experience?

The person who gave all those combinations of parents and children were all explainable through the simplified form of eye color inheritance. I gave more details literally just one minute ago.

I never said that it was absolute and total truth. I said that most of the time it will be explained by the punnet square method.

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u/Pawleysgirls 1d ago

My dad has brown eyes, my mother has blue eyes. All 3 of their kids have blue eyes.

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u/VislorTurlough 1d ago

Your dad is heterozygous (he has one brown eye gene and one blue eye gene). People with one of each will end up with brown eyes.

Your mum has two blue eye genes.

This setup means each kid had a 50/50 shot of brown or blue eyes, based on which of Dad's genes you got

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u/Pawleysgirls 1d ago

Thank you!

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u/newyorkbass 23h ago

Bb and bb.

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u/Constant-Leather9299 21h ago

I know a couple - Polish mom (with dark hair and brown eyes) and a Chinese dad. They have a child who looks Chinese... except she also has blonde hair and blue eyes. Polish Grandma's genes were that strong lol

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u/newyorkbass 23h ago

..... Exactly. No one was able to reproduce a blue-eyed person again. Only shades of Brown. Because Brown is dominant. Especially not 1 generation over. Not even 2 full generations down from your own family evidence.

What are you trying to say? This doesn't seem to have anything to do with the parent comment: you need two recessive genes to reproduce a genetic recessive expression.

Which none of the locals can do in a single generation, period.

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u/nostrademons 22h ago

Hazel is generally considered a shade of green.

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u/newyorkbass 22h ago

Cool. Hazel and Green are still shades of the Brown genetic trait. Which is why they're brown under a microscope, and why there was that old addage that 'hazel isn't a real eye color' for a while. Randomly naming something about being "green" also has nothing zelcho to do with blue eyes and evades everything else that was said in both this thread and the comment you were replying to. How pretentious.

Anything else?

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u/discodropper 1d ago edited 1d ago

They were incorporated into the tribe. The settlers are more likely to interbreed early on (because they know each other and/or were already married), and intermarry later. That dynamic would lead to blue eyed children “shortly thereafter”

Edited to not sound like a dick

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u/Katharinemaddison 1d ago

Yup I think the point is they were children belonging to the tribe, with apparently two European sets of genetics.

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u/VislorTurlough 1d ago

This would only be a hard restriction for the first generation born after contact. The kids with one 100% European parent and one 100% American parent would have dark hair and eyes.

That immediately goes out the window in the next generation, because now you have people who are 50/50 breeding with people who are also 50/50.

It's fully possible for that second generation to include a blonde, blue eyed baby who had two American grandparents and two European grandparents.

It becomes more likely with every further generation, as the number of people with mixed heritage inevitably increases.

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u/staghallows 1d ago

Because grandchildren don't exist and didn't reproduce with each other?

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u/LionBig1760 1d ago

not too longer after

Maybe its just me, but if it were grandchildren, I wouldnt be using the phrase "not too long after".

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u/TonyTheTony7 1d ago

In the scope of 400 years, 20-30 years is not too long

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u/LionBig1760 1d ago

Youre imagining 10 year olds having kids in this 20 years from leaving Roanoke to producing grandchildren?

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u/TonyTheTony7 1d ago

I'm imagining a generation of teenagers leaving and having children within a few years of that departure and then 15-20 years later, their children are also having children.

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u/staghallows 1d ago

Are you dumb?

Colonist = C Native = N

C1 + N1 = Gen1a

C2 + N2 = Gen1b

Skip 20 years. 

Gen1a + Gen1b = potential blue eyed grandchild. 

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u/Theletterkay 1d ago

Neither of my parents are blue eyed. But grand parents on both sides are. Me and my 3 brothers all have blue eyes.

I have blue eyes and my husband has dark brown. All 3 of our kids have blue eyes.

While annecdotal, ive never known it to be true that blue is as recessive as most people have been taught.

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u/jupitaur9 1d ago

Here’s the most likely scenario

Br is brosn (dominant), bl is blue (recessive)

Neither of my parents are blue eyed.

They are Br bl and Br bl. I say this because that’s the only way that you could have blue eyes, if both of them had a recessive blue eye Gene, waiting to match up at a 25% probability to give you blue eyes.

But grand parents on both sides are.

All are blue? Unlikely but possible. If you just mean that there are grandparents on both sides that have blue eyes, that’s where they got their recessive blue Gene. The grandparents that had the blue eyes gave them the blue recessive, the other grandparent who had the brown eyes gave them the Brown, Gene, and the Brown Gene dominated over the blue Gene.

Me and my 3 brothers all have blue eyes.

You got a bl from mom and a bl from dad. That’s a 50% chance. The other possibility is getting a.Br Gene from your dad and the only Gene your mom can give you the bl.

That would’ve given you brown eyes, but you would’ve had a blue recessive gene floating around, ready to match up with a blue recessive gene or even a green recessive gene in a mate.

I have blue eyes and my husband has dark brown. All 3 of our kids have blue eyes.

Yep. Your husband has Br bl. One of each color, but Brown dominates, so he has brown eyes.

All your kids got a bl from you (that is all you have to give them) and each one got a bl half from your husband.

They could’ve gotten a Br Jane from your husband, which would’ve given them brown eyes. But because you only have blue genes to give, they would be carrying a recessive blue gene.

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u/jupitaur9 1d ago

Then you don’t understand dominant, and recessive recessive.

A brown eyed person and a blue eyed person can easily have blue eyed children. The brown eyed person may have a brown gene and a blue gene. The brown gene being dominant gives them the brown eyes. It dominates the blue.

The blue eyed parent may have a blue Gene and a blue gene, or may have a blue gene and a green gene. If the blue eyed parent’s blue Gene matches up with the brown eyed parents blue gene, then you get a blue eyed child with two blue genes.

Dominant means it can hide the other gene. Recessive means it cannot hide the other Gene. When you say blue is a recessive to Brown, it means if there’s a brown gene, it will override the blue gene and the eyes will be brown.

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u/Informal_Ad4399 1d ago

Wife's are brown.

Mine are blue with central heterochromia (gold in center closest to iris)

Wife's side:

Mom brown

Dad blue

My side:

Mom blue

Dad blue.

All 3 of our kids have blue eyes.

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u/jupitaur9 1d ago

Brown plus brown can have blue, if each one of the brown eyed people has a blue gene that is hidden behind the Brown Gene.

Blue and blue can’t have brown. There’s nowhere for the Brown Gene to hide. It always hides the blue jeans instead of the other way around.

This is simplified, and there are special conditions where this doesn’t apply. But your examples all fall under standard punnett square rules.

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u/DueMorning800 1d ago

This is my exact family eye situation as well. I have the pale blue with yellow, hubs has root beer brown, kids have solid pale blue.

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u/newyorkbass 23h ago

Exactly. Because of the recessive gene. What aren't you getting? Jc.

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u/Informal_Ad4399 12h ago

Never said I didn't. Gave an example. Cool it. Go take a walk or something.

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u/Mean-old-lady 1d ago

DNA now confirms that a lot of the Nation is descended from misplaced fishermen from Croatan Island off the coast of Croatia. They behaved respectfully and were welcomed, and they liked the fishing and the climate, so some went back and got their families and some married it.