Leaping to conclusions?

I came across a news item on MSNBC.com, Genetic mutation makes those brown eyes blue. It is basically how researchers have figured that all blue eyes originate from a single ancestor. This was due to a genetic mutation that occurred some 6,000 to 10,000 years ago.

The final two paragraphs in the MSNBC.com article read as follows:

That genetic switch somehow spread throughout Europe and now other parts of the world.

"The question really is, 'Why did we go from having nobody on Earth with blue eyes 10,000 years ago to having 20 or 40 percent of Europeans having blue eyes now?" Hawks said. "This gene does something good for people. It makes them have more kids." [Emphasis mine.]

If a person begins with the assumption that humans have been around for much longer than 10,000 years populating all parts of the earth in great numbers, and a priori rule out a Great Flood that could have constricted the gene pool and reduced the population down to a very small number, then how else can one explain how this single mutation in a single individual spread so quickly and so widely?

Now, since I am only basing my observations on what I read in the news item, I may have missed the fact that validates the theory, "It makes them have more kids." I suspect though, inferring from the way the statement is worded, that this was a off-the-cuff leap to a conclusion, putting forth a theory to fit both the assumed and the observed facts. Has there been any scientific study that tests the theory that blue-eyed individuals have more kids? If so, I'd have expected the news item to at least mention it.

Maybe the statement was made tongue-in-cheek, a joke. But the way it's reported, it's hard to tell. In any case, to my ears it is just a bizarre statement, and I had to share and comment on it.