The seven daughters of Eve

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The Seven Daughters of Eve (orig .: “The Seven Daughters of Eve”) is a book written by Bryan Sykes on the theory that almost every person in Europe can be assigned one of the seven primal mothers from whom they are descended via mitochondrial DNA . Sykes explains the principles of genetics and human evolution , the peculiarities of mitochondrial genetics and the analyzes of ancient DNA with which he connects today's people with prehistoric ancestors. The work was published in the original version and in German in 2001 .

The book

Based on the development of mitochondrial genetics, Sykes attributes migrations to the out-of-Africa theory and refutes Thor Heyerdahl's theory about the settlement of the Polynesian archipelago, which did not come from South America, but from Southeast Asia. He also describes the use of mitochondrial DNA in the identification of the remains of Tsar Nicholas II and determines the genetic makeup of modern Europe.

The title of the book comes from one of the principal successes of mitochondrial genetics, which means the classification of all modern humans into mitochondrial haplogroups . The original hunter-gatherer societies changed - beginning in Asia Minor around 10,000 BC. BC - to sedentary societies that practiced agriculture and animal husbandry . Groups of these societies, which were growing rapidly because of improved food production, moved to Europe and, it was assumed, drove out local hunters and gatherers . Sykes (and other researchers) analyzed the mitochondrial DNA of thousands of Europeans, which is only passed on from mothers to their children and not from fathers, and found certain parallels in the sequence of the DNA sequences , so that he could divide them into groups. Each of these groups were more similar to one another than the corresponding sequences from Africa, Asia or America. Since the mutation rate of mitochondrial DNA is relatively low (once every 20,000 years), the age of the respective primal mother or that of the haplogroups can be determined. Six of the seven great mothers are much older than 10,000 years, one is 10,000 years old. This seventh is also found in 20% of Europeans, which means that only 20% of all Europeans today are descended from the farmers in Asia Minor in a direct maternal line. From this it follows that the rest of the modern Europeans descended from said hunters and gatherers who were not driven out, but learned agriculture and cattle breeding from the immigrants.

Each haplogroup is defined by certain characteristic mutations of the mitochondrial genomes and can be traced back to a particular prehistoric woman along the maternal family tree . Sykes refers to these women as primeval mothers , but not all of them lived at the same time. The seven women were named Ursula, Xenia, Helena, Velda, Tara, Katrine and Jasmine.

All of these women shared a common ancestor, the so-called Eve of the mitochondria . Sykes claims that there are seven mitochondrial lineages for modern Europeans (others, however, estimate this number to be eleven or twelve) and speaks of the "seven daughters of Eve". The number of mitochondrial lineages for the entire world population (as opposed to that for Europeans) is considerably greater.

The second half of the book consists of a series of fictional stories in which Sykes processes his idea of ​​what the life of the individual “ tribe mothers ” might have been like. Compared to the rest of the book, this part received mixed reviews.

At Oxford Ancestors, Syke's company, you can have a DNA analysis carried out for £ 120 that will find out the respective great mother .

Haplogroups and personified primeval mothers

Each of the seven primeval mothers corresponds to one of the human mitochondrial haplogroups . In his book, Sykes goes into more detail on these haplogroups by assigning a specific female name to each primordial mother haplogroup and adding a brief description of life and surroundings, which results from today's knowledge of the geographical and anthropological conditions in the corresponding time epoch.

comment

When using the term primeval mother , one should be aware that it only refers to the inheritance of the mitochondria. Although these have their own genome, it only makes up about one percent of the genetic information in humans. The majority of human genetic information lies in the cell nucleus and is a mixture of genomes from countless great-great-great ... grandmothers and fathers. There are also random mutations . Genetic kinship does not just mean having the same - or very similar - mitochondrial DNA as another person, it goes far beyond that. These topics are not the focus of the book, so they are not discussed in The Seven Daughters of Eve either.

Current

It was originally assumed that the mitochondria of a sperm cell did not get into the egg cell ( zygote ) that it fertilized , but only the DNA of the nucleus. In the meantime it has been found that some male mitochondria are also imported into the plasma of the fertilized egg cell through the sperm. These “male” mitochondria are likely to be eliminated quickly, however, because they are believed to be marked as potentially dangerous “cell waste” from the outset.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Mitochondria. Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn , archived from the original on April 1, 2009 ; Retrieved March 20, 2012 .