I just finished “The Seven Daughters of Eve” by Dr. Bryan Sykes. Dr. Sykes is a Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Oxford. Although his book was originally published in 2001, I recently became more interested in archeology and wanted to better understand this amazing new tool. The book provides a good explanation of how the field developed and how Mitochondrial DNA became a recognized option – one that changed many of the original stories of how our planet’s humans evolved. Sykes traced back human migration patterns, discussed the “out of Africa theory”, indicated that Polynesians came from Indonesia instead of Peru, determined the genetic makeup of modern Europe and used mitochondrial DNA to identify the remains of Czar Nicholas II.
Bryan Sykes is an amusing author – and as he described the events that transpired while mtDNA was being validated, I can only imagine what it must have been like for him. It seems that science moves slow and painfully from one idea to another.
The basic idea of mtDNA is that it is (1) only passed through the maternal line so it remains unchanged from generation to generation (2) has mutations that survive at a fairly well determined rate of about one mutation in 10,000 years and (3) a mini-chromosome of about 16,500 base pairs for easier analysis.
Using mtDNA gives you a view into how humans evolved and populated this planet. Sykes’ view of 7 original source mothers reflects the data that had been collected at the time of publishing. These seven mothers were used to classify of all modern Europeans into seven groups, called mitochondrial haplogroups. Each haplogroup is defined by a set of characteristic mutations on the mitochondrial chromosome, and can be traced along a person’s maternal line to a specific prehistoric woman.
Further research since 2001 has expanded the number of haplogroups throughout the world and added additional sub-types. But the fundamental mechanism is still providing additional vision into Earth’s past by looking at the human body today.
Flying Below the Radar 