The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry

Bryan Sykes is one of the world's leading genetic anthropologist, working with DNA identification and comparison to understand the biological history of the human race. He has been part of a growing worldwide coordinated effort in DNA gathering and comparison, and worked with various other specialists to reconstruct the migration and cultural portraits of humans.Since 2000, our understanding has accelerated and skyrocketed into a burgeoning, fairly coherent and exciting body of knowledge about human prehistory and the genetic character of modern populations. Sykes is a skilled storyteller and analyst, resulting in a well-crafted true tale of who we are and how we got to where we are in the world today, and how the innermost being of our every individual cell carries the story in our genes!The ongoing DNA comparisons all over the world began to fill out a picture of the kinship of all modern humans and their migrations all over the world. In 2001, Brian Sykes reported on his DNA studies in Europe and the Polynesian Islands and related, with careful comparisons to the studies by others on Hawaii and the Americas.In reporting his comprehensive an extensive DNA reconstruction for the people of Europe, Sykes detailed his DNA findings and presented a delightful historical and cultural history of Europe comparing the DNA reconstruction for Europe with related findings from Archaeology, paleoanthropology, and especially the lifestyle of each era. Important for this was the movement of agriculture across the world and its arrival in Europe.As his comparisons for Europe progressed, collecting or comparing samples from all over the UK locales, Sykes actually found a modern Irish woman who had the exact same mtDNA sequence as Ötzi, the 5000-year-old Alps Ice Man. The Ice man, found in 1991, was a mummified man found in a melting Alps glacier. This ancient European had been preserved by a glacial freeze and was determined to be 5200 or 5300 years old, determined by DNA study of grains in his leather bag carrying his tools and other paraphernalia.Similar information from pollen found in or on Ötzi providing additional insights into Ötzi's historical period. The viable DNA recovered from the Ice Man, with related findings from various disciplines of study and investigation reconstructed Ötzi's diet and likely family history. These insights into Ötzi's life and times shed additional light on Sykes' study of the origins and migrations of the streams of indigenous settlement and the much later movement of agriculture into Europe.The exciting upshot of this particular part of Sykes' study and reconstruction was the discovery of a modern current Irish woman with the same exact mitochondrial DNA sequence as the Ice Man!After analyzing the DNA patterns of thousands of subjects all across Europe, Sykes realized they all fell into a pattern of 7 groups, thus deriving form only 7 ancestral women for about 95% of the population of current Europe. These he dubs the Seven Daughters of Eve. After recounting the saga of the investigations, the puzzles, the disappointments and the breakthroughs that finally led to the final schema explaining the genetic relationship of thousand so Europeans, Sykes rounds out the story by providing a fictionalized account of the life of these seven women and their families.Sykes constructs his portraits by weaving in the knowledge from multiple disciplines like archaeology, geology, animal and plant DNA comparisons, and the toolsets associated with various eras of prehistory and history, including the advent of agriculture and its move into Europe. He outlines the movement of the human race across the world millennia by millennia to people all the continents.You will find this a fascinating novelesque scientific saga that is our story, the human story, with particular attention to how all these factors came together in the population of the continent of Europe.

There are seven individual women, who lived between 10,000 years ago and 45,000 years ago between the Middle East and various areas of Europe, who are the direct ancestors of 95% of all European people alive today. Yes, exactly seven women. I am European, so I am likely the direct descendent of one of those seven individuals.The author Bryan Sykes is a professor of human genetics at the University of Oxford. He has done pioneering work in genetics, specializing in studying mitochondrial DNA. One of the striking attributes is that the mitochondrial DNA is not passed on by males, only by females. Therefore, my personal mitochondrial DNA can be studied and compared with that of other contemporaries. When Sykes did this, he discovered that all modern Europeans pretty much belonged to one of only seven “groups” or “clans” as he calls them. Studying mutation frequency and the base mitochondrial DNA, coupled with the anthropological record, he was able to determine that there were seven specific women that are the mothers of all Europeans.He then traced further back into our African roots and found one single woman, who lived about 150,000 years ago in Africa, who is the mother of all human beings alive today. He calls her fittingly Mitochondrial Eve.Sykes writes The Seven Daughters of Eve for the non-scientist, but he goes through great pains to describe his research, the steps he went through to come to his conclusions, and the various scientific hurdles he had to jump. The book reads like a detective story, and I had trouble putting it down. After he makes his scientific points, the muses about the lives of the seven women. How might they have lived, what were the conditions of their lives like, how did they spend their days?A number of negative reviews challenge details in Sykes' conclusions, and the way he builds his "case" in this book. I found his excursion into Polynesia very helpful, because he used the simpler scenarios there as a vehicle to introduce me (who is not a biologist or geneticist) to the subject. After the Polynesia story, I was ready for Europe.I also enjoyed reading his fictional musings about what the lives of the seven women may have been like very helpful. I haven't studied anthropology, and I felt like he was sort of holding my hand and showing me what he speculated. It gave me visuals to work with.The roots of our human existence, our history and our unique humanness became alive for me as I read this book. Many times I was caught in reveries, dreaming about the lives of my ancestors. I was overwhelmed by the immense time periods that have elapsed, and how very unlikely our human existence actually is. 45,000 years represents about 2,000 generations. I know my grandmother. That’s three generations. However, my grandmother’s DNA comes from one of the seven daughters of Eve, 2,000 generations ago.The book may not work for scientists. It's not a textbook. But I don't believe that's what he tried to write here. I wanted to popularize the subject of mitochondrial DNA to laymen, like me. And that's exactly what he did.The Seven Daughters of Eve inspired me on many levels and has enriched my life. I will never think about humanity the same way again.

I was fascinated with the idea of actually genetically tracing human origins, and snapped this book up at my local library (1997) in the "New Books" section. Now in 2023, you can mail your spit to any number of websites to get your mitochondrial DNA patterned, but Oxford and Dr. Bill Sykes were the first, and developed the technology. They also were the first to start mapping global cultures and geographic sites, and compiling the genetic anomalies they found into a huge database. Unfortunately, Dr. Sykes died some years ago and I don't know where that database went, hopefully to some open lab, and not one using the data for profit.

This book arrived in great shape and was quite interesting, gives one a lot to think about.

ottima indagine storico-scientifica, un po prolisso a volte, inoltre è in lingua inglese

The writer was an expert and had evidence to back up his conclusions which were mind blowing. Fantastic read. I couldn’t put it down.

This is a remarkable story of the detective work necessary to unravel the DNA mysteries about the population of the United Kingdom. It’s written with a style halfway between the academic and the journalistic, and it reads well. I’ve not given it five stars because I think some of the material has now been superseded, but, if you want a good overview of what happened in the very origins of the British Isles, this is the place to start. Already DNA evidence is beginning to be matched with historical evidence from archaeology and from ancient literary texts and this is allowing us to build up an altogether more rounded idea of origins in Britain. Good stuff!

A great read should be in every library

Really great book, thoroughly recommend reading it if you have any interest in the recent evolution of mankind