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

Bryan Sykes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 17, 2002

The national bestseller that reveals how we are descended from seven prehistoric women. 

One of the most dramatic stories of genetic discovery since James Watson's The Double Helix, The Seven Daughters of Eve reveals the remarkable story behind a groundbreaking scientific discovery. After being summoned in 1997 to an archaeological site to examine the remains of a five-thousand-year-old man, Bryan Sykes ultimately was able to prove not only that the man was a European but also that he has living relatives in England today. In this lucid, absorbing account, Sykes reveals how the identification of a particular strand of DNA that passes unbroken through the maternal line allows scientists to trace our genetic makeup all the way back to prehistoric times, to seven primeval women, the Seven Daughters of Eve. illustrated and includes a map

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

"A traveler from an antique land... lives within us all," claims Sykes, a professor of genetics at Oxford. This unique traveler is mitochondrial DNA, and, as this provocative account illustrates, it can help scientists and archeologists piece together the history of the human race. Mitochondrial DNA is present in every cell in the body, and it remains virtually unchanged (aside from random mutations) as it passes from mother to daughter. By quantifying and analyzing the mutations of this relatively stable circle of DNA, Sykes has solved some of the hottest debates about human origins. For example, he clarified a long-running debate among anthropologists over the original inhabitants of the Cook Islands. After retrieving mitochondrial DNA samples from the island natives, Sykes concluded that the natives emigrated from Asia, not America, as many Western anthropologists had contended. In a similar manner, Sykes analyzed samples from native Europeans to determine that modern humans are not at all related to Neanderthals. The book's most complex and controversial find that the ancient European hunter-gatherers predominated over the farmers and not vice versa leads Sykes to another stunning conclusion: by chance, nearly all modern Europeans are descendants of one of seven "clan mothers" who lived at different times during the Ice Age. Drawing upon archeological and climatic records, Sykes spins seven informative and gracefully imagined tales of how these "daughters of Eve" eked out a living on the frozen plains. (July 9)Forecast: Sykes is a bit of a celebrity geneticist, as he was involved in identifying the remains of the last Romanovs. This fame, plus his startling conclusions augmented by a five-city tour should generate publicity and sales among science, archeology and genealogy buffs.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Sykes (genetics, Oxford Univ.; editor, Human Inheritance: Genes, Language, and Evolution) is passionate about his work in decoding mitochondrial DNA and about using this knowledge to trace the path of human evolution. To lure readers into this specialized work, he relates personal and historical anecdotes, offering familiar ground from which to consider the science. A discussion of the history of genetics and descriptions of the early landmark work of Sykes and his associates culminate with his finding that 90 percent of modern Europeans are descendents of just seven women who lived 45,000 to 10,000 years ago. Brief biographies serve to place these "seven daughters" into historical context as understood by archaeology. This is an example of good popular science writing that makes difficult concepts accessible and relevant to the general reader. Recommended for public libraries. (Index not seen..
- Ann Forister, Roseville P.L., CA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (May 17, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9780393323146
• ISBN-13: 978-0393323146
• ASIN: 0393323145
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (183 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #15,679 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #6 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Anthropology > Physical
  • #12 in Books > Medical Books > Basic Sciences > Genetics
  • #60 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Evolution

More About the Author

Bryan Sykes is professor of human genetics at Oxford University. His company, Oxford Ancestors, traces human genetic backgrounds. Sykes's books include the New York Times best-selling The Seven Daughters of Eve.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

119 of 122 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Top-notch scientific survey, with bizarre fictional chapters November 13, 2002

By D. Cloyce Smith TOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback

The first 200 pages of this book exemplify the best of scientific journalism: the author describes a difficult subject matter clearly and succinctly for those who don`t know much about genetics, he presents each scientific investigation as if it were a detective story, and he conveys his excitement and enthusiasm for his work. Anyone who reads this book will come away with enough knowledge about mitochondrial DNA and prehistoric humans to understand today's headlines. Sykes explains how DNA testing identified the bodies of the Romanovs (laying to rest fanciful stories about how they survived the Russian Revolution), he rebuts Thor Heyerdahl's theories of migration, and he presents a convincing case that all humans of European ancestry are descended from seven women. (He also discusses the possible ancestries of non-Europeans, for which--so far--there is far less evidence.)

Given how compelling and fun the majority of the book is, nothing prepares the reader for what comes next: seven chapters containing fanciful and completely fictional reconstructions of each of the "daughters of Eve." Sykes admits he cannot even be sure of where or when each of these women may have lived, but he reconstructs little soap operas out of the nonexistent facts of their lives; these New Age-inspired outtakes from "Clan of the Cave Bear" do not succeed even as good fiction. "Xenia was born in the wind and snow of late spring." "This year Helena's father was going to try a spear-thrower and detachable point for the first time." "Velda had a strong artistic streak." "Tara had always been a fast runner and her father, fit though he was, was gaining on her slowly." (Tara even "invents" a boat.) He fabricates entire families and children, births and deaths, relationships and tragedies for each of these women, even though he knows for certain only that they each had two daughters. For the most part, I found these chapters embarrassing and unreadable.

If Sykes wanted to speculate for the reader where, when, and how each of these women lived, he certainly could have done so in a scientific framework and made it interesting. For example, he could have presented what we know from the archaeological record about their approximate eras and possible environs. (I would in particular like to know what evidence, if any, scientists have uncovered to imagine that prehistoric societies featured mostly monogamous relationships, which figure prominently in Sykes`s stories.)

Fortunately, Sykes turns his attention back to the science in the last two chapters. Overall, except for the fictional chapters, this is a first-rate survey. I do wish, however, that the author had added a bibliographical essay or general notes, both to support his arguments and to suggest where readers might turn, now that he's managed to enlighten us on the subject.

211 of 221 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Remarkably Well Written; Stunning Conclusions January 16, 2002

By Bay Gibbons VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

Many scientists have things to say, but few know how to say them. The Stephen Hawkings (A Brief History of Time) and Brian Fagans (Famines, Floods and Emperors) of the world are rare creatures, indeed. In The Seven Daughters of Eve Bryan Sykes proves he belongs in that small but fortunate club.

This work is a remarkably well written narrative of Sykes' cutting edge research into the ancestry of modern humans using mitochondrial DNA. Unlike the DNA in the chromosomes of cell nuclei, which we inherit from both of our parents, mitochondrial DNA is inherited only from our mothers. It is also highly stable over time, which permits geneticists to determine with almost mathematical certainty the matrilineal genealogy of any human being on earth.

To students of history, prehistory, archaeology and linguistics the conclusions he draws from his research are absolutely stunning. First, he concludes that all modern humans (beyond reasonable mathematical certainty) are descended from a single woman - Sykes calls her, perhaps tongue in cheek, "Mitochondrial Eve." Second, every person on earth is, in turn, the descendant of one of only 33 women, who were the matrilineal descendants of "Eve." The book focuses on seven of these women who are the matrilineal ancestors of virtually every native European. These seven he calls, again perhaps tongue in cheek, "The Daughters of Eve." Third, the oldest of the "daughters of Eve" lived only about 45,000 years ago, the youngest within the past 10,000 years.

Some additional thoughts:

1. As with all knowledge, take this with a little grain of salt. Today's axioms in science may be disproved or reevaluated in a month, a year or a century. This is cutting edge stuff, and there are likely many surprises to come.

2. Sykes is at his descriptive best when dealing with the fascinating details of his own research and field work. His writing style breaks down somewhat when he attempts to write imaginative Clan of the Cave Bear-like chapters on the lives of the seven "daughters of Eve." I skipped heavily in this section.

3. I am a little surprised to sense a commercial-like ambience on Sykes' website, oxfordancestors.com. For a fee his organization will test your DNA and tell you which "daughter of Eve" you are descended from. This doesn't exactly lead me to doubt his research, but confirms my suspicions that Sykes has many more skills as a writer and pitchman than most of his colleagues.

4. Don't be misled by the title - this is not your standard Sunday School or Bible Class religious tract. Those who believe that every word of the Bible - through all of the twists and turns of 3,000 years of copying, editing, compiling and translation - is infallible, will perhaps find their faith challenged. On the other hand, those who are not Bible literalists may find some edification here, as well.

167 of 185 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Sykes' secret April 21, 2002

By Steve Sailer

Format:Hardcover

Oxford geneticist Bryan Sykes, author of The Seven Daughters Of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry just might have what it takes to become another Carl Sagan or Louis Leakey - that rare scientist with both the scientific skills and genius for self-promotion needed to make himself a household name.

Sykes has many talents, as well as some useful vices. As this book shows, he's a fine popular science writer. He also has a sizable ego and a flair for self-dramatization that annoys other scientists but appeals to the public. He often tends to portray himself in The Seven Daughters as a Galileo single-handedly doing battle with the benighted masses of anthropologists and geneticists like Stanford's distinguished L.L. Cavalli-Sforza, who, according to Sykes' not exactly neutral account, just didn't want to admit the importance of his mitochondrial DNA research.

Most importantly, though, Sykes has grasped a simple fact about population genetics that resounds emotionally with the average person, yet has largely eluded most learned commentators. Namely, genes are the stuff of genealogy. Each individual's genes are descended from some people, but not from some other people. Thus, Sykes discovered, people often feel a sense of family pride and loyalty to others, living and dead, with whom they share some DNA.

Further, if you read between his lines, you can readily understand why - despite all the propaganda that "race does not exist" - humanity will never get over its obsession with race: Race is Family. A racial group is an extremely extended family that is inbred to some degree.

In fact, people are so interested in tracing their family connections that Sykes has gone into business for himself. He started a for-profit firm OxfordAncestors.com. "Discover your ancestral mother," he advertises. For [money] he'll trace your DNA (actually, a particular set of your specialized mitochondrial DNA) back to one of the seven Stone Age women who are the ancestors in the all-female line of 95% of all white Europeans.

Sykes calls these "the Seven Daughters of Eve." (He's piggybacking on the much-publicized concept of the primordial "Mitochondrial Eve" from whom all women are supposedly descended.) One of his sales slogans: "Which daughter was your ancestor?"

(If you happen to be from a non-European race, well, Sykes has got 27 other matrilineal clans sketchily worked out for you. Still, the Eurocentric, cashocentric Sykes tends to treat those non-Caucasian ancient mothers as if they were The Twenty-Seven Stepdaughters of Eve.)

Some scientists are appalled by Sykes' shameless entrepreneurialism. Myself, I think that the self-effacing saints like the late William D. Hamilton (the greatest theoretical biologist of the 20th Century and the genius behind more famous biologists like Edward O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins) and the attention-seekers like Sykes both serve useful purposes in advancing science.

The key to Sykes' business is that within a particular set of stable "junk DNA" in the mitochondrial code, mutations happen every 10,000 years on average. Last spring, in "Darwinophobia I," I explained why junk genes are so useful to geneticists studying individual or racial genealogies, yet so useless to the bodies they inhabit since they don't do anything. But these genes' uselessness means they aren't subject to Darwinian selection. So they are passed on unchanged, except by random mutations.

Of course, precisely because population geneticists like Sykes and Cavalli-Sforza study only useless genes that don't do anything, they don't have anything credible to say about useful genes, like the ones that influence IQ. To learn about nonjunk genes, you need to read behavior geneticists like twin expert Nancy Segal or intelligence gene finder Robert Plomin.

Without going into the technical details, a study of mitochondrial DNA allows you to track the line of purely female descent in your genealogy. This is the opposite of the "paternal line of descent" by which your surname came down to you. (The male line can be tracked through tests of the Y chromosome.) The maternal line is your mother's mother's mother's etc. - all female, all the way back.

You can visualize your maternal line this way. Mentally lay out your family tree, with you at the bottom. Place your father above you to the left and your mother above you to the right. Fill in all your grandparents, great-grandparents, and so forth, always keeping the males to the left in each pair. Then, the matrilineal line of descent is the extreme right edge of your family tree (just as your last name comes from the extreme left edge).

Sykes has put together a chart of these functionally trivial but genealogically interesting mutations that allow him to state, for example, that the woman who claimed to be Anastasia Romanov (who was portrayed by Ingrid Bergman in her Oscar-winning performance in Anastasia) could not have been the daughter of the Czarina murdered by Lenin.

(Of course, considering how many surviving members of the Romanov extended family she fooled into thinking she was Anastasia, the possibility remains that she might still have been some kind of biological relative of the Romanovs. Perhaps she was fathered illegitimately by a member of the Czar's side of the family. Neither Sykes' matrilineal test, nor a Y chromosome patrilineal test can rule that out.)

Sykes has identified seven mitochondrial mutations of particular genealogical importance. Logically, for each mutation there existed an individual woman.

Who were these seven women? They weren't the only women alive at the time. They probably weren't even the first ones to be born with their distinctive mutant junk gene. Each of the seven daughters is simply the first after the appearance of their mutation to have a daughter who had a daughter who had a daughter and on and on in an unbroken line of female descent down to the present day. They are special only in the rather arbitrary genealogical sense of each being on the extreme right edge of the family tree of tens of millions of modern Europeans.