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The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry Hardcover – July 17, 2001
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Bryan Sykes
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Bryan Sykes
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Print length320 pages
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LanguageEnglish
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PublisherW. W. Norton & Company
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Publication dateJuly 17, 2001
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Dimensions6.5 x 1.2 x 9.6 inches
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ISBN-109780393020182
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ISBN-13978-0393020182
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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.
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.
- Ann Forister, Roseville P.L., CA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
From Eve, the earliest known hominid, discovered in Africa, geneticist Sykes traces a genetic linkage to seven prehistoric European women. A gifted writer, he conveys the excitement and drama of his discovery of strands of DNA that passed unbroken through the maternal line. He names the seven women he found in that line and extrapolates probable lives for them, based on anthropological data, thereby bringing them to life. His particular quest began with examining the remains of a 5,000-year-old man found in Italy and proceeded amidst the competitive pressure of other scientists, professional tensions between colleagues, and his sense of the fun involved in making his discoveries. In the end, he can trace living Europeans from some of Eve's seven daughters. Sykes is keenly aware of the professional and human significance of scientific inquiry and discovery, as well as of the woeful history of the use of genetics by racist theories--awareness that adds to this exciting contribution to showing that all humans share a common ancestry. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
About the Author
Bryan Sykes, professor of human genetics at Oxford University, pioneered the use of DNA in exploring the human past. He is the author of Saxons, Vikings, and Celts and the New York Times bestseller The Seven Daughters of Eve.
Product details
- ASIN : 0393020185
- Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company (July 17, 2001)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 320 pages
- ISBN-10 : 9780393020182
- ISBN-13 : 978-0393020182
- Item Weight : 1.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.5 x 1.2 x 9.6 inches
-
Best Sellers Rank:
#540,017 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #241 in Physical Anthropology (Books)
- #617 in Genetics (Books)
- #1,027 in Archaeology (Books)
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Reviewed in the United States on September 27, 2017
Verified Purchase
I would have been a lot more disappointed in the 100% European results of my recent DNA test if I hadn't happened to be reading The Seven Daughters of Eve when my pie chart came in over the Internet. The book focuses largely on European mitochondrial DNA. Bryan Sykes made me realize that European ancestry isn't just boring "white bread." My ancestors have been milling around in Europe for tens of thousands of years, through episodes of extreme climate change and sudden technological innovations. The author, a pioneer in the study of mitochondrial DNA as a window into the past, writes in a lively and at times humorous way about what could have been a dry topic. (Sometimes he lost me in the technicalities, but I just bashed my way out of the woods and read on.) Now I want to know which of the Seven Daughters is my great-great-etc.-grandmother.
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Reviewed in the United States on August 1, 2019
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Science usually works in increments: if a basic concept is discovered and replicated, it can then work itself through related disciplines, often with revolutionary consequences. This is what happened in the last decades with the investigation of mitochondrial DNA. Not only did it solve a number of fundamental debates, such as whether the Polynesians came from Asia or the Americas, but it led to some startlingly original connections, i.e. virtually all Europeans are descended from 7 women, whose home locations can be roughly identified and whose descendants can be traced to the present day. One of the pioneers of this "revolution" is Bryan Sykes, who has written a wonderful scientific memoir of how he went about it and what the process was like.
Sykes is a geneticist at Oxford with wide-ranging intellectual interests. He was lucky in that discoveries were coalescing: the structure of DNA was elucidated; then there was DNA amplification, whereby copies of genes could be cloned for study, greatly accelerating a painstaking laboratory process. By luck, he got called in to examine the DNA of the Iceman, whose mitochondrial DNA he took to his lab for further investigation. To his surprise, he discovered that someone he knew had the identical mitochondrial DNA, a news item that went viral: she and the Iceman shared direct descent from some mother in the distant past. This got Sykes thinking that there must be much more to this, indeed he discovered that he and the last Russian Tsar were also descended from the same "eve". Mitochondrial DNA, he concluded, could be a powerful tool in the search for human genetic evolution.
To explain the science, in the first few chapters, Sykes provides a history of recent scientific theories, in particular the discovery of the structure of DNA, the "genetic code" that programs the development of all life on Earth in a species' genome. Unlike genes in the nucleus, he notes, mitochondrial DNA does not recombine with each new generation but is passed on more or less intact from those in the mother's egg. Without recombination, which at present introduces so much complexity into the genome that the "donor" cannot be tracked into the distant past, mitochondrial DNA offers a direct picture of the mother's legacy. Finally, because mutations work themselves into mitochondrial DNA over long periods of time - about 20,000 years for each one - the comparison of the mitochondrial DNA between individuals can offer a map to the past, i.e. the how far they are from a common ancestor.
Burning with ambition and love of his field, this technique sets Sykes on a number of projects with wide implications. They include the discovery of the Cheddar Man's close genetic relation to locals in Somerset, England, i.e. many of them had been there since before the Neolithic agricultural revolution. Most interestingly, Sykes proved via mitochondrial DNA that the farmers and pastoralists who emigrated from the near east did not displace the hunter-gatherers that lived in place: only 20% of Europeans can trace the matrilineal descendants to Mesopotamia. Eventually, applying these techniques widely, Sykes concluded that there were "seven daughters of Eve", whose mitochondrial DNA survives in their matrilineal descendants. This is revolutionary stuff.
A very fun aspect is the story of academic competition and rivalries, about which Sykes is unusually open. Not only does the reader get a good sense of the pressures his team was under - they had grants and had to come up with results to ensure further funding, not to forget the impact on their careers - but the personal antagonisms and tensions are revealed with disconcerting honesty. For example, a disgruntled former lab assistant becomes a determined critic of Sykes' work, which leads to some vicious disputes played out in academic journals. Interestingly, Sykes notes that similar inquiries based on the Y chromosome - similarly passed on intact from males' sperm into their boys - corroborates their finding on the absorption of local hunter-gatherers rather than their outright replacement.
My criticism of the book is that I did not always find the science explained in the detail I wanted. Of course, I am not a specialist, just an interested amateur. Still, I couldn't help but think about my case: my mother is Chinese, so I have her mitochondrial DNA, whereas my wife is Irish, hence my kids have hers; as my father was Scottish-German, my son gets his Y chromosome. That means that, though both my kids appear quite Asian, by the methods that Sykes describes, their genetic origins would be only European. Hence, there are big gaps in the method, which Sykes doesn't make clear enough. Finally, the last 100 pages are Sykes' depiction of each Eve, a kind of historical reconstruction that is interesting but nonetheless fiction. It didn't impress me.
This is an absorbing and very fun tour of scientific advance. I liked Sykes' persona and personal stories, which added to the science. The reading level is late high school or early undergraduate rather than specialized academic. I recommend this book warmly.
Sykes is a geneticist at Oxford with wide-ranging intellectual interests. He was lucky in that discoveries were coalescing: the structure of DNA was elucidated; then there was DNA amplification, whereby copies of genes could be cloned for study, greatly accelerating a painstaking laboratory process. By luck, he got called in to examine the DNA of the Iceman, whose mitochondrial DNA he took to his lab for further investigation. To his surprise, he discovered that someone he knew had the identical mitochondrial DNA, a news item that went viral: she and the Iceman shared direct descent from some mother in the distant past. This got Sykes thinking that there must be much more to this, indeed he discovered that he and the last Russian Tsar were also descended from the same "eve". Mitochondrial DNA, he concluded, could be a powerful tool in the search for human genetic evolution.
To explain the science, in the first few chapters, Sykes provides a history of recent scientific theories, in particular the discovery of the structure of DNA, the "genetic code" that programs the development of all life on Earth in a species' genome. Unlike genes in the nucleus, he notes, mitochondrial DNA does not recombine with each new generation but is passed on more or less intact from those in the mother's egg. Without recombination, which at present introduces so much complexity into the genome that the "donor" cannot be tracked into the distant past, mitochondrial DNA offers a direct picture of the mother's legacy. Finally, because mutations work themselves into mitochondrial DNA over long periods of time - about 20,000 years for each one - the comparison of the mitochondrial DNA between individuals can offer a map to the past, i.e. the how far they are from a common ancestor.
Burning with ambition and love of his field, this technique sets Sykes on a number of projects with wide implications. They include the discovery of the Cheddar Man's close genetic relation to locals in Somerset, England, i.e. many of them had been there since before the Neolithic agricultural revolution. Most interestingly, Sykes proved via mitochondrial DNA that the farmers and pastoralists who emigrated from the near east did not displace the hunter-gatherers that lived in place: only 20% of Europeans can trace the matrilineal descendants to Mesopotamia. Eventually, applying these techniques widely, Sykes concluded that there were "seven daughters of Eve", whose mitochondrial DNA survives in their matrilineal descendants. This is revolutionary stuff.
A very fun aspect is the story of academic competition and rivalries, about which Sykes is unusually open. Not only does the reader get a good sense of the pressures his team was under - they had grants and had to come up with results to ensure further funding, not to forget the impact on their careers - but the personal antagonisms and tensions are revealed with disconcerting honesty. For example, a disgruntled former lab assistant becomes a determined critic of Sykes' work, which leads to some vicious disputes played out in academic journals. Interestingly, Sykes notes that similar inquiries based on the Y chromosome - similarly passed on intact from males' sperm into their boys - corroborates their finding on the absorption of local hunter-gatherers rather than their outright replacement.
My criticism of the book is that I did not always find the science explained in the detail I wanted. Of course, I am not a specialist, just an interested amateur. Still, I couldn't help but think about my case: my mother is Chinese, so I have her mitochondrial DNA, whereas my wife is Irish, hence my kids have hers; as my father was Scottish-German, my son gets his Y chromosome. That means that, though both my kids appear quite Asian, by the methods that Sykes describes, their genetic origins would be only European. Hence, there are big gaps in the method, which Sykes doesn't make clear enough. Finally, the last 100 pages are Sykes' depiction of each Eve, a kind of historical reconstruction that is interesting but nonetheless fiction. It didn't impress me.
This is an absorbing and very fun tour of scientific advance. I liked Sykes' persona and personal stories, which added to the science. The reading level is late high school or early undergraduate rather than specialized academic. I recommend this book warmly.
13 people found this helpful
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Reviewed in the United States on June 19, 2017
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I thoroughly enjoyed this book because you could tell that Bryan Sykes so thoroughly enjoyed the scientific investigations he took on throughout his professional life. He was not only a rigorous genetics scientist but valued the use of imagination in his work and was not afraid to use expertise from other scientific branches--paleontology, archaeology, mathematics--to help his projects go forward and find answers. Many people did not like his "stories" of the seven daughters. I did. You know he researched what the climate was like, what plants were growing at the different ages, what the landscape looked like, what animals roamed the land, what people would have eaten back then. Perhaps the stories themselves were a bit simplistic but I was fascinated by all of the background info. And now his stories raise a question that I cannot answer right now: would I rather live in Europe now with its large, polluted cities and overpopulation or way back when only small bands of people roamed Europe with the cold, the constant hunt for food, the constant perils to one's life, and the overwhelming emptiness of the area?
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RR Waller
5.0 out of 5 stars
DNA and our maternal lines explained
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 30, 2021Verified Purchase
Mitochondrial DNA is the “gene” passed from mothers, DNA which remains through generations and, as Bryan Sykes points out DNA which allows us to identify our genetic links through many thousand of years. Through his early work in Oxford, work which went against the currents of the time, he became a world authority on DNA and the various ways it can be used to delve into human history to explain so much about who we are and how we came to be who we are. Although the understanding of DNA and the human genome has advanced exponentially since the 2001 first edition, nevertheless, it is an excellent introduction.
Great scientists do not always have the ability to explain their science in terms accessible to the non-scientists. Sykes has that ability. He also appreciates the power of narratives as ideal conduits to explain, enrapture and encase the science; quickly, readers find themselves in northern Italy in 1994. Mistaken for a “recent” tragedy, a climbing accident, a body has been discovered but it soon becomes clear the body is ancient. Sykes is called in and takes us through his detective work which reveals not only that the body is over 5,000 years old but that DNA can be extracted ... the research takes him to modern Devon. An exciting first chapter.
Subsequent chapters explore what DNA is (in understandable terms), how blood groups and and gene are used, a visit to the Romanoffs in Tsarist Russia, the Pacific Islands, the nomadic life of the Neanderthals, the Cheddar Gorge and many other sites on which DNA has proved invaluable. Cleverly, as well as revealing how the understanding of DNA and its uses grew, Sykes builds the reader’s understanding too, each chapter an investigation adding different elements of our knowledge of the double-helix.
It is not a difficult read and, by the end, the seven daughters of eve stand before us, members of our enlarged, extended family in our more clearly understood family tree stretching back hundreds and thousand of years.
Great scientists do not always have the ability to explain their science in terms accessible to the non-scientists. Sykes has that ability. He also appreciates the power of narratives as ideal conduits to explain, enrapture and encase the science; quickly, readers find themselves in northern Italy in 1994. Mistaken for a “recent” tragedy, a climbing accident, a body has been discovered but it soon becomes clear the body is ancient. Sykes is called in and takes us through his detective work which reveals not only that the body is over 5,000 years old but that DNA can be extracted ... the research takes him to modern Devon. An exciting first chapter.
Subsequent chapters explore what DNA is (in understandable terms), how blood groups and and gene are used, a visit to the Romanoffs in Tsarist Russia, the Pacific Islands, the nomadic life of the Neanderthals, the Cheddar Gorge and many other sites on which DNA has proved invaluable. Cleverly, as well as revealing how the understanding of DNA and its uses grew, Sykes builds the reader’s understanding too, each chapter an investigation adding different elements of our knowledge of the double-helix.
It is not a difficult read and, by the end, the seven daughters of eve stand before us, members of our enlarged, extended family in our more clearly understood family tree stretching back hundreds and thousand of years.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding, though of course from 2001
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 6, 2011Verified Purchase
That's an easy book to read even in spite of the highly scientific knowledge it is bringing because of the great care of the author, an Oxford scientific professor and researcher, to give us clear explanations and plenty of details.
The author is one of those who discovered and studied mitochondrial DNA back in the 1980s, carried out some of the essential research in the domain and proved some fundamental facts about the history of Homo Sapiens. The book was published in 2001 and it has aged on a couple of points but certainly not on the fundamental research on mitochondrial DNA.
Before presenting the essential results of his research, it is important to say that he explains in clear terms how his research at the beginning was going against the dominant theory and he gives details about the reactions of those who were defending the dominant theory of the time, how they reacted in a vastly hostile way though they had to concede defeat and accept the new theory but it took them quite a few years to come to that point, as if science was not the field of truth but the paternal domain of each scientist.
The main discovery was that 83% of the mitochondrial DNA of modern Europeans goes back to the first Homo Sapiens who arrived in Europe before the peak of the last glaciation and then backed up in front of the ice and stayed in the southern half of Europe before redeploying after the peak of that ice age. Only 17% of modern Europeans have a mitochondrial DNA coming from the Homo Sapiens that brought agriculture 10,000 years ago. That means that the Indo-European migration of the Neolithic was not an invasion, was not an overwhelming take-over but a very progressive advancement that was more the adoption of the new economic ways by the local population rather than the extinction of the older population or its total absorption by a massive migration of Indo-Europeans.
That means that before it was the theory of a massive invasion that was dominant.
The regret I have in front of this research is that the author and his team never considered the linguistic aspect of things. If the first Homo Sapiens in Europe were coming from Anatolia and if the Basques are the only still living descendants of this first population (proved by the blood characteristics of the Basques), that leads us to believe that the language of Cro-Magnon and the Gravettians was an agglutinative language of the Turkic family like Basque. If the Neolithic men who brought agriculture and herding into Europe from the Middle East bringing an economic model that will take over the whole continent it is also normal that their language or languages took over too, which means the present Indo-European languages of Europe are the languages of these Neolithic men and the Finno-Ugrian languages of Hungary, Finland, Estonia and a few other regions in Europe are the languages of a new migration of agglutinative speakers, this time from the Ural and still again in the Neolithic period.
The language question would have probably enabled them to understand that these Neolithic men were coming from the Middle East but not from the Levant since at the time of publication it was not yet known the Levant had no Homo Sapiens occupants from 80,000 years ago to 35,000 years ago, the period of the first Homo Sapiens migration to Europe. They did not come from Africa via the Sinai but via another route which was not known in 2001 but is perfectly known today. But the language question would have led them to doubt the Levantine origin of these Neolithic men because these men brought Indo-European languages into Europe and the Levant was speaking a range of Semitic languages.
It is fascinating to follow this research and position it precisely before 2001. The shortcomings and flaws of it are due to things they could not know before 2001. First the southern coastal corridor along the coast of the Arabian Peninsula for the agglutinative and Indo-Aryan-Indo-European languages, or a route slightly north of this coastal route and across the Arabian Peninsula. Second they would have been able to think that the Middle East we are speaking of here, Mesopotamia and the Iranian plateau were occupied by languages (Sumerian is the oldest known language of this area and group) that developed into agglutinative languages that will be brought into Europe by Cro-Magnon 45,000 years ago, and later into the Indo-Aryan and Indo-European languages that will migrate from the Iranian plateau to India for the former and to Europe for the latter.
But The research presented in this book is absolutely positive about all humanity being born in the Eastern part of Africa (Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia) and then having migrated from there within Africa (and here the book does not speak at all of the Khoesian languages and the Semitic languages) and then out of Africa via the Middle East (essentially Mesopotamia, the Iranian plateau and eventually the valleys and plains of Pakistan) to the rest of the world. This research proved that at world level 33 mitochondrial DNA clans can be identified, 13 of them being African, the others being all over the world. As for Europe 7 mitochondrial DNA clans can be identified, six of them (83% of the population) that can be traced back to Cro-Magnon and his direct descendants, and one that can be traced to Asia Minor Neolithic time. That is a phenomenal result.
We just have to cross this research with research on the phylogeny of language and the psychogenesis of language to understand the various and successive waves of human migrations out of Africa. But that is linguistic research and that is where I am working. You cannot imagine how happy I am in discovering this book that supports my own research and justifies some of my purely linguistic hypotheses.
This is a classic that everyone who is looking for our distant history should read at least three times and upon which they should meditate at least till they reach the linguistic and humanistic nibbana (sorry nirvana in Sanskrit) of Enlightenment.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
The author is one of those who discovered and studied mitochondrial DNA back in the 1980s, carried out some of the essential research in the domain and proved some fundamental facts about the history of Homo Sapiens. The book was published in 2001 and it has aged on a couple of points but certainly not on the fundamental research on mitochondrial DNA.
Before presenting the essential results of his research, it is important to say that he explains in clear terms how his research at the beginning was going against the dominant theory and he gives details about the reactions of those who were defending the dominant theory of the time, how they reacted in a vastly hostile way though they had to concede defeat and accept the new theory but it took them quite a few years to come to that point, as if science was not the field of truth but the paternal domain of each scientist.
The main discovery was that 83% of the mitochondrial DNA of modern Europeans goes back to the first Homo Sapiens who arrived in Europe before the peak of the last glaciation and then backed up in front of the ice and stayed in the southern half of Europe before redeploying after the peak of that ice age. Only 17% of modern Europeans have a mitochondrial DNA coming from the Homo Sapiens that brought agriculture 10,000 years ago. That means that the Indo-European migration of the Neolithic was not an invasion, was not an overwhelming take-over but a very progressive advancement that was more the adoption of the new economic ways by the local population rather than the extinction of the older population or its total absorption by a massive migration of Indo-Europeans.
That means that before it was the theory of a massive invasion that was dominant.
The regret I have in front of this research is that the author and his team never considered the linguistic aspect of things. If the first Homo Sapiens in Europe were coming from Anatolia and if the Basques are the only still living descendants of this first population (proved by the blood characteristics of the Basques), that leads us to believe that the language of Cro-Magnon and the Gravettians was an agglutinative language of the Turkic family like Basque. If the Neolithic men who brought agriculture and herding into Europe from the Middle East bringing an economic model that will take over the whole continent it is also normal that their language or languages took over too, which means the present Indo-European languages of Europe are the languages of these Neolithic men and the Finno-Ugrian languages of Hungary, Finland, Estonia and a few other regions in Europe are the languages of a new migration of agglutinative speakers, this time from the Ural and still again in the Neolithic period.
The language question would have probably enabled them to understand that these Neolithic men were coming from the Middle East but not from the Levant since at the time of publication it was not yet known the Levant had no Homo Sapiens occupants from 80,000 years ago to 35,000 years ago, the period of the first Homo Sapiens migration to Europe. They did not come from Africa via the Sinai but via another route which was not known in 2001 but is perfectly known today. But the language question would have led them to doubt the Levantine origin of these Neolithic men because these men brought Indo-European languages into Europe and the Levant was speaking a range of Semitic languages.
It is fascinating to follow this research and position it precisely before 2001. The shortcomings and flaws of it are due to things they could not know before 2001. First the southern coastal corridor along the coast of the Arabian Peninsula for the agglutinative and Indo-Aryan-Indo-European languages, or a route slightly north of this coastal route and across the Arabian Peninsula. Second they would have been able to think that the Middle East we are speaking of here, Mesopotamia and the Iranian plateau were occupied by languages (Sumerian is the oldest known language of this area and group) that developed into agglutinative languages that will be brought into Europe by Cro-Magnon 45,000 years ago, and later into the Indo-Aryan and Indo-European languages that will migrate from the Iranian plateau to India for the former and to Europe for the latter.
But The research presented in this book is absolutely positive about all humanity being born in the Eastern part of Africa (Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia) and then having migrated from there within Africa (and here the book does not speak at all of the Khoesian languages and the Semitic languages) and then out of Africa via the Middle East (essentially Mesopotamia, the Iranian plateau and eventually the valleys and plains of Pakistan) to the rest of the world. This research proved that at world level 33 mitochondrial DNA clans can be identified, 13 of them being African, the others being all over the world. As for Europe 7 mitochondrial DNA clans can be identified, six of them (83% of the population) that can be traced back to Cro-Magnon and his direct descendants, and one that can be traced to Asia Minor Neolithic time. That is a phenomenal result.
We just have to cross this research with research on the phylogeny of language and the psychogenesis of language to understand the various and successive waves of human migrations out of Africa. But that is linguistic research and that is where I am working. You cannot imagine how happy I am in discovering this book that supports my own research and justifies some of my purely linguistic hypotheses.
This is a classic that everyone who is looking for our distant history should read at least three times and upon which they should meditate at least till they reach the linguistic and humanistic nibbana (sorry nirvana in Sanskrit) of Enlightenment.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU
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K H
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very interesting book.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 29, 2013Verified Purchase
I chose it, because I knew it was a big bestseller,
and the reviews said that Bryan is a very good
writer, who knows how to make his subjects interesting.
When I saw that the book begins with the story of
how he extracted Ötzi the Iceman's DNA, I knew that
this was the book I wanted to read !
I liked the fact that the book was written as a kind of
autobiography of his research adventures. The inclusion
of an account of his conflict with coworkers may have
stepped on some toes, but his account does look honest and fair,
and for future history books it is important that one can also
learn about circumstances that surround great discoveries.
I learned a few things too. For example that
* the alphabetic classification system for mtDNA is due to Antonio Torroni
* it was the hunters of the Paleolithic that had created the main body of the modern European gene pool.
* mtDNA has only 16,5oo bases, whereas the Y-chromosome has 6o million.
* There is only ca. one mutation in twenty thousand years down a single maternal line.
Even if the book was written in 2001, which is a long time ago for a field of research
that is developing so fast, I think it is important to "begin with the beginning" and obtain
a fuller view, than what you can expect from later summaries.
and the reviews said that Bryan is a very good
writer, who knows how to make his subjects interesting.
When I saw that the book begins with the story of
how he extracted Ötzi the Iceman's DNA, I knew that
this was the book I wanted to read !
I liked the fact that the book was written as a kind of
autobiography of his research adventures. The inclusion
of an account of his conflict with coworkers may have
stepped on some toes, but his account does look honest and fair,
and for future history books it is important that one can also
learn about circumstances that surround great discoveries.
I learned a few things too. For example that
* the alphabetic classification system for mtDNA is due to Antonio Torroni
* it was the hunters of the Paleolithic that had created the main body of the modern European gene pool.
* mtDNA has only 16,5oo bases, whereas the Y-chromosome has 6o million.
* There is only ca. one mutation in twenty thousand years down a single maternal line.
Even if the book was written in 2001, which is a long time ago for a field of research
that is developing so fast, I think it is important to "begin with the beginning" and obtain
a fuller view, than what you can expect from later summaries.
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Koriel Tannhauser
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Seven Daughters Of Eve
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 4, 2012Verified Purchase
The author (a world leading authority on DNA) gives a first-hand account of his research into the "gene" that passes from generation to generation (through the maternal line), allowing us to track our genetic ancestors from thousands years ago (don't worry -> the large part of the book is dedicated to presenting genetic science in a language that a simple laymen can actually understand).
In the book he also discusses the change of humans from a nomadic hunter-gatherer society, to an established farming and animal-domestication, short history of "mechanism of inheritance", different blood types and mitochondrial DNA (fascinating chapter), history of Romanovs executed by Bolsheviks and identification of remains (another great reading there), history of Polynesians and captain Cook, history of first Europeans and many others. At the end he is identifying 7 major genetic clusters among the Europeans (over 95% of native Europeans fits into one of those groups) or put it differently: 7 clans with one "clan mother" in each of them. He also identifies the location of the origin of each of these groups (great chapter 14).
In a way there is nothing shocking in that book , but is a great insight into one of the most important discoveries of our time (it should be also obvious for anybody at this point, that we are descendants of Cro-Magnon and not Neanderthal - curiously both of which lived pretty much next to each other at some point in time). It is truly a fascinating book describing an amazing research into "history of the human race" (and all that from a man who actually did it).
The book has 23 chapters, and a very small index. I wish there was also an additional Bibliography, but I can understand why author didn't include it (as it is simply an account of "his" discovery, not a scientific book). Read it if you can. I'm sure you will learn something new here.
In the book he also discusses the change of humans from a nomadic hunter-gatherer society, to an established farming and animal-domestication, short history of "mechanism of inheritance", different blood types and mitochondrial DNA (fascinating chapter), history of Romanovs executed by Bolsheviks and identification of remains (another great reading there), history of Polynesians and captain Cook, history of first Europeans and many others. At the end he is identifying 7 major genetic clusters among the Europeans (over 95% of native Europeans fits into one of those groups) or put it differently: 7 clans with one "clan mother" in each of them. He also identifies the location of the origin of each of these groups (great chapter 14).
In a way there is nothing shocking in that book , but is a great insight into one of the most important discoveries of our time (it should be also obvious for anybody at this point, that we are descendants of Cro-Magnon and not Neanderthal - curiously both of which lived pretty much next to each other at some point in time). It is truly a fascinating book describing an amazing research into "history of the human race" (and all that from a man who actually did it).
The book has 23 chapters, and a very small index. I wish there was also an additional Bibliography, but I can understand why author didn't include it (as it is simply an account of "his" discovery, not a scientific book). Read it if you can. I'm sure you will learn something new here.
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Tony Jones
5.0 out of 5 stars
Well written and thought provoking in many ways
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 22, 2007Verified Purchase
Having been aware of this book for a few years, I finally bought a copy to take on a train journey. Needless to say I was very pleased for a number of reasons.
Like other reviewers the sheer elegance of the central idea of being (90% likely for Europeans) descended from one of seven women is compelling. the science is built up fairly simply (I did O level biology a long time ago!) and the way the theory of mitochondrial inheritance grows from the chance experiences of the team is a good read.
The writing style is also very accessible and did not turn me off from the book at all.
I had to pause and think hard in a couple of places, and would love the opportunity to understand some of the fine detail (why did the Eve's have two daughters each still gets me thinking).
I was also surprised by the insight into academia and the in-fighting that goes in which threatened to bury theory more than once. Although only told from one side, it came across as quite scary that the rightness of the idea was less important than the reputation of others in the scientific world. I am left wondering how much good science gets discarded by the challenge of surviving the peer review process and the personalities therein. On the other hand one could argue that anything that becomes accepted science has been well challenged and stands up to scrutiny so is better.
Anyway, if you ever wondered about where your mother's mother's mother's.....mother came from, read this book!
Like other reviewers the sheer elegance of the central idea of being (90% likely for Europeans) descended from one of seven women is compelling. the science is built up fairly simply (I did O level biology a long time ago!) and the way the theory of mitochondrial inheritance grows from the chance experiences of the team is a good read.
The writing style is also very accessible and did not turn me off from the book at all.
I had to pause and think hard in a couple of places, and would love the opportunity to understand some of the fine detail (why did the Eve's have two daughters each still gets me thinking).
I was also surprised by the insight into academia and the in-fighting that goes in which threatened to bury theory more than once. Although only told from one side, it came across as quite scary that the rightness of the idea was less important than the reputation of others in the scientific world. I am left wondering how much good science gets discarded by the challenge of surviving the peer review process and the personalities therein. On the other hand one could argue that anything that becomes accepted science has been well challenged and stands up to scrutiny so is better.
Anyway, if you ever wondered about where your mother's mother's mother's.....mother came from, read this book!
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