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

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

3.94 of 5 stars 3.94 · rating details · 2,372 ratings · 297 reviews

One of the most dramatic stories of genetic discovery since James Watson's The Double Helix—a work whose scientific and cultural reverberations will be discussed for years to come.
In 1994 Professor Bryan Sykes, a leading world authority on DNA and human evolution, was called in to examine the frozen remains of a man trapped in glacial ice in northern Italy. News of both th...more One of the most dramatic stories of genetic discovery since James Watson's The Double Helix—a work whose scientific and cultural reverberations will be discussed for years to come.
In 1994 Professor Bryan Sykes, a leading world authority on DNA and human evolution, was called in to examine the frozen remains of a man trapped in glacial ice in northern Italy. News of both the Ice Man's discovery and his age, which was put at over five thousand years, fascinated scientists and newspapers throughout the world. But what made Sykes's story particularly revelatory was his successful identification of a genetic descendant of the Ice Man, a woman living in Great Britain today.
How was Sykes able to locate a living relative of a man who died thousands of years ago? In The Seven Daughters of Eve, he gives us a firsthand account of his research into a remarkable gene, which passes undiluted from generation to generation through the maternal line. After plotting thousands of DNA sequences from all over the world, Sykes found that they clustered around a handful of distinct groups. Among Europeans and North American Caucasians, there are, in fact, only seven.
This conclusion was staggering: almost everyone of native European descent, wherever they may live throughout the world, can trace their ancestry back to one of seven women, the Seven Daughters of Eve. Naming them Ursula, Xenia, Helena, Velda, Tara, Katrine, and Jasmine, Sykes has created portraits of their disparate worlds by mapping the migratory patterns followed by millions of their ancestors.
In reading the stories of these seven women, we learn exactly how our origins can be traced, how and where our ancient genetic ancestors lived, and how we are each living proof of the almost indestructible strands of DNA, which have survived over so many thousands of years. Indeed, The Seven Daughters of Eve is filled with dramatic stories: from Sykes's identification, using DNA samples from two living relatives, of the remains of Tsar Nicholas and Tsaress Alexandra, to the Caribbean woman whose family had been sold into slavery centuries before and whose ancestry Sykes was able to trace back to the Eastern coast of central Africa. Ultimately, Sykes's investigation reveals that, as a race, what humans have in common is more deeply embedded than what separates us.
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Hardcover, 320 pages

Published July 17th 2001 by W. W. Norton & Company (first published January 1st 2001)

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Sep 21, 2007 Lissa rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science

The first half of this book gives an excellent and detailed description of Bryan Sykes’ thrilling investigative journey whereby he uncovers findings and develops his theory regarding mitochondrial DNA, DNA that is passed down from mother to child that, according to Sykes, can give us a record back through our mothers due to measurable degrees of mutation.

While reading this book, keep in mind that, according to the author himself, the fictitious representations of the "Seven Daughters of Eve" are...more

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Mar 10, 2012 James rated it 1 of 5 stars

Too much of this book is fiction, and what isn't fiction is sometimes plain wrong.
On p26 he claims that Watson & Crick used X-rays to calculate the positions of atoms within DNA.

This is totally untrue.

Watson & Crick did NO experimental work on DNA,
an English woman did the X-ray work and watson & crick "borrowed" her work.
And borrowed much more from others.

He also claims there was a "general lack of interest in by most of their contemporaries"

Again, FALSE, in the 1930's an amer...more

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Mar 06, 2012 Emilie rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club, science-for-laypeople

Big fat meh. I didn't find it particularly well-written or engrossing and I really didn't enjoy the fictional bits. I know Sykes was trying to make the 7 daughters of Eve more real, easier to relate to, but I found it trite and a little nauseating. I've read other books on genetics and found them much more interesting and informative, for some reason this one just slid off my face. The only thing I found truly interesting was the mention of race at the end (literally 5 pages before the end!) and...more

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Sep 06, 2009 Amanda rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This book was surprisingly moving. The largest portion of the book is dedicated to presenting genetic science in a language that a simple laywoman such as myself can understand. I am still blown away that human beings have figured so much of this stuff out. But then Sykes goes on to imagine the lives of the seven women from whom most (>95%) of modern Europe’s inhabitants are descended. The surprisingly moving part of the book came as Sykes discusses the change of humans from a nomadic hunter-...more

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Jan 23, 2013 Egzon Hasanaj rated it 5 of 5 stars

The book "The Seven Daughters Of Eve:The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry" by the author, Bryan Sykes is one of the best books, in my opinion ever published. This book, is so interesting it really makes my mind ponder and really think about, where are our origins? Where do we all come from? And, why are we the creatures that we are today? What makes us so unique from the rest? Reading this book i asked these questions and many more. This book was interesting because of its imagination l...more

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Dec 03, 2012 Rae rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2012, math-and-sciences

The author, a professor of genetics at Oxford University, tells the story of how he and his team discovered an unbroken maternal line of DNA that traces back to seven ancestral women. Sykes is able to convey his excitement as a geneticist as he unravels the story for the reader. I didn't want to put the book down--until I got to the last one hundred pages or so in which he supposes what the lives of those seven women might have been like. That part of the narrative did nothing for me. I gave the...more The author, a professor of genetics at Oxford University, tells the story of how he and his team discovered an unbroken maternal line of DNA that traces back to seven ancestral women. Sykes is able to convey his excitement as a geneticist as he unravels the story for the reader. I didn't want to put the book down--until I got to the last one hundred pages or so in which he supposes what the lives of those seven women might have been like. That part of the narrative did nothing for me. I gave the first 200 pages of this book 5 stars but the last 100 only merited 2 -- so I averaged it out to 3 stars.

I enjoy books that fascinate me intellectually and also challenge my religious beliefs and faith. Sometimes I have to put questions up on a mental shelf until I have figured them out. This book presented some intriguing possibilities for me.

From p. 186: While you have only one mitochondrial ancestor in the last generation, your mother, you have two nuclear ancestors, your mother and your father. That doesn't sound too complicated. But go back one more generation. Now you have four nuclear ancestors, your grandparents; but still only one mitochondrial ancestor, your mother's mother. Go back another generation and there are eight nuclear ancestors, your great-grandparents; yet still only a single mitochondrial ancestor, your grandmother's mother. At each generation the number of nuclear ancestors doubles. Go back twenty generations, to about AD 1500, and there could be, theoretically, over one million ancestors who could have contributed to your nuclear genes. In practice, many of these potential ancestors will actually be the same individuals, whose lines of descent have come down to you along different pathways, crossing between males and females through the generations in an unpredictable way.

Tracing the genealogy of all 30,000 genes through this maze of interconnections would be quite impossible. Add to that the confusion introduced by recombination, and the magnitude of the task becomes mind-numbing.(less)

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Nov 10, 2012 Cyndi rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: genealogy, genetics, history

One of the earlier books that started the genetic genealogy revolution. Most of the book is an insider's look at the process of making scientific discoveries, getting funding, publishing, and dealing with critics. A process that, in this case, quite happily ended up at full acceptance. Mitochondrial DNA illuminates the maternal line and gives us strong evidence both for relatedness of different populations and human migration over tens of thousands of years.

The seven daughters of Eve are not sis...more

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Aug 14, 2012 Neal rated it 3 of 5 stars

Interesting science, which I don't totally understand but it goes something like this. Since we all have 50% DNA from father, 50% from mother, there's no way to trace back via DNA to see if somebody today is related to, say, DNA from a body found frozen in the ice of Italy from 20,000 years ago, since every generation back, our DNA would get more and more mixed and jumbled. BUT, there's a certain piece of DNA called Mitochondrial DNA that is passed on from the mother and never changes. Apparentl...more

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Jul 31, 2012 Meherin rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: those interested in genetics and mt genetics

Shelves: science, non-fiction

I read this book in high school because I was interested in mitochondrial genetics. The book itself was rather dry and boring in my opinion, though the concept of tracing lineages through mtDNA was really interesting. The summary on the back cover said "all humans are descended from seven prehistoric women." I thought it would be fun to learn about which daughter of Mitochondrial Eve I was descended from but I didn't realize this book is about the 7 maternal ancestors of modern EUROPEAN Humans (...more

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Sep 20, 2011 Bruce rated it 3 of 5 stars

I picked up this book because I was interested in learning more about mitochondrial DNA and its inheritance patterns. In the first part of the book Sykes, a primary researcher in this field, does a solid job about explaining mitochondrial DNA and the history and process of how he used it in his research, tracing the questions he was asking and the methods that he and his team used. In the second part of the book, he “names” several ancestral women, all identified by their individual DNA sequence...more I picked up this book because I was interested in learning more about mitochondrial DNA and its inheritance patterns. In the first part of the book Sykes, a primary researcher in this field, does a solid job about explaining mitochondrial DNA and the history and process of how he used it in his research, tracing the questions he was asking and the methods that he and his team used. In the second part of the book, he “names” several ancestral women, all identified by their individual DNA sequences, whom he suggests are common ancestors of identifiable modern groups, imaginatively describing what their lives might have been and indicating where their descendents ended up first in Europe and then beyond. The final, shortest section of the book explores the some of the “soft” implications of his work.

Sykes’s writing is unremarkable in terms of syntax and diction. It is usually straightforward and is most effective in the first part of the book. He does overly indulge in describing personality conflicts between himself and fellow scientists, but this is a minor issue. Basically, this section of the book adequately addressed the questions that I had at the beginning and was clear and interesting from a scientific perspective. His scientific explanations were sound.

The second part is sometimes extremely speculative. Bryan tries to incorporate archaeological and anthropological findings into his renditions, but his fictional journey through the lives of his seven key women becomes tedious and repetitious. Why did this section seem relatively unsuccessful? Because Sykes tried to create a clumsy kind of historical fiction without being able to craft characters who were other than stiff and cardboard, characters with whom the reader could identify or sympathize. Consequently, the result seemed stilted and artificial. He might have done better simply to describe postulated historical conditions without trying to personalize them. I had the sense that his book was originally too short and this section was expanded beyond its necessary length to act more or less as filler.

The final section is a romanticized emotional presentation of how wonderful it is that we are all at some level related to one another, that we are each a link in a chain going back thousands of years and are at some level kin. To my mind this section added little to the import of Sykes work and made it less scientific, a mere gesture to enhance the work’s popularity for what Sykes or his publisher felt to be the general reading public. They would have done better, in my opinion, just to present the facts of the method and their implications.

Popularizations of science can be a tricky genre. It is necessary for an author to simply without oversimplifying, and that can be difficult. He or she must generalize without distorting, and creative use of metaphor is often required and effective, even as it must be made clear when and where the metaphor is imprecise. Brian Greene’s books on physics and cosmology are examples of superb presentation. Sykes’s book, while useful, suffers by comparison.
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Feb 20, 2011 Elodie rated it 3 of 5 stars

I had to read this book for my book club, and I was less than enthusiastic when I started. Two friends from the book club told me how they had been quite disappointed with it, and as we often like the same literature I was expecting to not like it either... I started nonetheless, internally sighing... and found myself really engrossed with the story!
It did not start well however, as I found myself very annoyed at the author at the beginning of the book. I found him quite insufferable and preten...more I had to read this book for my book club, and I was less than enthusiastic when I started. Two friends from the book club told me how they had been quite disappointed with it, and as we often like the same literature I was expecting to not like it either... I started nonetheless, internally sighing... and found myself really engrossed with the story!
It did not start well however, as I found myself very annoyed at the author at the beginning of the book. I found him quite insufferable and pretentious, too engrossed with himself. I mean what do I care about him having an old car that leaked oil? This is coming back at several times in the book, for example when he gives himself a little pat on the back about being so good at discovering the Polynesian origin : it is clear in the book that archeologists had numerous evidence to prove this already and that the genetic proof is one other piece of evidence among others. Yes it is more irrefutable, but historians and archeologist can also be trusted to be doing their job properly and to collate relevant evidence to constructs/rebut theories.
However, I really loved the first part of the book (before he details the life of the 7 daughters) and found it a real page turner: to me this is science at its best: asking yourself a question out of sheer curiosity and finding your answer after research, experimentation. It is a real scientific/anthropological thriller, and my world was totally shaken when he proves that we did not evolve from Neanderthal but are all descendant of Cro-Magnon.. I mean wow!! So all the evolutionary drawings showing the evolution of men from ape to homo sapiens are wrong? Neanderthal got extinct! And I like also how he explains how they could have breed together but be infertile... I also liked the fact that without the initial question, there is no use for the technological progress: I mean you don’t need mitochondrial DNA if you are not asking yourself the relevant questions.
The second very strong point of this book to me, is the intellectual honesty of this man. You can like him or not, but you can’t deny him being a true scientist. I really appreciated him explaining how his genetic discovery about European ancestry created a scholarly earthquake, how is theory was put under attack and how he rebutted all critics point by points. Also, I am NOT a scientist AT ALL, and I really liked how he explained the science behind it all. I am not sure I could give a lecture quite yet, but I definitely have a much better understanding about genetics, mitochondrial DNA, chromosome, etc...
The last part of the book however annoyed me a bit... I did not really like the story of the 7 daughters, because they are too fictional for me. I know he can’t find the skeletons or retrace exactly their individual story, but as I am trained as a historian I don’t like him inventing these women at all. I was quite uncomfortable reading this part when I know he is a geneticist and not a Palaeontologist. I am sure he did his research, but I’d rather have that part written by a specialist, and could have dispensed with it altogether.In conclusion, I am really looking forward the next bookclub meeting!
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Aug 10, 2010 Matthew rated it 3 of 5 stars

I loved the first bit of this book, as he plotted his course through the science establishing the utility of mtDNA models of our maternal forebears, and the types of questions this might answer. The part I liked less well included the descriptions of those womens' lives. I agree with and love the concept, it's really a matter of execution. First, after such a great focus on the value of science, and even the frequently cited dictum that extraordinary claims require extraordinary data, Sykes seem...more

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Aug 28, 2009 Allison rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, nonfiction

The first half of Sykes' book is an incredibly thorough yet still accessible history of the use of mitochondrial DNA in tracking maternal genetic heritage. It's a nice companion to Spencer Wells' The Journey Of Man, though I read that one ages and ages ago, and can't offer any serious comparison of methodology or anything. All I can say is it was understandable but not too easy, and I actually felt like I was learning something about the process, even though I've read up on this sort of genetic...more

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Apr 12, 2010 Michael rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: anyone intested in genetics and/or human evolution

This book is all about the author's work with using mitochondrial DNA to classify human populations and their movements across the globe from stone age times onwards. The first three-quarters of the book is fascinating and relates the author's personal journey in relation to his work with mtDNA and its extraction from old bones. I particularly enjoyed the story of how he, through a motorcycle accident, got himself stuck on a Pacific island for several weeks and how this led to a whole string of...more This book is all about the author's work with using mitochondrial DNA to classify human populations and their movements across the globe from stone age times onwards. The first three-quarters of the book is fascinating and relates the author's personal journey in relation to his work with mtDNA and its extraction from old bones. I particularly enjoyed the story of how he, through a motorcycle accident, got himself stuck on a Pacific island for several weeks and how this led to a whole string of research on the population movement across the Pacific and how to identify whether that movement was from South America westwards (as proposed by Thor Heyerdahl) or from Asia eastwards - against the prevailing winds. I remember reading, back in the 60's, Thor Heyardahl's book about his recreation of this colonising journey on his balsawood raft Kon Tiki, so this early part of the book grabbed my interest very easily.

The author then moves on to work with extracting DNA from older fossils found in the Cheddar caves in Somerset, and then on to the classification of human populations in Europe and how he whittled us down to 7 clans with one clan mother each. He also identifies the location of the origin of each of these groups.

And this is the point at which I think he should have stopped writing for he then goes on to construct a fictional short-story about the primitive lives of each of these 'daughters of Eve'. the stories are okay, but are all a bit samey and I understand the author's desire to make these people seem real and very human - but if you want that then just read Jean M Auel's 'Earth Children' stories for she does this much better and much more believably. I just couldn't connect with these shallow made up women that I felt I was being coerced to feel an emotional connection with, and consequently, while I whizzed through the early part of the book, this section really dragged for me.

Nevertheless, the book is well worth reading and if it had stuck to the science would have earned itself 5 stars.(less)

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Oct 09, 2012 Jayesh Shah rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is a very interesting book. It is very well written. Bryan Sykes explains the science involved in his story in a very interesting fashion.

It is fascinating and mind-boggling to imagine that as few as seven women could be ancestors of a whole continent of Europe. The author makes it clear in his book, that these seven women were not the only women of their times. Also, he explains that they were ancestors by maternal lineages only. There must be many other women who are ancestors of millions...more

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Mar 20, 2013 Nate rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: evolution, science

Although this book was written in 2001, it is still a useful introduction to the study of human genetic ancestry for the layperson like me. Sykes is unique for having been at the forefront of major discoveries in genetics, such as sequencing the Iceman (Otzi)'s genome and finding modern descendants, helping to identify the bodies of most of the members of the massacred Russian royal family, and tracing 95% of Europeans' female ancestors to just seven women who lived between 45,000 and 10,000 yea...more

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Apr 25, 2012 Lori rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sciences

I haven't taken a biology course since my junior year at university and have read only lay scientific works since then, but I found this account of mitochondrial DNA research to be both accessible and compelling.

After surveying the rapid development of DNA technology in the past 30 years and what that has meant for laboratory applications, Sykes explores the role mitochondrial genes played in definitively resolving several archaeological and anthropological discoveries, before moving on to postu...more I haven't taken a biology course since my junior year at university and have read only lay scientific works since then, but I found this account of mitochondrial DNA research to be both accessible and compelling.

After surveying the rapid development of DNA technology in the past 30 years and what that has meant for laboratory applications, Sykes explores the role mitochondrial genes played in definitively resolving several archaeological and anthropological discoveries, before moving on to postulate that the ancestry of all humans of European extraction can be traced to exactly seven prehistoric women and the migrations of their female progeny.

A little background: mitochondria are structures that exist within a cell's membrane, but outside the nucleus. They contain some genetic code related to their cellular function (transmitting energy), and some "junk" genetic code as well. Unlike the genes found on chromosomes within the cell nucleus, the genes in mitochondria do not pair up during sexual reproduction to create a new and unique genetic fingerprint for the resulting child. In a sperm cell, mitochondria and the genetic information they carry are found only in the cell's tail, which propels the transmitted genetic material to the ovum, but then breaks off before fertilization occurs, leaving the father's mitochondrial genes outside the ovum wall. Any resulting offspring therefore receives only the mitochondrial genes contained in the ovum cell from which it was generated - genes identical to, or in surpassingly rare cases very slightly mutated from, the mother's own set of mitochondrial genes.

Thus mitochondrial genes are only passed on from mother to child, and only can be traced through successive generations of females. (Male children have their mother's mitochondrial fingerprint, but don't pass it on to their children.) They are not subject in each generation to reproductive recombination with genes of unknown heritage - genes passed on by the father, from any of his direct-line ancestors of either sex.

Therein lies the breathtaking mathematical remoteness of Sykes' findings: in order for a mitochondrial gene to have survived from sometime near the dawn of modern (Cro-Magnon) man down to the current day, the line of female-linked genetic inheritance - the line of daughters having daughters having daughters having daughters - could not have been broken for even one generation. These 7 primordial women and their female descendants succeeded in fulfilling this genetic mission over millennia. Meanwhile, the carriers of genes from all other mitochondrial lines that ever existed failed to produce a girl child in one generation, and just as quickly went extinct.

After considering at length Europe's genetic heritage from the original "seven daughters", Sykes finishes with a more succinct account of the migratory paths taken by the other 26 "daughters" of distinct Cro-Magnon ancestors, whose global dispersion of their genes, together with the European 7, accounts for virtually the entirety of the human species that exists today. If other maternally-descended mitochondrial "clans" exist, he claims, they are now limited to a small number of individuals in isolated populations whose genetics have not been made available for study.

Of course mitochondria contain only a small subset of human genetic code. Theoretically, any other gene sequence on any chromosome could be traced, mapped and assigned a "clan founder" - a distinct person whose then-novel genetic mutation was replicated and became common in a long line of descendants. The beguiling nature of mitochondrial DNA is its easy traceability into remotest human history. Tracking a single, gender-limited line over hundreds if not thousands of generations is infinitely less complex than attempting to decipher the intricacies of any nuclear "family tree" going back even a dozen generations - a mere genetic nanosecond. Yet mitochondrial lineages are more than enough to inspire our awe at the vast length of our biological heritage, and to humble us in imagining the sheer quantity of human genetic material that, through lack of reproductive success, has gone extinct.

Although I greatly enjoyed reading a scientific work filled with precise, factual, yet exciting and sometimes humorous accounts of research and collegial disagreement, 2/3 of the way through the book I did find that Sykes' fanciful personification of the "seven daughters" and exposition on their imagined lives and times, writ improbably large as prehistoric archetypes, marred my enjoyment. It was disconcerting to feel I'd suddenly picked up "Clan of the Cave Bear" instead of a book about genetics and factual anthropology. Fortunately, that fictional segment was brief.
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Apr 19, 2013 Aurelien rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: science

Were Polynesian islands peopled by Asians or American Indians? Are the skeletons found at Iekaterinburg the ones of the Romanov family? Is Neanderthal really extincted or, does he have any descendants? What about the Europeans? Do they have Croc-Magnon for ancestor or, farmers coming from the Middle-East? Bryan Sykes tells us the discoveries made by genetics thanks to mitochondrial DNA, a bacteria passing from generation to generation through the maternal line only.

Enthusiast, he is like a kid i...more

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Jun 03, 2012 Mia rated it 4 of 5 stars

I found the majority of this book a really fascinating read. Even though some of the information is already out of date (for example, Sykes states that Neanderthal went extinct more than 25,000 years ago and no modern Europeans possess Neanderthal DNA, but in the last couple of years this has been proven wrong), it was interesting to read about the events leading up to the widespread DNA analysis that is going on today and what all this information has taught us about migratory patterns, etc. As...more

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Oct 25, 2011 Carley rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

My mother's mother died when I was very young, no older than three, and I don't have much to remember her by. Just a few hazy memories, a picture in my parents' house (I look a lot like her), and an unfortunate legacy of type 2 diabetes. However, she did leave something else behind for me. She left me her mitochondrial DNA, passed on through my mother.

Mitochondrial DNA is passed on only through the mother, and can be traced in an unbroken line through mothers and daughters. By now many people ha...more My mother's mother died when I was very young, no older than three, and I don't have much to remember her by. Just a few hazy memories, a picture in my parents' house (I look a lot like her), and an unfortunate legacy of type 2 diabetes. However, she did leave something else behind for me. She left me her mitochondrial DNA, passed on through my mother.

Mitochondrial DNA is passed on only through the mother, and can be traced in an unbroken line through mothers and daughters. By now many people have heard of "Mitochondrial Eve," the one woman to whom every living human being can trace his or her lineage. In this book, Bryan Sykes details his research that lead to the seven main mitochondrial DNA lines to which everybody living in Europe, and arguably everybody of European descent, belongs.

Managing to be scholarly without being dry, this book is a perfect companion to anybody studying basic archeology or anthropology, as I am this semester. I found myself touching on familiar concepts from my classes throughout the book. The first part describes the research that went into the project, while the last few chapters detail the hypothetical lives of the seven clan mothers. The most interesting part of the research, I felt, was the fact that our genetic lineage is much older than most people believed. Europeans can trace their ancestry back to the hunting and gathering peoples of the Ice Age, rather than the more recent farmers.

The biggest criticism I have of this book is the fact that the research only touched on the seven European lines. In the second to last chapter Sykes does speak briefly of the other clans that exist throughout the world and their possible origins, but I would like to read more about them. The book was published a full ten years ago and perhaps a follow up has been written; I haven't checked. If there is one, I would definitely read it.

I have to wonder which clan I belong to. My mother's mother was from Spain, but considering the spread of these seven clans, it's all but impossible to say which group is mine without a DNA test. Someday I hope to find out which of the seven daughters of Eve was the matriarch of my line, a line that I might someday pass on to children of my own.(less)

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Dec 11, 2010 Reiden rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction

I heard about this book in a geography class I took a few years ago, and I thought it did a good job explaining how matrilineal lineages can be traced using mitochondrial DNA. I do agree with several of the other reviews which state that there was a little too much of the book spent on European decent and the fictional narratives of the Seven Daughters, but other than that it was a great book. As much as I wanted to get back to the science of the genetic testing described in the first half of th...more

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Jan 14, 2013 Tanis rated it 4 of 5 stars

Perhaps the most startling breakthrough of genetic science is the confirmation that we are all descended from a very small number of prehistoric individuals. Sykes has been examining DNA from fossil animals and humans, and from their modern descendants, since the 1980s.

At an early stage, he and his colleagues recognized that the relationships of far-flung modern populations will be recorded in the sequence of their DNA—particularly mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited exclusively from one’s mo...more

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Aug 29, 2012 Becca rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: genetics, winter

I was intrigued by Sykes' account of the mitochondrial DNA and how it passes from mother to daughter. I liked how Sykes applied the mitochondrial DNA to trace human migrations around the world. I felt it contributes to what we know of human history. I didn't enjoy the fictional accounts of the seven women in Europe. I had several reasons. It felt Euro-centric to me as there are other "mitochondrial mothers" on other continents. So to call the European mothers the seven daughters of Eve just seem...more

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Sep 07, 2012 Rich Biggs rated it 5 of 5 stars

I'm interested in prehistory and human genetics. I read news items about Neanderthal genes, and watch Prof. Henry Louis Gates' TV shows here in the U.S. about genealogy and genetics.

So I came to this book interested. I liked it very much. It's a mixture of a personal account of his hand in groundbreaking discoveries in this area, some explanations of genetics made accessible to the lay person like me, and some historical fiction, imagining the lives of these ancestral mothers some 20,0000 or 30,...more

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Feb 06, 2011 Katie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, science

I read this book for my genomics class. The dude who wrote it is basically one of the pioneers of the use of mitochondrial DNA. For someone who's not familiar with DNA or genetics, this would be a really great choice if you're interested in learning more. All scientific concepts the reader might be unfamiliar with are clearly defined, but for someone looking for a more technical discussion, you should probably look elsewhere. It's clearly written and easy to read, the story flows quite nicely. A...more

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Mar 11, 2011 William Ramsay rated it 3 of 5 stars

This is a very interesting book that does damage to any lingering ideas of racial superiority. By genetic testing of thousands of people, Sykes has show that everyone of European extraction can trace his or her ancestry to just seven women who lived between 10 and 45 thousand years ago. Not only that, but DNA testing and archeology have shown that we are all Africans at the core. All I could think of while reading this is that so much blood has been spilled because one man thinks he's superior t...more

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Apr 11, 2013 Belle rated it 2 of 5 stars

After enjoying DNA USA so much, this was disappointing. I loved the stories, research hurdles, and data of the first portion, but the rest went down in a mudslide. The amount of speculation was enormous especially in origin of Polynesians, movement of neo-paleolithic peoples, and dating of the clusters. What made it worse is that he later referred to these conclusions like 'clearly,' 'as we now know,' 'without a doubt,' without furthur support, data, research, or reasoning. These footings were s...more

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Dec 01, 2009 Julie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Though this book wasn't quite what I expected it to be, I did enjoy it. I was thinking it would be more of a narrative of the author's experimental journey(s) to trace back mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) to its sources, but in reality, he uses the power of mtDNA to solve certain age-old questions and discusses those cases. Don't get me wrong -- there's still science involved and explained, but there's much more narrative than I expected, which was a good thing. It keeps it interesting and helps the f...more

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Jun 02, 2008 Chandra rated it 5 of 5 stars

For all the geeky geneticists out there, a fascinating look into our history through our mitochondrial chromosomes. Sykes uses modern molecular technology to bring the history of the human race to life in a surprisingly vibrant tale of theory and discovery.

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Dec 08, 2007 Susan rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

My book club read this one, but I didn't finish it. The first half was fascinating, but then the author tried too hard, by creating fictional personalities for each of the seven daughters. Still, worth it for the first half.

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“We are all a complete mixture;yet at the same time,we are all related.Each gene can trace its own journey to a different common ancestor.This is a quite extraordinary legacy that we all have inherited from the people who lived before us.Our genes did not just appear when we were born.They have been carried to us by millions of individual lives over thousands of generations.” — 2 people liked it

“Our DNA does not fade like an ancient parchment; it does not rust in the ground like the sword of a warrior long dead. It is not eroded by wind or rain, nor reduced to ruin by fire and earthquake. It is the traveller from an ancient land who lives within us all.” — 2 people liked it

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