The Seven Daughters of Eve

The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry

By: Bryan Sykes

Narrated by: Michael Page

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 5,000 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.

©2001 Bryan Skyes (P)2017 Tantor

We Are All One Race

This book beautifully illustrates that all humans have a common origin, and that all races are one. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in their own lineage, and in the genetic history of all humanity. The narrator does a wonderful job keeping your interest through the chapters. A+

An interesting glimpse

This audible book is a good fit for those interested in the DNA side of anthropology. It mixes modern technological finds with a quaint narrative for each character to give the listener a valuable glimpse into the time period each of the women lived in. Great find for the DNA/23 and Me curious.

a fascinating and engaging look into genetics

a fascinating and engaging look into not just what is known of ancestral genetics but also into how it is known. engaging to a layman such as myself at every turn.

Inspiring

I read this book when it had just come out, and it was the initial spark to what became gradually a more serious interest in the topic of paleogenetics. While of course in the intervening years many of its claims have been revised over the years, it us still inspiring and creative and mostly valid.

Fascinating but out of date.

3.5 stars. Fascinating but out of date. Originally published in 2001, the developments in the human genome mapping and the recent proof that Neanderthals did interbreed rather than be replaced are new since the publication of this book. I could have done without the made up "portraits" of his seven clan mothers and wish he had just stuck to the science, that is interesting enough without having to make up fantasy women. The author could have described how these women lived without personifying them.