The Seven Daughters of Eve

Rating:
Summary: Enjoyable, Enlightening and yet somewhat disappointing
Review: While I enjoyed Sykes easy to understand explanation of the science behind the "seven daughters", I was disappointed in his attempted dramatizations of their lives. He was clearly a man trying to discribe the lives of women. For instance,most women would know that a baby does not get milk when it first suckles. He is also so much of a modern man that he leaves out the spiritual dimention. Ancient people were no less complicated than ourselves and had a mystical sense of their world which is shown in their cave art. It is thought that this was connected with Shamanistic religious practices. Sykes takes the easy way out and treats it as mere hunting magic. He portrays twins as an inconvenience. My guess is that they would have been seen as a double blessing from the great Goddess of Life. Even Neanderthals were able to nurture injured and elderly members of the community and keep them alive past their economic usefulness. My guess is that twins would have been cherished instead of one being killed as he suggests.

Rating:
Summary: Sykes' secret
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Marvelous Story, Great Introduction to DNA!
Review: Not being an expert on DNA, I read this book to find out exactly what all the fuss was about. I was pleasantly surprised by 1) the information and 2) the writing style of the author.

He painstakingly explains the elements of DNA and how it works, but what made this very palatable was the way writing style employed.

The author is a great storyteller, and this made the book a real page-turner. What was also fascinating was the fact the reaction of the scientific community to his teams' findings. Even in an "enlightened" and "objective" field there is still much bias and sacred cows.

Here are some very important questions the author answers:
1. What are the origins of the people indigenous peoples of the South Pacific islands?
2. Did the people from the near east really drive out and replace the population of Europe several thousand years ago?
3. Is there a biological basis for separating people based on their race?

I would recommend this book highly to anyone who wants to learn the story of DNA! Great book!

Rating:
Summary: Informative & Insightful
Review: The author does an excellent job of giving the timeline of his research and facts to back up his theory. Might be a hard read for people who are not into the very technical side of his research. Only down side would be his stories of the seven women which are a bit sentimental. Otherwise I highly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: Sykes should stick to fact, not fancy
Review: A celebrated geneticist who was in on the DNA analysis of the Alpine Ice Man and the remains of the Russian Romanovs (and the Anastasia pretenders), Sykes has written a provocative, enthusiastic history of mitochondrial DNA research and its importance in revealing the ancestry and movements of people.

Mitochondrial DNA, present in every cell in the body, is passed only from mother to daughter, unchanged except for random mutations. Though a woman passes mitochondrial DNA to all her children, only her daughters will pass it to the next generation. (Sykes briefly discusses newer research into Y chromosome DNA, which traces the male line).

The title of the book comes from its last section; Sykes' tracing of European lines back to seven "clan mothers" originating at different times and places during the last ice age. After a genetic discussion of how he arrived at these seven, the author devotes a chapter to each woman, describing the climate and terrain, then speculating on her life. Where his imaginings are based on archaeological research these chapters are fascinating; his fictional fights of fancy are less so.

The real meat of this book is in the first half, where Sykes discusses research leading up to the seven daughters. He begins with a great hook - his match of the 5,000-year-old iceman found in the Alps to a modern Dorset woman (of course he matches many others but since she is a friend, her sample has a name). He goes on to show how mitochondrial research traced the movement of Polynesian peoples (small mutations occur over thousands of years, providing a geographic timeline) outward from Asia, disproving theories which posited an American origin based on wind patterns and patronizing attitudes toward ancient sailing proficiencies. He uses mitochondrial DNA to prove the Asian origin of native Americans, and the African origin of Homo sapiens. And shows that Neanderthals are truly extinct, having left no trace of themselves in modern peoples.

Sykes' grandstanding and sharp little digs at rival scientists may annoy some readers, but they lend personality and gleeful human drama to the account. I found them highly entertaining and often illuminating in showing the effects of personality and personal challenge on science.

His work on European origins is a case in point, demolishing the theory that western moving farmers from the Near East supplanted the smaller population of native hunter-gatherers, becoming today's modern Europeans. Sykes' genetic research proved this not to be the case. Instead, the modern population can trace their ancestry back 20,000 to 50,000 years, back to the first Cro-Magnon, and Sykes has great fun discussing the resistance to his team's results and the hoops the scientific world required them to jump through.

But it's not just backbiting. Sykes shows how hostile questioning opens cracks in assumptions and forces scientists to back up their results with impeccable research. Scrutiny exposes a problem from all angles and sends researchers scurrying to create new testing methods to confirm findings. Sykes gets his digs in, but he does it by showing how science works.

The writing is anecdotal and full of infectious enthusiasm and Sykes has the gift of explaining science to the neophyte. Mitochondrial DNA may still make your head spin but you'll understand exactly how it works. Interested readers can check out Sykes' web site which even offers mitochondrial and Y-chromosome testing, for a fee.

Rating:
Summary: How genetic knowledge is rewriting the prehistory
Review: This is a popular book of scientific discovery written in an affecting and engaging style by a geneticist who has the all too rare gift of writing extremely readable prose.

Professor Bryan Sykes draws the reader into his story as easily as a best-selling novelist. And this is just the "science" part of the book which lasts for fourteen chapters. Then come the fictional chapters about the seven daughters and their imagined stories, so touching and so full of the very human struggle to survive in the prehistory that I could not read them without misting up. (But then I tend to the sentimental.)

Sykes begins with the story of how he was able to identify a living descendant of the five-thousand year old "ice man" found in northern Italy in 1994 by comparing mitochondrial DNA sequences. Mitochondrial DNA is contained only in egg cells (thus, "Eve" and her daughters), not in sperm cells, and transmitted without recombination so that the changes are all the result of mutations that occur at a predictable rate over time. Then he tells the story of how the bodies of the murdered Romanovs, the last of the Russian Tsarist families, were identified through DNA fingerprinting. Both of these stories are more about media events and ventures in forensics than original scientific work. But then comes the story of where the Pacific Islanders originated.

When I was young I read the engaging story of Thor Heyerdahl in his book Kon-Tiki in which he attempted to prove that the Polynesians originated in the Americas by sailing west into the Pacific. This beguiling theory is demolished once and for all by the DNA evidence that Sykes presents. He shows that the Polynesians were originally from Southeast Asia and made all their great ocean discoveries by sailing against the prevailing winds, going east toward the Americas.

Sykes notes that because this was the prevailing scientific opinion his work met with mostly agreement. However when he and other geneticists were able to show that the current population of Europe is mainly descended from the original hunters and gathers that lived there prior to the arrival of the farmers who brought agriculture from the Middle East roughly ten thousand years ago, they ran into resistence. The prevailing scientific opinion was that the farmers overwhelmed the hunters and that most of today's Europeans are descended from those farmers. Sykes relates the story of the scientific controversy and how the genetic proof finally prevailed against entrenched opinion. Incidentally, to me the intriguing thing about this discovery is the question, not addressed in the book: What, if any, conclusions can we draw from the fact that 80% of our European genes came from hunters and gathers and only 20% from Middle Eastern farmers?

There is also the story of the "Cheddar Man" and how Sykes learned to extract DNA from the bones of people dead tens of thousands of years. Finally there is his argument for all people of European descent coming from just seven women who lived ten thousand to forty thousand years ago, the so-called, "Seven Daughters of Eve." (World-wide Sykes identifies 33 "daughters of Eve.")

To round out the book, Sykes writes an imaginative chapter about each one of the seven daughters. Here is where some readers are displeased, claiming that Sykes's imaginings are unscientific and even slanted. One reader complained about the men out hunting and the women remaining behind in caves as a kind of stereotype that has been overcome. But remember Sykes is writing in six cases out of seven about European peoples who made their living primarily from hunting during the ice ages, not from gathering. Think about how much "gathering" the Inuit do and you can see why he emphasized hunting. In the seventh case, about Jasmine, whom he sees as being from the birthplace of agriculture in modern Syria, his story is different. Indeed he has Jasmine and her non-hunting mate inventing agriculture! I might also point out for those who skimmed the "daughters of Eve" chapters, that he also has a woman playing a major part in the invention of water-going craft.

If I were to criticize this book I would say he was too generous in his depiction of human beings in the prehistory. He describes their lives as hunters and gathers, their hardships and their short and difficult lives with an emphasis on their humanity and how that helped them to survive. He downplays any part humans may have had in the extinction of the Neanderthal. He relates no rapes or murders or tribal wars, and de-emphasizes tribal sexism. He shows the beginnings of trade and cooperation. The result is so warm and touching I'm surprised that Stephen Spielberg hasn't taken out an option on the book. (Maybe he has!)

Finally, this is not an academic tome. It is a popular science book meant for educated lay persons. There are no learned academics writing glowing blurbs on the cover. Most academics would be afraid to write a book like this because of the imaginative chapters which are quasi-scientific and can be so easily criticized.

In short Professor Sykes is a tremendously engaging writer (with guts) who happens to be a world-class scientist. His goal was to communicate something about what he has learned to a wide readership, and I think he did a good job. If you can read this book without feeling better about humanity, maybe you should read it again.

Rating:
Summary: Intriguing and Fun!
Review: As a scientist and teacher, I found this book to be an excellent story of the scientific process. From the impulses of curiousity to the challenges of peer review, Dr. Sykes recounts his journey with mitochondrial DNA. I recommend this book to everyone I know.

Rating:
Summary: Remarkably Well Written; Stunning Conclusions
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Science yes, anthropology no
Review: For an interested layperson, Mr Sykes has clearly laid out the scientific bases of his work, and makes a gripping detective story out of what could have sounded like another high school biology text.

The only disappointment for this reader came in the second section, in which Mr Sykes visualizes the lives of his seven clan mothers. He may have spent too much time in the lab and battling for his new ideas to have consulted with current research into the lives of hunter-gatherers. As this will be a book of interest to many, it is a shame that it relies on now-discredited myths of our prehistoric ancestors: the old museum dioramas with the females huddling in caves while their mates bring home the wooly mammoth. To see what these seven women might have been up to, I'd consult the anthropologist/novelist Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, or Hrdy's "Mother Nature."

Rating:
Summary: Sykes tells us more about his life than the subject matter
Review: Well, I'm not sure why my previous review wasn't helpful unless people are responding to my negative rating alone. So, here's a shorter, revamped review. The author doesn't check his facts. As I was reading the book, I was embarassed for him. It often seems his main source for information is the Discovery Channel and not enough real research that one should expect from someone of his status. I've done further research on the matter and found that the author in the book isn't entirely honest about "his" own accomplishments as well. The book does have some good information, but he spends too much of the print puffing up his own ego, and not enough supporting his arguements.

My recommendation is AVOID. Wait for another book on the topic.