is it true that our dna can be traced back to one woman on the african plains?

Question

and what are the chances are that her name was eve.

Answer 1

Actually "Mitochondrial Eve" or "African Eve" was named after the Eve of the Bible, so I'm not sure what her name was, but apparently, according to alot of studies, it is true.
Try this link, it has many references and is not Yahoo!answers.

Answer 2

Chances are nil that her name was "Eve" ... that is just a PR designation. Her name (if she had one) was probably the plains ape equivalent of "hot hips", since she survived to reproduce some offspring.
As to tracing the genes of humanity back to her ... that is a statistical game, and probably irrelevant.
You had two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grands, and so forth. By the time you go back 30 generations (about 600 years, give or take) and you've got over a million antecedents. A bit further, and the number of your ancestors outnumbers the population of humanity. That's total population. All of humanity on the planet.
So we're all related? Not really. Some of us are related along multiple lines. All of us may be related distantly along a line or two. Follow it back far enough, and there HAD to be a first human-like female whose genes came forward.
But by that same logic, we are "related" to pond scum, since we all came from the same primordial chemical soup in the oceans of pre-life Earth. A bit further back, say a billion or so years, and we are related to the Sun, since the same cosmic dust that coalesced into old Sol also made up Earth and the comets and other planets in orbit around him.
As Karl Sagan used to say (bless is soul), "We are all star stuff."
So, yeah, poetically speaking, we probably are all related to that monkeygirl on the plains of Afrique, but only poetically, and in the same degree as we are related to the rocks and soil beneath our feet, and (if you are so inclined), the stars in the heavens, as well.

Answer 3

According to National Geographic articles (sorry, no link), and The History and/or Discovery Channels, it's very true. I doubt her name would be Eve (she was an Australopithecus, on the evolutionary ladder to becoming human) though this is what they called her. All this is proof of is that we share a common ancestor. Nothing more.

***Nugatory...not to be disrespectful, but Lucy, while the oldest female Australopithecus to be found to date, is not the common ancestor referred to by scientists as "Eve". I appreciate the info and link you've provided, it's all very interesting.

Answer 4

Well, unless she left behind a signed birth certificate, the scientists most likely named her. Oh, and by the way, the oldest ancestral remains that have been found in Africa go back to a woman that was named, by scientists,... Lucy. There's actually a very good chance, based on the supposed construction of her throat, that she didn't have the ability to make specialized sounds and thus, most likely, if she communicated verbally at all it would have been through grunts. So no, her mother wouldn't have named Eve. Her mother couldn't even say Eve.

Answer 5

I don't think it was one woman...but recent scientific evidence did trace the world's DNA to a single tribe living isolated in Africa and when found the explorers found that this tribe had all the characteristics of all the races of humanity.

This is in relation to a scientific belief that there was a disaster in early humanity's history and most died off and only a very small number survived to carry on the species

Answer 6

Eve is from the middle east...so could be trace back there I guess as for African woman maybe its one of the decendants that travelled till Africa...nothing is impossible with God grace.

Answer 7

No DNA can traced to tribes in Africa. As for Eve no chance.

Answer 8

Very possible, but I don't know if its true.

Answer 9

Eve was black?

Answer 10

Really??!!....Did they have fig leaves over there then at that time???.....amaaaaazing....haha