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

I heard on the radio a program presenting that fact. They said that there were 2 DNA's in each person. The one that is you, and a different dna in the mitochondria of each individual cell. The mitochondria DNA they said comes only from the mother, and that the mitochondria DNA in every person is identical, and therefore everyone came from the same mother. I don't know enough genetics to verify this, nor do I know how or where to check it out.

Answer 2

Mitochondrial DNA comes only from your mother. The only changes to it are through mutations. They can trace it to single females at every migration bottleneck on the whole Earth.

That doesn't imply that there was only one female. It only implies a small population. Also because the mutations occur at a known rate it is possible to tell how long it has been. The mutations world wide converge about 150,000 years ago.

The chances of her being Eve: well since the time line is all wrong and the migrations don't match the Bible story at all, it is pretty close to zero. Also if there was a world wide flood, that would have been the bottleneck so it matches even less well.

Answer 3

Apparently so, but this genetic research is widely misunderstood. What it means is that the individual you cited (I think they call her the Ancestral Eve) is a common ancestor of everyone alive today. What it does NOT mean is that at some point in the past there was only one human female - It just means that all the other females alive at that time either have no living descendants, or that all their living descendants *also* have the Ancestral Eve as another ancestor through interbreeding. To put it another way, of all the human females that have ever existed, the Ancestral Eve is the only identifiable female whose genes have been inherited by *all* living humans.

The reason they know about this is that mitochondria (components of living cells that deal with energy production) were originally free-living organisms, and they have their own genetic code which is separate from the cell's genetic code, and, unlike the cell's genetic code which is inherited from both parents, the mitochondrial code is only inherited from the mother. Hence it gives an unambiguous indication of lineage, but always and only on the mother's side - It tells us nothing about paternity. An ancestral female whose living descendents at any time went through male children would not have her mitochondrial genetic code inherited by those descendants and would therefore not be unambiguously identifiable today. I believe that also means that a non-Eve ancestral female could *also* be a common ancestor of everyone alive today, but that we just couldn't identify her in this way.

There is some good quality evidence that there was a genetic 'bottleneck' during which the population of modern humans dwindled to some few thousands, but the scientific evidence does not support the idea that our species was reduced to a single family at any point.

HTH...

Answer 4

Yes. Through the mitochondrial DNA. You can find good information in the following links:

http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/ingman.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve

Answer 5

Yes it's true. Funny science has actually proved that yet says little about it while pushing evolution every where you look.

Answer 6

yes,about 80%

Answer 7

Maybe YOURS does!