Uncover Your Genetic History with The Seven Daughters of Eve: Exploring the Science of Ancestry

GowerBizAngel: If you are interested in genealogy you will love this book. It is an easy read and can send you off on other scientific trails, like anthropology and paleoanthropology if you're not careful!

United Kingdom on Sep 11, 2023

Karen Brown: Interesting read

Canada on Aug 29, 2023

Elsabar: The writer was an expert and had evidence to back up his conclusions which were mind blowing. Fantastic read. I couldn’t put it down.

United Kingdom on Jul 22, 2023

Will: This is a remarkable story of the detective work necessary to unravel the DNA mysteries about the population of the United Kingdom. It’s written with a style halfway between the academic and the journalistic, and it reads well. I’ve not given it five stars because I think some of the material has now been superseded, but, if you want a good overview of what happened in the very origins of the British Isles, this is the place to start. Already DNA evidence is beginning to be matched with historical evidence from archaeology and from ancient literary texts and this is allowing us to build up an altogether more rounded idea of origins in Britain. Good stuff!

United Kingdom on Apr 11, 2023

Nun ya: I was fascinated with the idea of actually genetically tracing human origins, and snapped this book up at my local library (1997) in the "New Books" section.
Now in 2023, you can mail your spit to any number of websites to get your mitochondrial DNA patterned, but Oxford and Dr. Bill Sykes were the first, and developed the technology. They also were the first to start mapping global cultures and geographic sites, and compiling the genetic anomalies they found into a huge database. Unfortunately, Dr. Sykes died some years ago and I don't know where that database went, hopefully to some open lab, and not one using the data for profit.

United States on Mar 03, 2023

bob: This book arrived in great shape and was quite interesting, gives one a lot to think about.

United States on Mar 02, 2023

Lorenzo: ottima indagine storico-scientifica, un po prolisso a volte, inoltre è in lingua inglese

Italy on Feb 13, 2023

Orville B. Jenkins: Bryan Sykes is one of the world's leading genetic anthropologist, working with DNA identification and comparison to understand the biological history of the human race. He has been part of a growing worldwide coordinated effort in DNA gathering and comparison, and worked with various other specialists to reconstruct the migration and cultural portraits of humans.

Since 2000, our understanding has accelerated and skyrocketed into a burgeoning, fairly coherent and exciting body of knowledge about human prehistory and the genetic character of modern populations. Sykes is a skilled storyteller and analyst, resulting in a well-crafted true tale of who we are and how we got to where we are in the world today, and how the innermost being of our every individual cell carries the story in our genes!

The ongoing DNA comparisons all over the world began to fill out a picture of the kinship of all modern humans and their migrations all over the world. In 2001, Brian Sykes reported on his DNA studies in Europe and the Polynesian Islands and related, with careful comparisons to the studies by others on Hawaii and the Americas.

In reporting his comprehensive an extensive DNA...

United States on Jan 07, 2018

Norbert Haupt: There are seven individual women, who lived between 10,000 years ago and 45,000 years ago between the Middle East and various areas of Europe, who are the direct ancestors of 95% of all European people alive today. Yes, exactly seven women. I am European, so I am likely the direct descendent of one of those seven individuals.

The author Bryan Sykes is a professor of human genetics at the University of Oxford. He has done pioneering work in genetics, specializing in studying mitochondrial DNA. One of the striking attributes is that the mitochondrial DNA is not passed on by males, only by females. Therefore, my personal mitochondrial DNA can be studied and compared with that of other contemporaries. When Sykes did this, he discovered that all modern Europeans pretty much belonged to one of only seven “groups” or “clans” as he calls them. Studying mutation frequency and the base mitochondrial DNA, coupled with the anthropological record, he was able to determine that there were seven specific women that are the mothers of all Europeans.

He then traced further back into our African roots and found one single woman, who lived about 150,000 years ago in Africa, who...

United States on Dec 19, 2013