It's fascinating stuff (if
you're into that sort of thing). The first part of the book gives us some background on what led
Sykes to his conclusions, as well as a smattering of interesting history on genetic research in
general. Sykes also gives us some applications of his discovery - determining who the Polynesians
are descended from, or when the Native Americans made their trek across the Bering Strait, as well
as his elaborate "family tree" which leads to the stories of the "Seven Daughters of Eve".

My
biggest criticism with this book is Sykes' treatment of the Daughters themselves. I think his first
mistake was in naming them. Once he has attached names to them (thoroughly incongruous, modern names
like Helena and Katrine), he wants to anthropomorphize them. Each Daughter has a chapter devoted to
what her life would have been like - but Sykes oversteps the bounds of generalities and starts
getting into specifics he could have no way of knowing. Instead of merely describing the flora and
fauna of the period, the region, etc, Sykes attempts to give us the actual life stories of the women
themselves. But if he makes up some of this stuff - like Ursula having twin daughters, or Jasmine
inventing agriculture - how can we trust the rest of what he tells us?

Moreover, despite the fact
that he goes out of his way to point out that there is nothing special about these women, his
stories paint them all as the most beautiful, intelligent, and accomplished women in their tribes,
who discover everything from the domestication of animals to the boat. By the end of the book, Sykes
frequently devolves into mushy sentiment, waxing odes to his ancestress Tara, earnestly reminding us
that "this just proves how humanity is connected to each other."

It's a tough line to walk
between being informative and being entertaining. I guess I can't fault Sykes for erring on the side
of entertainment, although a bit less melodrama would not have hurt him. Still, if you have any
interest in the modern study and application of genetics, not to mention anthropology and genealogy,
this book is a must-read.

The tale of one man's search of our own human
history unfolds chapter by chapter in a most elegant style. The prose is smooth, carefully worked
through, and extremely readable. Sykes related how his curiosity slowly led him to find that the
majority of Europeans can trace their maternal ancestry to just seven women. His analysis showed
that these women were part of a tremendous series of population migrations which have taken place in
Europe over the past forty-five thousand years. That these migrations can be so traced is a
tremendous vindication of the mtDNA sequencing field initiated in part by Alan Wilson and others at
UC Berkeley.

Sykes takes us back and forth through time, both in his life and that of Mankind,
during the early chapters. I must confess that when my copy arrived in the mail, I only put it down
to eat, sleep, and take my children to their weekend soccer matches; I finished the book over about
thirty hours. Very few other books have had this effect upon me. The most exciting parts are when
Sykes confronts his former post-doc at an international meeting, challenging her to take part in the
democracy of science. It would of course be interesting to hear the other individual's side of the
story, but Sykes' predigious memory of the events surely would be confirmed by other attendees.

We
are presented with the tale of the "Ice Man", "Cheddar Man", the last days of the Russian Imperial
family, the trans-Pacific migrations of the Polynesians, all brought to life by Sykes' masterful
laboratory's analyses.

I was greatly taken with his description of his trip to North Wales where a
local reporter, convinced that Sykes was Government Agent out to secretly test school children for
mutations caused by the local nuclear power station, quizzed him incessantly for some time. His
subsequent analysis of the children's blood samples showed that the Welsh had been around for a
very, very, long time. This analysis also showed that to all intents and purposes, Europeans have
no, or at most undetectable as yet, Neanderthal genes.

His story essentially refutes arguments put
forth by the "multiregionalists", physical anthropologists who maintain that modern man evolved from
extant Homo erectus in different parts of the world, and supports the "out of Africa" thesis of Alan
Wilson and colleagues. Following the description as to how a separate analysis of human DNA
sequences, those of the Y chromosome, which confirmed Sykes' thesis, he then goes into the fictional
part of the book. I am sure that the seven chapters which put the seven daughters of Eve into a
(pre)historical context were included to entertain and draw the non-specialist reader, however they
too are well and imaginatively written, based upon the knowledge we have at the present time. The
only thing I think was missing was a similar tale as to where these seven women might have come
from. The details are to be found in the penultimate chapter, but are somewhat buried in the charts.
A series of maps, illustrating the migrations of the European and world clans, might also have been
of interest to the reader. In addition, a chart showing the percentage distribution by country or
region of origin of the mtDNA samples would also have delivered more information to the reader.

My
last question goes to the author: Dr Sykes, have you taken samples from the mummies of Urumchi and
the peoples of central Asia? Now that would be another tale...