Genealogy Books - The Seven Daughters of Eve

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Customer Rating:

Summary: Great story.
Comment: This book has lots of technical, scientific knowledge that takes time to study and comprehend for
the lay person, yet the theory is so intriguing, I found it hard to put the book down. As a reader
of Jean Auel, I was impressed by the stories of each of the seven earth mothers presented in the
book. It makes each one real, and you'll want to know which of them is your ancestoral mother.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Wonderful book about DNA
Comment: Bryan Sykes was one of the leaders of a great revolution in anthropology and the social sciences;
the tool which he used to advance this revolution was the analysis of mitochondrial DNA.

While
DNA in the cell nucleus is continually recombined at each generation, the DNA of the mitochondria
remain constant -- they are passed from mother to child with only very minimal mutations (a rate of
1 every 10,000 years in the areas Sykes studied). This means that you have, stretching back into
the mists of time, an unbroken chain of maternal relationships recorded in your genes.

The
applications of this that Sykes comes up with are interesting: he can prove that the woman who
claimed to be the princess Anastasia was not related to the tsar's family, he can show that
Polynesia was settled from Asia rather than from South America (as Thor Heyerdahl conjectured), and
most astonishingly, he can break down most modern europeans as belonging to one of seven maternal
clans.

This information was used to solve a mystery in anthropology -- whether farmers from the
near east drove the hunter-gatherer population out of Europe or whether the hunter gatherers adopted
agriculture and remained -- Sykes concludes the latter.

As an entertaining way of expressing the
concept of the seven different clan mothers, Sykes calls them the seven daughters of Eve, and gives
them names and a brief description of their "lives". This is clearly done from a sense of whimsy,
and although some feel it distracts from his scholarly tone throughout most of the book, I found it
a charming was of expressing the concept -- as well as a somewhat chilling description of what life
in the stone age was really like.

This a wonderful summer book to bring to the beach -- enough
science to be interesting, but light and entertaining enough for the beach. Highly recommended.

Customer Rating:

Summary: interesting but a bit scatter shot execution
Comment: Sykes brings together an interesting new way of examining our genetic heritage, especially from an
European perspective. He sheds light on a study of genetics that I was not familiar with. The
problem is that Sykes can't stay in a good scientific examination. Much of the book seems self
promoting, and while he is a pioneer in much of this, it seemed that he built his credentials more
on the media than on his academics. He brings his research to an interesting conclusion tracking
genes back to seven original "mothers" in Europe. But then he tries to tell us the stories of these
seven women, and things just fall apart. It is an abrupt shift from this scientific quest to the
creation of fictional stories of the lives of these women. He could have served his cause better if
he had stuck to fact instead of writing narrative conjecture.

Still, an interesting book and a
fascinating look into one slice of the science of genetics.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Interesting but self-serving
Comment: This book was a fascinating read, although Sykes is inclined throughout to much self-promotion. The
chapters on the lives of the various "daughters of Eve" are a bit contrived and seem out of place in
a book that is really more of a popularized science narrative. The rest of the book is good, a fast
read and somewhat lacking in scientific details as it was obviously intended to be.

While others
who have written reviews here think that this will shake some people's faith in the Bible, I find
that it fits squarely with Biblical history with the exception of Syke's time lines, which, of
course, are based on his extrapolation of mutation rates within the mitochondrial DNA. In having my
interest piqued, I have done more checking and have found out there is recent work showing much
faster mutation rates than used by Sykes for his chronology, which, in essence, compresses the time
frame much further than asserted in the book. Sykes does not mention any of this work, although it
has been published since 1997. Evolutionary biologists are mystified by these results, but there
are those of us who are not surprised at all.

Customer Rating:

Summary: From whom do we originate?
Comment: I thought this was a really neat book. This book is about the geneology of humankind. There is
little doubt in my mind that genetics will prove to be the definitive tool for all sorts of
mysteries. Archeology will never be the same as a result of these inroads by genetics. Dr. Sykes'
detective sleuthing of the Polynesian migration led nicely into the more challenging task of Europe
and eventually the world. It is very humbling, although not surprising, to know that the billions
of people alive today are all relatives. The majority of the work is devoted to the ancestry of
Europeans showing that over 80% of them are derived from a mere seven women. These types of studies
will become a necessary tool in the reconstruction of history and will allow a better confidence
level in the results. This book is easy to read and enjoyable besides.

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