Genealogy Books - The Seven Daughters of Eve

Spotlight customer reviews:
Customer Rating:

Summary: Good, informative book
Comment: Bryan Sykes, a professor of genetics at Oxford, has written a very good, informative book, on how
DNA has been used in an unlikely endeavor: to help trace the history of the human race, after they
left Africa. You see, human DNA changes at a particular rate in time, so this allows us to identify
when the different human groups split from one another. The book is a bit eurocentric (one can
almost forgive that, given that Sykes is an European) as most of the book deals with the origins of
the European people. He found that almost all (native, not recent immigrants) Europeans descend from
a particular woman (the Eve of the title) who lived during the Ice Age (Sykes tentatively places her
as having lived in what is today Syria). From "Eve" are descended seven different European subgroups
that Sykes is able to identify in those who want it through a saliva sample (he has founded a
company to do that, so he is a bit of an entrepeneur, something that fellow scientists probably will
not like). More tentatively, and drawing on archaelogical records, Sykes imagines the lives of those
seven daughters of Eve. Another thing to criticize in the book is Sykes egolatry: he always speaks
about himself, and criticize those who in the scientific community had taken a different opinion on
a particular issue.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Sykes could have his high college position partially due to nepotism
Comment: To the poster who talked about negative posters having "arrogance" blasting the book.
/>As for the book itself the stone age stories are fake and take forever. Though some find the
middle eastern, neolithic ancestry (of fake girl Jasmine) that the British possess interesting I
find that a distasteful and unimportant fact trying to link the inhabitants of the British Isles to
the followers of (genocidal mass-murderer) Saddam Hussein in Iraq. 10,000 years ago is a long, long
time ago and a connection like that doesn't matter.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Enjoyed 3/4 of this book
Comment: I enjoyed most all of this book, with the exception of the descriptions of the 'seven daughters".
..which I thought was a little too contrived. the science behind the genetics is laid out so the
the average joe, can understand it, and the writing style of the author, makes the reading a
pleasure. If you are interested in genetic history, but are not a professional scientist, this is
the book for you. I dismiss the 7 daughters descriptions, as a swing and a miss. Would recommend.

Customer Rating:

Summary: Which of the Seven Daughters is Your Ancestor?
Comment: Wow a well written book that tells about the origins of Nearly every White European on the planet.
Who were these seven daughters?

They were women who had a mutated gene that gave their
offspring and advantage. Each of the seven daughters is simply the first after the appearance of
their mutation to have a daughter who had a daughter who had a daughter and so forth in an unbroken
line of female descent right up to the present day.

Customer Rating:

Summary: What kind of an unprofessional book is SDOE?
Comment: Since it has no index anywhere in it making it hard to reference where people or ideas are I'd say
SDOE is an utterly unprofessional book.

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