13/06/2025
EVE
Mitochondrial Eve is the name given to the most recent common matrilineal ancestor of all living humans ā a woman who lived approximately 150,000 to 200,000 years ago in Africa. She is not the only woman who lived at the time, but she is unique because her mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), passed exclusively from mothers to their children, has survived unbroken through thousands of generations.
This concept is grounded in genetics, not mythology. The idea emerged in the 1980s when researchers including Rebecca L. Cann, Mark Stoneking, and Allan Wilson at the University of California, Berkeley, analyzed mitochondrial DNA from people across the globe. Their groundbreaking 1987 study, published in Nature, revealed that all human mtDNA could be traced back to a single woman in Africa ā sparking the name āMitochondrial Eve.ā
Unlike nuclear DNA, which is inherited from both parents and reshuffled with each generation, mtDNA is passed down almost unchanged from mother to child, making it a powerful tool for tracing maternal ancestry. The mtDNA genome is small, with 16,569 base pairs and 37 genes, all inherited maternally. As people migrated and formed new populations, their mtDNA diverged into lineages known as haplogroups, but all of them can still be traced back to Eve.
This discovery supports the āOut of Africaā model of human origins and highlights how all modern humans, regardless of race or location, share a common maternal ancestor deep in the human past. The term āEveā is metaphorical ā she was not the only woman alive at the time, nor the only ancestor we descend from, but she is the one whose mother-to-daughter mitochondrial line never broke.
