On January 1st, 1987, a paper was published in the Journal Nature, which rocked the world of anthropology.

Researchers Alan Wilson, Mark Stone King, and Rebecca Kahn used the then new science of genetic analysis to analyze the DNA in human mitochondria.

What they found was evidence that humans on Earth can trace their ancestry back

to a single woman who lived approximately 180,000 years ago. Learn more about

Mitochondrial Eve, the mother of everyone, on this episode of Everything Everywhere

Daily. This episode is sponsored by audible.

My audio book. This episode is sponsored by audible.com. My audiobook recommendation today is The Seven

Daughters of Eve, the science that reveals our genetic ancestry by Brian Sykes. In 1994, Professor Brian Sykes, a leading world authority on DNA and human

evolution, was called in to examine the frozen remains of a man trapped in a glacial ice in

northern Italy. News of both the Iceman's discovery and his age, which was put

at over 5,000 years, fascinated scientists and newspapers throughout the world. But what

made Sykes story particularly relevatory was his success in identifying a genetic descendant of the Ice Man, a woman living in Great Britain today.

You can get a free one month trial to Audible and two free audio books by going to

audible trial dot com slash everything everywhere or by clicking on the link in the

show notes.

To start we need a bit of background on how human genetics work.

Most of your genes are some combination of your mother and your father.

What genes came from who can differ so even siblings or fraternal twins can look very different, even though they have the same parents.

This mixing of genes is why sexual reproduction is so successful as an evolutionary strategy.

However, not all genes can be combined in such a manner.

The mitochondria, which is the energy-producing center of our cells,

have DNA that only comes from our mother. That means me, you, and everyone in the world

...