This is too cool! This article was in the September 2000 issue of Brill's
Content. I'm just going to type the article as-is.
Morgan
[ Perina, Kaja. (2000), "Oxford ancestors: Online genetic history", Brill's
Content, vol. 3, no. 7, September, pp.59-60 ]
Oxford Ancestors
Online Genetic History
The "Seven Daughters of Eve" might sound like the title of a fairy tale,
but the phrase refers to a recent and well-accepted addition to the science
of genealogy. Oxford Ancestors, a company founded by Bryan Sykes, has taken
molecular biology online with a website that can trace the maternal lineage
of anyone of European ancestry to one of seven women who lived tens of
thousands of years ago. Sykes, professor of human genetics at the Institute
of Molecular Medicine at Oxford University in England, made this discovery
when he tested 6,000 Europeans' DNA and found that they divided into seven
groups, each of which, in turn, derived from a single woman (mitochondrial
DNA passes unchanged from mother to child). Now, with the click of a mouse,
a mouth swab, and a $180 check, Oxford Ancestors will identify the woman to
whom a person is related. Those of non-European extraction can receive the
"appropriate continental context" for their mtDNA, and Sykes hopes to map
the world's remaining genetic clans with the same precision he brings to
Europe's seven groups.
Oxfordancestors.com includes the likely birth date and regions for each of
the seven women, based on mutations in the DNA sequence analyzed. "Xenia"
(mother to group X) lived about 25,000 years ago near the Black Sea in what
is now Russia, while "Tara" (group T) was born some 8,000 years later in
Tuscany. "Helena" claims the most European descendants, while "Velda,"
though born in present-day Spain, is the progenitor of today's
Scandinavians. All seven clans in turn derived from "Lara," one of three
African "Eves."
The DNA sampling kit can be ordered online; results arrive in a month,
along with a certificate of European maternal ancestry printed on
high-grade, frame-ready paper -- and the vow that your DNA sample will be
destroyed.
But you needn't submit to DNA-typing to appreciate its ramifications for
contemporary society: "What all this means is that genetics offers no
support at all to current ethnic divisions in Europe," the website states.
"Our shared genetic ancestry goes back many thousands of years, far beyond
political or religious division what are, in comparison, a much more recent
phenomenon."
Kaja Perina
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morgan(a)usroots.com
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