The Mitochondrial Eve

‘All of us living humans, over 6.9 billion of them, are related to a single woman who lived nearly 150,000 years ago in Africa’

I was incredulous when my friend mentioned this to me, on that fateful evening when we had discussed about the Aryans of Ladakh. I must have been numbed by a state of utter disbelief which struck to the core of my existence, for my whole being froze as the bolt of the proclamation ran through every living cell of mine.

Are you as startled and curious to know the veracity of this contention ? Have you ever wondered where do we all come from ? How did we get to where we are today ? If yes, then read on.

Firstly, if you were not already aware, it is now established that that the human genetic code, or genome, is 99.9% identical throughout the world. That’s the first irrefutable proof that all of us homo sapiens on this planet are actually one big family. But who started it all ?

For decades, paleontologists and archaeologists have tried to decipher the story of human origins and migrations through clues of sparsely scattered bones and artifacts left behind by our ancestors. In the last 20 years, however, scientists have found a record of ancient human migrations in the DNA of living people.

Let me spare you the gory technical details, and just state that geneticists can trace ancestral connections by studying mutations in the DNA of mitochondria (called mtDNA), which is passed on from mother to child. The mtDNA is kind of a ‘marker’ pointing to the antecedents of humans.

With this fantastic technique, scientists now calculate that all living humans descended from a single woman, who lived roughly 150,000 years ago in East Africa, a “mitochondrial Eve”. Was she the only woman alive at the time ? No, but the current crop of human beings is linked to this Eve through an unbroken chain of mothers.

And what about the grand-est daddy of us all ? Well, naturally mitochondrial Eve was soon joined by a “Y chromosome Adam”, an analogous father of us all, also from Africa (though he did not live at the same time as the mitochondrial Eve). So there – all the variously shaped and shaded people of Earth trace their ancestry to African hunter-gatherers !

Ah, the skeptic in you is now asking – how the hell did these forefathers pan out across the globe, into such diverse and far-flung lands ?

That my friend, is the greatest epic still unfolding, a sprawling saga of survival, improvement, isolation and conquest, most of it in the silence of prehistory. When this story is finished, this will be the greatest one ever told.

I will live another day to tell you about that part of the story.

I just want to pause here for a moment in our ultra-busy lives, and ponder over this monumental hypothesis.

Ok, science is just about beginning to unravel the mysteries of this vast world, and as new techniques are discovered, new realities may emerge. Maybe we are children of a higher God, a master Creator, a Supreme Being. But, let us assume that this is true – that Africa is really the original cradle of us humans. What new perspectives does it bring in our understanding of the diversity and differences of people across the globe ? Does it shake the very foundations of our furiously-held beliefs, just like it did when it was revealed that the Earth was really a sphere, not a flat surface, and that it revolved around the sun, not the other way round ?

Does is make us wonder why do we harbor so much hatred amongst our own kith and kin ? Since time immemorial, we have shed blood, massacred innocents, annihilated entire cultures, killed mindlessly, slaughtered with vengeance – all for the parochial purpose of perpetuating one’s own supposed clan or clique. Why is there such animosity, abhorrence, jealousy, distrust and such detestation on the basis of color, caste, creed or religion? Why do such abominable feelings dominate over equally human emotions as love, compassion, kindness and empathy towards fellow human beings ?

Throughout this bleeding march of strife and discord, the wise men, the saints and sages of yore, have preached only one thing – look within yourself. By focusing inwardly, you will know who you truly are, and will free yourself from the shackles of narrow-thinking. .Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves. If we do not show even basic respect to others who have descended from the same one single mother, doesn’t is starkly betray our insular minds ?

Sadly, the lofty words of those with higher intellect are mostly dismissed and quickly forgotten, and we let the secretions of adrenal glands take possession of our mind. We cannot even imagine a world where everyone lives in peace and harmony – it’s an ideal for a hopeless dreamer, a mere fantasy of a societal misfit.

If the mitochondrial Eve – our one and original Mother - was looking down upon us, and seeing all the misery, inequalities and friction amongst our brethren, what would she think ? And what would she say to us ?

Endpiece : If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other – Mother Teresa