Continuing from Thou Mayest Choose IV Beverly Campbell’s book “Eve, and the Choice Made in the Garden”. . . . (I apologize, links for this series were not working properly, but are now corrected, starting with the link at the end of this post.)
An intriguing scientific discovery ties us all back to Mother Eve and helps us see the enduring nature of our linkage to her. That linkage, which has to do with our innermost “wiring,” also helps us understand that it was Eve and her daughters who carried within them the power to activate lives.
We know that the body has within it hundreds of mitochondria, which were once free, living cells. They contain their own genetic material distinct from the cells DNA in the chromosomes. Scientists have found within the mitochondrial DNA thirteen tiny genomes, which have come to be known as powerhouse cells. These cells are the activators of life, for without the genomes, the body will exist but not live. “Mitochondria are only inherited from mothers; a father’s mitochondria are never passed on. Only a daughter can pass her mother’s mitochondria to the next generation. The mitochondrial genes of any woman who bears only sons are lost.”10 Each genome bears a succession of mutations inherited from the foremothers in whom they have occurred. Scientists tell us that it is thus possible to trace lineage back to the original mother of us all, Eve.
Based on this incredible finding, we not only call Eve “Mother” but we can be sure that Eve and Adam had many daughters. It was not until my husband gave me a book entitled The Seven Daughters of Eve, by world-renowned geneticist Bryan Sykes, that I began to feel a compelling identity with these distant daughters. The introduction to the book stated: “After plotting thousands of DNA sequences from all over the world, Sykes found that they clustered around a handful of distinct groups.
The conclusion was staggering. Almost all people of native European descent, wherever they live throughout the world, can trace their ancestry back to one of seven women.”11 Though Sykes work is not completed (at the pulication of this book , he has identified twenty-six other daughters, who tie the rest of the worlds population together—all going back to that same mother, whom scientists call “Mitochondrial Eve.’
It took my breath away to think of Eve’s daughters, how they had been taught, how they had been caressed and valued by their father, how they must have felt as they too went out into the world to start their own families. Sykes expressed his musings about these ancestral mothers: (For the first post of this series, click Nevertheless, Thou Mayest Choose.)
