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In Scotland, a clan is a group of people united by kinship and descent. Members of a clan share an apical ancestor several generations back. In other words, they share the same great grandparents, great-great grandparents, or an even more distant ancestor. Prior to the Normans, most clans were matrilineal, meaning its members were related through the female line. Few were patrilineal or related through the male line. Today many clans are bilateral, consisting of all the descendents of the apical ancestor through both the male and female lines. The clans of Scotland are an excellent example of bilateral descent, and as a result, monolineal descent patterns are totally unheard of in Scotland.
I consider my maternal genealogy of equal importance to my paternal lineage. I’m sure you do too. Exclusive focus on paternal genealogy is single-minded and intellectually dishonest. Negative references to equal studies of ones father’s and mother’s genealogy is a symptom of a profound lack of genealogical understanding. It reflects the biases of 19th century Anglo-centric cultural attitudes. We grow and change in a nonlinear fashion so, too, does our genealogy.
Let me state the obvious:
generation #1 – 2 parents ...................................... 2 lines [1 is maternal]
generation #2 – 4 grandparents ............................ 4 lines [2 are maternal]
generation #3 – 8 great grandparents ................ 8 lines [4 are maternal]
generation #4 – 16 2xs great grandparents ........ 16 lines [8 are maternal]
generation #5 – 32 3xs great grandparents ........ 32 lines [16 are maternal]
generation #6 – 64 4xs great grandparents ........ 64 lines [32 are maternal]
generation #7 – 128 5xs great grandparents ........ 128 lines [64 are maternal]
generation #8 – 256 6xs great grandparents ........ 256 lines [128 are maternal]
generation #9 – 512 7xs great grandparents ........ 512 lines [256 are maternal]
generation #10 – 1024 8xs great grandparents ........ 1024 lines [512 are maternal]
generation #11 – 2048 9xs great grandparents ........ 2048 lines [1024 are maternal]
The Seven Daughters of Eve
The Y-chromosome is the ultimate symbol of machismo but, asks Bryan Sykes, “apart from breeding, what real use is the male to the human race?"
Surprisingly few hereditary traits pass exclusively through male lineages, and the traits that fathers do transmit mostly derive from female ancestors. Genetic heritage is past mainly through maternal lines of descent, and fathers provide a one-generation impediment to genetic inheritance. Thus, we humans have many recessive genes, or genes that are present in the father’s mother, but which skip one generation, and reappear among the father’s grandchildren. A person’s maternal ancestry is traced by mitochondrial DNA or mtDNA for short. Both men and women possess mtDNA, but only women pass it on to their children.
We all inherit our mtDNAs from our mothers, but not from our fathers. Your mother inherited it from her mother, who inherited it from hers, and so on back through time. Therefore, mtDNA traces an unbroken maternal line back through time for generation upon generation far further back than any written record.
Research has shown that all of our maternal lines are connected at some time in the past and that these connections can be traced by reading mtDNA. One striking finding was that people tended to cluster into a small number of groups, which could be defined by the precise sequence of their mtDNA. In native Europeans, for example, there were seven such groups, among the American Indians there were four, among Japanese people there were nine, and so on. Each of these groups, by an astounding yet inescapable logic, traced back to just one woman, the common maternal ancestor of everyone in her group, or clan.
Everyone in the same clan is a direct maternal descendant of one of these clan mothers and carries her DNA within every cell of their body. The "clan mothers" were not the only people alive at the time, of course, but they were the only ones to have direct maternal descendants living right through to the present day. The other women around, or their descendants, either had no children at all or had only sons, who could not pass on their mtDNA. And, of course, the clan mothers had ancestors themselves. Amazingly, their genealogies have also been discovered. They show how everyone alive on the planet today can trace their maternal ancestry back to just one woman. This common maternal ancestor lived in Africa about 150,000 – 200,000 years ago and is known as “Mitochondrial Eve”.
“The Mitochondrial Clans”
1 - Clan of Ursula
Founded around 45,000 years ago
11% of modern Europeans are direct maternal descendants
Located in western Britain and Scandinavia.
2 - Clan of Xenia
Founded 25,000 years ago
7% of native Europeans are direct maternal descendants
Located in three distinct areas 1] Eastern Europe 2] central Europe 3] France and Britain. About 1% of American Indians are also in the clan of Xenia.
3 - Clan of Helena
41% of Europeans are direct maternal descendants
Founded 20,000 years ago
Located in the valleys of the Dordogne and the Vezere, in south-central France - highest frequency among the Basque people of northern Spain and southern France.
4 - Clan of Velda
4% of native Europeans are direct maternal descendants
Founded 17,000 years ago
Located in Cantabria in northwest Spain, nowadays mainly in western and northern Europe and among the Saami people of Finland and Northern Norway.
5 - Clan of Tara
10% of modern Europeans are direct maternal descendants
Founded 17,000 years ago in the northwest of Italy
Located in southern and western Europe with high concentrations in Ireland and the west of Britain.
6 - Clan of Katrine
10% of Europeans are direct maternal descendants
Founded 15,000 years ago
Located in northeast Italy and the southern foothills of the Alps and throughout central and northern Europe.
7 - Clan of Jasmine
12% of Europeans are direct maternal descendants
Founded 8,500 years ago
Located throughout Europe. Among the first farmers who brought the agricultural revolution to Europe from the Middle East.
Please see:
Bryan Sykes
"The Seven Daughters of Eve"
Bryan Sykes is professor of genetics at the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Oxford University.
John H. Relethford
"Reflections of Our Past: How Human History is Revealed in Our Genes"
Dr. John H. Relethford is a biological anthropologist with a Ph.D. in anthropology from the State University of New York at Albany.
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