Mitochondrial Eve’s Surviving Line

Geneticists use the name Mitochondrial Eve for the most recent woman from whom all living people descend through an unbroken maternal line. She lived in Africa roughly 150,000 to 200,000 years ago, not as the only woman alive then, but as the one whose mitochondrial DNA lineage survived to the present. Over time, other maternal lines died out, leaving hers as the only one still shared by nearly all humans today.

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