The Greatest of My Grandmothers

When I first read the book, "The Seven Daughters of Eve" by Bryan Sykes, I knew I had to be tested.  I had to find out where I came from so, when I finally got hold of some extra cash I sent to Ancestry to have my mitrochondrial DNA tested. Mitochondria are present in eggs but absent in sperm; hence, everyone gets their mitochondria from their mother. Men and women both have it in their cells. But only women can pass it on to their children.

It takes awhile for the test to be completed, but it was finally done and   as I read the results, I have to tell you, I was totally unprepared for my emotional reaction as I was introduced to my first and greatest grandmother.  I literally burst into tears.  Yes, I am a very emotional person, but this was something that caught me off guard. This is the woman who was at my very beginnings. Thousands of years later, she is still a part of me. 

I discovered that my ancestry stems from a branch known as 'The Travelers' in  Haplogroup U. Haplogroup U descends from a woman in the Haplogroup R branch of the phylogenetic tree, who lived around 55,000 years ago. She literally is my first grandmother. It was her descendants who gave birth to several different subgroups who migrated to new areas and formed subgroups. Most likely originating in central Asia and spreading into Europe in a very early expansion. The presence of Haplogroup U in Europe pre-dates the expansion of agriculture in Europe and may even have been come in contact with Neanderthals living in Europe at the time.

The following is from my report as well as some research that I did:

From Ancestry 'You belong to the Travelers, Haplogroup U, which emerged around 60,000 years ago, not long after the first modern humans left Africa.  Because the Travelers are so old, they've had many descendants who migrated to new areas and formed subgroups." 

The maternal ancestor of this haplogroup was given the name Ursula. The following excerpt is from "The Seven Daughters of Eve".

Sykes begins his first narrative, "Ursula was born into a world very different from our own. Forty-five thousand years ago it was a lot colder than it is today, and would get colder still in the millennia to come leading up to the Great Ice Age. Ursula was born in a shallow cave cut into the cliffs at the foot of what is now Mount Parnassus, close to what was to become the ancient Greek classical site of Delphi." 

Ursula, whose name means She Bear, lived about 45,000 years ago in what is now northern Greece. She was among the first arrivals of a new, modern human to set foot in Europe. She was slender and graceful, in marked contrast to the thickset Neanderthals with whom she and her clan shared the land for another 20,000 years. Her kind brought with them a new and more sophisticated type of stone tool with which to hunt and butcher the abundant game, animals that soon appeared on the walls of limestone caves as the first expression of human art. They spread right across Europe, west across France and north as far as the British Isles.

As the climate deteriorated 25,000 years ago, the clan began its long migration south; eventually reaching Spain and founding what became a refuge for all humans during the coldest millennia of the last Ice Age. As the climate warmed, the scattered clan led the march back to the North to reclaim the once frozen lands. They reached the British Isles and left an indelible record in the limestone caves of Cheddar Gorge. In 1998, DNA was recovered from the famous skeleton known as Cheddar Man and our analysis showed that it belonged to the clan of Ursula. In a dramatic demonstration of genetic continuity, we found that a teacher at the local school, only a few hundred yards from the cave entrance, was clearly a member of the same clan.

The following, when Sykes speaks of Ursula's death, brings tears to my  eyes:

"Ursula had no idea, of course, that both her daughters would give rise, through their children and grandchildren, to a continuous maternal line stretching to the present day.  She had no idea she was to become the clan mother, the only woman of that time who could make that claim.  Every single member of her clan can trace a direct and  unbroken line back to Ursula."

"Today about 11 percent of modern Europeans are the direct maternal descendants of Ursula."

Ursula, per se, was not a real woman, but the clan mother was.  This great woman did live and die thousands of years ago.  And, because she lived, I live.