Mitochondrial Eve, the mother of all mothers, is thought to have lived in Africa, perhaps 170 000 years ago, and is also known as ‘African Eve’. We can trace our genetic ancestry in this way because all mitochondria have retained a small quota of their own genes, which are usually passed on to the next generation only in the egg cell, not in the sperm. This means that mitochondrial genes act like a female surname, which enables us to trace our ancestry down the female line in the same way that some families try to trace their descent down the male line from William the Conqueror, or Noah, or Mohammed.
Lane, Nick. Power, Sex, Suicide (Oxford Landmark Science) (p. 3). OUP Oxford. Kindle Edition.
In the societies of Western Civilization ancestry is passed down patrilineal lines which has had huge social, legal, economic and political consequences for millenia. Now we learn in the study of mitochondria genes that ancestry is biologically matrilineal. Will this new knowledge have any impact on the dynamics of sex relations in the coming decades, centuries, millennia?