Our Mothers’ Ancient Lineage

Family trees traditionally were paternal-centered graphs， passed on from father to son. It is noticeable, however, that women were usually only included as spouses or children, and rarely given a line of their own, going back daughter to mother to mother to mother. In my American ancestral chart I can follow maternal ancestors from my own mother to just four generations before, whereas the maternal line of my Japanese mother-in-law peters out after two. With this in mind, I decided to try another way of searching for the family maternal roots.

The Human Genome Project makes it easy. All you do is send in a swab from your inner cheek and wait for the results of your mitochondrial DNA test. My husband and I took two seconds to do this test, he for his mother and me for mine. I thought I would be ho-hum about whatever they would tell me, but when I saw the map charting my mother’s and my mother-in-law’s ancient maternal paths out of Eastern Africa and their migration routes for the past 150,000 years, I felt like I was looking far to into space, but this was inner space, past space. It was hard to grasp the enormity of this time line leading to the present. It outdid any family tree I’d ever seen by far.

Mitochondrial (mt) DNA genetic information is passed down daughter to daughter (sons also receive it but do not pass it on). One can see how one’s particular set of mutations have been preserved into groups of similar genetic patterns and how these groups have moved across the globe. It shows, too, how so many of us in this world share common female ancestors. Yes, we all go back to one certain woman in Eastern Africa, she is not the first human, nor the first female, but the important thing is that her genes of mtDNA survived until today. She is our original mother.

Then, 80,000 years ago our particular group of numerous mothers with their families walked out of Africa north up the Nile River Valley, over the Red Sea and Sinai Peninsula and into the Fertile Crescent in today’s northern Syria and eastern Turkey. I visualized them carrying their belongings, creating new homes while following good weather and the availability of animals along the upper reaches of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers. My mother’s and mother-in-law’s lineages that I was following had similar markings and were part of the same larger group up to this point (specifically, Haplogroup N) and both settled in the Fertile Crescent.

Eventually, though, sometime between about 40,000 to 10,000 years ago, our mothers’ group split. Gene mutations gave them new genetic markers. Although the period is uncertain, my mother-in-law’s line (specifically, Haplogroup A that had evolved from N) and her female descendents branched out from their long time home south of the Caspian Sea and went northeast across the Russian steppes across Asia and went eventually to Japan. The other mother line, my line (specifically, Haplogroup T2 that also evolved from N), and the daughters that followed, developed early agricultural skills and as Neolithic humans around 10,000 years ago migrated north along the eastern bank of the Black Sea and on to southern Russia and northern Europe.

There was no paper trail. No one wrote down their identities. But their I.D. was within them. Nameless, they still made their mark in time and place. It is a very accurate blood line. If more people in the world knew about this “secret key” unlocking the mysteries of the women’s family tree, it might enhance the stature of girl babies. I wonder if family registers in Japan may now want to rethink their priorities.

When this Mother’s Day comes around I will celebrate my incredible personal discovery. I now feel particularly close to the long line of women, the ancestors of my line of my specific genetic pool and realize what a fragile journey this has been. The genetic connections can so easily be broken and where there is no girl, there is no mtDNA continuity. I’m so glad I have a daughter.