OF THE estimated 300 million indigenous peoples living in approximately 70 countries world-wide, about 100 000 San live in the southern African region — 49 000 in Botswana, 38 000 in Namibia, 4 500 in South Africa, 6 000 in Angola, 1 600 in Zambia and 1 200 in Zimbabwe.  THE SAN are the aboriginal people of South Africa. Their distinct hunter-gatherer culture stretches back over 20 000 years, and their genetic origins reach back over one million years. Recent research indicates that the San are the oldest genetic stock of contemporary humanity.

ONLY A small minority of the San groups inhabit remnants of their ancestral land. The majority eke out an existence as labourers on cattle posts and farms, as gatherers of bush food and, if legally permitted, as hunters in remote areas with limited infrastructure and poor-quality land, or as squatters near towns. The economic base for the majority of San community members lies in generating income from the production and marketing of crafts, from guiding or performing for tourists, from earning small salaries as labourers on commercial or communal farms or, in the cases of Namibia and Botswana, from receiving pensions paid by the governments to the elderly. Most San families earn less than US$12 per month, except for pensioners who receive US$37 per month.

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Bushmen live in clans and loosely connected family groups consisting of 120 or more, but never in anything like a tribal entity. Each clan has a right of use over some land and they are careful not to trespass on their neighbour’s property. The hallmark of their social attitudes is their utter belief in co-operation – within the family, between clans, and within nature itself. Their customs are geared to exclude anything that causes personal antagonism. There is, therefore, no ownership of property. Even the spoils of a hunt are divided according to customary allocation. The Bushmen believe that if he misuses his environment, he will be punished by the Supreme Being. So he never takes from the soil or from the herds of game more than he needs to stay alive. In his long history there is no evidence that he has ever needlessly exploited nature – and some experts have actually described the San as the world’s greatest conservationists.

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8 DAUGHTERS OF A GENETIC EVE

Dr. Douglas C. Wallace and his colleagues at the Emory University School of Medicine in Atlanta constructed a world female genetic tree based on mitochondrial DNA. Dr. Wallace found that almost all American Indians have mtNDA that belong to lineages he named A, B, C and D. Europeans belong to lineages H through K and T through X. The split between the two main branches in the European tree suggests that modern humans reached Europe 39,000 to 51,000 years ago, Dr. Wallace calculates, a time that corresponds with the archaeological date of at least 35,000 years ago.

In Asia the ancestral lineage is known as M, with descendant branches E, F and G. In the Americas are lineages A through D. In Africa there is a single main lineage, known as L, which is divided into three branches. L3, the youngest branch, is common in East Africa and is believed to be the source of both the Asian and European lineages. Dr. Wallace’s mitochondrial DNA lineages are “haplogroups” but known as “daughters of Eve,” because all of the lineages are branches of the trunk that stems from the mitochondrial Eve.

Dr. Wallace is now exploring the root of the mitochondrial tree. In the March 2000 American Journal of Human Genetics, he and colleagues identify the Vasikela Kung of the northwestern Kalahari desert in southern Africa as the population that lies nearest to the root of the human mtDNA tree. Another population that seems almost equally old is that of the Biaka pygmies of Central Africa.

THE 7 EUROPEAN DAUGHTERS OF EVE

Prof. Sykes and Oxford University researchers in England have identified seven ancestral matriarchal groups from which all Europeans appear to be descended. Every European can trace his or her evolutionary history back to the seven ancestral mother groups, also referred to as the Seven European Daughters of Eve. Sykes et al. obtained buccal cells from 6,000 individuals and analyzed the samples using the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis. It is known that mtDNA mutates at a very slow rate, such as 1 mutation in every 10,000 years. So they figured that the women would have lived between 8,000 and 45,000 years ago. What is amazing is that all seven of the genetic groups appear to be descended from the Lara clan, one of three clans that still exist today in Africa. This is called the African Eve theory. It was proposed in the late 1980′s by Allan Wilson, Mark Stoneking and others. The African Eve theory states that all humans share a common African ancestor.

The Seven European Daughters of Eve matriarchal groups correspond to Dr. Wallace’s lineages above, and were given names by Prof. Sykes:

Helena: This clan lived in the ice-capped Pyrenees. As the climate warmed, Helena’s descendants trekked northward to what is now England, some 12,000 years ago. Members of this group are now present in all European countries.

Jasmine: Her people had a relatively happy life in Syria, where they farmed wheat and raised domestic animals. Jasmine’s descendants traveled throughout Europe, spreading their agricultural innovations with them.

Katrine: Members of this group lived in Venice 10,000 years ago. Today most of Katrine’s clan lives in the Alps.

Tara: Sykes’ maternal ancestry goes back to this group, which settled in Tuscany 17,000 years ago. Descendants ventured across northern Europe and eventually crossed the English Channel.

Ursula: Users of stone tools, Ursula’s clan members drifted across all of Europe.

Valda: Originally from Spain, Valda and her immediate descendants lived 17,000 years ago. Later relatives moved into northern Finland and Norway.

Xenia: Her people lived in the Caucasus Mountains 25,000 years ago. Just before the Ice Age, this clan spread across Europe, and even reached the Americas. [As Dr. Wallace discovered, the X pattern is a rare European lineage and is also among the northern Native Americans such as the Ojibwa and Sioux.]

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