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As Provocative as Stephen Jay Gould's The Mismeanure of Man and as controversial as E. O. Wilson's Sociobiology, The Seven Daughters of Eve offers a fascinating history of the world as revealed through genetics. After years of research that resulted...(more) in headlines across the world, Bryan Sykes, an Oxford University geneticist, now lays the foundation for an entirely new branch of the study of DNA. After being summoned in 1997 to an archaeological site in Italy to examine the remains of a five-thousand-year-old man, Sykes ultimately was able to prove not only that the man was a European but also that he has relatives living in England today. Sykes found a particular strand of DNA that passes unbroken through the maternal line, allowing us to trace our genetic make-up back to prehistoric times to seven primeval women, or the "seven daughters of Eve". This book is popular science at its best, and its scientific and cultural reverberations will be discussed for years to come.(less)