Africa, Cradle of Mankind

The summer of 2009 took me to the Origins Center and schools in Johannesburg, South Africa. At the origins Center (National Health Lab Service) I submitted my DNA sample for genetic ancestry testing. They reported to me later that I was one of the descendants of "Mitochondrial Eve." When they compared my mt DNA profile to two international databases with about 10,600 mt DNA haplotypes, they found 64 identical matches in Chinese, Indians, Thai, Mongolians, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Turkish as well as one South African white individual. My mt DNA did not match with the Japanese samples that they had. My guess was that the long history of the settlement of the complicated mixture of peoples at the tip of the Asian continent made the Japanese mt DNA samples very diverse. I was happy to know that I am small but truly a mix of the genes of the earth. No doubt I shared my new information with my students back in Tokyo. I also showed an image of Motochondrial Eve that is presented in Stephen Oppenheimer's book, "Out of Africa's Eden"(Jonathan Ball Publishers, Johannesburg, 2003).