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→Out of Africa hypothesis and Y Chromosome Adam and Mitochondrial Eve: remove "myth"
'''Matrilineal descent'''
Although Mitochondrial Eve was named after Eve of the Genesis creation myth, this has led to some misunderstandings amongst the general public. A common misconception is that Mitochondrial Eve was the only living female of her time -- she was not thought to be. It is thought that there wer many women alive at the same time as Mitochondrial Eve, but only Mitochondrial Eve produced an unbroken line of daughters that persists today -- each of the other matrilineal lineages was broken when a woman had no children or only sons.
Consider a family tree of all humans living today. Now imagine a line from each individual to their mother, and continue those lines from each of those mothers to their mothers, and so on. Going back through time the lineages will converge as sisters share the same mother. The further back in time one goes, the fewer lineages there will be until only one lineage is left -- this is the common matrilineal ancestor of all the humans we started with, i.e. Mitochondrial Eve.
