Mitochondrial Eve

Mitochondrial Eve was can be considered the female ancestor of all humans on earth. This is caused by the fact that the mitochondrial DNA is passed down through the female line to their children. These lines of ancestry can be traces from all human population to the small populations of Africa nearly 200,000 years ago. However, the spread of humans over the earth did not happen until nearly 100,000 years later. There have been other points of common ancestry however, including a common male ancestor and a certain point by which common ancestors left offspring or did not. Many of this points happened much later than Mitochondrial Eve. There is also evidence that there where many Mitochondrial Eves that simply did not leave any daughters in the human population resulting in us have one female common ancestor. Mitochondrial Eve was the start of the Africa origin hypothesis that states that human population began in Africa and expanded from Africa.