Richard Dawkins 'Mitochondrial Eve'

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Based from the first two chapters of River Out of Eden, Richard Dawkins lays out the foundation about the concepts of ancestry, genes, reproduction and evolution. He highlighted on many key factors such as from Chapter 1 that our ancestry is composed by the river of DNA, and that the concept of the Mitochondrial Eve is considered as more poetic than the mythology of Genesis from Chapter 2. Specifically, Dawkins makes his point by explaining that the purpose of our existence is primarily based on the replication of successful genes, coincidentally from the reproduction of our successful ancestors. (TBC) The term “Mitochondrial Eve” is a name referred as our most recent common matrilineal ancestor of all modern human beings. When Dawkins mentioned …show more content…
Dawkins pointed out that even though most of the genetic codes of all species are identical, only a very small fraction of these codes are differentiated for each species. As a result, these findings of the identical genetic codes can be linked to Dawkins’ statement based on this conclusion: “All earthly living things are certainly descended from a single ancestor” (Dawkins 12). We can trace back millions of years to determine the explanation concerning on how all species were considered as distant cousins, or that the genes from reproduction of these ancestors have drifted away into creating two species. Based from this, Dawkins refers to his analogy of a river that splits into two branches to clarify the scientific view on how species start to differentiate from one to another. In a similar fashion on how the two branches of rivers keep drifting further apart by time, he points out that the geographical separation along with longer periods of time is the reason that explains the differentiation of species. He mentions the example of gray squirrels from both North America and England; even though they might be considered as good companions, unfortunately their genes are not compatible for each other. In other words, the surroundings of their environments

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