Would you Adam and Eve it?

Assalamu Aleikum!

I'm recovered from the excitement of the football match and now look forward to my trip into the city. A few of us from the desert have been invited to the big city to watch a pantomime. It's being put on by the British Club and we have a few friends on the stage. I do enjoy a good panto and thought I might miss out being out of the UK. I haven't been to the British Club yet so I don't know what to expect. I have visions of that scene in Lawrence of Arabia where Lawrence appears out of the desert dressed as a Bedouin much to the disgust of the gentlemen officers in the club.

It's almost the end of this semester and things have slowed down. To help pass the time I've borrowed a few books from my American colleague. They're written by Spencer Wells and concern the Genographic Project. He uses the study of DNA to investigate where we all came from. It's a fascinating read. One of the things he says is that we all originate from Africa from ancestors he calls Adam and Eve. He talks about mtDNA which is passed down through the maternal line. Men and women inherit it from their mothers. Wells goes on to explain that there is a group of mtDNA called haplogroup J. Bedouins in Arabia have a high frequency of haplogroup J as do the peoples of northern Europe especially Britain and northern Germany. It's lower in southern Europe.

So we're all cousins after all!

Masalamah
Yahya