mt-Eve
COM LIT 250 SEMINAR IN CRITICAL BIBLE STUDIES:
Loki: Around 200,000 years ago, later part of the Pleistocene Period,
the first humans emerged in the region around Lake Victoria. The
lake's area is divided among three countries: Kenya, Uganda, and
Tanzania. Lake Victoria is Africa's largest lake by area, the world's
largest tropical lake, and the world's second largest freshwater lake
by surface area after Lake Superior in North America. The waters
from Lake Victoria flow into the Mediterranean Sea through the Nile
River. Mitochondrial Eve, also known as mt-Eve was born and lived in
this region of Africa.
Amiri: (Plays his guitar while singing. Loki draws an African mask with
marker on classroom whiteboard)
Rivers I have seen and rivers I have known
Ancient as the world and older than the blood
I’ve known rivers:
All through Africa and North America
South America and Australia
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers
in the North and South
I’ve known rivers
in the East and West
I’ve known rivers all over this world
I’ve sailed some and seen the rest
I’ve known rivers
I’ve known rivers
Ancient, dusky rivers.
And my soul has grown deep
Like the rivers
Like the rivers
Like the rivers of my soul (1)
Wiki Lin: In human genetics, the Mitochondrial Eve, sometimes
shortened to mt-Eve is the matrilineal most recent common ancestor
of all living humans. In other words, she is defined as the most recent
woman from whom all living humans descend in an unbroken line
purely through their mothers and through the mothers of those
mothers, back until all lines converge on one woman. (Loki finishes
drawing and lays marker on tray.)
Loki: So honored to have the mother of all humans living today,
Mitochondrial Eve. May I call you mt-Eve for short.
mt-Eve: No problem, Honey.
Maggie: Omigod! Black like Amiri and me. LOVE YOU, MAMA EVE!
mt-Eve: Love you back, baby!
Loki: In Genesis 3:20 Adam calls your name Eve because you are the
mother of all living which according to the World Clock is over 8
billion people who live on our planet today and counting.
mt-Eve: Mercy! Mercy! In my times we could wonder days without
end in our forager-hunter bands without seeing anyone who looked
like us.
Okie: Wow! That’s a lot of birthdays to remember.
mt-Eve: No problem, honey. I’m in everybody born; everybody born
is in me.
Blake: If you are mt-Eve, then where is mt-Adam?
mt-Eve: You must be thinking of the "Y-chromosomal member of
Homo sapiens
from whom all living humans are descended
Patri lineally. As to where this “Adam” is, your guess is as good as
mine. You know how men are. (Laughs)
Wiki Lin: Y-chromosomal Adam’ is thought to have walked the Earth
between 120,000 and 156,000 years ago. But the researchers say it is
‘extremely unlikely’ they were exact contemporaries.
Cal: Have you encountered any Mitochondrial talking snakes who
walk instead of crawling by any chance?
mt-Eve: Well, around campfires, my grandmother would tell a lot of
stories about animals who spoke. The speaking and walking serpent
in your Bible sounds like a trickster we’d often hear about in one of
her stories.
Irene: Your grandmother? You weren’t the first woman on earth like in
Genesis?”
mt-Eve: No, Honey, just the only one you can trace descent to
everybody living today.
Cal: Like you said, Mama Eve, Genesis is a story, not history. All
people have not been damned to burn in hell forever because Adam
and Eve ate some goddamned apple. Ergo there’s no need to grovel
before some preacher to get right with some old, bearded sky-god.
Barry: Well then how do you account for all this wicked shit in the
world that keeps happening like crime and war? My Presbyterian
pastor says Adam and Eve fell into history.
mt-Eve: What is crime and war?
Loki: Some bad habits many of your descendants picked up along
the way. Well, Mama Eve, it’s been a real pleasure visiting the African
mother of us all.
mt-Eve: The pleasure is all mine, Sweet cakes.
Maggie: Sweet cakes? Where’d she pick that up?
Blake: From Kaylin Haught’s poem, “God Says Yes to Me”
(1) Gary Bartz’s Jazz rendition of Langston Hughes poem, “I’ve known Rivers”
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