clan mother legacy

pegi eyers

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One of the most exciting moments of my life, was when I discovered through DNA testing that I was a member of the Helena Clan, a group that existed 20,000 years ago in the cave-painting cultures of Lascaux and the Dordogne and Vezere valleys of southwest France! Thanks to population science, genetic research and links to the archaeological record, my mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), or motherline, was traced to this paleolithic hunter-gatherer society.  Miraculously, I was able to locate my maternal ancestor, who was a matriarch and Clan Mother thousands of years ago.  It is mind-boggling and humbling to think of all the loving “mothers of mothers of mothers”  stretching through time and place, all the way to me today!   The Helena Clan is one of the world clans descended from “Mitochondrial Eve” as traced in   The Seven Daughters of Eve    by Bryan Sykes.

Each DNA haplogroup has a chain of letters and numbers, and my maternal line begins with the letter “H.”   Genetics professor and the founder of Oxford Ancestors, Sykes identified 7 letters overall that represent the European Clan Mothers, and he gave each a name and a narrative.   My clan mother is Helena (Greek for light) who lived at the peak of the last Ice Age.  

Helena’s story begins on the shoreline and in the woodlands south of the ice sheets. With her extended family group she combed the food forest for fungi and other edible plants, and waded into the wetlands and lagoons searching for oysters. The hunters thrived in the woodlands, seeking small deer and other mammals to hunt with handmade spears. Helena hand-stitched clothes with pelts and sinew to survive the icy winters, and gave birth to her children in caves by the river during the annual reindeer migration. Sykes describes extensive tool making including knives, scrapers, spear points, spear throwers and sewing needles, and mentions the flourishing of cave art and ceremonies.  At the time of Helena the Atlantic Ocean was frozen, and pack ice was found as far south as Bordeaux, France.  Britain was still joined to continental Europe by dry land, and what are now the English Midlands, central Wales, and southern Ireland were buried under the ice.

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The Seven Clan Mothers    that Sykes identified are:

The Clan of Ursula (Latin for she-bear) is the oldest of the seven native European clans. It was founded around 45,000 years ago by the first modern humans as they established themselves in Europe. Today, about 11% of modern Europeans are the direct maternal descendants of Ursula. They come from all parts of Europe, but the clan is particularly well represented in western Britain and Scandinavia.

The Clan of Xenia  (Greek for hospitable) is the second oldest of the seven native European clans, and also the smallest. It was founded 25,000 years ago by the second wave of modern humans who established themselves in Europe, just prior to the coldest part of the last Ice Age. Today only 6% of native Europeans are in the clan of Xenia. Within the clan, three distinct branches fan out over Europe. One is still largely confined to Eastern Europe while the other two have spread further to the West into central Europe and as far as France and Britain. About 1% of Native Americans are also in the clan of Xenia.

The Clan of Helena  (Greek for light) is by far the largest and most successful of the seven native clans.  47% of modern Europeans belong to one of its many branches, and are direct maternal descendents of Helena. It began 20,000 years ago with the birth of Helena somewhere in the valleys of the Dordogne and the Vezere, in south-central France. The clan is widespread throughout all parts of Europe, but reaches its highest frequency among the Basque people of northern Spain and southern France.  Approximately 47 percent of modern Europeans (and those in diasporas) are descended from   the Clan of Helena. 

The Clan of Velda  (Scandinavian for ruler) is the second smallest of the seven clans containing only about 7% of native Europeans. Velda lived 17,000 years ago in the limestone hills of Cantabria in northwest Spain. Her descendants are found nowadays mainly in western and northern Europe and are surprisingly frequent among the Saami people of Finland and Northern Norway.

The Clan of Tara  (Gaelic for rocky hill) includes slightly fewer than 10% of modern Europeans. Its many branches are widely distributed throughout southern and western Europe with particularly high concentrations in Ireland and the west of Britain. Tara herself lived 17,000 years ago in the northwest of Italy among the hills of Tuscany and along the estuary of the river Arno.

The Clan of Katrine (Greek for pure) is a medium sized clan with 10% of Europeans among its membership. Katrine herself lived 15,000 years ago in the wooded plains of northeast Italy, now flooded by the Adriatic, and among the southern foothills of the Alps. Her descendants are still there in numbers, but have also spread throughout central and northern Europe.

The Clan of Jasmine  (Persian for flower) is the second largest of the seven European clans after Helena and is the only one to have its origins outside Europe. Jasmine and her descendants, who now make up 12% of Europeans, were among the first farmers and brought the agricultural revolution to Europe from the Middle East around 8,500 years ago.

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This graphic displays the ancestral networks of the Seven Clan Mothers for all Europeans, diagramed by  Sykes and his research team. 

Theoretically, any European can have her or his mitochondrial DNA sequenced and analyzed in order to situate their origin in one of the seven clans. Each of the seven circles represents a specific mitochondrial DNA sequence persevered over thousands of years via maternal inheritance, and the size of the circles represent the proportion of Europeans who share each sequence. Each line represents mutations, or differences, between the sequences that they connect, and the distances separating any two circles is proportional to the number of mutations separating each sequence. The dashed line between Ursula and Xenia indicates an “even deeper genealogy through which our species, Homo sapiens, is connected to the other, extinct, humans, the Neanderthals and Homo erectus, and eventually back to the common ancestor of humans and other primates”
​(p. 275 The Seven Daughters of Eve)

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Of course, the Clan Mothers had ancestors themselves, and their genealogies have also been charted. Amazingly, everyone alive on the planet today can trace their maternal ancestry back to just one woman - “Mitochondrial Eve” who lived in Africa 150,000 – 200,000 years ago.  From the First Mother, each human has in their lineage approximately six billion ancestors. These ancestors are still present in our blood and bones, helping to shape our own physical and spiritual descendants.  To remember all who came before, is to remember that we belong to a vast web of humanity.

Through the mists of cyclic time and antidiluvian earth changes, I am the recipient of a wealth of blessings from my ancestors. Their resilience has empowered me to self-identify with my own haplogroup and claim my tribe.  Being a descendant of Helena is very grounding, and gives me deep roots in a long lineage of women, all who carry her essence and agency. It may take much imagination and dedication to express these connections, but at least there is no argument that I am not Indigenous to Old Europe!  I am finally at home, with my primordial belonging, my Clan Mothers, and my kinship to Earth Community.  

​LINKS 
​>Learning of Europe's Past: The Seven Daughters of Eve<  
>International Society of Genetic Genealogy Wiki:  The Seven Daughters of Eve<
The Seven Daughters of Eve:  The Science that Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry    on Amazon

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​Pegi Eyers is the award-winning author of Ancient Spirit Rising: Reclaiming Your Roots & Restoring Earth Community,   a survey on social justice, nature spirituality, the recovery of ancestral wisdom, earth-emergent healing, creating a sustainable future, and reclaiming peaceful co-existence in Earth Community.

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