[0:00]What if I told you that every human alive today, you, me, everyone, shares one single ancestor?
[0:07]Not a legend, not a myth, but a real woman who lived nearly 200,000 years ago.
[0:13]Scientists call her mitochondrial Eve, the mother of us all.
[0:18]Here's how they found her. Inside our cells, tiny engines called mitochondria power life itself.
[0:24]But there's a twist. Mitochondria are passed down only from mothers to their children.
[0:29]They exist in the tail of the sperm, which never enters the egg.
[0:33]So all our mitochondria come from our mothers, and their mothers before them.
[0:38]Over time, tiny changes, mutations appear in mitochondrial DNA, roughly one letter changes every 4,000 years.
[0:46]By tracing those changes backward like genetic breadcrumbs, scientists calculated when all maternal lines meet, around 200,000 years ago, in ancient Africa.
[0:57]She wasn't the first woman, just the one whose bloodline never broke.
[1:01]And today, in every cell of your body, her spark still burns.
[1:06]The silent memory of the woman who began us all. If you love uncovering the hidden stories of our past, don't forget to subscribe and follow for more.
