All sorts of people, most likely. Language
and mtDNA may co-evolve inasmuch as any woman is _likely_ to inherit her
mother's language and _sure_ to inherit her mtDNA (with or without an
occasional mutation), and pass them both on to her own daughters, if any.
However, the correlation is contingent upon the vagaries of language
transmission (involving language shift or language death once in a while) and
cannot last forever. Moreover, the linguistic community (tribe
or whatever) to which our hypothetical "Jasmine" belonged must have
included hundreds of other women whose descendant mtDNA lineages, different from
Jasmine's, happen to have expired by now (but whose linguistic "memes"
as well as nuclear genes may still be circulating in some form). It's hardly
logical to use a single woman's mtDNA as a genetic marker of a whole ethnic
or linguistic group.
Piotr
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2002 6:54 PM
Subject: [tied] Jasmine, the Seventh Daughter of Eve
" The seventh daughter of Eve, Jasmine, lived near
the River Euphrates after the Ice Age. Her descendants, 17% of native Europeans,
are particularly common in Cornwall, Wales and the west of
Scotland."
What kind of people could represent this
matrilinear branch?