The Maternal Link

© 2005 Bettye Johnson

Books and articles that place women beneath men have subjugated women for eons and are tiresome. In writing my book. Secrets of the Magdalene Scrolls about Mary Magdalene, I found it a challenge to find any credible history of that era. The information available was written by men and for the most part, men who were monks. That should tell us something. Some claim to have evidence of the genealogy of the bloodline of Mary Magdalene and Jesus and that is even more interesting. Men put the so-called reputable charts together and only once in a great while was the mother named. Thus, it became that the lineage was handed down from king to king. That in itself is suspect and I wonder if these kings and men of royalty were hatched in an incubator.

Science today is indicating that this is not so. There is scientific evidence from archaeology combined with the study of the DNA and genes that it is a possibility women and men came from one woman nicknamed Eve. The primary piece of evidence is called mitochondria

An article by Rebecca Cann of the University of Hawaii, together with her two male coworkers, stunned the scientific world when it was published in the British journal Nature on January 1, 1987. The article, Mitochondrial DNA and Human Evolution, alleges that all people living on Earth now can date their ancestry back to 200,000 years ago to a particular woman living at that time. Since that article was published, there have been other scientific studies and subsequent research alleges it could have been a group of women. What does this mean for women?

It means that the hereditary maternal DNA is carried by the mitochondria, which is passed from mother to daughter. Any mitochondria in the male sperm dies and is not passed to the daughters or the sons. Therefore, if a man and woman have only sons, the woman’s mitochondria carrying the lineage dies out. When a son with no female sibling marries a woman and they have a daughter, then that woman’s mitochondria DNA is passed down. From my perspective, it would be quite onerous to trace the lineage unless one knew who the females were.

What is the mitochondrial? From the science reports I have researched, the general consensus is that it carries the power of the energy of a cell. It could also be called the power generator of the cell. The mitochondria also have other functions, but for the purpose of this article, I want to emphasize the importance it has in tracing a lineage because the mitochondria also has its own DNA.

I find it a tragedy that down through the ages and today in some cultures, it is the male child that is desired and in a few cultures the female baby is killed. Because of the attitudes of the men of history, almost all knowledge of powerful and wonderful women has been either suppressed or eradicated. In some instances such as Mary Magdalene, Lucretia Borgia, Marie Antoinette, they have been portrayed as either sinners or in unflattering terms. I chose to portray Mary Magdalene as a powerful woman in her own right and I used my research to write this story in novel form. She was the wife of Jesus and they had two children.

I find it interesting that I have three sons and therefore my mitochondria is not passed down. It stops with me, however my sister had three girls and they will carry on the line. My granddaughters now carry the maternal lineage through their mothers’ mitochondria. I primarily raised my sons alone, as their father was a career military man and away two-thirds of our married life. This arrangement gave me the opportunity to raise my sons as I wanted to and they have all grown into splendid men. They are loving, caring men and are not prejudice against women.

We, the women must take the responsibility of teaching our sons and daughters that each is an equal. It can begin in the womb. While carrying a child in the womb, the woman can speak to it and begin the teaching along with playing classical music. A fetus is aware in the womb. Now, that is another study in itself.

For further research, I recommend reading Zechariah Sitchen’s book The Lost Book of Enki. An excellent website is from a NOVA documentary, Tracing Ancestry Through MiDNA, http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/neanderthals/mtdna.html ~