The Story of An Ancestor
Lulit’s family has always lived in the fertile grasslands of Africa, where they gather nutritious plants and hunt majestic game animals for food. Lulit has a special connection to the land: her lion, Anbesa, who she has raised since he was a cub.
As a megadrought causes the plants and animals they eat to disappear, disaster strikes Lulit’s family. With the land itself drying up, Lulit wonders if there’s anything she can do to help her people.
When her family decides that they must eat her lion to stay alive, Lulit knows that she must find another way. She sets out to find a new source of food — and a passage through the Great Desert, to the unknown lands in the north.
This is a Genetic Eve story — a story of what life might have been like for the first girl to be born with a new mitochondrial DNA mutation.
Lulit’s special mutation — the L3 haplogroup — allows her to stay cool in the hot sun, stay healthy while eating less, and move faster than the rest of her tribe. All of these mutations will help her to cross the Great Desert in a time of famine and save her people.
Follow Genetic Eve’s book releases to learn about more other mitochondrial mutators, like Havva and Jera, whose mutations help them survive the challenges the Ice Age brings their peoples in the lands north of the Great Salt Lake.
Learn more at GeneticEve.com
