In their 1987 Nature publication, “Mitochondrial DNA and Human Evolution,” Rebecca Cann, Mark Stoneking, and Allan C. Wilson gave a new reconstruction of human evolution on the basis of differences in mitochondrial DNA among contemporary human populations. This phylogeny included an African common ancestor for all human mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) lineages, and Cann et al.’s reconstruction became known as the “Out of Africa” hypothesis. Since mtDNA is inherited exclusively through the maternal line, the common ancestor who was first branded African Eve later became known as Mitochondrial Eve (mtEve, for short).

In this paper, I show that mtEve was not a single, successful, or purely scientific discovery. Instead, she was produced many times and in many ways, each of which informed the next. Importantly, though Wilson and colleagues heralded mitochondrial DNA as a source of certainty, objectivity, and consensus for evolutionary inference, their productions of Mitochondrial Eve depended as much on popular assumptions about the certainty of maternal inheritance as they did on new molecular and computational tools. This recognition lets us reevaluate the complex consequences of these productions, which, like mtEve herself, could not be confined to a purely social, material, or scientific dimension.

丽贝卡·坎（Rebecca Cann），马克·斯通金（Mark Stoneking）和艾伦·威尔逊（Allan C. Wilson）在其1987年的《自然》杂志中发表了“线粒体DNA与人类进化”，根据当代人群中线粒体DNA的差异，对人类进化进行了新的重建。这种系统发育包括所有人类线粒体DNA（mtDNA）谱系的非洲共同祖先，Cann等人的重建被称为“非洲之外”假说。由于mtDNA仅通过母系遗传，因此共同的祖先最初被称为非洲夏娃，后来被称为线粒体夏娃（简称mtEve）。

在本文中，我证明了mtEve不是单个，成功或纯粹的科学发现。取而代之的是，她被培养了许多次，并且以多种方式产生，而每种方式都为下一次提供了信息。重要的是，尽管威尔逊及其同事宣称线粒体DNA是进化论推论的确定性，客观性和共识性来源，但线粒体夏娃的生产在很大程度上取决于关于产妇遗传确定性的普遍假设，就像他们在新的分子和计算工具上所做的一样。这种认识使我们重新评估了这些作品的复杂后果，就像mtEve她自己一样，这些后果不能仅仅局限于社会，物质或科学层面。