The vision of Eve’s Imprint has inspired me since the age of twenty-three when I retraced my ancestral path from North America back to Northern Europe, the Mediterranean, the Near East, and all the way to human origins in Ethiopia. Traveling in six-seat prop planes, I traversed East, Central, and West Africa. A plane engine’s failure prevented me from reaching the ancient city of Timbuktu, but the second engine got me safely back to Accra, Ghana.
Eve’s Imprint is the bigger story behind PILGRIMAGE Wonder Encounter Witness, my traveling exhibition and book honoring villages around the world in which I have lived and worked. My experiences on all continents revealed common human threads that haunted me until I learned of Mitochondrial Eve. Even as I was painting the Pilgrimage series I was already collecting ideas for a series on ‘our one Black mother’. Before launching the Eve series, I did my DNA test with National Geographic Society’s The Genographic Project. The materials they provided greatly enhanced my research for Eve’s Imprint.
My DNA test results showed that both my maternal and paternal ancestors left Africa about 50,000 years ago. My mother’s people followed the Nile Valley north, crossed at the northern end of the Red Sea and settled in the Near East for some time before continuing north through the Caucasus. Thus it is no surprise that 41% of my DNA composition is shared with people in Denmark. My father’s people crossed the southern end of the Red Sea and after some time in Arabia, traveled northwest and then westward along the Mediterranean coast. Thus it also seems natural for 40% of my DNA composition to be shared with people in Tuscany, Italy.
Both my maternal and paternal ancestral lines passed through the Middle East: Southwest Asia and the Fertile Crescent. And both were impacted by the spread of agriculture from the Middle East over the past 10,000 years. It makes sense that 17% of my DNA matches that of people in Southwest Asia. My ancestors (and yours) participated in the maiden migrations out of Africa.