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Whether just by chance or by the guiding hand of natural selection, is not known, but Helen's clan has grown to become the most widespread and successful of the Seven Daughters of Eve. Her children have reached every shore, settled every forest and mountain range from the Alps in the South to the Scottish Highlands and the Norwegian fjords in the North, even to the Urals and the Russian steppes. Helena was born about 20,000 years ago in the strip of land that joins France and Spain near what is now the town of Perpignan. Her family were hunters, of course, but they also harvested the rich oyster beds in the lagoons of the Camargue. Not long before, they had arrived from the Middle East, pushing their way along the Mediterranean, constrained to the narrow strip of land that was still habitable (the rest was covered by glaciers). Not long after she was born, the glaciers that covered the Pyrenees, which she could see on a clear day only thirty miles fom the camp, began to draw back as, little by little, the summers grew warmer. Some of her clan moved south of the mountains, up the valley of the Ebro to the West to reach the lands of the Basque, where they remain to this day. The most adventurous of her children took advantage of the climatic improvement and journeyed ever northwards to join the great movement of hunters across the plains of France. It is known they reached England 12,000 years ago because the DNA recovered from a young male skeleton found in Gough's Cave, Somerset, shows that he, too, belonged to the clan of Helena. The star marks my place in the scheme of human descent. The gray circle just below the clan of Xenia marks the connection of those of European descent with the rest of the world. |
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