How did we manage to become so diverse if we all come from the same “mother” is my question. The blood thing is a correlated thing
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One doesn’t always inherit exactly the same genes from one’s parents. With each new generation there is a chance for mutation. Many mutations are lethal, some are harmless, some have no obvious manifestation (what we refer to as “junk DNA”), and some offer a survival benefit (which leads to forming a separate species).
It’s evolution in action; there are always small variations within a population, and those small variations become larger variations if they are emphasized in a population that’s separate from another, and if they are not disadvantageous to survival. In the case of mitochondrial Eve, we’re talking about hundreds of thousands of years for this to happen.
It’s also worth noting that mitochondrial Eve is simply the most recent common ancestor of all living humans; at the time she lived, there were plenty of other humans who already sported diversity within their population. Their diversity is responsible for our diversity; their lines are still intact as well, just not all of them to all of us.
The further back you go in the family tree, the more opportunity there has been for genetic mutations. It’s not just that all humans share a common ancestor. All living things share a common ancestor. It’s just that over time a group of offspring from that common ancestor became humans and another group became e.g. bananas, all through random mutations and Darwinian selection. That’s a much bigger difference than blood types.
Mitochondrial eve does not mean that she is the only “mother” in that generation. Mitochondrial eve is just the unbroken maternal lineage. You have thousands of ancestors from the same generation as mitochondrial eve, and they are likely to be different from another random person you meet on the street.
Mitochondrial eve isn’t a specific individual. Mitochondrial eve is derived from statistical analysis on mutation rates in the DNA of our mitochondria. It exists because we all inherit the complete mitochondrial genome of our mothers because of the egg. There’s one for all people in the US. There’s one for all people in Europe. There’s a different one for all people in the world. You can figure out a mitochondrial eve across species as well. It’s a similar process when we use statistical analysis to figure out when two species diverged in evolution, like between us and our ape cousins.
Children of the same mother do not get the exact same mix of genes passed on to them. That’s why siblings may have similar looks but not the same eye or hair color. One sibling may have straight hair while the others are curly.
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