The hypothesis that all modern humans are descended from a common first mother who lived in southern Africa about 200,000 years ago. The Eve theory is similar to the Noah's Ark model and is based on genetic research showing that as modern humans spread throughout the world they rarely if at all interbred with existing but more archaic humans such as the Neanderthals. The Eve theory does not imply a creationist view only that there has been a chance survival of a single line of mitochondrial DNA.