Until approximately 1997, we did not have good empirical measures of mutation rates in humans. However, that situation greatly improved when geneticists were able to analyze DNA from individuals with well-established family trees going back several generations. One study found that mutation rates in mitochondrial DNA were eighteen times higher than previous estimates (see Parsons, et al., 1997).

Science writer Ann Gibbons authored an article for the January 2, 1998 issue of Science titled “Calibrating the Mitochondrial Clock,” the subheading of which read as follows: “Mitochondrial DNA appears to mutate much faster than expected, prompting new DNA forensics procedures and raising troubling questions about the dating of evolutionary events.” In that article, she discussed the new data which showed that the mutation rates used to obtain mitochondrial Eve’s age no longer could be considered valid, and concluded:

Regardless of the cause, evolutionists are most concerned about the effect of a faster mutation rate. For example, researchers have calculated that “mitochondrial Eve”—the woman whose mtDNA was ancestral to that in all living people—lived 100,000 to 200,000 years ago in Africa. Using the new clock, she would be a mere 6,000 years old (1998: 279:29, emphasis added).
Gibbons quickly went on to note, of course, that “no one thinks that’s the case,” (279:29). She concluded her article by discussing the fact that many test results are (to use her exact word) “inconclusive.” She then noted: “And, for now, so are some of the evolutionary results gained by using the mtDNA clock” (279:29).

We now know that the two key assumptions behind the data used to establish the existence of “mitochondrial Eve” are not just flawed, but wrong. The assumption that mitochondrial DNA is passed down only by the mother is completely incorrect (it also can be passed on by the father). And, the mutation rates used so calibrate the so-called “molecular clock” are now known to have been in error. (To use the words of Rodriguez-Trelles and his coworkers, the method contains a “fundamental flaw.”)

Philip Awadalla and his coworkers noted in Science: “Many inferences about the pattern and tempo of human evolution and mtDNA evolution have been based on the assumption of clonal inheritance. There inferences will now have to be reconsidered” (1999, 286:2525). However, rather than merely “reconsidering” their theory and attempting to revamp it accordingly, evolutionists need to admit, honestly and forthrightly, that “mitochondrial Eve,” as it turns out, has existed only in their minds, not in the facts of the real world. Science works by analyzing the data and forming hypotheses based on those data. Science is not supposed to massage the data until they fit a certain preconceived hypothesis. All of the conclusions that have been drawn from research on mitochondrial Eve via the molecular clock must now be discarded as unreliable. A funeral and interment are in order for mitochondrial Eve.

Now, I really don't care if it was 200.000 years ago or 6.000. The point is we outta know much more about mitochondrial DNA.