Product Description

Bryan Sykes, the world's first genetic archaeologist, takes us on a journey around the family tree of Britain and Ireland, to reveal how our tribal history still colours the country today. In 54BC, Julius Caesar launched the first Roman invasion of Britain. His was the first detailed account of the Celtic tribes that inhabited the Isles. But where had they come from and how long had they been there? When the Roman eventually left five hundred years later, they were succeeded by invasions of Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Normans. Did these successive invasions obliterate the genetic legacy of the Celts, or have very little effect? After two decades tracing the genetic origins of people from all over the world, Bryan Sykes has now turned the spotlight on his own back yard. In a major research programme, the first of its kind, he and his team at Oxford University set out to test the DNA of over 10,000 volunteers from across Britain and Ireland with the specific aim of answering this very question: what is our modern genetic make-up and what does it tell us of our tribal past? Where are today's Celtic genes? Did Vikings only rape and pillage, or settle with their families? And what of the genetic legacy of the Saxons and the Normans? Are the modern people of the Isles a delicious genetic cocktail? Or did the invaders keep mostly to themselves forming separate genetic layers within the Isles? And where do you fit in? As his findings came in, Bryan Sykes discovered that the genetic evidence revealed often very different stories to the conventional accounts coming from history and archaeology. "Blood of the Isles" reveals the nature of our genetic make-up as never before and what this says about our attitudes to ourselves, each other, and to our past. It is a gripping story that will fascinate and surprise with its conclusions.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #252167 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-12
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 306 pages

About the Author
Bryan Sykes is Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Oxford, has had a remarkable scientific career in genetics. After undertaking medical research into the causes of inherited bone disease, he set out to discover if DNA, the genetic material, could possibly survive in ancient bones. It did and he was the first to report on the recovery of ancient DNA from archaeological bone in the journal "Nature" in 1989. Since then Professor Sykes has been called in as the leading international authority to examine several high profile cases, such as the Ice Man, Cheddar Man and the many individuals claiming to be surviving members of the Russian Royal Family. He is the author of The Seven Daughters of Eve and Adam's Curse.

Customer Reviews

An interesting read, but "dumbed-down" too far
Bryan Sykes gives the story of his travels around the Isles collecting samples, with many interesting anecdotes along the way. In the last few pages he gives his views on the meaning of the results. The problem is that he does not give enough detail on what those results actually were for the reader to form an opinion on the reliability of his conclusions.

Several comments in the book indicate that Sykes was very keen not to make the book too technical for the general reader. A laudable aim, but the secret of a good popular science book is to make the science comprehensible and interesting to readers without a scientific background - not to leave out the science. There is a reference to a web site where the details can be found, but they should have been in the book.

An excellent introduction to the genetic roots of the British Isles
If you have already read Brian Sykes' "The Seven Daughters of Eve", you will be familiar with a number of the arguments raised in this book. In the "Seven Daughters" , Sykes explored the theme that most people of European origin are descended from seven clan mothers at varying times in the past 40,000 years. Interestingly as an aside in the current work, he makes the point that he now believes an Eighth daughter should be added.The current book extends this argument, to consider the genetic origins of the "tribes" of the British Isles. If you have not read the Seven Daughters, the first chapters provide a useful background to Sykes research methods and how these developed- if you have read the previous books this can be a bit repetetive, although in fairness he does try and keep this to the minimum required for the first time reader. The first chapters also provide a useful potted history of the Isles from the re-population after the Younger Dryas event at the end of the last Ice Age.

The second part of the book, considers the individual origins of the Irish, Scots, Welsh and English, based on Sykes analysis of Mitochondrial DNA and the Y Chromosone. I found the chapters relating to Ireland and Scotland more interesting- perhaps because the genetic patterns are more distinct, enabling Sykes to draw some firmer conclusions. The chapters on England, seemed weaker - probably this is no fault of the author's- the differences between Frisian, Saxon and Norman DNA, does not seem great enough to allow any firm conclusion on this. In any case, the book goes some way to demolishing the myths of the Saxon origins of the English and an ethnic cleansing of the Celtic population, genetically most of us remain pretty Celtic.

It is difficult, to pitch this type of book between loading on the statistics and baffling the general reader- possibly it leans a bit too far to the general reader, I was left looking for a bit more detail in places. Nevertheless, the writing style is engaging throughout, and the book contains enough nuggets of interest to make it worth the purchase. I would well recoomend to readers with a general interest in the history of the British Isles and for the those with an interest in their distant Brritish family history.

Thin, rushed, poorly presented
I expected much better of this book having read Syke's previous "Seven Daughters of Eve." I read Sykes because he's a famed geneticist, but he pads most of the book with straight chapters on British history that any 3rd rate historian could have penned. When it comes to the meat of the issue, the DNA of Britain, he hedges and dumbs down so much that you suspect he's not confident at all of his findings. One frustratingly obvious example is when he labels a particular strain of male Y- chromosome DNA "Wodan" and never explains what it is. You assume it's a reference to a Germanic strain, but Sykes doesn't bother to tell us through 200-plus pages. His information is so annoyingly sketchy and incomplete I suspect he rushed the book into print to satisfy the advertising needs of his DNA testing business. Overall, the biggest frustration with Sykes' work is his refusal to explain with satisfaction why, if we all descend from people who lived in southern Europe during the last ice age, how he can distinguish "Celtic" DNA from "Anglo-Saxon" DNA in Britain. Couldn't the Paleolithic clan have migrated to Germany, and then later to Britain? If so, how can he say who's Celtic and who's Anglo Saxon. A mess of a book. Just read Norman Davies "The Isles" and consider yourself lucky.