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 Romans 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 peoples 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 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? 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? 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: #60619 in Books
• Published on: 2007-09-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 368 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

Of interest but reads as unfinished
Following on from Seven Daughters of Eve, Bryan Sykes talks about the genetic evidence that supports (or disputes) traditional myth / history of the various parts of the Isles (his neutral term for England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales).

The style is very chatty, presumably to counterpoint the detailed science bits; I did find that this made it read too much like Bill Bryson as I wasn't sure that reading about the ice cream being sampled on tour collecting DNA really added much to the development of the book.

I also felt let down that having set out a stall, mentioned a much earlier survey of hair / eye colour that showed regional differences, the book stops suddenly whilst beginning the development of the England story.

I almost think this was brought out to keep interest up whilst the overall work continues, and imagine that there will be further editions of this.

Fascinating and accessibly written
I really enjoyed this book, reading it cover to cover in a couple of days. Not having read Professor Sykes' previous book, I found Blood of the Isles adequately conveyed the scope and findings to date of the Oxford Genome Project. His writing style is involving and renders a subject which could be as dry as dust both interesting and relevant to life in Britain today.

A Curate's Egg
The strength of this book is its analysis of the female mitochondrial and male Y chromosome 'clans' of the British Isles, traced by the author's Oxford University group of geneticists, and its explanation of how this information is used to throw light on people's origins. However, much of ths book is devoted to relating Dark Age myths, and anecdotes about the author's time collecting DNA samples, and the style is chatty, at times verging on the patronising.

Some of his assumptions appear to me dubious. He assumes that if the DNA analysis shows that immigration was both male and female, this shows it was peaceful, but this is not borne out by experience elsewhere. The European settlement of Australia and North America was by families, but this did not prevent the settlers from violently seizing the land of the existing inhabitants.

I found the conclusion particularly disappointing. In general he accepts the view that farming was spread by diffusion of knowledge to the hunter gatherers rather than large scale immigration by farmers, yet in the final chapter he suggests that there was an early occupation by a small number of Mesolithic hunter gatherers, and later larger scale immigration by farmers. This is all the more confusing as it appears to be based on the distribution of the farming 'Jasmine' mitochondrial clan, but these were only 10% of female genes on his own figures, and the Helena clan who are nearly 50% are barely discussed. Which clan did the early Mesolithic inhabitants belong to and where did they come from? What was their contribution to the population of the British Isles today? These and other points are not discussed.

Several reviewers of Stephen Oppenheimer's 'The Origins of the British' rated it as much better than this book, and I agree with them.