Product Description

Stephen Oppenheimer's extraordinary scientific detective story
combining genetics, linguistics, archaeology and historical record shatters
the myths we have come to live by. It demonstrates that the Anglo-Saxon
invasions contributed just a tiny fraction (5%) to the English gene pool.
Two thirds of the English people reveal an unbroken line of genetic descent
from south-western Europeans arriving long before the first farmers. Most
of the remaining third arrived between 6,000 and 3,000 years ago as part of
long-term north-west European trade and immigration, especially from
Scandinavia - possibly carrying the earliest forms of English language. As
for the Celts - the Irish, Scots and Welsh - history has traditionally
placed their origins in Iron Age Central Europe. Oppenheimer's genetic
synthesis shows the majority to have arrived via the Atlantic coastal route
from Ice Age refuges including the Basque country; with the modern
languages we call Celtic arriving later. There is indeed a deep divide
between the English and the rest of the British. But as this book reveals
the division is many thousands of years older than we ever knew.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #176347 in Books
• Published on: 2006-09-11
• Binding: Hardcover
• 534 pages

Publishing News, June 9, 2006
'An incredible genetic detective story based on the latest scientific evidence'

Professor Colin Renfrew, University of Cambridge
`A well-informed, original and challenging application of new
genetic data ... British prehistory will never look the same again.'

Dr Peter Forster, The McDonald Institute,Cambridge
`Oppenheimer's challenging book contributes significantly to the
growing body of ... evidence for an early Germanic presence in "Celtic"
Britain.'

Customer Reviews

Disagree !
Unlike several of the reviewers, I have found this work very readable, and well presented. I was totally captivated.
Dr. Stephen Oppenheimer by his own admission is not by background an expert in linguistics, archaeology or history. But he is an expert in genetics who has been exasperated at the entrenched dogma in these disciplines, and has extended his research into these areas.
His results are plausible, very lucidly prfesented and a benchmark.
A great read, and very thought provocing !

An in depth re-analyis of 200 years of misinformation on English British roots.
Oppenheimer gives a very convincing new look at pre-Roman Britain. Gone is the simplistic idea of an entirely Celtic people from John O Groats to Kent as perpetuated by the mis-understanding of Bede as propagated since the 1700s. In comes the far more likely idea of several cultures and languages occupying these shores including pre-English and probably pre-Indo-European peoples. With regard to the doubters I would say they doth protest too much. Oppenheimer destroys the idea of an Anglo Saxon genocide of a mythical Celtic England using DNA. He then points out that English has almost no Celt in it and yet is full of Latin. That entirely fits the idea of an already existing pre-English language adopting the words of the Superstrate language of Latin during Roman times. Traditionalists would have us believe that all latin came into English during Norman times. Certainly the Anglo Saxons were invited over to England, but as allies of their kin Vortigern, who was not a Celtic traitor as the Welsh Gildas would have us believe, but was himself Germanic with a latinised name.

The book backs up many ideas which have already been covered by Theo Venneman who believes English to be far older than Roman Britain, and by Colin Renfrew who moved away from the old school idea of all language being carried merely by conquest.

Celtic confusions
While we in North America have a distressing tendency to lump most of the inhabitants of the British Isles together, those living there are aware of their diversity. That awareness has been carried rather to extremes by some scholars and politicians. "What is a Celt?" has been a key question, as has been its follow-up "What really happened to the Celts?" Tied in with these queries is the problem of finding an origin for the Celts and just what language they spoke. Stephen Oppenheimer addresses these and related issues in a comprehensive "detective story" incorporating history, analytical genetics and linguistic studies. His conclusions, well depicted in this provocative study, will prove surprising to some, and perhaps distressing to a few.

The British Isles, he begins, have the advantage of being invaders of a "terra nullius" [uninhabited land] some fifteen thousand years ago. As the Last Glacial Maximum retreated before the rise of a revived warm period, humans were able to enter a land they'd been driven from thousands of years previously. While this situation offers nothing to the historian, archaeologists and geneticists have a clear starting point for placing and dating the migration. Not an island then, Britain was a peninsula jutting out from the European land mass. That provided an easy route from the Mediterranean shoreline, around what is now Iberia to the southern and western coasts of Britain. Since "western" here now means Eire, it's clear the first adjustment of opinion must accommodate Ireland and Britain. Clearly, there were later population movements, but where did they originate, how long did they last and what numbers of people were involved? Most significantly, what languages did they speak?

From his introductory survey, Oppenheimer proceeds to tease out the answers to these questions. The origins are traced back in time using genetic markers. Mitochondrial DNA, carried down the generations only through female inheritance factors provides one scenario. The Y chromosome, the genetic marker for men is analysed separately, then compared. In most, although not all cases, the matches are mutually supportive. Archaeological finds are used as further indicators which have the advantage of solid dating techniques to support them, unlike the DNA tests which rest on a calculation based on presumed mutation rates. The language question remains contentious. Oppenheimer links it with the spread of farming entering Europe from Anatolia introducing early forms of Celtic into Western Europe. The author's genetic analysis also overturns the idea that farmers "displaced" earlier hunter-gatherer societies in Europe and Britain. Instead, farming was adapted by the resident population and farmers' larger families added some population pressure, but hardly "displacement". The same holds true for the Roman occupation, which was more interested in social stability and tax collecting than genocide.

The post-Roman era has also led to the establishment of displacement myths and their more recent overturning. History, partly thanks to reliance on "Saint" Gildas, has stoked the fires of national sentiments by depicting the Angles and Saxons as a barbarian horde bent on ethnic cleansing of the indigenous "Celtic" peoples. Oppenheimer rejects this tradition, arguing instead that a "warrior elite" may have entered Britain, but this was a small population and a continuation of British-Continental ties in any case. Just who those "barbarians" were is problematic in any case, since the author sees ongoing contact with the Frisian and near shore of Europe rather than a conquering horde emerging from northern Germany. It is now generally accepted that the Norman "Conquest" was only slightly more intrusive than the Roman one, with an elite doing the ruling and the long-lasting indigenous population doing everything else like farming, herding and trading.

A major issue here is language. Linguists, Oppenheimer argues have been keen to avoid dating of language branching, mostly because early attempts came to grief. He goes so far as to separate "Celtic" populations from "celtic" languages. Part of the reason for this is the lack of a written base of celtic to use as a foundation. The Classical Period commentators in Greece and Rome wrote of "Celts" in a vague sort of way, and even a man on the ground, Julius Caesar was unable to make definitive comments about either the people or their languages. More precise cultural details were omitted entirely. Oppenheimer's path through the language issues is inevitably a tortured one, but he makes a serious effort at simplification. Whatever his success is due to a paucity of real data. For him, the genes speak louder than words. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]