Readable Non-Fiction: Bryan Sykes

[Eileen]

Bryan Sykes writes on the science of DNA. That may not seem to be very readable, but he breaks it down into layperson bite sizes, and makes it interesting. The first book of his I read was The Seven Daughters of Eve, which traces the ancestry of most Europeans to seven women through mitochondrial DNA, which is passed unchanged from mother to child. The first attempts to extract ancient DNA from bones lead to using mitochondrial DNA because it was the most plentiful, and had the shortest strings. The subsequent discovery, through testing both ancient bones and living donors showed that most people in Europe, (and other places like the US, Canada, and Australia) could be traced to seven women in the long past.

His second book, Adam's Curse, traces his work with the Y chromosome, which is passed from father to son unchanged. Here he finds five clans in Europe. I haven't read this book yet, but it is next on my list.

I know what the second book is about, because I have read the third book in the series, Saxons, Vikings and Celts, which traces both the maternal and paternal DNA in the British Isles. Along with stories of the adventures in collecting data for the Genetic Atlas Project, the book has a section on the history of each part of the British Isles, (Scotland, England, Wales) and Ireland. Once you have an overview of the history, he takes you through what the DNA tells us about the history, and about how some of the peoples got to the Isles. Many more came by a sea-going route around the Mediteranian and through the Straits of Gibralter than came overland and then crossed the channel. Some of the history I didn't know, For instance, I didn't know that my Irish-Norman ancestors were Vikings who had settled in Normandy in France. No wonder there are red-heads in my family!

If you are interested in finding out your ancestry from your DNA, you can have your profile done at Oxford Ancestors, a commercial enterprise that has been developed from Dr. Sykes laboratory. It's not cheap, however. Prices range from about $360 for a maternal or paternal line to $740 for both. But curiosity killed the cat, and it's too bad I didn't know about it when I had money. However, it would be better to get one of my brothers to submit his DNA, as I am sadly lacking in the Y chromosome department.