Audiobook10 hours
Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland
Written by Bryan Sykes
Narrated by Dick Hill
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
()
About this audiobook
WASPs finally get their due in this stimulating history by one of the world's leading geneticists.
Saxons, Vikings, and Celts is the most illuminating book yet to be written about the genetic history of Britain and Ireland. Through a systematic, ten-year DNA survey of more than 10,000 volunteers, Bryan Sykes has traced the true genetic makeup of British Islanders and their descendants. This historical travelogue and genetic tour of the fabled isles, which includes accounts of the Roman invasions and Norman conquests, takes readers from the Pontnewydd cave in North Wales, where a 300,000-year-old tooth was discovered, to the resting place of "The Red Lady" of Paviland, whose anatomically modern body was dyed with ochre by her grieving relatives nearly 29,000 years ago. A perfect work for anyone interested in the genealogy of England, Scotland, or Ireland, Saxons, Vikings, and Celts features a chapter specifically addressing the genetic makeup of those people in the United States who have descended from the British Isles.
Saxons, Vikings, and Celts is the most illuminating book yet to be written about the genetic history of Britain and Ireland. Through a systematic, ten-year DNA survey of more than 10,000 volunteers, Bryan Sykes has traced the true genetic makeup of British Islanders and their descendants. This historical travelogue and genetic tour of the fabled isles, which includes accounts of the Roman invasions and Norman conquests, takes readers from the Pontnewydd cave in North Wales, where a 300,000-year-old tooth was discovered, to the resting place of "The Red Lady" of Paviland, whose anatomically modern body was dyed with ochre by her grieving relatives nearly 29,000 years ago. A perfect work for anyone interested in the genealogy of England, Scotland, or Ireland, Saxons, Vikings, and Celts features a chapter specifically addressing the genetic makeup of those people in the United States who have descended from the British Isles.
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Reviews for Saxons, Vikings, and Celts
Rating: 3.799363031847134 out of 5 stars
4/5
157 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I gave this book 5 stars because I think it does what it sets out to do: offer an interpretation of the human history of the British Isles through the lens of genomics. Readers fairly literate in genomics and who take an interest in matrilineal and patrilineal genomics may find it of great interest.
The book is of limited interest to a more general or popular science reader, I think.Certainly, many people are excited to hear random facts about “their” genome; but would have less interest in slogging through the scholarly and scientific parts of this book. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5the low quality of this audio book recording was terribly distracting.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Bryan Sykes is a respected DNA researcher who started his string of popular books with The Seven Daughters of Eve and Adam’s Curse. Recently I finally got around to reading DNA USA and Saxons, Vikings and Celts. In the latter book, he has a fascinating dissection of the many different areas of England and Scotland with some interesting conclusions about the probable history of human settlement in the region. He traced Scots lineage as well as the Irish, English and Celts and compares “Viking” DNA to European DNA. In particular, I found his conclusions on the MacDonald clan fascinating. It is always interesting when we can extrapolate probable history from scientific fact. Saxons, Vikings and Celts is a little dated in that Sykes mentions that there has been no Neanderthal DNA discovered in humans yet, a discovery that was just a few short years in the future from the time of publication. Toward the end of the book, Sykes writes “For every fact I have shown you, I have a hundred more in reserve.” I wish he had given me more facts and less travelogue. While it is somewhat interesting to learn the methods of collection and challenges, he goes on and on at length about the people in the clinics and quaint little towns and there is a very long and eye-glazing narrative on the earliest kings, despots and rulers. The discussion of maternal clans that he mentions would have been helped greatly with more information in the table and at least a summary discussion on haplogroups even though he covered this subject in detail in his earlier books. I found the appendix and maps to be the most interesting part of the book. Sykes might just do two books instead of one next time, one for those of us more interested in the facts and research, the meat of his work, even if it a shorter book without the folksy filler. He could do the other book for those who want the travelogue which I found to be tedious. Sykes has also been looking into Bigfoot DNA and there are those that disparage this use of his time and talent. I admire his intrepid spirit and willingness to look into any subject that pertains to DNA for the answers to age-old questions. I am always willing to give his publications a look.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Saxons, Vikings, and Celts examines the origins of the people on the British Isles. The legends and written histories are given in detail. Much of those accounts are corroborated by the genetic testing which the author did.Overall, I found this book to be mildly interesting, but annoying and tedious in spots. The author carefully goes through the histories of each group of people, such as the Irish. This takes up the bulk of the book, but it's something that I already knew and I suspect most people reading this book would already know. Another large part is how the blood was collected, which was interesting but this gave the book more of a travel log feeling than a presentation of scientific findings. The large conclusions on the genetic origin is in the second half of the very last chapter. Since it was the topic of the book, I would have liked to seen it discussed more.Additionally, since I was listening to the audio version of this book, I was frustrated by the reader, Dick Hill. He would speak in a normal voice, then speak very softly for dramatic effect, and then back to normal for the point. This might work if I had been listening in a quite room, but I was driving. The quiet parts were generally lost. Eventually, I gave up trying to hear them and assumed if whatever he was saying was important, he would say it in a normal voice.I'll probably listen to this again just because I commute so much and I run out of books to listen to, but I would not really recommend it.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Another rambling walk through history, as revealed by genetics, with Bryan Sykes. Sykes has a bothersome habit of combining really interesting genetic and historical information with a lot of superfluous material on his travels.