THE ORIGINS OF THE BRITISH BY STEPHEN OPPENHEIMER

	The Origins of the British

A Genetic Detective Story
by Stephen Oppenheimer Book Details:
ROBINSON
978-1-84529-482-3
www.constablerobinson.com
£10.99 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. Stephen 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 divide between the English and the rest of the British. But this book reveals the division is many thousands of years older than we ever knew.

Overview by the Author

As a child, I sometimes wondered why people told jokes about Englishmen, Irishmen, Welshmen and Scotsmen. Why should our origins and differences matter? Part of growing up was realizing that they do matter and trying to understand why. This book challenges some of our longest held assumptions about the differences between Anglo-Saxons and Celts - perceived differences that have informed our collective sense of identity. Orthodox history has long taught that the Romans found a uniformly Celtic population throughout the British Isles, but that the peoples of the English heartland fell victim to genocide by the Anglo-Saxon hordes during the fifth and sixth centuries. Now Stephen Oppenheimer's groundbreaking genetic research has revealed that the Anglo-Saxon invasion contributed only a tiny fraction to the English gene pool. In fact, three quarters of English people can trace an unbroken line of genetic descent through their parental genes from settlers arriving long before the introduction of farming. Synthesizing the genetic evidence with linguistics, archaeology and the historical record, Oppenheimer shows how long-term Scandinavian trade and immigration contributed the remaining quarter - mostly before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. These migrations may have introduced the earliest forms of English. And what of the Celts we know - the Irish, Scots and Welsh? Scholars have traditionally placed their origins in Iron Age Central Europe, but Oppenheimer's new data clearly show that the Welsh, Irish and other Atlantic fringe peoples derive from Ice Age refuges in the Basque country and Spain. They came by an Atlantic coastal route many thousands of years ago, though the Celtic languages we know of today were brought in by later migrations, following the same route, during Neolithic times. Stephen Oppenheimer shows us, in his meticulous analysis, that there is in truth a deep genetic line dividing the English from the rest of the British people but that, fascinatingly, the roots of that separate identity go back not 1500 years but 6,000. The real story of the British peoples is one of extraordinary continuity and enduring lineage that has survived all onslaughts. Stephen Oppenheimer of University of Oxford is a leading expert in the use of DNA to track migrations. His last book Out of Eden rewrote the prehistory of man's peopling of the world in a thesis that has since been confirmed in Science. He is also the author of Eden in the East: The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia, which challenged the orthodox view of the origins of Polynesians as rice farmers from Taiwan. → For more information on Stephen Oppenheimer click here
→ British Isles Prehistory Archive