The Origins of the British: A Genetic Detective Story [ILLUSTRATED] (Hardcover)

by Stephen Oppenheimer (Author) "Since how we view Celtic cultures today is probably most important for how we view them in the future, we should start with current perceptions..." (more)
Key Phrases: genetic distance map, founding clusters, deeper timescale, North Sea, Bronze Age, Old English (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"* 'The thrill of this book lies in the vast reaches of time and space that one is deftly guided through.' Emma Crichton-Miller, Sunday Telegraph * 'I can put my finger on a map and say that is where my people came from... research by Dr Oppenheimer and others has now given us all the right to say that.' The Economist" --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Description

History has long maintained that the Anglo-Saxon overtaking of the Iron Age Celts was the origin of the British people. Celtic Britain reconstructs the peopling of Britain — through a study of genetics, climatology, archaeology, language, culture, and history — and overturns that myth and others. The Anglo-Saxons, who supposedly conquered the Celts, contributed only five to ten percent of the British gene pool. The "Atlantic Celts," long believed to have migrated to Britain from Central Europe around 300 BC during the Iron Age, can be linked genetically to the people of Basque country. And linguistic evidence suggests that, besides Celtic languages, a Germanic-type language similar to Norse was also spoken in Britain long before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. In this groundbreaking study, Stephen Oppenheimer explaines the surprising roots of the present-day cultural identities of the English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Basic Books (October 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0786718900
• ISBN-13: 978-0786718900
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #656,561 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars fascinating topic but terribly written, December 16, 2006

By	m-starr (Washington D.C. area) - See all my reviews

I'm fascinated by studies of the human diaspora based on DNA evidence, especially when they interweave the genetics with history, linguistics and archaeology. Being partly of English ancestory myself, this book looked right up my alley, and indeed I read it cover to cover. It advances two interesting arguments: (a) that the Celtic peoples of the British Isles come not from a Central European homeland, but rather moved up the Atlantic coast from an Ice Age refuge in Basque country, and (b) that the Germanic roots of the English population are much older than the Anglo-Saxon invasion and instead reflect earlier waves of inflows from Scandinavia and Frisia. But the book is DREADFULLY written. It is terribly organized, so that issues come up again and again as though the author forgot he mentioned it before. There are all kinds of digressions that seem unrelated to the main thesis, but that for some reason the author wanted to mention. Small topics receive pages and pages of coverage, while some main ones go fast. In the end, it's hard to judge whether the book's novel arguments hold water, because there is too much speculation woven in with the facts. My interest sustained me, but if I found this topic anything less than fascinating, there's no way I would have plodded through this book.

44 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating topic, but not well written., November 11, 2006

By	John Clavin (Seattle, Wa, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I wanted to like this book, I really did, but despite being about a topic that should have kept me enthralled for hours (it's a fairly hefty book at 420 pages + 100 or so pages of appendices), I found the authors overly academic style of writing and constant references to other learned works (many of them his own) very severly got in the way of telling the detective story that he'd spent so much time unravelling.

I felt like I was back in college wading through a course related text book rather than reading for pleasure.

The premise of the book is to look at certain genetic markers in the current population of the British Isles and use that information to track back to other population groupings in Mainland Europe and adjacent areas to identify the various locations that human migrations to the British Isles during the last fifteen thousand years originated.

Who was there First?
Who were the Celts and where did they come from?
Did Celtic populations dominate southern Britain before the Romans or was it some other population group?
Which of the historical tribes has the most profound [genetic] influence on the current pupulation of Europes Northwestern Isles - Angles? Saxons? Jutes? Frisians? Picts? Vikings? Celts? Normans?

These and other questions are all dealt with through the books rather ponderous examination of the genetic clues to "The Origins of the British".

The attentions of a decent editor and the use of a friendlier writing style would have made this a much more entertaining read rather than being a trial that only just kept me occupied on a trans oceanic flight.

Rating this one is a bit tricky - I'd give it a four for interest level of the topic, and unfortunately just one for the readibility.

38 of 41 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting But Very Technical, December 11, 2006

By	John D. Cofield - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I'm very interested in the use of DNA analysis in genealogy and uncovering the "deep ancestry" of humanity, so I was most intrigued when I saw this book had been published and ordered it quickly. It has some useful information, but its written in a very dry, technical style which does little or nothing to interest or inspire a general readership.

Being of British ancestry myself, and having had my DNA analyzed already, I was hopeful that this book could help me determine more about my distant ancestry. There are numerous maps and charts which do so to an extent, but they don't go far enough to really illuminate things. This is not entirely the book's fault: DNA research is such a new field that a standard method of referencing the material has not completely evolved, causing difficulties if you cross-check several different sources.

Oppenheimer has been able to demonstrate that much of the mythology surrounding early settlement of Britain is just that: myth and legend. The true story of British ancestral origins is much more complex and sometimes confusing than the old story line of Celts-Romans-Angles-Vikings would have us believe. This work will be a valuable reference, especially after writers with a more general audience in mind take over the job of introducing the subject so that more people can get a basic grounding. Then Oppenheimer's work can be more fully appreciated by more people.