Saxons, Vikings, and Celts (Bryan Sykes)
Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2008 8:26 pm
Saxons, Vikings, and Celts
Brian Sykes 2006
$16.95 pp 306
(published in UK as ‘Blood of the Isles’)
Prompted by news articles, especially a posting by our member Celtica (see thread below), I bought Sykes’ book in January 2008. I thought it might be useful if I transcribed blurbs from the different chapters where Sykes examines the DNA (both Y-chromosome and mitochondrial) in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England. He never goes into detail about where in northern Spain the post-glacial population moved across the Atlantic 16,000 years ago. It could be a general area from south of the Pyrenees, at the time populated by proto-Basques, all the way west to Asturias, Galicia and northern Portugal. He does, however, devote time to the Milesian myth in the Leabhar Gabhala chronicles that describes a migration from Galicia to Ireland.
Again, skim through the earlier thread as a reminder of the issues raised by Art, Carlos, Mouguias, Bob, Terechu, Celtica and others:
http://www.asturianus.org/forum/viewtop ... c&start=30
Apart from the prologue and the genetic maps that appear in the appendix, which are part of the Oxford Genetic Atlas Project, this is table of contents:
12,000 years of solitude
Who do we think we are?
The resurgent Celts
The skull snatchers
The blood bankers
The silent messengers
The nature of evidence
Ireland
The DNA of Ireland
Scotland
The Picts
The DNA of Scotland
Wales
The DNA of Wales
England
Saxons, Danes, Vikings and Normans
The DNA of England
The blood of the Isles
‘About 24,000 years ago the temperatures in the northern latitudes around the globe, including the Isles, began to drop as the planet entered once again into the downward phase of a glacial cycle. These regular cycles of bitter cold and comparative mildness have been going on for at least 2 million years. They are caused by the slight shifts in the way the earth rotates and moves in its orbit around the sun…’
‘By the time of the coldest phase of the Ice Age, 18,000 years ago, there were no humans left in Britain, or anywhere else in Europe north of the Alps. The descendants of the Red Lady and their contemporaries had retreated to refuges in southern France, Italy and Spain…The warmth of the sun returned to northern latitudes and the ice began to melt. Our ancestors followed the herds north from their huddled refuges as the frozen land began to thaw.’
‘Most important of all, there was dry land connecting Britain to continental Europe. This was no narrow causeway, but a wide rolling plain joining eastern Britain to the rest of Europe from the Tyne in the north to Beachy Head near Eastbourne in the south. The entire southern section of what is now the North Sea was dry land intersected by wide rivers.’
‘The modern historian Norman Davies castigates archaeologists for their over-materialist approach to the past and their disdain for myth. I am on his side. While no one would be foolish enough to suggest that they are entirely accurate in every detail, myths have a very long memory. They are also extremely influential.’
Sykes cites an 1867 lead article in The Times (London) faulting the Welsh language for locking Wales in general backwardness and ignorance, as opposed to the progress-guaranteeing English. It reminded me of the PSOE/FSA’s contempt for the Asturian and Galician languages, pre-supposing that Castilian Spanish is superior: ‘The Welsh language is the curse of Wales. Its prevalence, and the ignorance of English have excluded, and even now exclude, the Welsh people from the civilization of their English neighbours…it is simply a foolish interference with the natural progress of civilization and prosperity.’
He cites the case of an Australian woman named Janet, whose family originally came from the Scottish island of Harris: ‘The intense spirituality of the Australian Aborigine, the connection to ancestors and the homeland, is in a muted form reflected in the search for Celtic roots. Displaced by the invader and forced to the margins before being forced into exile overseas, the Celt is perceived to be the British –or even the European- aboriginal. She continues, ‘to have Celtic roots is to demonstrate that one also has a rich, tribal heritage rooted deeply within a landscape that is both mystical and mythical’.’
‘We are taught nothing of the vigorous culture and the technological achievements of the Atlantic seaboard, the coastline stretching from North Africa in the south 2,000 miles to Shetland off the north coast of Scotland and beyond to Scandinavia. But this Atlantic zone has a prehistory as ancient and as colorful as any in the Mediterranean.’
‘But the most dramatic examples of continuity along the Atlantic zone are the great stone monuments, the megaliths, which rise from the ground from Orkney and Lewis in the north to Spain and Portugal in the south. These are a purely Atlantic phenomenon, owing nothing at all to the Mediterranean world. Could it be that it was by this route that the Celts of the Isles first arrived?
I will post more citations from Bryan Sykes’ book later. This is just a teaser…
Brian Sykes 2006
$16.95 pp 306
(published in UK as ‘Blood of the Isles’)
Prompted by news articles, especially a posting by our member Celtica (see thread below), I bought Sykes’ book in January 2008. I thought it might be useful if I transcribed blurbs from the different chapters where Sykes examines the DNA (both Y-chromosome and mitochondrial) in Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England. He never goes into detail about where in northern Spain the post-glacial population moved across the Atlantic 16,000 years ago. It could be a general area from south of the Pyrenees, at the time populated by proto-Basques, all the way west to Asturias, Galicia and northern Portugal. He does, however, devote time to the Milesian myth in the Leabhar Gabhala chronicles that describes a migration from Galicia to Ireland.
Again, skim through the earlier thread as a reminder of the issues raised by Art, Carlos, Mouguias, Bob, Terechu, Celtica and others:
http://www.asturianus.org/forum/viewtop ... c&start=30
Apart from the prologue and the genetic maps that appear in the appendix, which are part of the Oxford Genetic Atlas Project, this is table of contents:
12,000 years of solitude
Who do we think we are?
The resurgent Celts
The skull snatchers
The blood bankers
The silent messengers
The nature of evidence
Ireland
The DNA of Ireland
Scotland
The Picts
The DNA of Scotland
Wales
The DNA of Wales
England
Saxons, Danes, Vikings and Normans
The DNA of England
The blood of the Isles
‘About 24,000 years ago the temperatures in the northern latitudes around the globe, including the Isles, began to drop as the planet entered once again into the downward phase of a glacial cycle. These regular cycles of bitter cold and comparative mildness have been going on for at least 2 million years. They are caused by the slight shifts in the way the earth rotates and moves in its orbit around the sun…’
‘By the time of the coldest phase of the Ice Age, 18,000 years ago, there were no humans left in Britain, or anywhere else in Europe north of the Alps. The descendants of the Red Lady and their contemporaries had retreated to refuges in southern France, Italy and Spain…The warmth of the sun returned to northern latitudes and the ice began to melt. Our ancestors followed the herds north from their huddled refuges as the frozen land began to thaw.’
‘Most important of all, there was dry land connecting Britain to continental Europe. This was no narrow causeway, but a wide rolling plain joining eastern Britain to the rest of Europe from the Tyne in the north to Beachy Head near Eastbourne in the south. The entire southern section of what is now the North Sea was dry land intersected by wide rivers.’
‘The modern historian Norman Davies castigates archaeologists for their over-materialist approach to the past and their disdain for myth. I am on his side. While no one would be foolish enough to suggest that they are entirely accurate in every detail, myths have a very long memory. They are also extremely influential.’
Sykes cites an 1867 lead article in The Times (London) faulting the Welsh language for locking Wales in general backwardness and ignorance, as opposed to the progress-guaranteeing English. It reminded me of the PSOE/FSA’s contempt for the Asturian and Galician languages, pre-supposing that Castilian Spanish is superior: ‘The Welsh language is the curse of Wales. Its prevalence, and the ignorance of English have excluded, and even now exclude, the Welsh people from the civilization of their English neighbours…it is simply a foolish interference with the natural progress of civilization and prosperity.’
He cites the case of an Australian woman named Janet, whose family originally came from the Scottish island of Harris: ‘The intense spirituality of the Australian Aborigine, the connection to ancestors and the homeland, is in a muted form reflected in the search for Celtic roots. Displaced by the invader and forced to the margins before being forced into exile overseas, the Celt is perceived to be the British –or even the European- aboriginal. She continues, ‘to have Celtic roots is to demonstrate that one also has a rich, tribal heritage rooted deeply within a landscape that is both mystical and mythical’.’
‘We are taught nothing of the vigorous culture and the technological achievements of the Atlantic seaboard, the coastline stretching from North Africa in the south 2,000 miles to Shetland off the north coast of Scotland and beyond to Scandinavia. But this Atlantic zone has a prehistory as ancient and as colorful as any in the Mediterranean.’
‘But the most dramatic examples of continuity along the Atlantic zone are the great stone monuments, the megaliths, which rise from the ground from Orkney and Lewis in the north to Spain and Portugal in the south. These are a purely Atlantic phenomenon, owing nothing at all to the Mediterranean world. Could it be that it was by this route that the Celts of the Isles first arrived?
I will post more citations from Bryan Sykes’ book later. This is just a teaser…