Bryan Sykes > Quotes

“Myths have a very long memory.”
― Bryan Sykes, Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland

“Oral myths are closer to the genetic conclusions than the often ambiguous scientific evidence of archaeology.”
― Bryan Sykes, Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland

“Where Eve chooses to go, Adam is bound to travel.”
― Bryan Sykes

“Our DNA does not fade like an ancient parchment; it does not rust in the ground like the sword of a warrior long dead. It is not eroded by wind or rain, nor reduced to ruin by fire and earthquake. It is the traveller from an ancient land who lives within us all.”
― Bryan Sykes, The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry

“We are all a complete mixture;yet at the same time,we are all related.Each gene can trace its own journey to a different common ancestor.This is a quite extraordinary legacy that we all have inherited from the people who lived before us.Our genes did not just appear when we were born.They have been carried to us by millions of individual lives over thousands of generations.”
― Bryan Sykes, The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry

“As this book will show, objectively defined races simply do not exist. Even Arthur Mourant realized that fact nearly fifty years ago, when he wrote: 'Rather does a study of blood groups show a heterogeneity in the proudest nation and support the view that the races of the present day are but temporary integrations in the constant process of . . . mixing that marks the history of every living species.' The temptation to classify the human species into categories which have no objective basis is an inevitable but regrettable consequence of the gene frequency system when it is taken too far. For several years the study of human genetics got firmly bogged down in the intellectually pointless (and morally dangerous) morass of constructing ever more detailed classifications of human population groups.”
― Bryan Sykes, The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry

“...Once again confirms that there is no such thing as genetically pure classification into different races.”
― Bryan Sykes, The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry

“DNA is the messenger which illuminates that connection,handed down from generation to generation,carried,literally,in the bodies of my ancestors.”
― Bryan Sykes, The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry

“Ironically, although the Y-chromosome has become synonymous with male aggression, it is intrinsically unstable. Adam is as much cursed as cursing.”
― Bryan Sykes, Adam's Curse: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Destiny

“The gradual colonization of the west from the Irish kingdom of Dál Riata during the first half of the first millennium AD, and the consolidation of their Gaelic kingdom in Scotland following their defeat by the Ui Neill, had an immense cultural impact in Scotland.”
― Bryan Sykes, Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland

“I have in my hand the end of the thread which connects me to my ancestral mother way at the back. I pull on the thread and one woman's face in every generation feeling the tug, looks up at me.”
― Bryan Sykes, The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry

“Again starting with an unusual Y-chromosome, they noticed its occurrence in a related set of surnames that were linked to branches of the Ui Neill, the clan that had held the High Kingship at Tara, and had expelled the Dál Riata to Argyll. The Ui Neill equivalent of Somerled was Niall Noigiallach, better known as Niall of the Nine Hostages, who lived in the second half of the fourth century AD. This was a time when the Romans were beginning to withdraw from mainland Britain. According to legend, Niall raided and harassed western Britain and specialized in capturing and then ransoming high-ranking hostages, hence his soubriquet. His most famous captive was one Succat, who went on to become St Patrick. Niall’s military exploits carried him over the sea to Scotland, where he fought the Picts who were trying to retake the recent Irish colonies of Dalriada. It was during a raid even further afield, in France, that an arrow from the bow of an Irish rival killed Niall on the banks of the River Loire in AD 405. Niall was succeeded in the High Kingship by his nephew, Dathi, his father’s brother’s son. This was typical of the Gaelic tradition of derbhfine, the rules of inheritance that chose the new king from among the direct male relatives of the old. This served to ensure the patrilineal inheritance of the High Kingship itself”
― Bryan Sykes, Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland

“The resulting tree, or phylogram, to use the proper name, again recognised the four main branches (I–IV in the figure on page 17) of modern dog breeds initially published by Wayne and Vilà. The results were fascinating. The fossil dogs on three of the four branches (I, III, IV) of the tree are closely related to modern breeds while the rare fourth, mainly Scandinavian, branch (II) is closest to modern wolves from Sweden and Ukraine. One possible explanation is that dogs on this branch, which include the Norwegian Elkhound and the Jämthund, acquired their mitochondrial DNA from wild wolves in the recent past, after the advent of agriculture.”
― Bryan Sykes, Once a Wolf: The Science Behind Our Dogs' Astonishing Genetic Evolution

“published in 2001, concentrates on tracing our ancestry using the maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA, which also features heavily in The Nature of the Beast. Other books focus on the paternally inherited Y-chromosome and the evolution of sex (Adam’s Curse, 2003), on genealogy and the genetic history of Britain and Ireland (Blood of the Isles, 2006) and America (DNA USA, 2012).”
― Bryan Sykes, The Nature of the Beast: The First Genetic Evidence on the Survival of Apemen, Yeti, Bigfoot and Other Mysterious Creatures into Modern Times

“Avidum genus auricularum.”
― Bryan Sykes, The Nature of the Beast: The First Genetic Evidence on the Survival of Apemen, Yeti, Bigfoot and Other Mysterious Creatures into Modern Times

“The far more dependable Bede, writing from the monastery at Jarrow, completed his Ecclesiastical History of the English People in 731. It is thanks to him that we are able to differentiate between the three tribes of ‘barbarians’, namely Saxons, Angles and Jutes. According to Bede, Jutes from the Jutland peninsula of northern Denmark occupied Kent and the Isle of Wight, while Saxons from Saxony in north-west Germany settled in southern England. They eventually differentiated into the East Saxons, in Essex, the Mid-Saxons farther west (and remembered in the now vanished county of Middlesex) and the West Saxons of Wessex, which was much later divided into Hampshire, Wiltshire and Dorset. The Angles, originally located in Angeln in southern Denmark, between Saxony and Jutland, took over East Anglia, as well as the Midlands, which became Mercia, and Northumbria in the north-east.”
― Bryan Sykes, Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland

“the Roman historian Tacitus, who wrote in AD 98, ‘For myself I accept the view that the people of Germany have never been tainted by intermarriage with other peoples and stand out as a nation peculiar, pure and unique of its kind.’ Luther himself even managed to concoct a genealogy for the Germans right back to Adam, who for Christians like Luther was the father of the human race.”
― Bryan Sykes, Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland

“The final withdrawal of the Roman army, some fifty years later, left England completely undefended and the population unprotected. Four centuries of occupation, during which citizens and slaves alike were forbidden even to carry arms and all weapons and military equipment were in the hands of the army, had left a population unaccustomed to warfare. That is not to say that the population was necessarily completely defenceless. Everyone must have seen this coming, and there were unknown numbers of retired veterans living in the towns and countryside. There may even have been remnants of a command structure at York and around Hadrian’s Wall. The wall was not breached by the Picts, who must, therefore, have taken to the sea to attack the North Sea coasts in the great rising of 367. There were already Germanic settlements in eastern England based on former auxiliary units of the Roman army.”
― Bryan Sykes, Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland

“The Nature of the Beast. I have always been curious about other human species,”
― Bryan Sykes, The Nature of the Beast: The First Genetic Evidence on the Survival of Apemen, Yeti, Bigfoot and Other Mysterious Creatures into Modern Times

“As the dust settles on the controversies still hovering over the timing and location of the transition from wolf to dog, one thing is certain. It all began a very long time ago.”
― Bryan Sykes, Once a Wolf: The Science Behind Our Dogs' Astonishing Genetic Evolution

“It is a weary lament to lay most acts of violence and aggression, from the strictly local to the truly global, squarely at the feet of men. Yet the association is strong and undeniable”
― Bryan Sykes , Adam's Curse: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Destiny

“What began as a declaration of religious independence from Rome transformed over the years into a virulent doctrine of Saxon/Teutonic racial superiority over”
― Bryan Sykes, Saxons, Vikings, and Celts: The Genetic Roots of Britain and Ireland

“clearly both related to branch I European dogs, though the ages of the fossils (1,000 and 8,500 years BP respectively) mean that they must have arrived well before the first European settlement in the fifteenth century. These dogs accompanied the indigenous Native Americans who had arrived earlier from Asia. None, however, had mitochondrial DNA remotely like that from American wolves. This has to mean that Native American dogs were ultimately descended from European and not American wolves.”
― Bryan Sykes, Once a Wolf: The Science Behind Our Dogs' Astonishing Genetic Evolution

“I will leave you to imagine a world without men, but there is one immediate benefit from their extinction. Adam's curse is permanently lifted. Sexual selection disappears, for the simplest of reasons - there are no longer two sexes. Sperm no longer fights sperm for access to eggs. There are no sperm to do battle, no Y-chromosomes to enslave the feminine. The destructive spiral of greed and ambition fuelled by sexual selection diminishes and, as a direct result, the sickness of our planet eases. The world no longer reverberates to the sound of men's clashing antlers and the grim repercussions of private and public warfare.”
― Bryan Sykes, Adam's Curse: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Destiny

“Durante los siguientes días y semanas, la historia del Hombre de Cheddar circuló por todo el mundo. Coincidí con Adrián Targett en un coloquio de televisión. Me dijo que un periódico sensacionalista, famoso por sus fotos de mujeres con los pechos al aire, le había ofrecido una cantidad de cinco cifras (es decir, por lo menos 10.000 libras) por posar en taparrabos de piel junto a su antiguo pariente.”
― bryan sykes