Origins the journey of humankind
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. "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. Why should our origins and differences matter? Part of growing up was realizing that they do matter and trying to understand why. 'A wonderful, very readable book, written by an expert: Stephen Oppenheimer explains how our genes hold clues to the origin of our species, and tell the story of how our ancestors colonised the world.' Dr Alice Roberts, University of Bristol, Author of "The Incredible Human Journey".Īs a child, I sometimes wondered why people told jokes about Englishmen, Irishmen, Welshmen and Scotsmen. One migrant group of no more than a few hundred souls was forced out of its homeland by increasing salinity in the Red Sea, some 85,000 years ago, and all non-Africans today can trace their mitochondrial DNA to one woman from this group - the Out-of-Africa Eve. With a systhesis of new genetic, archaeological and climatic evidence, Stephen Oppenheimer challenges the orthodoxy by arguing that all modern non-Africans can be shown to have sprung from a single exodus. But how, when and why we left our motherland was open to question and until very recently most experts believed that many waves of ex-African migration had resulted in a gradual populating of the world. In 1988 Newsweek broke the news that everyone alive on the planet today carries DNA that can be traced back to a single woman living in Africa over 150,000 years ago. Out of Eden has been the subject of a Channel 4 programme of the same name and a Discovery Channel film The Real Eve. Oppenheimer’s paradigm change, using a synthesis of genetics, archaeology, geology and linguistics, has since been endorsed by reviewers in Science. His first book Eden in the East - The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia challenged the orthodox view of the origins of Polynesians as rice farmers from Taiwan and was widely acclaimed. That research subsequently led to his focus on the use of genetic markers to track migrations. This genetic disorder shadowed the spread of Polynesians out to the Pacific. While working in New Guinea in the early 1980’s he was the first to notice anti-malarial protection conferred by -thalassaemia, a mild inherited blood disorder. He is a member of Green College, Oxford University. Author & GeneticistStephen Oppenheimer is a world-recognised expert in the synthesis of DNA studies with archaeological and other evidence to track ancient migrations.