麻豆传媒

In DNA USA, Bryan Sykes probes the melting pot of US genetics

I AM a Canadian, descended mainly from Highland Scots. Despite this bog-standard ancestry, I am irrationally fascinated by clues about where my 鈥減eople鈥� came from. I am not alone: Europeans and Africans are forever laughing at North American visitors in search of their 鈥渞oots鈥�. Well, laugh no longer. After reading this gracefully written book, I know that North American roots are well worth investigating.

Bryan Sykes is a geneticist at the University of Oxford and founder of , a company that traces ancestry. He has also written five books about DNA and humanity. DNA USA covers what DNA tells us about the 鈥渕elting pot鈥� of the US 鈥� and how Americans feel about it.

He starts with a deft exposition of the science, and what DNA says about Native Americans and the main immigrant progenitors in Africa and Europe. MacDonald, the only name that outnumbered mine in our phone book back home, turns out to be Viking.

The second part, mainly about Sykes鈥檚 US travels in search of DNA, is lighter on science. He sums up his findings, not only from the Y chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA that, respectively, reveal paternal and maternal descent, but by categorising genes as typically Asian, European or African.

Many Americans might not be as surprised as Sykes was at the African Americans with Native American DNA or European Y chromosomes, and certainly not by the exclusively European lineage of patrician New Englanders. But he also found Hispanics with Jewish Y chromosomes (grandfathers fleeing the Inquisition), white southerners with African DNA, and tribal leaders with almost no Native American DNA who barred people with plenty from the tribe.

Sykes鈥檚 list is not as complete as the book title suggests. When he refers to 鈥淎sian鈥� DNA, he means 鈥淣ative American鈥� (because it originated in Asia and most resembles modern Asian DNA). Chinese Americans and other more recent Asian arrivals are largely missing from the story.

He notes that research has been hampered by Native Americans鈥� hostility towards genetic investigations into their roots, and finds this is partly because findings conflict with native creation myths. Of course, theirs are not the only creation myths at odds with science in the US 鈥� and more about these sensitivities might have been interesting.

Sykes notes that genes cannot define which tribe you belong to. This can be a pernicious subject 鈥� think 鈥渞ace鈥�. Yet he shows how knowing where your DNA came from can foster a profound sense of identity, especially if slavery obliterated your ancestors鈥� histories. So is DNA identity 鈥� or not? Again, we needed more.

But Sykes stands up his main conclusion beautifully. We are (almost) all little melting pots. Especially Americans.