DNA USA: A Genetic Portrait of America

This book changes our understanding of history, and history buffs will find it rewarding, so long as they don’t mind revising long-held views. Bryan Sykes uses the record of the past written in DNA – ““the language of the genes” -- to trace human settlement and the blending of different ancestries to create modern America. Sykes is professor of human genetics at Oxford and one of the world’s leading genetic anthropologists.

Genetic history starts in the original ancestral homelands from which Americans have come. Anthropologists have debated for generations about how long ago the first migrants arrived in America. Genetics provides a new type of evidence about that arrival. DNA in bones and teeth can survive for thousands of years, even if not completely intact.

Genetic reconstruction of the past relies on a much simpler piece of DNA than a complete genome: mitochondrial DNA (mDNA), which have qualities making them most useful in exploring human evolution. This mDNA is inherited down only one line of ancestors – from mothers -- so every man, woman and child’s mDNA is inherited from his or her mother, who inherits it from her mother.

Sykes explains that individual mDNA sequences tend to fall into distinct clusters, and each cluster has one matrilineal ancestor. In Sykes’ earlier book, The Seven Daughters of Eve, he concludes that there are seven clusters among Europeans. This means native Europeans are almost all descended from only seven women whom, Sykes calculated, lived between 10,000-45,000 years ago.

Sykes’ analysis of mDNA indicates Native Americans did not descend from a single migration of a small band of people but from four founding mothers between 15,800 -19,600 years ago. Three of the clusters had similar sequences, but the fourth was more distinct. Clusters A,C & D originated in northeast Asia in present day Siberia, where A,C & D are common -- but cluster B isn’t found. The Siberians originated in Central Asia, not from China.

Cluster B is not found among the Eskimo, but is common among the Natives from Central and South America, as well as in North America from Vancouver Island south. B shares maternal ancestry with the Polynesians of the Cook Islands. The first Polynesians came to the Cook Islands across the Pacific from the Indonesian islands about 3,000 years ago. The founder population was from Taiwan, and Founding mother B arrived in America by boat across the Pacific.

Several years after the discovery of four main clusters, signs of a fifth were found among some American Indian tribes; it was dubbed Cluster X and the mystery is its origin. Cluster X has its highest frequency among the Ojibwa, but is also found among the Sioux, the Yakima and the Navajo. Cluster X has been in America for 15,800 years. It is found only in North America, but not in Alaska or Siberia. Cluster X is found, however, in Europe where it’s a minor cluster, averaging five percent.

European ancestry was also indicated by the discovery in 1998 of a 9,300-year-old skeleton at Kennewick, Washington, whose skull and reconstructed face appeared European, bearing an uncanny resemblance to the British actor Patrick Stewart; no DNA was recovered, however.

One barrier to genetic testing is that Native American tradition teaches they have always lived here, so research suggesting they descended from migrants challenges their sacred traditions. This had led to Native American resistance to such DNA research using their DNA.

Speaking of sacred cows, Sykes tiptoes around the touchy issue of race and genetics. He can’t very well deny that race and ethnicity have something to do with genes, yet he resists any genetic definition of race.

“After all,” he writes, “it is true that most African-Americans do carry more African DNA than European Americans. And Ashkenazi Jews are more likely to be members of the clan of Katrine than the average native European. But the correspondence is far too weak in individual cases for accurate assignment.” Sykes concludes that he had “not gotten anywhere near ‘solving” the relationship between genetics and race. There is no “solution.” (pgs. 304, 316)

Suspicions about racial definitions have prevented the kind of genetic solution to sickle cell anemia that has worked so well with Tay-Sachs in the USA. One in 500 black babies in the US is born with sickle-cell disease. Genetic screening could greatly reduce the disease, as it has with Tay-Sachs disease among American Jews.

DNA USA contains a variety of fascinating findings such as these:

• Whites from New England typically had no ancestry from Asia or Africa, while whites from the South often had some African roots.

• African-Americans have much less uniform profiles than the whites, with all African-American volunteers showing some European and Native American ancestries.

• The genetic bedrock of the British Isles is fundamentally Celtic overlaid with a thin topsoil of Saxons and Vikings, nowhere more than 20 percent.

• Most diseases with a genetic component have many genes involved; e.g. there is no single asthma gene. On the other hand, asthma is far more frequent among Puerto Ricans than Mexicans, suggesting the possibility that genetic differences matter.

• The controversy about whether Thomas Jefferson fathered a child with his slave, Sally Hemmings, was settled in 1998 by comparing the Y chromosome in descendants of Sally’s son with the Y from Jefferson’s male descendants and finding a match.

• Ninety-seven percent of African Americans have inherited an African mitochondrial lineage from their mothers. By contrast, about 50 percent of African-American men have a European Y chromosome. The Y is inherited from male ancestors.

• Mexican men typically have mDNA from one of the Native American clans, but more than half also carry a distinctly European Y chromosome.

• “Mitrochondrial Eve” is the woman from whom we are all maternally descended. She lived about 170,000 years ago in East Africa. Though she had counterparts, she is the only woman to have matrilineal descendants who survived to today.

• Indian tribes typically define membership by “blood quantum,” i.e. by having a certain percentage of Indian ancestry to qualify, with each tribe deciding the percentage. They seek genealogical evidence, but reject genetic testing. Overall, however, the American genealogy community has quickly embraced genetics. Genealogy focuses on the Y chromosome.

Speaking of genealogy, Sykes has started a for-profit firm, OxfordAncestors.com. "Discover your ancestral mother," he advertises. For $220 he'll trace your DNA (actually, a particular set of your specialized mitochondrial DNA) back to one of the seven Stone Age women who are the ancestors in the all-female line of 95 percent of all white Europeans.

Genetic evidence contradicts tribal traditions and other inveterate beliefs, but it allows us a more accurate view of history. ###

This is the most recent book on genetics by Sykes. I have now read all of his books on this sugject and found each of them as informative and entertaining as previous ones. In addition to this one being another excellent tour of genetics and geneaology it is also a travel log of sorts since his analysis of the genetic history of the USA took him many places to talk about his findings but also on his continuing research for linkages between individual human families and the rest of those among whom they may have wandered, let alone married or left progeny.

In this case his searches begin with some anthropological mysteries of the early humans settling the American continent (The Point of Clovis). This early investigation leads him to conclude a somewhat different prehistory of the continent than general opinion. He finds perhaps four human movements converged as first inhabitants of the North American Continent. Of the four mitochondrial clusters he studies a familiar conclusion emerges supporting movement of peoples across the Bering Sea from northeastern Asia but a fourth group perhaps originating in the far east coming here across the Pacific Ocean.

Since I appreciate his writings related to my own investigations into my past in believing there may have been more than one strain of ancient human on this continent, I am encouraged to regard, perhaps fantasize is a better word, my distant ancestral past as including those before my personal recorded history beginning in Norway. Having gone as far back as the 1500’s I try to imagine how some even earlier ancestors may have come from the far east during the great migrations of 400 to 600 AD. And then to imagine them moving across the northern parts of the Euro-Asian continent to arrive at the northernmost parts of Scandanavia.

Since there are no conclusive answers from such a distant past, his writing is in the form of mysteries he is compelled to solve one way or another. In the process he takes us along on his mental and physical journeys while exploring our ancient history in a geological era immediately following the last ice age about twelve thousand years ago. In the process of this exploration he outlines scenarios of probable behavior of those early inhabitants wandering a new continent of America. These mysteries he relates to contemporary inhabitants whose maladies in the present, such as diabetes among Indians of the Southwest, traceable with a probability to early habits of eating dominated by foods conducive to evolving as a specific physical condition requiring medical treatment. One logical conclusion to our past and its effect on our present diets.

He creates imaginative scenarios in his travles that come across as just short of fictional accounts as to how artifacts were left behind as clues to his continuing investigations. These little scenarios contribute both an intriguing sense of the reader being there as a fictional observer but stories conclude with probable histories of earliest ancestors. In this he writes in a manner similar to Peter Ward a palentologist whose scientific journeys around the world are presented as though ‘you are there’ witnessing how ancient ancestors may have behaved and in what physical circumstance they may have been as geological eras came and went.

By Chapter five he reaches northern Europe and my specific interests in Scandinavian geneaology. Soon thereafter he moves on to Scotland and the biggest gathering regarding common surnames of almost fifty thousand people from around the world. Next he quickly moves to Jewish and Negro genetic history in the USA. Then follows his travels to meet personally with families and geneaological groups throughout the USA, hence the title “DNA USA”. To the end of the book his travels in the USA are both informative and entertaining. Among those he visits are contemporary families whose traditions date back to the Pilgrim Fathers and early Indian tribes.

He leaves the reader with some research resources in appendices. There are charts of genetic clusters identified for Native Americans tied back to his seven daughters of Eve as described in his prior book of the same name. Next he presents the chromosomal signatures of the McDonald clan and finally the 146 genes related to individual human bodily functions.
All in all this is a good reference book as well as simply entertaining and informative reading.

DNA USA has a lot of interesting information, but is more limited than the title suggests. Part of the book is a travelogue of the author's train trip across the US. A good deal is about Native Americans (Indians), which notes that most Native Americans have some European DNA, but probably via Siberia, not from prehistoric immigration directly from Europe. There are also studies of African-American and Jewish Americans.. There are interesting chapters on the Scottish clans, though this is not directly connected to the USA. As far as DNA testing of Americans of European descent, the author mostly concentrated on New England blue-bloods, a tiny and intermarried minority even in New England. There was little from the "heartland" of the mid-west and very little from the South, which might reveal a large Scottish, Scotch-Irish,and Welsh content. Other melting pots like Pennsylvania or New Jersey are also neglected The other fault is the author's constant need to be politically correct, for fear of offending various minority groups . Nonetheless, and interesting read but only a beginning of "a genetic portrati of America" -- we do not yet have a wide study of DNA USA

My wife purchased this book for me on Amazon, knowing that I have been designated the family ancestry expert by dint of inheriting a 175-year-old trunk of documentary testimonies to my forebears' lives going back into the seventeenth century. I found the book very educational on several fronts. First is the pleasant surprise of the author's, Bryan Sykes', literarily sophisticated writing style. Imaginative and elucidative metaphors and similes abound (just read the Preface for an exemplary sample). Second is the constantly manifest erudition. Sykes' knowledge is indeed a wonder, and not only in the field of human genetics. Philosophy, Literature, Languages, Cultural History, Politics...you name it, he's more than ordinarily conversant in it. And third is his commitment to showing us all, through diverse historic relations of our own American culture that many of us have remained oblivious to, that WE ARE ALL RELATED and that all the people we consider "others" are really our brothers and sisters and cousins and that their situations merit our tolerance if not our sympathy. Finally, there are all the diverse places in our country that he visits with his wife and son...crossing the country by train, first from east to west, then from west to east, with several circular junkets interspersed...listing numerous fascinating people...their tribes, groups, parties, organizations, businesses, and courses of advocacy. I have now recommended this book to a wide range of my friends and acquaintances because I believe that reading this book about the genetics of America can make one a better, brighter, kinder and more tolerant American. Thanks so very much, Prof. Sykes. --Lee B. Croft

Having read Bryan Sykes previous books, I find this closer in narrative style to his first book,
Seven Daughters, and thus more interesting to read than later books laden with DNA statistics.
However, it is also more like a travelogue of his trip across USA and not as absorbing to those of us
who are already familiar with travel across the country.

I was a little disappointed. I love Bryan Sykes and have read everything that he has written. However, on this subject, the USA, he only discussed the Native American and African American and sort of left the rest of us to fend for ourselves. I enjoyed what he wrote about both groups but was left with the feeling that that was the sum total of America. There was little to no research about the millions of others living in this country, including me, a Southerner.

Although a fan of his work THIS one stopped me at the first chapter and set my teeth on edge. He recounts meeting the British Museum Director, Neil McGregor, who later is referred to as DR. McGregor. On the same page, Jill Cook, curator of North American collections, (WHO IS ALSO A PH.D.) is subsequently referred to as "Jill." Not Dr. Cook.
Really, Bryan?

The title of this book caught my immediate attention. I have read The Seven Daughter's of Eve; Adam's Curse; and Saxons, Vikings, and Celts. I find Bryan Sykes to be an excellent author, combining fact with history and even humor. He is able to choose from the importance of his research, yet able to make it understandable for the "average" person. I find his subjects extremely interesting and want to know still more. I will purchase every book he writes!

This is a nicely written and interesting review of patterns of genetics in America. Perhaps the best feature of this book is the innovative data visualization scheme showing dna patterns with examples from different ethnic groups. Thus one can see at a glance the relative influence of different ancestries, e.g. northern European, African, etc, in modern Americans.

Every word Bryan Sykes writes is worth reading, and so is this book if you are looking for a scientific book made accessible to a non-scientific mind! Thanks and will be looking forward to his Next Book!