Bryan Sykes Quotes & Sayings

There's no genetic basis for any kind of rigid ethnic or racial classification ... I'm always asked is there Greek DNA or an Italian gene, but, of course, there isn't ... We're very closely related. — Bryan Sykes

Where Eve chooses to go, Adam is bound to travel. — Bryan Sykes

DNA is the messenger which illuminates that connection,handed down from generation to generation,carried,literally,in the bodies of my ancestors. — Bryan Sykes

Myths have a very long memory. — Bryan Sykes

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

By looking at the details of the DNA, it is possible to chart the flow of your ancestry from your ultimate grandmother to more modern times. — Bryan Sykes

Oral myths are closer to the genetic conclusions than the often ambiguous scientific evidence of archaeology. — 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

Once again confirms that there is no such thing as genetically pure classification into different races. — Bryan Sykes

Are the different species defined by paleontologists - Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis and ourselves, Homo sapiens - all part of the same gene pool or not? — Bryan Sykes

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