Quote by Brian Sykes

“When I thought of my ancestors, if I thoughts of them at all, as some sort of vague and amorphous collection of dead people with no solid connection to me or the modern world and certainty no real relevance to either. It was interesting enough to read about the Cro Magnons got up to all those years ago but nothing much to do with me. But once I had realised through genetics that one of my ancestors was actually there taking part is was no longer merely interesting it is overwhelming. DNA is the messenger to luminate that connection, handed down generation to generation, carried, literally, in the bodies of my ancestors. Each message traces a journey through time and space, a journey made by the long lines that springs from the ancestral mothers. We will never know all the details of these journeys over thousands of years and thousands of miles, but we can at least imagine them. I am on a stage. Before me, in the dim light are all who have ever lives are lined up - rank upon rank, stretching far into the distance. They make no sound that I can hear but they are talking to each other. I have in my hand the end of a 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. Their faces stand out from the crowd and they are illuminated by a strange light. These are my ancestors. I recognise my grandmother in the front row, but the faces in the generations behind her are unfamiliar to me. I look down the line. The women do not all look the same. Some are tall, some are short, some are beautiful, some are plain, some look wealthy, others poor. I want to ask them each in turn about their lives, their hopes, their disappointments, their joys and their sacrifices. I speak but they cannot hear. I feel a strong connection. These are all my mothers who passed this precious message from one to another through a thousand births, a thousand screams, a thousand embraces, a thousand new born babies. The thread becomes an umbilical cord. A thousand rows back stands Tara herself, the ancestral mother of my clan. She pulls on the cord. In the great throng, a million ancestors feel the tug in lines that radiate out from her source.”

Quote by Brian Sykes