Most histories of the Cherokee nation focus on its encounters with Europeans, its conflicts with the U. S. government, and its expulsion from its lands during the Trail of Tears. This work, however, traces the origins of the Cherokee people to the third century B.C.E. and follows their migrations through the Americas to their homeland in the lower Appalachian Mountains. Using a combination of DNA analysis, historical research, and classical philology, it uncovers the Jewish and Eastern Mediterranean ancestry of the Cherokee and reveals that they originally spoke Greek before adopting the Iroquoian language of their Haudenosaunee allies while the two nations dwelt together in the Ohio Valley. Ten years in the making, this new history of the Cherokee Indians will make you rethink everything you thought you "knew" about them. -- Cherokee DNA Studies Genealogist Donald Yates traces the origins of the Cherokee to an era when their ancestry was formed from Jewish and Eastern Mediterranean roots. For ancient history buffs, it's a fascinating story. -- Western Words Yates detects Cherokee as Greek in an epochal shift of thinking. His momentous book surely will have numerous noteworthy successors. --Prof. Cyclone Covey, Wake Forest University "Demonstrates with considerable scholarship that southeastern Indians blended to an astonishing degree with early European colonists. Yates and his associates have uncovered provocative genetic data showing unequivocally that Cherokees and Melungeons have ancestry from the Mediterranean sphere."-- NEARA Journal "Brings together multiple sources of evidence from different disciplines and fields to offer an argument for the origins of parts of the Cherokee people in the Old World, including Ancient Greece and the Middle East. Many readers throughout American Indian studies, ethnic studies, and interdisciplinary studies in general will find writing in this intersection of science, history, language, and religion engaging and useful." -- American Indian Culture and Research Journal Ten years in the making, this new history of the Cherokee Indians will make you rethink everything you thought you "knew" about them. -- Cherokee DNA Studies Genealogist Donald Yates traces the origins of the Cherokee to an era when their ancestry was formed from Jewish and Eastern Mediterranean roots. For ancient history buffs, it's a fascinating story. -- Western Words Yates detects Cherokee as Greek in an epochal shift of thinking. His momentous book surely will have numerous noteworthy successors. --Prof. Cyclone Covey, Wake Forest University "Demonstrates with considerable scholarship that southeastern Indians blended to an astonishing degree with early European colonists. Yates and his associates have uncovered provocative genetic data showing unequivocally that Cherokees and Melungeons have ancestry from the Mediterranean sphere." -- NEARA Journal "Brings together multiple sources of evidence from different disciplines and fields to offer an argument for the origins of parts of the Cherokee people in the Old World, including Ancient Greece and the Middle East. Many readers throughout American Indian studies, ethnic studies, and interdisciplinary studies in general will find writing in this intersection of science, history, language, and religion engaging and useful." -- American Indian Culture and Research Journal I have been not only surprised but also a little sorry to have arrived at the conclusions I was forced to draw from this personal odyssey. I wish it had been otherwise. I wish that my Cherokee ancestors had turned out to be the numinous, proud figures I knew from tales and textbooks, that their original homeland had ever been the Great Smoky Mountains where my family vacationed and that they were by nature a people who turned their backs on the allurements of technology, physical comfort and material gain to embrace a spiritual life. The reality is that they were more like ancient Greeks, Egyptians and Jews, the acknowledged founders of modern Western civilization. This is not to rob them of any mystery. It should make us both closer and more akin to each other, and it should invite an explosion of new studies. I hope it is the beginning of a more nuanced understanding of our common mysteries, our common diversity and the factors that have made the Cherokees one of the most enduring of all peoples. The ancient Greeks, Phoenicians, Israelites and Egyptians are gone. The Cherokees remain. Donald N. Yates (also published as Donald Panther-Yates) is a genealogist from Georgia, cultural historian and DNA investigator. He is a one-quarter blood Cherokee descendant. Used Book in Good Condition