About the Author

Donald N. Yates is a native of Cedartown, Georgia and lives in Longmont, Colorado. He earned a Ph.D. in Classical Studies with an emphasis on Medieval Latin Language and Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1979. He is a member of the Medieval Academy of America. He has taught at St. John's University, University of Notre Dame and University of New Mexico and has published a number of scholarly articles and books. He was a Member of the International Committee on Latin Paleography (Comité International de Paléographie), Paris, from 1978 to 1983. He studied ancient and medieval scripts, epigraphy and paleography under Berthe M. Marti, Daniel Sheerin, Christine I. Eder, Richard H. Rouse and Leonard M. Boyle, OP, Prefect of the Apostolic Vatican Library, among other leading figures in those disciplines. He worked at the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library in Collegeville, Minnesota, the world's largest repository of medieval texts on microfilm, before heading a team of experts at the Medieval Institute at Notre Dame, Indiana, where he led efforts to develop new standards adopted later internationally for cataloguing and describing Latin manuscripts and the varieties of script in which they were produced. A recent book of history is Old World Roots of the Cherokee: How DNA, Ancient Alphabets and Religion Explain the Origins of America's Largest Indian Nation (McFarland 2012). Yates co-authored with Elizabeth Caldwell Hirschman The Early Jews and Muslims of England and Wales: A Genetic and Genealogical History (2014). For more information, visit www.donaldyates.com.