Saturday, August 6, 2016

Myths of British ancestry | Our ancestors were Basques, not Celts

Myths of British ancestry

Mountains of the Basque country ©Iñaki LLM
Mountains of the Basque country ©Iñaki LLM
Read Stephen Oppenheimer’s follow-up to this article here, in the June 2007 edition of Prospect, as he answers some of the many comments and queries readers have sent in response to his analysis. You can also find out more about his work here, at the Bradshaw Foundation website.

The fact that the British and the Irish both live on islands gives them a misleading sense of security about their unique historical identities. But do we really know who we are, where we come from and what defines the nature of our genetic and cultural heritage? Who are and were the Scots, the Welsh, the Irish and the English? And did the English really crush a glorious Celtic heritage?
Everyone has heard of Celts, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. And most of us are familiar with the idea that the English are descended from Anglo-Saxons, who invaded eastern England after the Romans left, while most of the people in the rest of the British Isles derive from indigenous Celtic ancestors with a sprinkling of Viking blood around the fringes.
Yet there is no agreement among historians or archaeologists on the meaning of the words “Celtic” or “Anglo-Saxon.” What is more, new evidence from genetic analysis (see note below) indicates that the Anglo-Saxons and Celts, to the extent that they can be defined genetically, were both small immigrant minorities. Neither group had much more impact on the British Isles gene pool than the Vikings, the Normans or, indeed, immigrants of the past 50 years.
The genetic evidence shows that three quarters of our ancestors came to this corner of Europe as hunter-gatherers, between 15,000 and 7,500 years ago, after the melting of the ice caps but before the land broke away from the mainland and divided into islands. Our subsequent separation from Europe has preserved a genetic time capsule of southwestern Europe during the ice age, which we share most closely with the former ice-age refuge in the Basque country. The first settlers were unlikely to have spoken a Celtic language but possibly a tongue related to the unique Basque language.
Another wave of immigration arrived during the Neolithic period, when farming developed about 6,500 years ago. But the English still derive most of their current gene pool from the same early Basque source as the Irish, Welsh and Scots. These figures are at odds with the modern perceptions of Celtic and Anglo-Saxon ethnicity based on more recent invasions. There were many later invasions, as well as less violent immigrations, and each left a genetic signal, but no individual event contributed much more than 5 per cent to our modern genetic mix.
Many myths about the Celts
Celtic languages and the people who brought them probably first arrived during the Neolithic period. The regions we now regard as Celtic heartlands actually had less immigration from the continent during this time than England. Ireland, being to the west, has changed least since the hunter-gatherer period and received fewer subsequent migrants (about 12 per cent of the population) than anywhere else. Wales and Cornwall have received about 20 per cent, Scotland and its associated islands 30 per cent, while eastern and southern England, being nearer the continent, has received one third of its population from outside over the past 6,500 years. These estimates, set out in my book The Origins of the British, come from tracing individual male gene lines from continental Europe to the British Isles and dating each one (see box at bottom of page).
If the Celts were not our main aboriginal stock, how do we explain the wide historical distribution and influence of Celtic languages? There are many examples of language change without significant population replacement; even so, some people must have brought Celtic languages to our isles. So where did they come from, and when?
The orthodox view of the origins of the Celts turns out to be an archaeological myth left over from the 19th century. Over the past 200 years, a myth has grown up of the Celts as a vast, culturally sophisticated but warlike people from central Europe, north of the Alps and the Danube, who invaded most of Europe, including the British Isles, during the iron age, around 300 BC.
Central Europe during the last millennium BC certainly was the time and place of the exotic and fierce Hallstatt culture and, later, the La Tène culture, with their prestigious, iron-age metal jewellery wrought with intricately woven swirls. Hoards of such jewellery and weapons, some fashioned in gold, have been dug up in Ireland, seeming to confirm central Europe as the source of migration. The swirling style of decoration is immortalised in such cultural icons as the Book of Kells, the illuminated Irish manuscript (Trinity College, Dublin), and the bronze Battersea shield (British Museum), evoking the western British Isles as a surviving remnant of past Celtic glory. But unfortunately for this orthodoxy, these artistic styles spread generally in Europe as cultural fashions, often made locally. There is no evidence they came to Britain and Ireland as part of an invasion.
Many archaeologists still hold this view of a grand iron-age Celtic culture in the centre of the continent, which shrank to a western rump after Roman times. It is also the basis of a strong sense of ethnic identity that millions of members of the so-called Celtic diaspora hold. But there is absolutely no evidence, linguistic, archaeological or genetic, that identifies the Hallstatt or La Tène regions or cultures as Celtic homelands. The notion derives from a mistake made by the historian Herodotus 2,500 years ago when, in a passing remark about the “Keltoi,” he placed them at the source of the Danube, which he thought was near the Pyrenees. Everything else about his description located the Keltoi in the region of Iberia.
The late 19th-century French historian Marie Henri d’Arbois de Jubainville decided that Herodotus had meant to place the Celtic homeland in southern Germany. His idea has remained in the books ever since, despite a mountain of other evidence that Celts derived from southwestern Europe. For the idea of the south German “Empire of the Celts” to survive as the orthodoxy for so long has required determined misreading of texts by Caesar, Strabo, Livy and others. And the well-recorded Celtic invasions of Italy across the French Alps from the west in the 1st millennium BC have been systematically reinterpreted as coming from Germany, across the Austrian Alps.
De Jubainville’s Celtic myth has been deconstructed in two recent sceptical publications: The Atlantic Celts: Ancient People or Modern Invention by Simon James (1999), and The Celts: Origins, Myths and Inventions by John Collis (2003). Nevertheless, the story lingers on in standard texts and notably in The Celts, a Channel 4 documentary broadcast in February. “Celt” is now a term that sceptics consider so corrupted in the archaeological and popular literature that it is worthless.
This is too drastic a view. It is only the central European homeland theory that is false. The connection between modern Celtic languages and those spoken in southwest Europe during Roman times is clear and valid. Caesar wrote that the Gauls living south of the Seine called themselves Celts. That region, in particular Normandy, has the highest density of ancient Celtic place-names and Celtic inscriptions in Europe. They are common in the rest of southern France (excluding the formerly Basque region of Gascony), Spain, Portugal and the British Isles. Conversely, Celtic place-names are hard to find east of the Rhine in central Europe.
Given the distribution of Celtic languages in southwest Europe, it is most likely that they were spread by a wave of agriculturalists who dispersed 7,000 years ago from Anatolia, travelling along the north coast of the Mediterranean to Italy, France, Spain and then up the Atlantic coast to the British Isles. There is a dated archaeological trail for this. My genetic analysis shows exact counterparts for this trail both in the male Y chromosome and the maternally transmitted mitochondrial DNA right up to Cornwall, Wales, Ireland and the English south coast.
Further evidence for the Mediterranean origins of Celtic invaders is preserved in medieval Gaelic literature. According to the orthodox academic view of “iron-age Celtic invasions” from central Europe, Celtic cultural history should start in the British Isles no earlier than 300 BC. Yet Irish legend tells us that all six of the cycles of invasion came from the Mediterranean via Spain, during the late Neolithic to bronze age, and were completed 3,700 years ago.

Anglo-Saxon ethnic cleansing?
The other myth I was taught at school, one which persists to this day, is that the English are almost all descended from 5th-century invaders, the Angles, Saxons and Jutes, from the Danish peninsula, who wiped out the indigenous Celtic population of England.
The story originates with the clerical historians of the early dark ages. Gildas (6th century AD) and Bede (7th century) tell of Saxons and Angles invading over the 5th and 6th centuries. Gildas, in particular, sprinkles his tale with “rivers of blood” descriptions of Saxon massacres. And then there is the well-documented history of Anglian and Saxon kingdoms covering England for 500 years before the Norman invasion.
But who were those Ancient Britons left in England to be slaughtered when the legions left? The idea that the Celts were eradicated—culturally, linguistically and genetically—by invading Angles and Saxons derives from the idea of a previously uniformly Celtic English landscape. But the presence in Roman England of some Celtic personal and place-names doesn’t mean that all ancient Britons were Celts or Celtic-speaking.
The genocidal view was generated, like the Celtic myth, by historians and archaeologists over the last 200 years. With the swing in academic fashion against “migrationism” (seeing the spread of cultural influence as dependent on significant migrations) over the past couple of decades, archaeologists are now downplaying this story, although it remains a strong underlying perspective in history books.
Some geneticists still cling to the genocide story. Research by several genetics teams associated with University College London has concentrated in recent years on proving the wipeout view on the basis of similarities of male Y chromosome gene group frequency between Frisia/north Germany and England. One of the London groups attracted press attention in July by claiming that the close similarities were the result of genocide followed by a social-sexual apartheid that enhanced Anglo-Saxon reproductive success over Celtic.
The problem is that the English resemble in this way all the other countries of northwest Europe as well as the Frisians and Germans. Using the same method (principal components analysis, see note below), I have found greater similarities of this kind between the southern English and Belgians than the supposedly Anglo-Saxon homelands at the base of the Danish peninsula. These different regions could not all have been waiting their turn to commit genocide on the former Celtic population of England. The most likely reason for the genetic similarities between these neighbouring countries and England is that they all had similar prehistoric settlement histories.
When I looked at exact gene type matches between the British Isles and the continent, there were indeed specific matches between the continental Anglo-Saxon homelands and England, but these amounted to only 5 per cent of modern English male lines, rising to 15 per cent in parts of Norfolk where the Angles first settled. There were no such matches with Frisia, which tends to confirm a specific Anglo-Saxon event since Frisia is closer to England, so would be expected to have more matches.
When I examined dates of intrusive male gene lines to look for those coming in from northwest Europe during the past 3,000 years, there was a similarly low rate of immigration, by far the majority arriving in the Neolithic period. The English maternal genetic record (mtDNA) is consistent with this and contradicts the Anglo-Saxon wipeout story. English females almost completely lack the characteristic Saxon mtDNA marker type still found in the homeland of the Angles and Saxons. The conclusion is that there was an Anglo-Saxon invasion, but of a minority elite type, with no evidence of subsequent “sexual apartheid.”
The orthodox view is that the entire population of the British Isles, including England, was Celtic-speaking when Caesar invaded. But if that were the case, a modest Anglo-Saxon invasion is unlikely to have swept away all traces of Celtic language from the pre-existing population of England. Yet there are only half a dozen Celtic words in English, the rest being mainly Germanic, Norman or medieval Latin. One explanation is that England was not mainly Celtic-speaking before the Anglo-Saxons. Consider, for example, the near-total absence of Celtic inscriptions in England (outside Cornwall), although they are abundant in Ireland, Wales, Scotland and Brittany.
Who was here when the Romans came?
So who were the Britons inhabiting England at the time of the Roman invasion? The history of pre-Roman coins in southern Britain reveals an influence from Belgic Gaul. The tribes of England south of the Thames and along the south coast during Caesar’s time all had Belgic names or affiliations. Caesar tells us that these large intrusive settlements had replaced an earlier British population, which had retreated to the hinterland of southeast England. The latter may have been the large Celtic tribe, the Catuvellauni, situated in the home counties north of the Thames. Tacitus reported that between Britain and Gaul “the language differs but little.”
The common language referred to by Tacitus was probably not Celtic, but was similar to that spoken by the Belgae, who may have been a Germanic people, as implied by Caesar. In other words, a Germanic-type language could already have been indigenous to England at the time of the Roman invasion. In support of this inference, there is some recent lexical (vocabulary) evidence analysed by Cambridge geneticist Peter Forster and continental colleagues. They found that the date of the split between old English and continental Germanic languages goes much further back than the dark ages, and that English may have been a separate, fourth branch of the Germanic language before the Roman invasion.
Apart from the Belgian connection in the south, my analysis of the genetic evidence also shows that there were major Scandinavian incursions into northern and eastern Britain, from Shetland to Anglia, during the Neolithic period and before the Romans. These are consistent with the intense cultural interchanges across the North sea during the Neolithic and bronze age. Early Anglian dialects, such as found in the old English saga Beowulf, owe much of their vocabulary to Scandinavian languages. This is consistent with the fact that Beowulf was set in Denmark and Sweden and that the cultural affiliations of the early Anglian kingdoms, such as found in the Sutton Hoo boat burial, derive from Scandinavia.
A picture thus emerges of the dark-ages invasions of England and northeastern Britain as less like replacements than minority elite additions, akin to earlier and larger Neolithic intrusions from the same places. There were battles for dominance between chieftains, all of Germanic origin, each invader sharing much culturally with their newly conquered indigenous subjects.
So, based on the overall genetic perspective of the British, it seems that Celts, Belgians, Angles, Jutes, Saxons, Vikings and Normans were all immigrant minorities compared with the Basque pioneers, who first ventured into the empty, chilly lands so recently vacated by the great ice sheets.
Note: How does genetic tracking work?
The greatest advances in genetic tracing and measuring migrations over the past two decades have used samples from living populations to reconstruct the past. Such research goes back to the discovery of blood groups, but our Y-chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA are the most fruitful markers to study since they do not get mixed up at each generation. Study of mitochondrial DNA in the British goes back over a decade, and from 2000 to 2003 London-based researchers established a database of the geographically informative Y-chromosomes by systematic sampling throughout the British Isles. Most of these samples were collected from people living in small, long-established towns, whose grandparents had also lived there.
Two alternative methods of analysis are used. In the British Y-chromosome studies, the traditional approach of principal components analysis was used to compare similarities between whole sample populations. This method reduces complexity of genetic analysis by averaging the variation in frequencies of numerous genetic markers into a smaller number of parcels—the principal components—of decreasing statistical importance. The newer approach that I use, the phylogeographic method, follows individual genes rather than whole populations. The geographical distribution of individual gene lines is analysed with respect to their position on a gene tree, to reconstruct their origins, dates and routes of movement.
Discuss this article at First Drafts, Prospect’s blog

Related articles

Michelangelo,_Fall_and_Expulsion_from_Garden_of_Eden_01
Anatol Lieven / January 20, 2001
At the turn of the second millennium, humanity seemed set on a steady upward course. How...
Buttermere Lake, with Park of Cromackwater, Cumberland, a Shower, by JMW Turner
Joanna Kavenna / August 20, 2015
Descriptions of the weather tell an important story about English history, argues Joanna...

Comments

  1. g.sylvester
    November 17, 2009 at 20:41
    I enjoyed this article very much.During my working life,I travelled around Europe where my Accent/Origon clashed with the long -held belief that if one is "Irish" one's name should reflect it.I learned that in Germany my name was readily identified as"The Woodsman" & in Sweden as "the Man who came in from the Woods".This might indicate North Europe origon . In Italy however,I was told it was quite common--including a Pope.You can see how enjoyably provocative your Article is.After 75 years you've started the old "Grey Matter" moving again.Thanks, Yours Sincerely,George Sylvester.(52 yrs. in England--and loves it ! )
  2. Jane Walsh
    November 21, 2009 at 10:43
    Oppenheimer's theories are a nonsense and yet another attempt to grab the headlines by re-writing history. One only only has to stand English and Scandinavian people side-by-side to see the striking similarities. This is particularly true among children. A similarity very different when comparing the English with the Southern French, Spanish or Italians.
    1. Karl Aritz
      January 14, 2015 at 04:51
      Your statement is provincial. Just go to Elizondo or Amorebieta in the Basque provinces to see for yourself people like myself that have blue eyes, brown, red or blond hair, freckles, tow head toddlers and men that reach 6 feet to 6 feet 10 inches height. And yes, we have pale white skin with Intelligence Quotion above 125 to 160.
    2. Danny
      November 8, 2015 at 01:34
      "Oppenheimer's theories are a nonsense and yet another attempt to grab the headlines by re-writing history. One only only has to stand English and Scandinavian people side-by-side to see the striking similarities. This is particularly true among children. A similarity very different when comparing the English with the Southern French, Spanish or Italians." The "English" (in fact UK and Irish citizens), are a polyglot of physical appearances--they are not across the board or even mostly tall blondes, as in Scandinavian countries (Norway, Sweden, Denmark) and the Netherlands. The original inhabitants of the UK range in hair colour from brunette (dark), to brown, to red, to blonde, and eye color is just as varied. Having said that--the same that was said about the UK and Irish people can be said about the Spanish and French--they are a mixture of various groups. There are natural blonde's, redheads, blue/green eyed peoples in both Spain and France, and fair skin is even more common in many parts of both these countries. It does NOT detract from the fact that the UK was settled in larger percentages by Scandinavians (compared to Spain or France--although even Spain and France have ancestors who originated in Sweden--the Visigoths and Vandals, and southern Germany/Switzerland--Suevi/Alamanni), but it does indicate that the UK had a much more dynamic immigration/settler pattern from many many sources, rather than just a few. By the by, Celts seem to have their origin in northern Spain (Iberia) where red hair, blue eyes are fairly common. Genetic tracing (which is hard scientific fact) proves this more than anything else.
  3. cpbm
    December 2, 2009 at 15:37
    @Jane Walsh Oppenheimer writes above "Apart from the Belgian connection in the south, my analysis of the genetic evidence also shows that there were major Scandinavian incursions into northern and eastern Britain, from Shetland to Anglia, during the Neolithic period and before the Romans." He clearly acknowledges the Scandinavian influence on the genetics in Great Britain, particularly in the north. Personally, I notice many similar traits among the British and south western Europeans. Take dark curly hair and large noses and there are plenty of darker skinned Englishmen than most people take note of. But of course his genetic study speaks for itself. @g.sylvester Your anectode is very entertaining but is about languages. Oppenheimer's study is on genetics which as he implies might act independently of languages and hence culture. "There are many examples of language change without significant population replacement" The base of the English vocabulary is very closely related to Frisia and northern Germanic tribes.
  4. Trevor Needham
    December 7, 2009 at 08:01
    Far from being nonsense, Stephen Oppenheimer's genetic view of history/pre-history at last takes us beyond the speculative theories previously derived from small and often misleading glimpses through the frustratingly incomplete archeological record. Yes, it may well mean re-writing the history books, and many people will find this hard to swallow. Let's face it, many people are still struggling with Darwinian evolutionary theory 150 years later. But I find it all enormously exciting and I am keeping my eyes and ears, and especially my mind, well and truly open. Thank you Stephen Oppenheimer for a new way of looking at our origins.
  5. mo george
    December 15, 2009 at 10:06
    oppenheimer's theory ignores lots of evidences that have proved a mass migration from Europe indeed took place in the fifth and sixth century....and Bede (7th century)just 100 years after these events took place should be in a good position to describe them.
  6. BJ Mac
    December 20, 2009 at 02:57
    Surely Spanish stereotypes would have had racial mixing with subsaharan and saharan racial types and doing the side by side comparison of childrens features would take no account of this mix. This mixing clearly would clearly be less pronounced with northern europeans from scandnavia. Prejudices are terrible things to erradicate.
  7. John
    December 24, 2009 at 05:36
    i've always been struck by the difference between most Britons from most Scandanavians. As Britain has been in relative genetic isolation for thousands of years it is to be expected to have ended up with its own distinctive looks. As for southern Europeans, which Italians and which Spaniards are you comparing? - go around those countries and you'll be amazed by the regional diversity of looks, and I've seen plenty who would not look out of place in France, Britain or Germany - they just tan well.
  8. Wayne
    January 21, 2010 at 01:41
    Genetic is a very fascinating way of classifying people and their migrations. I have been studying Celtic history as a specialist subject for most of my adult life and so feel quite qualified to speak on the matter. One thing I have noticed regarding all these genetic studies which are currently being undertaken, is that when dealing with ancient groups such as the Celts the first mistake that is made is that you are searching for a \race\. I doubt that in a period even as far back as the neolithic that many isloted races existed by then. What the studies prove is that ultimately most people are descended from various general stocks. However witin each stock unique cultures and languages may occur whic are then shared and sipersed from the point of origin (s). It is much like one street developing decorating styles that differ from their neighbours despite the fact that genetically there isnt much difference. Therefore it is, and has always has been a waste of time to try and prove or disprove racial differences between Europe and British Islanders. A blackbird comes from the same ancestor as the emu - ultimately but they dont sing or even act the same. Celtic migration into Britain and Ireland cannot be therfore disproved or proved by genetics as a reliable migration indicator in my opinion. Your work confirms a common heritage of ANCIENT ancestry but these results are way to old to relate to a bronze age and iron age culture.
  9. Sakara Gold
    January 28, 2010 at 15:54
    A brilliant article, well researched and entirely believable. And there I was thinking that the Romans had slaughtered the inhabitants of south-eastern Britain after the Boudicca Revolt to prevent a repetition and had re-populated the countryside with saxon mercenaries. Who were the barbarians, the Celts or the Romans!
  10. Linda Dale Burns
    February 28, 2010 at 03:23
    Having just received my results from the Megamtdna testing from the Genographic Projects Family Tree DNA, I find this article very interesting. My mothers family immigrated to the U.S. in 1922 from Northumberland, England, having lived there as far back as I have been able to go in the 1600's. Her grandfather came from Sussex tho. It was said he was of ancient French descent. My mother and her sister and the grandfather are very dark haired, tanning darkly with large Roman noses. Our mtdna is J2b1a1. Some female family names were Carmichael, Cole, Fail, McKenzie, Johnson. We look more Basque or Mediterranean than Germanic.
  11. chris jones
    March 15, 2010 at 02:41
    what a typically arrogant english historian!! i switched off when he described england as england.england obvioulsy didnt exist at this time,it was just britain.as a historian he really should have got the basics right.this is typically pompous and speculative work with no hard evidence
    1. Danny
      November 8, 2015 at 01:09
      Doing genotyping IS evidence. Genetic analysis is about as solid scientific evidence as you can find.
  12. JC Loach
    April 4, 2010 at 16:15
    I found Stephen Oppenheimer's article fascinating, quite a change from academia's tendency to rely upon the assumption that what they were taught at university is indisputable 'fact', much like the Victorian scientists who stated as fact that gorillas did not exist. One minor note, Britain is named for the Roman name for the British Isles, Britannia, so 'Britain' wouldn't have existed in the dim and distant either. I would assume that the word England was used in order to allow Mr Oppenheimer to specify in simple terms where he was talking about.
  13. markus wallett
    April 20, 2010 at 22:58
    If the ancestors of the English were in the minority, then the British tongue (Welsh) would have prevailed over 3 or 4 generations. There's no doubt that there was an indigenous "British" survival when the Germanic invaders came over in waves between the fifth and seventh centuries and carved themselves out a country called England, but I think the British population numbers were small. The only way to solve this is to test every white member of the population in the UK, then we'll know for sure.
  14. Barry
    May 4, 2010 at 01:37
    Oppenheimer is no geneticist, infact the last i heard he was/is a pediotrician.Oppenheimer says that English as a fourth branch of Germanic could have been spoken in Britain for tens of thousands of years; that clearly is utter nonsence, since proto-Germanic dates to the bronze age.Furthermore he is no historian either, it has been established beyond dispute that the earliest identifiable Celtic culture did first appear in central Europe, there is ample evidence for this. Oppenheimer dismisses myths of Anglo-saxon origins very quickly claiming its all welsh propaganda, yet he seizes on the words of Tacitus and Julius Caesar, whom many would consider more unreliable than Gildas-Bede etc. Its quite possible that some pockets of Germanic speakers were in England in Roman times and indeed late preRoman times, but quite mad to say tens of thousands of years ago. The Romans were in Britain for four hundred years, Latin was the language of the legions and was the language of law and the government, yet for all that, latin did not replace welsh; but we are asked to believe that a tiny minority elite; less sophisticated than the Brits, in less than half the time the Romans were in Britain managed to impose or somehow make their language widespread? utter nonsense.
    1. Michael
      April 28, 2015 at 05:35
      I believe this man has an agenda. As far as I'm concerned his claims are part of a deliberate policy to disenfranchise the native English people, and his study result has more to do with politics than scholarship or genuine research . It's perfectly obvious to me, just by observation, that a large proportion of the people in England and the Scottish borders are of English descent, as has been shown by so many previous scientific studies.
  15. barnstormer
    May 29, 2010 at 20:24
    If the Anglo Saxons were settled in Britain before and during Roman times, how come there are so few Latin borrowings into the language. Welsh is full of Latin borrowings yet Anglo-Saxon - which according to Oppenheimer flourished in the most romanised part of Britain - doesn't. Of course Oppenheimer ignores Sims-Williams' book on Celtic placenames in Europe, surely because it blows his theory out of the water. No doubt his theories appeal to the English nationalists but they don't stand-up to scutiny.
  16. Paul Metcalfe
    May 30, 2010 at 19:15
    Jane Walsh says Oppenheimer's theory is nonsense as you only have to stand English people and Scandinavian people side by side to see the likeness. Firstly away from East Anglia and Lincolnshire more children are not blonde than are. In Scandinavia most children are blonde with higher cheek bones. Secondly you are comparing Mediterranean people with the English. The original Basques were not Mediterranean unlike today where there is a considerable Latin DNA influence.
  17. Michael
    June 25, 2010 at 14:17
    Yes I agree with the findings, truth is where's the evidence of what language people spoke before the Romans, Anglo-Saxons arrived here. It not as though ordinary people wrote things down. The Celts to me are a language, culture not a ethnic group or people. These genes have simply been here a long time and there are genetic similarities across northern Europe. Germanic speakers could of come into Britain at any date. It politics and historical ideas that separate people not genes.
  18. robert
    June 26, 2010 at 15:16
    fascinating article but i am quite amazed at how many people are taking this story as gospel. One, oppenheimer is not a qualified geneticist nor historain, two; 'gene tracing' is still somewhat of a very rudimentary science with various differing opinions and interpretations on the same subject. three; people in this modern climate are so eager to believe on first glance 'evidence' that dispiutes the norm, whether or not this is influenced by modern social-political ideas one can only begin to imagine. Many modern scientists are so eager to dispute historical opinions due to political influences to deny us all a common heritage. according to some the white race doesnt even exsist but is merely caucasian, ignoring completley the fact that outside europe most in the middle east and north africa and caucasus have been 'mongrelised' to use of a better term with african and orientals,but still maintaining there white features. What has this got to do with the above article you may ask; well its has got precisely EVERYTHING to do with it, the fact that common sense,historical and linguistics are ignored in determing heritage and the same misguided moves to deny us our roots. linguistics in a lot of cases are a prominent decider in affirming genetic heritage. but the fact is everyone knows that the ancient british came from the iberian peninsular,whats new??? the oldest myths even state it, but these iberians holed up in the mountains were just the advancement of more 'white' tribes coming in from the east. and germanics were another aspect of these. another notion that hasnt even got a mention here is that the gene pool of the original inhabitants no matter how diluted and assimilated will always remain strong!! thats a fact.. so celts,saxons and angles could of well came over in vast numbers as many historical records state and assimilated with their genetic cousins. many people in england and infact the whole of the british isles look like germans,northern spanish, scandinavians...we all look similar, because we are all from the same originally!!!!ok some mighthave different hair or shapes of faces but we are all vaguely similar... some of the comments here have stated that many english look like southern mediteraneans, and some incling we are as dark? if you ask the majority of spanish they would proclaim temselves as white and tanned but the fact is that many in southern spain and italy notably scilily have got mixed heritage due to north african moors raping and colonizating the population during their invasion.so to compare the english to certain southern med people is ludicrous at best, scandalous at worse. fact is the entire isles are a mixture of celtic and germanic now but still retaining their original neolithic genteic markers, so oppenheimers article is stating what we already know but trying to aggravate what is also fact, that celts and germanics have contributed significantly to our gene pool but not massively over ran it, but due to the fact that they already from the same stock as the neolithics it doesnt really show, apart from innorthern countries where their halotypes regarding hair colour are more significant as they were the original settlers and not their iberian cousins.......common sense tells you we are all the same poeople.....how hard is that to understand

No comments:

Post a Comment