NEW UK DNA group map: 40% French 30% German 11% Danes 9% Belgian; like AD60

I dunno about this DNA, where did they get it from?

a reply to: tastyrawmeat

I think it was down the back of the sofa and they found it when they were looking for a pen to fill in the Pools coupon with

a reply to: skalla

They do, it also covers things like liking for Coriander.

I don't drink alcohol at all these days but used to moderately, unlike my perhaps Scottish /Irish ancestry, which makes me question my genetics more.

a reply to: theabsolutetruth

Battered marsbar, tennants extra, 60 B & H a day, and copious amounts of heroin? its in the genes.

a reply to: tastyrawmeat

I don't drink, don't like chocolate, avoid sugar, don't smoke, don't take drugs.

I guess I am probably not genetically Scottish /Irish.

a reply to: theabsolutetruth

witchcraft? I hear that there are some strange goings on in the highlands?

a reply to: tastyrawmeat

I grew up in rural Central Scotland, there were weird things going on there, though it was the 70's /80's.

Genetic predisposition to Witchcraft? Perhaps someday that research will be done.

a reply to: skalla

Hmm. A lot more explanations would be cool! It would be good to see further than Europe, but I guess that would be a pretty massive research task and you'd need a lot more samples too. They didn't really go all out on their Scottish research, except the Dal Riadans and the Picts. And surprise be, there's some there.
I'm going to try and find some more on this study.

a reply to: beansidhe

There is more information on the nature article and links to the research documents which are available for purchase or rental, the maps are probably more detailed but can't be downloaded or copied.

I considered it. I might look at the research again at the weekend as I would like to see the map properly, especially the rest of Europe, Scandinavia etc, some of my family are from the white triangle area and it doesn't show on the map.

I don't trust these genetic surveys.

Several have been done now (I know of two earlier ones) and they come up with different results each time.

I definitely remember one of them concluding that the English and Scots were basically Germans, with scant evidence for any Celtic contribution; the suggestion was that the Anglo-Saxons had invaded the country, killing or else driving away the indigenous population, and then simply moved into the vacated areas resulting in 100% replacement!

And now this latest survey with completely different results.

Bah.

Interesting results. I knew that French was the language of the nobles for a while, but I figured it would be mostly German ancestry.

I secretly wish all Americans would take DNA tests. It would finally eradicate most of the racism and nationalism, once people saw that there's no such thing as being "pure" blooded. Lol

a reply to: theabsolutetruth

Thanks for posting this. I posted it on Facebook and got no response. Figures.

Very interesting stuff. These types of genetic studies will probably rewrite a lot of history. Like the one link says: history is written by the victors, archaeology is the study of the wealthy, but genetics is the study of all of us.

a reply to: theabsolutetruth

That's what I thought too, but thought my eyes were playing tricks on me! I'll have a good read of it today, cheers.

a reply to: CJCrawley

I remember a National Geographic one where they looked at the west coast of Ireland (Mayo, I think but maybe not) and concluded that a large percentage came from the Iberian penisula, hence confirming the Milesian stories. I think it depends on the motivations of the researchers as to what they will look for.

originally posted by: beansidhe
a reply to: CJCrawley

I remember a National Geographic one where they looked at the west coast of Ireland (Mayo, I think but maybe not) and concluded that a large percentage came from the Iberian penisula, hence confirming the Milesian stories. I think it depends on the motivations of the researchers as to what they will look for.

I'm not suggesting that geneticists aren't very knowledgeable in their chosen area of expertise, but they need to raise their game because something keeps getting lost in translation.

A national genetic survey should yield results that leave nothing to be desired; if you have say three surveys with three different (even contradictory) sets of results...what are these surveys really worth?

Maybe they should consider much larger population samples, and refrain from extrapolating their findings and pretending that they are linguists and historians. They're not.

I feel frustrated because, once again, we are left guessing about one of the great mysteries of British history - how a Brythonic-speaking country became transformed into an English-speaking one within a few generations.

It's the Dark Ages and we really only have genetic evidence to help us.

a reply to: CJCrawley
Very interesting question but i suspect the answer lies less in genetics and more in social / cultural factors. By this i mean that you are more likely to adopt the language if you don't resent those imposing it. Take the Norman invasion, Norman was kept as the language of the aristocracy and didn't transfer down. Why? Mainly because the population saw the Normans as overlords and tyrants rather than a new leadership. In actualy fact, within a couple of generations it worked the other way round with Norman Lords speaking English and saving the Norman for court.

The Anglo Saxon invasion certainly brought new blood but it also brought Anglo Saxon laws and traditions. This eventually evolved into the Witan which was far more advanced in terms of rights of the common man than other models on offer. Perhaps the earlier Angle versions also offered more than the native alternative at the time?

For such a fascinating period of European history, it is a shame more is not known......it would be nice to deal in facts rather than speculation!

originally posted by: CJCrawley

I feel frustrated because, once again, we are left guessing about one of the great mysteries of British history - how a Brythonic-speaking country became transformed into an English-speaking one within a few generations.

It's the Dark Ages and we really only have genetic evidence to help us.

It's an interesting question, and one i've never seen tackled in any specific sense but then all my books on Ancient Britain and stuff on proto-indo-euro languages are getting a bit old..

I guess the push of Goidelic from Dal Riada and Germanic/Scandi forced those tongues to the fringe, just like the folk who spoke it and they all ended up in Wales, Cornwall, Cumbria and a few isolated pockets.

I grew up in Walsall and was surprised to learn a few years ago that "Wal" compares to the same sound in "Wales" and "Cornwall" meaning more or less "Foreigners" ie British natives from the Saxon point of view, and the town name supposedly roughly translates as "Valley of the native speakers/Britons".

I kind of thought of the tongues of these isles as being pretty mutable - i expect that the Beaker folk/Proto British Celts spoke a different tongue to the older Brits that they wowed with their groovy beer mugs and metal working... and i cant recall if there was supposed to be P/Q difference when later iron age groups from Europe made their way here, but i feel that many communities over time may well have swapped between p and q many times depending on local political changes.

Then i assume many leaned Latin to prosper under Roman rule?

You realise you have just damned me to getting out loads of books and relearning loads of stuff that i didn't realise i had forgotten?

a reply to: CJCrawley

Well just to reiterate, that is a very interesting question! I'm going to have to nitpick though, and argue that this didn't happen in a few generations.
We don't know what the Picts spoke, although there is a convincing argument that it was close to Welsh (so Brythonic). There are similar place names, for example Aber- or Din- (Dun in Scotland) for hill fort etc.
Gaelic is still spoken although it was only 'allowed' after devolution. Before that everywhere was written in English. The Book of Deer (10th c) has footnotes written in Gaelic and this was in prime Pictland, Aberdeen.
Anyway, my point being that these languages appear to have been spoken together -maybe many were bi-lingual? - and over centuries things changed. By the 1600's Gaelic was banned as the Lowland and Highlanders became more separate and without going into too much detail, English was to be taught as the 'proper' language.

So I think politics has much more to do with it than genetics. In saying that, I agree with you that I was hoping for a better understanding of our 'roots'. I think a much bigger sample would be needed or as you say we are just left to guess.

There is further information on the nature.com article as the PDF is being shared free now, though not for download.

www.nature.com...

As usual on boards uninitiated in population genetics, there are some quite remarkably incompetent interpretations of the article (or paper, if anyone even bothered to read it).

originally posted by: dollukka
Interesting Brits are not real Brits after all..

I'm not really sure you have any clue what this paper was about. Obviously Britain was populated by way of somewhere, and that somewhere was, unsurprisingly, from neighbouring (continental) populations. In real terms, it doesn't actually suggest the migrants were 'French' or 'German', necessarily, but that the same population that poured genes into Britain also poured genes into France. A population that was ancestral to, say, Gauls and settlers in Britain would share genes in common with both modern Britons and modern French. The same can be said of some of the German genetic material: some is Anglo-Saxon, some is older and probably relates to aspects of the early peopling of NW Europe.

originally posted by: Kandinsky
There was a TV show about English white supremacists with maybe five varieties and classes of them. One was an aristocrat and one was a Cockney comedian affiliated with the NF. The comedian, all curly black hair and 'swarthy,' had an African ancestor from the mid-19th century lol. The aristocrat faired worse. She had Romany gypsy and Berber Arab in her genetics and was not pleased at all.

The tests were administered by a company known as AncestryByDna in 2006. This was an early (and highly flawed) genetic test, known for its wide margins of statistical error. I remember back in the day when AncestryByDNA came out with its laughable, not remotely peer-reviewed findings that Italians were 11% Native American. As expected, the same test produced high levels of garbage when applied to English people (whom modern ancestry tests, employing hundreds of thousands of SNPs, rather than AncestryByDNA's couple of hundred AIMs, do not find to have exotic ancestry of any nature). The show was premised on the guarantee that the people would be found to be admixed, for political reasons too obvious to bother mentioning. From my viewing hundreds of British people’s genomes, in all likelihood every single person featured on that show would turn up 99.5-100% European on an accurate test, such as 23andMe’s (which usually have no more than 0.5% noise).

Both of them queried science and invoked special pleading to hold on to their notions of being 'pure' white.

If so, then they were correct.

There's a great chance your own lineage includes Mediterranean ancestry and iirc A-blood groups tend to come from the Med basin with the mixture of North African, Latin and Middle-Eastern families.

And

originally posted by: [post=19134932]theabsolutetruth
If I was to guess my heritage it would be Scandi / Med, my surname is linked to a Roman general that ruled an area of Spain and there is definite fair but olive skin and mixed blonde /dark/ reddish hair.

Folk anthropology. It’s always better to leave the tough stuff to people who know what they’re talking about. Nobody whose family has been British for hundreds of years, and hasn’t in some way isolated itself (the only two examples of said genetic isolation being Romany and Ashkenazi), genetically clusters with random non-British populations, regardless of anyone's surname’s origins or blood group or hair colour. It is mathematically impossible, and every genetic PCA anyone has ever seen shows this.

I think a mixture is a good thing as long as it works, widening the gene pool etc.

Everything is a good thing if it works, by definition.

originally posted by: enlightenedservant
I secretly wish all Americans would take DNA tests. It would finally eradicate most of the racism and nationalism, once people saw that there's no such thing as being "pure" blooded. Lol

Ironically, genetic tests show Americans to be less admixed than they wish to be. All white Americans claim Native American ancestry, and the vast majority of American genomes lack it. African Americans have some, but it’s not really a feature of the general white American gene pool. White Americans from Utah are actually used by many professionals as a reference for an unadmixed West Eurasian population.