The Genetic Origin of the British By Brian Simpson

In an article by Nicholas Wade, “A United Kingdom? Maybe,” The New York Times, March 6. 2007, at:

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/06/science/06brits.html

Wade says that geneticist have reached a view that the standard view of British history is wrong; that Britain and Ireland are descended from different people, “the Irish from the Celts and the English from the Anglo-Saxons who invaded from northern Europe and drove the Celts to the country’s western and northern fringes.”

Wade gives the alternative view advocated by Stephen Oppenheimer of the University of Oxford, “the principal ancestors of today’s British and Irish populations arrived from Spain about 16,000 years ago speaking a language related to Basque.” Allegedly, there was only minor, insignificant genetic additions from the Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Vikings and Normans. Also quoted in the Wade article is the view of Bryan Sykes, also of Oxford University, who says: “[t]he Saxons, Vikings and Normans had a minor effect, and much less than some of the medieval historical texts wold indicate.” Sykes is author of The Seven Daughters of Eve, and Adam’s Curse, the later which predicts a generic “end of men.” The Y chromosome is supposed to be disintegrating. Well, there goes the human race! I remain unconvinced, as much as feminists may get excited by this thesis.

However, Sykes has also published, Saxons, Vikings and Celts: The Genetic roots of Britain and Ireland, (Norton, New York, 2006), based on a DNA study conducted by Sykes and his Oxford University team and 10,000 volunteers across the United Kingdom. There he tells us that “Genetic dates are not very accurate.” (p. 155) Nevertheless, the genetic analysis goes somewhat against the position of the Wade article. First, the Celts (and this term is vague and ill-defined, he admits), are not related to the Celts who spread to Italy, Greece and Turkey. “The peoples of the Isles who now feel themselves to be Celts have far deeper roots in the Isles than that … their ancestors have been here for several thousand years.” (p. 281) There were a large proportion of Irish Celts who came from Iberia who did join the Mesolithic people who were already there. But, talk of a connection to “Spain” (p. 282) is nonsense. Spain did not exist then, and the whites of Iberia are not the same as the Spanish of today. So, the British people are not Spanish or Mediterranean.

Sykes’ book points out that 10 percent of the men in the south of England are patrilineal descendants of the Saxons and Danes (genetically too close to distinguish), increasing to 15 percent in the north, 20 percent in east Anglia and in the Viking settlements, reaching 42 percent in Shetland and 37 percent in Orkney. (p. 194) Hence, the Saxon and Dane invaders did leave a substantial genetic presence (p. 286), contrary to Wade. And Sykes also states: “England owes very little to Celtic, but almost everything to its Germanic roots.” (p. 260)

However, the work of both Oppenheimer and Sykes has been taken to show that most of Britain’s ancient population arose from the earlier Iberian ice-age migrations in Palaeolithic times.

Nevertheless, as argued in Mark Thomas (et al.), “Evidence for an Apartheid-Like Social Structure in Early Anglo-Saxon England,” Proceedings of the Royal Society Series B, vol. 273, 2006, pp. 2651-2657, Anglo-Saxons, Jutes and Friesians probably replaced around 50 percent of the male lines within a century after the Romans left Britain. The indigenous Britons were at a disadvantage compared to the Anglo-Saxons, and consequently began to be bred out of existence. Genetic evidence is based on the Y chromosomes of English men being identical to those of Norway and Friesland, where the Anglo-Saxons came from.

Michael Weale (et al.), “Y Chromosome Evidence for Anglo-Saxon Mass Migration,” Mol. Biol. Evol., vol. 19, no. 7, 2002, pp. 1008-1021, found that Y chromosome haplotypes were “statistically indistinguishable” between central England and the Frisian samples, but a dissimilarity was found between central
England and North Wales: “Using novel population genetics models that incorporate both mass migration and continuous gene flow, we conclude that these striking patterns are best explained by a substantial migration of Anglo-Saxon Y chromosomes into central England (contributing 50%-100% to the gene pool at that time) but not into North Wales.  (p. 1008)

However, both Thomas (et al.) and Weale (et al.) assumed that “the Germanic import into Britain was only significant during the early Anglo-Saxon period, and that no significant intermarriage occurred between the British and Germanic peoples”: J. G. Pattison, “Is it Necessary to Assume an Apartheid-Like Social Structure in Early Anglo-Saxon England?” Proceedings of the Royal Society Series B, vol. 275, 2008, pp. 2423-2429. Pattison’s estimation of the native Briton population is 2 million and the migrating populations, between ten and low hundreds of thousands, which he says is in agreement with Thomas (et al.). But as I read them, the Anglo-Saxon Germanic input is much larger, and if periods other than the early Anglo-Saxon period are added, logically must be greater.

Thus, there appears to be no consensus among geneticists about these issues. One thing is clear though: genetics does not trump other historical and cultural evidence. As I see it, contrary to Wade, the common-sense historical view still stands. But I wonder how long it will be before it is proposed that the original inhabitants of Briton were actually sub-Saharan Africans? Maybe it has already been done.

 

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Friday, 29 March 2024

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