Free Republic

The genetic makeup of Europe mysteriously transformed about 4,000-5,000 years ago, researchers have discovered. An Australian team found the unexplained change while analysing several skeletons unearthed in central Europe that were up to 7,500 years old. They say the rapid expansion of the Bell Beaker culture, which is believed to have been instrumental in building the monoliths at Stonehedge, could hold the key.

Migrants Poured into Britain after Ice Age By John von Radowitz, Science Correspondent, PA News Britain experienced a tidal wave of immigration as soon as the last Ice Age ended, new data has shown. Previously it was thought that Britain’s repopulation was a slow process led by a few pioneering explorers. Researchers now know that humans responded rapidly to climate change and moved into Britain en masse as soon as the ice receded. Up to 20,000 years ago a huge ice sheet extended as far south as Norfolk. Then temperatures rose rapidly, producing warming weather than we have now. Once...

Britain and Ireland are so thoroughly divided in their histories that there is no single word to refer to the inhabitants of both islands. Historians teach that they are mostly descended from different peoples: 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. But geneticists who have tested DNA throughout the British Isles are edging toward a different conclusion. Many are struck by the overall genetic similarities, leading some to claim that both Britain and Ireland have been inhabited for thousands of...

SPACE AGE LASERS REVEAL OFFA'S DYKE MISSING LINK BY JANET HUGHES J.HUGHES@BEPP.CO.UK 08:00 - 01 June 2007 It has remained hidden for centuries but space-age technology has stripped away layers of history to discover what excited archaeologists believe could be a missing section of Offa's Dyke. Aerial laser technology, which allows the experts to see what is hidden below the trees and the undergrowth, has discovered a long strip of earthworks in the Forest of Dean. And archaeologists believe they may have finally found a missing 250-metre stretch of the Dyke built by King Offa between 757 to 796 AD...

Traditionally the difference between the English and Scots, Welsh, Irish and Cornish was attributed to the foreign influence of invading forces such as the Anglo-Saxons, Celts and Vikings settling in different areas of Britain hundreds of years ago. But Professor Stephen Oppenheimer of Oxford University, believes the difference originates much further back in history... The professor of clinical sociomedical sciences at Oxford University said the Celts of Western Scotland, Wales, Ireland and Cornwall are descended from an ancient people living on the Atlantic coast while Britain was still attached to mainland Europe, while the English are more closely related...

"There's been a lot of arguing over the last ten years, but it's now more or less agreed that about 80 percent of Britons' genes come from hunter-gatherers who came in immediately after the Ice Age," Miles said... New evidence for the genetic ancestry of modern Britons comes from analysis of blood groups, oxygen traces in teeth, and DNA samples taken from skeletal remains... The most visible British genetic marker is red hair, he added. The writer Tacitus noted the Romans' surprise at how common it was when they arrived 2,000 years ago. "It's something that foreign observers have often...

Roman Britons after 410The ‘end of Roman Britain’ is a myth. Roman culture survived right through the Anglo-Saxon period. Martin Henig explainsThe 'story' of Roman Britain, as told to generations of schoolchildren, is a very simple one - AD 43, the Roman legions march in; AD 410, they march out again. Barbarity beforehand, barbarity afterwards, civilisation in between. In an earlier issue of this magazine (BA, September 1998) I suggested that the Roman 'conquest' of AD 43 was not all that it seemed to be, and that Britain's southern rulers - if not those in the north - were Romanised...

Who were the Celts? The Celts were a group of peoples that occupied lands stretching from the British Isles to Gallatia. The Celts had many dealings with other cultures that bordered the lands occupied by these peoples, and even though there is no written record of the Celts stemming from their own documents, we can piece together a fair picture of them from archeological evidence as well as historical accounts from other cultures. The first historical recorded encounter of a people displaying the cultural traits associated with the Celts comes from northern Italy around 400 BC, when a previously unkown...

When Anglo-Saxons first arrived in Britain 1,600 years ago, they created an apartheid-like society that oppressed the native Britons and wiped out almost all of the British gene pool, according to a new study. By treating Britons like slaves and imposing strict rules, the small band of Anglo-Saxons -- who had come from what is now Germany, Denmark, and the Netherlands -- quickly dominated the country, leaving a legacy of Germanic genes and the English language, both of which still dominate Britain today. The new theory helps explain historical, archaeological, and genetic evidence that until now had seemed contradictory, including...

We're nearly all Celts under the skin IAN JOHNSTON SCIENCE CORRESPONDENT A MAJOR genetic study of the population of Britain appears to have put an end to the idea of the "Celtic fringe" of Scotland, Ireland and Wales. Instead, a research team at Oxford University has found the majority of Britons are Celts descended from Spanish tribes who began arriving about 7,000 years ago. Even in England, about 64 per cent of people are descended from these Celts, outnumbering the descendants of Anglo- Saxons by about three to one. The proportion of Celts is only slightly higher in Scotland, at...

Myths of British ancestry October 2006Stephen Oppenheimer Everything you know about British and Irish ancestry is wrong. Our ancestors were Basques, not Celts. The Celts were not wiped out by the Anglo-Saxons, in fact neither had much impact on the genetic stock of these islands 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,...

History books favor stories of conquest, not of continuity, so it is perhaps not surprising that many Englishmen grow up believing they are a fighting mixture of the Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Vikings and Normans who invaded Britain. The defeated Celts, by this reckoning, left their legacy only in the hinterlands of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. A new genetic survey of Y chromosomes throughout the British Isles has revealed a very different story. The Celtic inhabitants of Britain were real survivors. Nowhere were they entirely replaced by the invaders and they survive in high proportions, often 50 percent or more, throughout...

Peoples of Britain By Dr Simon James Did the Celts exist? Simon James asks just who were the Britons - and did the Celts ever really exist? Uncover the fascinating ethnic and cultural history of the peoples of Briton, and assess the impact of the many invaders of Britain's shores. Introduction The story of early Britain has traditionally been told in terms of waves of invaders displacing or annihilating their predecessors. Archaeology suggests that this picture is fundamentally wrong. For over 10,000 years people have been moving into - and out of - Britain, sometimes in substantial numbers, yet there...

From studying the present day population of the Orkneys, a small archipelago off the northeast coast of Scotland, geneticists from University College, in London, have gained a deep insight into the earliest inhabitants of Europe. Of the medley of peoples who populated Britain, neither the Anglo-Saxons nor the Romans ever settled the distant Orkneys. The Romans called the islands' inhabitants picti, or painted people. The Celtic-speaking Picts dominated the islands until the arrival of the Vikings about A.D. 800. The islanders then spoke Norn until the 18th century when this ancient form of Norse was replaced by English, brought in...

Human remains dug up from an ancient grave in Oxfordshire add to a growing body of evidence that Britain's fifth-century transition from Roman to Anglo-Saxon was cultural rather than bloody. The traditional historical narrative is one of brutal conquest, with invaders from the North wiping out and replacing the pre-existing population. But a new study, published in the Journal of Archaeological Science, hints at a more peaceful process. Dr Andrew Millard, from Durham University, is one of the study's authors. 'The main controversy over the years has centred on how many Anglo-Saxons came across the North Sea,' he says. 'Was...

Y chromosomes rewrite British historyAnglo-Saxons' genetic stamp weaker than historians suspected 19 June 2003 HANNAH HOAG Some Scottish men's Y's are remarkably similar to those of southern England. © GettyImages A new survey of Y chromosomes in the British Isles suggests that the Anglo-Saxons failed to leave as much of a genetic stamp on the UK as history books imply1. Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Vikings and Normans invaded Britain repeatedly between 50 BC and AD 1050. Many historians ascribe much of the British ancestry to the Anglo-Saxons because their written legacy overshadows that of the Celts. But the Y chromosomes of...

Our Celtic roots lie in Spain and Portugal May 5 2008 by Darren Devine, Western Mail THE Welsh have more in common with sun-kissed glamour pusses like actress Penelope Cruz and footballer Christiano Ronaldo than pale- faced Germans like Helmet Kohl, according to an academic. Professor John Koch suggests the Welsh can trace their ancestry back to Portugal and Spain, debunking the century-old received wisdom that our forebears came from Iron Age Germany and Austria. His radical work on Celtic origins flatly contradicts the writing of Sir John Rhys, who in the late 19th century established the idea that we...

SUNDAY DECEMBER 02 2001 Genetic survey reveals hidden Celts of England JOHN ELLIOTT AND TOM ROBBINS THE Celts of Scotland and Wales are not as unique as some of them like to think. New research has revealed that the majority of Britons living in the south of England share the same DNA as their Celtic counterparts. The findings, based on the DNA analysis of more than 2,000 people, poses the strongest challenge yet to the conventional historical view that the ancient Britons were forced out of most of England by hordes of Anglo-Saxon invaders. It suggests that far from being ...

Experts are asking people from north-east Wales to provide a DNA sample to discover why those from the area carry rare genetic make-up. So far, 500 people have taken part in the study which shows 30% of men carry an unusual type of Y chromosome, compared to 1% of men elsewhere the UK. Common in Mediterranean men, it was initially thought to suggest Bronze Age migrants 4,000 years ago. Sheffield University scientists explain the study at Wrexham Science Festival. 'Quite extraordinary' A team of scientists, led by Dr Andy Grierson and Dr Robert Johnston, from the University of Sheffield is...

Men are needed for DNA tests to prove their distant ancestors moved from the Mediterranean to north west Wales as migrant workers 4,000 years ago.> The researchers are building on previous work carried out in the area which found a much higher-than-average presence of a DNA marker that is commonly found in people from the Balkans and Spain. >