Genealogy Chat

Interesting new theories from an article in the NYT: http://www.nytimes(.)com/2007/03/05/science/05cnd-brits.html?pagewanted=1&hp QUOTE: .......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 years by a single people that have remained in the majority, with only minor additions from later invaders like Celts, Romans, Angles , Saxons, Vikings and Normans. The implication that the Irish, English, Scottish and Welsh have a great deal in common with each other, at least from the geneticist’s point of view, seems likely to please no one. The genetic evidence is still under development, however, and because only very rough dates can be derived from it, it is hard to weave evidence from DNA, archaeology, history and linguistics into a coherent picture of British and Irish origins. That has not stopped the attempt. Stephen Oppenheimer, a medical geneticist at the University of Oxford, says the historians’ account is wrong in almost every detail. In Dr. Oppenheimer’s reconstruction of events, the principal ancestors of today’s British and Irish populations arrived from Spain about 16,000 years ago, speaking a language related to Basque.................................................... .........The Celtic cultural myth “is very entrenched and has a lot to do with the Scottish, Welsh and Irish identity; their main identifying feature is that they are not English,” said Dr. Sykes, an Englishman who has traced his Y chromosome and surname to an ancestor who lived in the village of Flockton in Yorkshire in 1286.- HOW TRUE!!!

Where did Dr Sykes get DNA from a man who lived in the 1200s? Who were his other one million ancestors from the 1200s and where did THEY come from? OC

OC I thought you would be the first to react! I am reliably informed that he had his ancestor dug up & the DNA extracted, however he is one of those people whose ancestors all come from the same village and who does not allow his family tree to be published or viewed by others, if you can imagine such a thing! Seriously though, it is an interesting look at possible ancestral migrations and perhaps will slow xenophobic inclinations to malign other nationalities. It's also more interesting than reading about the boring machinations of scrumptious-mother-of five and similar inarticulate posters.

So the Costa del Sol really is the ancestral land of the English? Just remember that, for those looking for their ancestors in 14,000 AD, the Madrid GRO needs name, both surnames, exact date of birth and volume and page number ! Pam

Alastair I agree that it makes far more interesting reading, and as you know I love to be argumentative on a subject like this. And as I didnt know you were allowed to dig up your ancestors out of idle curiosity, then I am off to Lancashire for a week with a spade, a cotton bud and a test tube. But even that won't answer my question about where my other one million ancestors came from. I really don't know how any inhabitant of the british isles can be 100% 'pure', genetically speaking as our islands have a history of invasion which goes back thousands of years, and I doubt if it would be possible to define English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, in genetic terms. Although no doubt someone will try. OC