Britons still live in Anglo-Saxon tribal kingdoms, Oxford University finds

The Telegraph ^ | 18 Mar 2015 | Sarah Knapton, Science Editor

[I still care]

A new genetic map of Britain shows that there has been little movement between areas of Britain which were former tribal kingdoms in Anglo-Saxon England.

Britons are still living in the same 'tribes' that they did in the 7th Century, Oxford University has found after an astonishing study into our genetic make-up.

Archaeologists and geneticists were amazed to find that genetically similar individuals inhabit the same areas they did following the Anglo-Saxon invasion, following the fall of the Roman Empire.

In fact, a map showing tribes of Britain in 600AD is almost identical to a new chart showing genetic variability throughout the UK, suggesting that local communities have stayed put for the past 1415 years.

Many people in Britain claim to feel a strong sense of regional identity and scientists say they the new study proves that the link to birthplace is DNA deep.

The most striking genetic split can be seen between people living in Cornwall and Devon, where the division lies exactly along the county border. It means that people living on either side of the River Tamar, which separates the two counties, have different DNA.

[I still care]

Saw this in my web travels and it has a lot of interesting info. Knew there would be some interested Freepers, we are an educated lot here. For instance, that the Celts DNA is very diverse - they are not all one people - and that the Danish Vikings and Romans DNA has basically disappeared from Britain, while the Anglo-Saxons intermarried with invaders. Lots of charts.

[I still care]

[mbarker12474]

Fascinating.

[I still care]

[I still care]

I know I’m nerdy but I do find this stuff interesting.

[duckbutt]

Maybe this is a stupid question, but it seems with so little migration, that there would be a problem with inbreeding, yes?

[Eric in the Ozarks]

An even more interesting survey would be of UK accents.

[Robert A Cook PE]

So the North Ireland-Ireland problem is NOT “just religious” is it?

[mbarker12474]

Ancestry.com is touting genetic analysis for its genealogy customers, and showing the results sometimes on the Genealogy Roadshow on PBS. Pretty cools stuff. I’m a bit skeptical of the data, but fascinating nevertheless..... I’d get the DNA test kit and do it myself if the price came down from $100 to say, $20. I’d prove I’m a mongrel, rather than simply suspect it.

[Robert A Cook PE]

You’ve got hundreds of thousands in each little “dot” there - No inbreeding problem at all.

[driftless2]

This might explain why there are so many different regional accents in Britain. America has about four or five basic accent. Britain, a much smaller country with about one fifth of the population of the U.S., has about thirty or more distinctly different accents. That’s not counting the Scottish dialect either.

[StoneWall Brigade]

Neat stuff

[Roman_War_Criminal]

I’m sure almost everybody in the world is mostly a mongrel of some sort. Of course....some more than others.

[AEMILIUS PAULUS]

Very interesting. Since many Americans are Anglo Saxon in origin I wonder if this study could be extended?

[A Formerly Proud Canadian]

That only seems to affect their teeth! Wait, I am wrong! Allowing the Moslems to come in and take over, suggests the change in intelligence may be the result of centuries of inbreeding. The same can be said for much of Europe and its surrender to muhamedans. Further suggesting that socialism is a mental disease.

[GrootheWanderer]

Christopher Hitchens once wrote that people in Northern Ireland have a pretty good ability to tell a Protestant from a Catholic on site, even if they’ve never met. To outsiders, the look pretty much they same, but they look different enough to each other to be able to be able to predict who is which religion with a pretty good certainty.

[MeganC]

Where are the Pakistanis and Jamaicans on this map?

[Zionist Conspirator]

The author obviously meant "English" when he wrote "Britons." "Britons" is misleading, as it implies he's writing about the original Brythonic Celtic peoples who lived there prior to the Anglo-Saxon invasions.

Goodness I wish people would learn the difference between "England/English" and "Britain/British!"

[RayChuang88]

Maybe it's an issue with the people in the British Isles not willing to move around the country? Remember, modern transportation is erasing a lot of the regional accents in the USA, and Japan--at least among the younger generation--has far fewer dialects than in the past, thanks to much of Japan now accessible easily via the Shinkansen high-speed rail system.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks I still care.

• Genetic study reveals 30% of white British DNA has German ancestry