This is the next Christmas gift I will read.
Posted on 12/31/2006 2:56:02 PM PST by blam
Reunited at last! This is David, the brother I lost just 1,000 years ago
Gene study is throwing a new light on our nation's history - and our personal ancestry, reports science editor Robin McKie
Sunday December 31, 2006
The Observer (UK)
A scientific revolution is taking place in the study of our ancient past. Once the preserve of academics who analysed prehistoric stones and crumbling parchment, the subject has been transformed by the study of our genes by scientists who are using the blood of the living to determine the actions of men and women centuries ago. In the process, a mass of fascinating information about our predecessors has been revealed, from the physical appearance of Britain's first Stone Age settlers to the impact that invading Romans, Saxons and Normans had on our bloodline.
The approach can turn history into an extraordinary, personal business, as I found when I started researching a book on the subject. I have often been asked if I am related to the Guardian writer David McKie. The distinguished columnist and former deputy editor has my surname, though David comes from north London while I am Glaswegian. Little common ancestry there, it seemed. But now David has been revealed to be my long-lost 'brother'. Our DNA shows that, between AD1000 and 1400, either in Ireland or Scotland, our lineages shared a common ancestor, a grandfather of multiple 'greatness'. Even better, that ancestor turns out to have been a direct descendant of the Irish king Niall of the Nine Hostages, who created a vast fifth-century dynasty around modern Strabane. David and I are related to a notorious Irish warlord. Not bad for a pair of old Fleet Street hacks.
(Excerpt) Read more at observer.guardian.co.uk ...
As frivolous as this may seem, sometimes it is kinda fun to speculate about.
Why is it frivolous?
First word that came to mind. :-)
This book challenges some of our longest held assumptions about the differences between Anglo-Saxons and Celts – perceived differences that have informed our collective sense of identity.
Orthodox history has long taught that the Romans found a uniformly Celtic population throughout the British Isles, but that the peoples of the English heartland fell victim to genocide by the Anglo-Saxon hordes during the fifth and sixth centuries.
Now Stephen Oppenheimer’s groundbreaking genetic research has revealed that the ‘Anglo-Saxon invasion’ contributed only a tiny fraction to the English gene pool. In fact, three quarters of English people can trace an unbroken line of genetic descent through their parental genes from settlers arriving long before the introduction of farming.
Synthesizing the genetic evidence with linguistics, archaeology and the historical record, Oppenheimer shows how long-term Scandinavian trade and immigration contributed the remaining quarter – mostly before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons. These migrations may have introduced the earliest forms of English.
And what of the Celts we know – the Irish, Scots and Welsh? Scholars have traditionally placed their origins in Iron Age Central Europe, but Oppenheimer’s new data clearly show that the Welsh, Irish and other Atlanticfringe peoples derive from Ice Age refuges in the Basque country and Spain.They came by an Atlantic coastal route many thousands of years ago, though the Celtic languages we know of today were brought in by later migrations, following the same route, during Neolithic times.
Stephen Oppenheimer shows us, in his meticulous analysis, that there is in truth a deep genetic line dividing the English from the rest of the British people but that, fascinatingly, the roots of that separate identity go back not 1500 years but 6,000.The real story of the British peoples is one of extraordinary continuity and enduring lineage that has survived all onslaughts.
Stephen Oppenheimer of University of Oxford is a leading expert in the use of DNA to track migrations. His last book Out of Eden rewrote the prehistory of man’s peopling of the world in a thesis that has since been confirmed in Science. He is also the author of Eden in the East:The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia, which challenged the orthodox view of the origins of Polynesians as rice farmers from Taiwan.
It has been said that George Washington was a descendant of Nial of the Nine Hostages, but when I emailed a researcher in Ireland about that and asked if he could get some of The General's hair to check the Y chromosome out, I never heard back.
I'm of British descent from around York. FReeper Torie told me that a lot of Vikings settled there. Don't know for sure though. The strides being made with DNA will have us all 'nailed-down' in a few years.
Happy New Year to all.
"And what of the Celts we know – the Irish, Scots and Welsh? Scholars have traditionally placed their origins in Iron Age Central Europe, but Oppenheimer’s new data clearly show that the Welsh, Irish and other Atlanticfringe peoples derive from Ice Age refuges in the Basque country and Spain."
I had the DNA test a couple of years ago and I was puzzled that it indicated Irish/Scottish/Welsh and Basque.
Happy New Year to you, and thanks so much for all of the excellent anthropological and archaeological threads that you "dig up" as it were. You are one of Free Republic's jewels of the crown, that enhance it, and make it a more interesting and pleasurable place.
Kudos.
btt
Thank you for the post. This is always amazing. If you like that book and can find the show, there was a show awhile back on BBC called 100% English. It's good for a laugh at least. They gave DNA tests to four people in England (one was Margaret Thatcher's daughter who was completely cool about the whole thing) to determine their ancestral grouping (American Indian, Northern European, Saharan, Asian). Two of them were absolutely arrogant (the old lady was downright racist) about their heritage. To see their faces drop when they found out they weren't '100% English' was priceless.
The ancestors of mine from there arrived maybe 1100 years ago, asked the locals what they called the place and that became their family name, which we still have. Where they came from before that nobody said, but probably Denmark or so.
Thanks for a great post.
Having traced several hundred of my lines back to this time frame in England and beyond, am always interested in this subject.
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