Split Between English and Scots Older Than Thought

The Scotsman ^ | 11APR04 | Louise Gray

[WoofDog123]

The ancient split between the English and Scots is older than previously thought, an Oxford don said today.

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.

In a book tracing humankind from its origins in Africa 80,000 years ago, Prof Oppenheimer develops a theory of the original inhabitants of Britain.

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 to the Germanic peoples of the interior.

As evidence he cites genetic data showing the Celts are more closely related to the Basque people of south west France and the Celts of Brittany and Spain, while the English are closer to the Germans descended from the Anglo Saxons.

In the past the split was attributed to “migration, invasion and replacement”, but Prof Oppenheimer said the difference was established long before Britain was even an island.

He said: “The first line between England and the Celts was put down at a much earlier period, say 10,000 years ago.”

The professor, who is speaking at the Edinburgh Science Festival tonight, said Britons are descended from the original settlers, rather than later invasions, and as such were already split by the western divide.

He said: “The English are the odd-ones-out because they are the ones more linked to continental Europe.

“The Scots, the Irish, the Welsh and the Cornish are all very similar in their genetic pattern to the Basque.”

However, the professor did say later invasions will have influenced the developing cultures in different areas of Britain.

He said: “The people themselves may have been more conservative about their movement but accepted new cultures coming in at different dates.”

The revelations are all part of Prof Oppenheimer’s controversial theory, expanded in his book The Real Eve: Modern Man’s Journey Out of Africa, that humans migrated from Africa and populated the planet.

The professor will speak about his theory in a talk entitled Out of Eden at the Apex International Hotel in the Grassmarket tonight

[WoofDog123]

What about your eastern brethren, the former pictish areas? What did they speak prior to the irish immivasion in the dark ages? Most seem to think it was a p-celtic language due to the names of some pictish leaders adn places, but with nothing but carved stones to go by....

[jnarcus]

Stones last other forms of writing typically are affected by the environment....And Ogham is considered a written laguage of great age...I refer to both P and Q which really seems to break more along a north and south line on the Great Isle...And just for fun compare the Ogham to some of the cuniform types of writing that have been found on various mud slabs from Phoenician times....

[JohCol]

The DNA testing done to date has confirmed that the people of the Pictish regions of Scotland, i.e., the NE, are genetically 95% similar to the Basques, which makes the Pictish NE probably the "purest" 'proto-basque' population of the British Isles, given that apart from a few anglicised Briton and Flemish merchant immigrants the people of NE Scotland are the same as they always have been. Indigenous, as it were. My own NE Scottish DNA testing is 95% matched to the Basque population of the Pyrenees. It should be noted that Columba, the gaelic speaking Irishman, needed an interpreter to prosleytize the Picts...perhaps they were speaking a Basque derivative as recently as the early middle ages. As well, genetically, the Western Norwegian Vikings who settled Orkney and Sheltand, are quite distinct -- more paleo, and probably more proto-basque themselves -- from the other Scandinavian vikings, namely the thoroughly indo-European Danes and Swedes and Vandals and Goths....

[WoofDog123]

That is very interesting; off the top of my head, the implication seems to be that the picts, like the basques, are the remnant of a widespread migration across western europe before recorded history. It isn't impossible that they were actually one of the first wide migrations since the ice melted; i.e. stone age.

I didn't know that about colomba needing an interpreter; I am not sure if he would have needed one for a p-celtic language, or if he even spoke/understood p-celtic enough to do his work. The lack of almost any pictish language remnants is a real mystery. How it disappeared quietly with no visible trace baffles me.

Do you know of any other ethnic groups with high %-correlation to basque dna?

[JohCol]

The Irish are, like the Scots, and the Welsh, and the Bretons, strongly genetically matched with the Basques. But then, so are people of all the regions first populated by the 'proto-basques' who descended from the Pyrenees aftger the last Ice Age: Northern Spanish, and Portuguese; Western and north western French, and, Icelanders, seeing as how they are largely a blend of Western Norewgians (likely more Basque themselves than the rest of Scandinavia) and British Islanders.
As for the original divide, it seems likely that groups that over-wintered in the Balkans, and later moved into Germany also moved in to England, and so were related to who were to become Anglo-Saxons, long before we knew who the Angles et al were; meaning that the proto-basques likely lived next to small groups of non-proto-basques, the latter were 'stranded' on the Island, and were subsequently 'celticised' during the first invasions from teh Contintent, and then, subsequently, 'Teutonicized' BY THEIR OWN GENETIC KIN once again -- the Anglo-Saxons. That is why so many Britons were so easily absorbed in to the Anglo-Saxon society and why you can very seldom tell them apart...not because anglo-saxons conqured Britons, but because the Britons, to a considerable degree, were ALREADY very much like the Anglo-Saxons, and their continentalist kin, the Celts.

[farmfriend]

Gods, Graves, Glyphs
List for articles regarding early civilizations , life of all forms, - dinosaurs - etc.
Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this ping list.

[Ciexyz]

btt

[JimSEA]

Professor Stephen Oppenheimer of Oxford University is the author of "Eden in the East: The Drowned Continent of Southeast Asia" and he has done a lot on the post Ice Age Flooding.

[blam]

Thanks. On your recommendation, I will place an order friday evening.

[rightofrush]

THANK YOU FOR ONE OF THE MOST THOUGHT-PROVOKING ARTICLES I'VE SEEN ON FR. I di'na ken.

[U S Army EOD]

Perhaps bagpipes were invented sooner than we think, which would easily explain the split.

[rightofrush]

A thought occured to me over night.

When's the last time you've seen a red-haired Basque?

[blam]

RedHeads 'Are Neanderthal'

[blam]

The Curse Of The Red-Headed Mummy

[blam]

The Art Of Being A Redhead

Lady Godiva c. 1898

[buwaya]

Nice link.
Nice picture of the village of Elanxobe, my grandfathers home. I used to climb those hills, and play in the harbor as a boy. There are moray eels along the breakwaters.
The place is worth a visit if you are ever in Bilbao.

[blam]

Guggenheim-Bilbao

[rightofrush]

A very pretty lady, but again I ask: when was the last time that you saw a red-headed Basque?

[rightofrush]

Chinese red-heads --> Sythians --> Celts?
Idaho has the highest population of Basques in the US, and I've never seen a red-headed Basque.

[blam]

"when was the last time that you saw a red-headed Basque?"

I've only know one guy that I knew to be Basque...he was not red-headed so, I've never seen a red-headed Basque. Incidently, the incident of red-headedness in Libya is the same as it is in Ireland.