Posted on 07/04/2002 5:27:12 PM PDT by blam
Sunday, 30 June, 2002, 15:31 GMT 16:31 UK
English and Welsh are races apart
Gene scientists claim to have found proof that the Welsh are the "true" Britons.
The research supports the idea that Celtic Britain underwent a form of ethnic cleansing by Anglo-Saxons invaders following the Roman withdrawal in the fifth century.
Genetic tests show clear differences between the Welsh and English
It suggests that between 50% and 100% of the indigenous population of what was to become England was wiped out, with Offa's Dyke acting as a "genetic barrier" protecting those on the Welsh side.
And the upheaval can be traced to this day through genetic differences between the English and the Welsh.
Academics at University College in London comparing a sample of men from the UK with those from an area of the Netherlands where the Anglo-Saxons are thought to have originated found the English subjects had genes that were almost identical.
But there were clear differences between the genetic make-up of Welsh people studied.
The research team studied the Y-chromosome, which is passed almost unchanged from father to son, and looked for certain genetic markers.
Ethnic links: Many races share common bonds
They chose seven market towns mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 and studied 313 male volunteers whose paternal grandfather had also lived in the area.
They then compared this with samples from Norway and with Friesland, now a northern province of the Netherlands.
The English and Frisians studied had almost identical genetic make-up but the English and Welsh were very different.
The researchers concluded the most likely explanation for this was a large-scale Anglo-Saxon invasion, which devastated the Celtic population of England, but did not reach Wales.
Dr Mark Thomas, of the Centre for Genetic Anthropology at UCL, said their findings suggested that a migration occurred within the last 2,500 years.
Genetic links
It reinforced the idea that the Welsh were the true indigenous Britons.
In April last year, research for a BBC programme on the Vikings revealed strong genetic links between the Welsh and Irish Celts and the Basques of northern Spain and south France.
It suggested a possible link between the Celts and Basques, dating back tens of thousands of years.
The UCL research into the more recent Anglo-Saxon period suggested a migration on a huge scale.
"It appears England is made up of an ethnic cleansing event from people coming across from the continent after the Romans left," he said.
Celtic Britons
Archaeologists after the Second World War rejected the traditionally held view that an Anglo-Saxon invasion pushed the indigenous Celtic Britons to the fringes of Britain.
Instead, they said the arrival of Anglo-Saxon culture could have come from trade or a small ruling elite.
But the latest research by the UCL team, "using genetics as a history book", appears to support the original view of a large-scale invasion of England.
It suggests that the Welsh border was more of a genetic barrier to the Anglo-Saxon Y chromosome gene flow than the North Sea.
Dr Thomas added: "Our findings completely overturn the modern view of the origins of the English."
The Vikings are just one of many sub-categories of Celts. Check the population numbers at my Profile and you'll see how large the Celtic population was, even then. It's little wonder they came to totally dominate all of NORTHERN and WESTERN Europe.
No, that overstates the case. But it is safe to say that FAR MORE Europeans (North and West) are of Celtic origin than in the article which began this thread, which confines them to Cornwall/Wales, Ireland and Brittany.
Then, there are the Highland Scots! These magnificent people are direct descendants of the Irish who invaded and conquered Alba and changed its name to Scota in the 900s.
Most Scots and Scottish descendants are descendants of one or more, or maybe all, of these groups.
The people in Northern Ireland are either Irish or they are descended from a mix of peoples who came from Great Britain to colonize Ulster. They are not all Scottish in origin.
That's why it would be in error to inform the Scots-Irish and the Irish in Ulster that they are the same folks - they are not the same folks!
Yup. You are correct. I get the names mixed up.
The Normans WERE Celts. Rollo was from Norway and brought many Danes with him to threaten the simple French king into giving them "Normandy". By the time William got around to invading, many of his men had married other Celtic French women. The battles of 1066 were largely battles between Scandinavians to see who would KEEP England. (The Scandinavians won. ---ggg---
>We can be sure of that because they held on to their Gallo language!
Actually, good linguistic researchers say that language is a very poor way to try to draw conclusions, because the languages do not remain, any more than our ancestors languages remained with us several generations after they came to America.
Certainly there are descendants of Celtic people throughout Europe, but they don't know it having been conquered by Eastern barbarians.
The jury is out on the Germans being just a different tribe of Celts, but the fact is their coloration is different. Now that's somewhat obscured in modern populations due to the population rebuilding efforts after the 30 Years War where numerous Irishmen and Bretons volunteered to help the German ladies have babies, but it's pretty clear the Germans are really different!
Gaelic speakers are known to have been at large in the Mediterranean previous to 700 BC, and resident at Troy for at least 1000 years prior to the arrival of the Greeks on the scene. They had a culture and civilization coincident with the first stirrings of serious civilization in the Levant. I read your site where you seek to turn Gaelic speakers into the "Lost Tribes", but you wait until 610 BC. The known dates for independent Gaelic civilization are much older than that and must be respected.
One of the prophets does note that David has in his ancestry a Scythian, and the Scythians at that time are Celtic. I'd rather think that's how Gaelic speakers ended up among the Semitic speaking Kurds occupying Palestine in the old days - they showed up in a boat and visited the ladies - nothing need be more complex than that.
The word Saxon goes back far before that, and derives from "saka-suni" which is loosely "Isaacs son". Please read the 3-MINUTE history at my Profile to save bandwidth. Thanks.
I sorta subscribe to that theory.
I believe that there was a large population of Celts (fishers/farmers) crowded around the fresh water Black Sea prior to it being flooded with salt water.
The whole area around the Black Sea was very arid during that period and only the coast line and the river valleys could support life. When it flooded (rising one foot per day) all these folks fled up the river valleys displacing all in their path and eventually covering all of Europe and introducing farming to all the areas in which they settled.
Linguists support this theory as they can trace all the farming words in the European language back to this region.
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