The Last of the Neanderthals

The Spanish Paranoia posted this article on sci.bio.evolution and I got
confused with my newsgroups and replied thinking it was here. His original
post is.....

A team from Oxford University has discovered that the Celts, Britain's
indigenous people, are descended from a tribe of Iberian fishermen who
crossed the Bay of Biscay 6,000 years ago. DNA analysis reveals they
have an almost identical genetic "fingerprint" to the inhabitants of
coastal regions of Spain, whose own ancestors migrated north between
4,000 and 5,000 BC.

The discovery, by Bryan Sykes, professor of human genetics at Oxford
University, will herald a change in scientific understanding of
Britishness.

People of Celtic ancestry were thought to have descended from tribes of
central Europe. Professor Sykes, who is soon to publish the first DNA
map of the British Isles, said: "About 6,000 years ago Iberians
developed ocean-going boats that enabled them to push up the Channel.
Before they arrived, there were some human inhabitants of Britain but
only a few thousand in number. These people were later subsumed into a
larger Celtic tribe... The majority of people in the British Isles are
actually descended from the Spanish."

Professor Sykes spent five years taking DNA samples from 10,000
volunteers in Britain and Ireland, in an effort to produce a map of our
genetic roots.
Research on their "Y" chromosome, which subjects inherit from their
fathers, revealed that all but a tiny percentage of the volunteers were
originally descended from one of six clans who arrived in the UK in
several waves of immigration prior to the Norman conquest.
The most common genetic fingerprint belongs to the Celtic clan, which
Professor Sykes has called "Oisin". After that, the next most
widespread originally belonged to tribes of Danish and Norse Vikings.
Small numbers of today's Britons are also descended from north African,
Middle Eastern and Roman clans.
These DNA "fingerprints" have enabled Professor Sykes to create the
first genetic maps of the British Isles, which are analysed in Blood of
the Isles, a book published this week. The maps show that Celts are
most dominant in areas of Ireland, Scotland and Wales. But, contrary to
popular myth, the Celtic clan is also strongly represented elsewhere in
the British Isles.
"Although Celtic countries have previously thought of themselves as
being genetically different from the English, this is emphatically not
the case," Professor Sykes said.
"This is significant, because the idea of a separate Celtic race is
deeply ingrained in our political structure, and has historically been
very divisive. Culturally, the view of a separate race holds water. But
from a genetic point of view, Britain is emphatically not a divided
nation."

Although the Romans ruled from AD 43 until 410, they left a tiny
genetic footprint. For the first 200 years occupying forces were
forbidden from marrying locally.

Don't tell the locals, but the hordes of British holidaymakers who
visited Spain this summer were, in fact, returning to their ancestral
home.

And here was my reply....

Having read Bryan Sykes book (and now reading the Stephen Oppenheimer) I am
very dubious about him. His book 'Blood of the Isles' is more of a sales
pitch for his DNA research firm Oxford Ancestry than a serious scientific
work. I note from AmazonUK that he is publishing what look like his serious
findings in a very expensive book to be published later this year. I dont
think the man is very trustworthy.

Regarding the Oppenheimer he is quite bewildering the way he flashes around
the haplotypes etc. It would take a prd to follow his argument. So far the
picture he is building up is much more complicated and interesting than
Sykes but I am not halfway into the book yet. The Iberian connection can be
taken for granted but there seems to be much more in the DNA than that
simplistic notion.

I note from previous discussions here that Oppenheimer can be a bit hazy
about the facts. As basically he is using other peoples research in his book
we will have to watch that.

And Brian Sykes writes his books on Skye in the house of the great Gaelic
poet Sorley McLean whose house he has bought.




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Relevant Pages

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