Clues to ancient invasion in DNA

[slohairt]

I think the long-held opinion that the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes drove the native Britons to Wales, Cornwall, and southern Scotland was always a bit naive to begin with. I suspect that thinking was a product of 19th Century Anglo-Saxonism. Obviously the Anglo-Saxons merely established themselves as the ruling class. Much like the Franks in France and the Normans later in England's history.

[Rob]

I think the long-held opinion that the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes drove the native Britons to Wales, Cornwall, and southern Scotland was always a bit naive to begin with. I suspect that thinking was a product of 19th Century Anglo-Saxonism. Obviously the Anglo-Saxons merely established themselves as the ruling class. Much like the Franks in France and the Normans later in England's history.

Too true! However, there were still historians in the latter half of the 20th century who still believed the population replacement theory, and there are still Anglo-Saxon enthusiasts who insist that genetics has got it all wrong.

Another myth that population genetics has laid bare is the belief that the native Britons (Celts) were Iron Age invaders from Central Europe who displaced the earlier Bronze Age inhabitants. We now know that the ancestors of the Britons had been in Britain since soon after the last Ice Age and had mostly come from Northern Iberia. It was only the Celtic language that replaced the earlier (probably non-Indo-European) language at some time either during or before the Iron Age, not the Celts themselves. The British Celts were definitely not descended from the Continental Keltoi/Celtae referred to by the Greeks and the Romans respectively.

[Sketraw]

Too true! However, there were still historians in the latter half of the 20th century who still believed the population replacement theory, and there are still Anglo-Saxon enthusiasts who insist that genetics has got it all wrong.

Another myth that population genetics has laid bare is the belief that the native Britons (Celts) were Iron Age invaders from Central Europe who displaced the earlier Bronze Age inhabitants. We now know that the ancestors of the Britons had been in Britain since soon after the last Ice Age and had mostly come from Northern Iberia. It was only the Celtic language that replaced the earlier (probably non-Indo-European) language at some time either during or before the Iron Age, not the Celts themselves. The British Celts were definitely not descended from the Continental Keltoi/Celtae referred to by the Greeks and the Romans respectively.

Eureka! --- To a degree.... some have always spouted the p-Celtic and q-Celtic theory and that the original inhabitants of Northern Britain were p-Celtic, an earlier movement of Celts some 8,000 -9.000 years ago. I think their is no doubt that these New Stone Age people (old Stone Age pre-iceage) who populated Britain were of Iberian decent.

Their could be a case however for a later Celtic movement to Britain as the Romans advanced across mainland Europe pushing the Celts further and further into obscurity, with a sort of last stronghold if you like being Britain.

Have a look at this http://www.scotshistoryonline.co.uk/origin1.html an extract from a longer paper on the subject that I compiled a number of years ago now. It will save me a bit of typing.

[gilmore]

What I find interesting about this discussion is how fragile and easily displaced cultures and languages are.

It was Norman French culture, language, and technology that heavily impacted and transformed Anglo-Saxon culture, moreso than numbers of living invaders physically occupying the countryside. Similarly, Anglo-Saxon languages, dialects and culture pushed Celtic culture to the Fringe. Before that, Celtic culture and language much wiped out the Pictish way of life in Scotland and whatever preceded it in the rest of Britain, so much so that we know comparatively little about them.

And the prior cultures were displaced so throughly that their descendants often thought---and still think--- of the carriers of the "invading" culture as their biological ancestors, while consigning their own genetic ancestry to a kind of pre-civilized Otherness that they don't identify with.

We now know from genetics that largely the same group of people and their descendants have inhabited the British Isles since the end of the last Ice Age, when we humans went north from the refugium on the Iberian peninsula. We may have changed our languages and our technologies, but we can't change our DNA.

How quickly and thoroughly these changes can occur is shown in this news story http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/wo...2&pagewanted=1 about the generational divide in Cambodia between those who lived through the Khmer Rouge genocide and younger people who know little about it, and generally don't want to know. With some 70% of Cambodians under the age of 30, it seems that this part of Cambodian history is being lost to the collective memory.

[skauwt]

http://news.scotsman.com/scotland/Sc...und.5161087.jp came across this tonight