Despite their obvious proximity, Britain and Ireland are so thoroughly divided in their histories that there is actually no single word to refer to the inhabitants of both islands. Historians teach that they are mostly descended from different peoples: the Irish from the Celts, and the English from the Anglo-Saxons who invaded from northern Europe and drove the Celts to the countrys western and northern fringes. Yet, genetic studies of DNA throughout the British Isles are edging toward a different conclusion. Many geneticists are struck by the overall genetic similarities, leading some to claim that both Britain and Ireland have been inhabited for thousands of years by a single people that have remained in the majority, with only minor additions from later invaders like Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Vikings and Normans. The implication that the English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh have a great deal in common with each other, at least from the geneticists point of view, is unlikely to please many desperate to maintain the distinction. The genetic evidence is still under development, however, and because only very rough dates can be derived from it, it remains difficult to convincingly weave evidence from DNA, archaeology, history and linguistics into a coherent picture of British and Irish origins. Arguments from Genetics. That has not stopped the attempt. Stephen Oppenheimer, a medical geneticist at the University of Oxford, simply believes the historians account is wrong in almost every detail. In Dr. Oppenheimers reconstruction of events, the principal ancestors of todays British and Irish populations arrived from Spain about 16,000 years ago, speaking a language related to Basque. On the basis of the available genetic data, Dr. Oppenheimer believes no single group of invaders is responsible for more than 5% of the current gene pool. Estimates by the archaeologist Dr. Heinrich Haerke suggest that the Anglo-Saxon invasions, beginning in the 4th century AD, added about 250,000 people to a British population of one to two million. Dr. Oppenheimer notes this figure is larger than his but considerably less than the substantial replacement of the British population assumed by others. As a comparison, Dr. Haerke has calculated that the Norman invasion of AD 1066 introduced not many more than 10,000 people. Importantly, Dr. Oppenheimers population history of the British Isles does not rely solely on genetic data but includes the dating of language changes by methods developed by geneticists. ...so in short we in the British Isles are Spanish
Posted on: Mon, 22 Dec 2014 19:17:47 +0000
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