Contrary to popular belief, the original inhabitants of Britain survived in considerable numbers after the invasions of the Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Vikings and Normans
Nicholas Wade New York Times
History books favor stories of conquest rather than continuity, so perhaps it's no surprise that many English people believe they are a warlike mix of Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Danes, Vikings and Normans – the various peoples who invaded Britain. According to this theory, the defeated Celts, the original inhabitants of Britain, left their legacy only in the book regions of Ireland, Scotland and Wales.
But a new genetic test of Y chromosomes across the British Isles reveals a completely different occurrence. According to a study by Dr. Christian Capelli, Dr. David Goldstein and other researchers from University College London, the Celtic inhabitants of Britain had impressive survival skills. Nowhere have they been completely replaced by the invaders, and their genes survive in large proportions - sometimes 50% or more - throughout the British Isles.
The study, published this week in the journal Current Biology, was based on a comparison between the Y chromosomes sampled throughout the British Isles and the Y chromosomes of the invaders, as represented by the contemporary descendants of the Danes, the Vikings (in Norway) and the Anglo-Saxons (in Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany ). The beginning of the research in the initiative of the BBC to trace the genetic signatures of the Vikings in England. Later the study was expanded to include the Danes and Anglo-Saxons as well. Goldstein said there was not enough money to study two other groups of invaders, the Romans and the Normans, but he believes their demographic contribution was small.
Goldstein assumed that the original inhabitants of Britain could be represented by men living in Castlereagh in central Ireland, an area where no foreign invaders had reached. In a study from two years ago, Goldstein and his colleagues determined that the Y chromosomes of Celtic populations are almost identical to those of the Basques.
The Basques live in a mountainous area on the France-Spain border and speak a language that has nothing to do with the Indo-European languages that arrived in Europe about 8,000 years ago, with the agricultural revolution of the Neolithic period. Therefore, the Basques are considered the heirs of the first modern humans, who arrived in Europe about 30 thousand years ago, in the Paleolithic period.
According to this theory, even the Celtic-speaking men, who are genetically very close to the Basques, should be descendants of the original inhabitants of Europe in the Paleolithic period. They probably represent the first modern humans to settle in Britain around 10,000 years ago. It is speculated that these original Britons adopted from Europe, at a later stage, both the Celtic culture - the first evidence of its existence is from 3,000 years ago - and the Celtic language, which is a branch of the Indo-European language family.
After identifying Y chromosomes thought to be typical of the original Britons, Goldstein and his team were able to estimate the demographic impact of the invaders. They discovered that the Vikings left a considerable genetic imprint on the Orkney Islands off the northeast coast of Scotland, which were a center of Viking activity in the years 1200-800. Many men in York and East Anglia carry Danish Y chromosomes. But surprisingly, there is little sign of Anglo-Saxon heritage in southern England.
"We tend to think of England as Anglo-Saxon," Goldstein said. "But the research clearly shows that there was no complete replacement of existing populations by Anglo-Saxons or Danes. It seems that the Celts held on."
Y chromosome testing only provides evidence of male lineages. In a study published two years ago, Goldstein and his colleagues tested British mitochondrial DNA, a genetic component that is inherited through the mother. Surprisingly, it turns out that the similarity between the British female lineage and the corresponding lineage in Northern Europe is greater than the similarity between the male lineage in Britain and that of Northern Europe.
According to Goldstein, to explain this finding it is not necessary to assume that Britain was conquered by an army of Amazons. It is more likely that since the Celts in Britain maintained contact with the Celts in Europe, there were exchange relations between them that also included women. As in many cultures, the Celtic men stayed where they were while the women moved to their husbands' villages. Thus, over time, the female population in Britain became more similar to that of Northern Europe.
British historians have tended to emphasize the contributions of the Romans and Anglo-Saxons to English culture, at the expense of the Celtic contribution. A recent book on British history, "The Islands" by Norman Davies, seeks to restore the Celts to their rightful status. According to him, the Celts were ignored due in part to the fact that they did not leave written historical documents, since they saw writing as a threat to their oral traditions. Generations of historians have held that British history began with the Roman invasions in the first century AD, and in fact identified more with the Romans than with the defeated Celts.
"As long as classical education and the prejudices that accompanied it ruled the roost, the educated English saw ancient Britain as a foreign country," Davis wrote. The new research shows that the genetic contribution of the Celts has been neglected as much as their historical legacy. In an interview, Davis said: "Historians have traditionally thought in terms of invasions - the Celts took over the islands, then the Romans, then the Anglo-Saxons. In fact, it is more likely that the inhabitants remained in their place but were 'recultured' by the new dominant culture."
