We are all Celts Now!
According to Bryan Sykes, Professor of Human Genetics at Oxford University most people in Britain are decended from peoples often referred to as Celts. Celts are not a separate race living in the West of Britain and Ireland but are the ancestor of most of us.
Sykes is publishing a book, called 'The Blood of the Isles ‘Exploring the genetic roots of our tribal history’.
According to Salon IFA, the archaeology e-newsletter, he 'draws on the work of The Oxford Genetic Atlas Project which, with funding from the Wellcome Trust, has taken and analysed blood and saliva samples from 10,000 volunteers in order to settle scientifically questions about migration and interbreeding in these islands ..... all but a tiny percentage of the volunteers in his study were originally descended from one of six ‘clans’ who arrived in the UK in several waves of immigration prior to the Norman conquest. '
Salon IFa quotes Sykes ‘about 6,000 years ago Iberians developed ocean-going boats that enabled them to cross the Bay of Biscay and 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 the larger Celtic tribe migrating from Spain.’
'The next most widely shared genetic fingerprint links us to Danish and Norse Vikings, again spread across all of Ireland and the UK but with Viking concentrations in Shetland and north and west Scotland. Smaller numbers of today's Britons are descended from north African, Middle Eastern and Roman migrants.
SALON - the Society of Antiquaries of London Online Archaeology Newsletter
Salon 149: 2 October 2006
Prospect Article on the subject
Sykes is publishing a book, called 'The Blood of the Isles ‘Exploring the genetic roots of our tribal history’.
According to Salon IFA, the archaeology e-newsletter, he 'draws on the work of The Oxford Genetic Atlas Project which, with funding from the Wellcome Trust, has taken and analysed blood and saliva samples from 10,000 volunteers in order to settle scientifically questions about migration and interbreeding in these islands ..... all but a tiny percentage of the volunteers in his study were originally descended from one of six ‘clans’ who arrived in the UK in several waves of immigration prior to the Norman conquest. '
Salon IFa quotes Sykes ‘about 6,000 years ago Iberians developed ocean-going boats that enabled them to cross the Bay of Biscay and 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 the larger Celtic tribe migrating from Spain.’
'The next most widely shared genetic fingerprint links us to Danish and Norse Vikings, again spread across all of Ireland and the UK but with Viking concentrations in Shetland and north and west Scotland. Smaller numbers of today's Britons are descended from north African, Middle Eastern and Roman migrants.
SALON - the Society of Antiquaries of London Online Archaeology Newsletter
Salon 149: 2 October 2006
Prospect Article on the subject
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