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August 03, 2007
Origins of the British
The Origins of the British A Genetic Detective Story: The Surprising Roots of the English, Irish, Scottish, and Welsh by Stephen Oppenheimer copyright 2006 Carroll & Graf Publishiers, New York 534 pages
Oppenheimer is an Oxford (England) professor and a leading expert in the world on using DNA to track migrations. His previous book, Out of Eden: The Peopling of the World, was a fascinating detailed explanation of his theory on human migration out of Africa to eventually people the world. This book, instead of starting from a geographic location (the horn of Africa) focuses on a destination, the British Isles.
The book is lengthy and goes into a number of disciplines in addition to genetics, including archeology, history, ancient languages, geology... I will not attempt to summarize the book's parts and chapters in any detail.
Oppenheimer says what is now the British Isles was unpopulated during the last ice age, the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), as recently as 17,000 years ago. Britain had previously been populated by humans, but because parts were covered with ice and the rest a polar dessert, no one lived there at the LGM. In addition the "isles" were connected to Europe. The ocean was about 400 feet lower than today so land now beneath the Channel, the North Sea, and the Irish Sea was above sea level.
During the LGM humans fled to refuges in the south of Europe. They survived in northwest Spain, the western Balkans (possibly including Italy), and southern Ukraine. As the ice receded and the climate improved, they moved north and just about every other direction to re-people the continent. There was a natural path of expansion up the Atlantic shore from Spain to the northern end of Scotland. Remember, there was no ocean to cross. Another natural path was from the Balkans up the Danube then up the major rivers of Germany, on to Scotland.
Oppenheimer's assertion is that people from these two reservoirs during the LGM converged on the British Isles (not islands then) and populated the place (as well as much of the rest of Europe). Ireland, Wales, Cornwall, and the western half of Scotland can trace ancestry primarily to Spain. England and eastern Scotland trace ancestry primarily to the Balkans.
Of course many other peoples came to Britain over the millennia, but those who got there first had the most impact on population. There were not big changes to the genetic makeup of the population once it was founded, 15 thousand + years ago.
Oppenheimer's position is contrary to conventional wisdom. People think there was a big Celtic invasion originating in Eastern Europe or Ukraine several centuries or millennia before Christ. The author discusses it and finds it unlikely there was a major migration into the British Isles by a new population group within the last few millennia, and also unlikely the Celts originated in the east. They could well have been in what is now France and the Atlantic coast for a very long time.
Conventional wisdom also has it that all the British Isles were inhabited by gaelic-speaking Celts up to the Roman conquest, then Anglo-Saxons invaded and conquered after the Romans left. These newcomers, speaking a Germanic language, pretty much exterminated the Celts in England and eastern Scotland. The genetic evidence of relationship between the English and people across the North Sea is there. But that does not prove invasion and population replacement. Those folks speaking a germanic language had actually been in Britain since before the rise in sea level, and were part of a culturally connected population on both sides of the North Sea and the Channel.
But didn't the Romans find Gauls in southeastern England when they conquered it? Yes, but what did "Gaul" mean to the Romans?
"All Gaul is divided in three parts" wrote Julius Caesar in 58 BC, the Belgae, the Celts, and the Aquitani. Oppenheimer, with a careful and convincing argument, says these three are major linguistic and ethnic groups separate from one another. The Aquitani, per Wikipedia, spoke a variation of Basque. The Celts spoke gaelic. And, per Oppenheimer, the Belgae spoke a germanic tongue. The Belgae occupied land north of the Seine River, up to the North Sea and the Channel coast near England. Tribes the Romans found in England were closely related and some even had the same names as tribes among the Belgae.
There was a continuum of germanic speaking, related peoples from eastern Scotland south to the Seine. The "English" were always there.
Posted by rob at 03:19 PM | Comments (0)