Appreciating all your feedback....and set me off pondering some further questions.

Interestingly Fil, New Zealand has retained a majority of Maori place/fauna/flora names although little impact on day to day spoken English.

I realise I shouldn't try and draw parallels, but interstingly in NZ the areas where Europeans first arrived have been the areas where Maori culture/identity/place names remain strongest. The most cohesive explanation of this is the first Europeans in these areas where a vulnerable minority and had to accomodate themselves to local ways to maintain their security. They integrated and subsequent mass European arrivals found a stable order, with Europeans in positions of authority and either went elsewhere in NZ or accepted it. In pristine Maori areas settled later by mass influx of Europeans the story tended to be less happy. Perhaps similar local effects unfolded here?

The unpleasant aparthied theory seems to be a ubiquitous norm not a theory?? It doesn't have to be formalised, its an unspoken understing. Having lived in 4 post colonial contexts on 4 continents there has always been the tradition of colonising European males consorting with local women. Their offspring are still living evidence of that. The opposite of European women marrying locals is rare and still often socially less acceptable. Is there any hsitorical evidence of a dominant colonising group where this didn't happen? At the extreme end, an associated behaviour might be the present UN concern over rape as a weapon in informal conflict. The situation in Congo today might have some parallels with the 4-5th century?

Link to the apartheid hypothesis.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5192634.stm

A paper on the subject was presented to the Royal Society the same year, it is available online but I can't link to it because it's in PDF format.

I'm not immediately convinced. The idea of asymmetric inter-marriage seems to be more probable.

Checking my atlas, which admittedly is large scale, it's difficult to work out the ratio of Maori to European place names, certainly the majority of the latter appear to be in the North Island. Interestingly an atlas I have from the 1930s includes the Maori names for both North and South Islands but the later volume, published in the 60s, does not. Make of that what you will.

quote:

The idea of asymmetric inter-marriage seems to be more probable.

This is what Thomas suggested. On symmetrical marriage, Thomas points out:

"However, intermarriage between ethnic groups would serve to homogenize the genetic makeup of those groups."

But, we don't see homogenity. As Capelli's survey showed, there is considerable heterogenity within England. The number of paternal lineages which Capelli suggests match those found in North Germany and Denmark amount to 54.1% indicating that British paternal lineages survive in the modern population at 45.9%. These ratios however are not uniformly distributed, they range from a low of 24.4% to a high of 72.5% for immigrant lineages in England.

If the population of England at the time of immigration was 2 million, the average 54% of anglo saxon lineages would require an immigration of over a million, far too high to be plausible. So, the question is, if it is much lower, say 200,000, around 10%, how could it grow to the much larger proportion that we see in today's figures? Symmetrical marriage would only create a situation whereby the immigrant/indigenous ratio would be maintained. To reach the ratios we see today, the Anglo Saxon community has to have more reproductive success than the indigenous population.

One community being more successful than another is quite normal. There are many reasons, female mate choice, marriage system, infant mortality, adult male competition and so on.

Thomas' model sets U=D, that is, equal opportunity for one community to marry into the other but investigates the effects that female mate choice has on the ratios. The model simulates the values for different proportions of individuals available to marry out of their ethnic group, ranging from 0 to 10% per generation in steps of 0.1%. It also models different initial proportions of anglo saxons, 5%, 10% and 20%. Even if the initial proportion was as low as 5%, it can grow to exceed 50% within 15 generations if the number of British women marrying anglo saxon males is as low as 10%.

best

Harry A

It does seem quite convincing. Stretching the Maori parallels again I suspect it could have happened a lot quicker than 15 generations. Pure blooded Maori were gone within 100 years. I don't think the marriage aparthied would have had to be as formalised as the rules of Ine, as I observed previously this prohibition is unstated in many cultures.

Whats the situation with mDNA data for the UK? Is accurate mDNA data likely to help answer this question or will it not define Briton / A-S lineages sufficiently given confounders like unquantified later immigration? I guess there could be three broad mDNA outcomes (local variation aside) 1. high Briton mDNA proportion 2. Middling Briton mDNA proportion 3. low Briton mDNA proportion. Given the yDNA data there is, what hypotheses would each of the mDNA proportions suggest?

I wish the word apartheid hadn't been used. It makes for dramatic headlines, but is misleading and has stirred up instinctive distaste. Objectivity then flies out of the window.

quote:

Whats the situation with mDNA data for the UK?

We don't have any mtDNA study for Britain. This is a shame as mtDNA is proving much easier to extract from ancient remains and thus it will be possible to compare directly, the old with the new.

Genetics is a fast moving topic and many of the assumptions made about the past may not prove to be true. The area where this is likely to have greatest impact is if the isolation of the Basques and continuity since the paleolithic theories is shown not to be true. If the Basques are shown to have only some lineages which date back to the paleolithic but also include lineages since the neolithic, the overall picture completely changes from one of cultural diffusion to that of demic diffusion.

A word of warning about inferring past migrations from studies of modern DNA from 3 leading geneticists (Carvahlo-Silva, Zerjal and Tyler-Smith):

"How can you determine when and where a lineage originated? And how does the origin and spread of a lineage relate to what we think of as the origin of a population? These are rather contentious issues. According to the simplest way of thinking, current high frequency and high diversity may mark the place of origin of a lineage; but high frequency can also arise by genetic drift, and high diversity by admixture. The time can be calculated in several ways, and a wide range of mutation rates can be used, so molecular dates are much less certain than archaeological ones. In thinking about the second question, we can paraphrase the Italian geneticist Guido Barbujani: imagine that at some time in the future Indian astronauts colonise Mars, and geneticists then type their Y chromosomes. We may well find that their lineages date back to 9,000–20,000 years ago. But we would not be wise to infer that they have been living on Mars for 9,000 years."

best

Harry A

quote:

I wish the word apartheid hadn't been used. It makes for dramatic headlines, but is misleading and has stirred up instinctive distaste. Objectivity then flies out of the window.

It is not the best choice I agree. Nick Higham's acculturalist argument involving minimal numbers of a male dominated military elite creates just as much a picture of subjugation but draws no parallels with South Africa. In other words, people think about the one, but not the other.

Thomas, Stumpf and Härke refer to Woolf's paper posted by Gil, 'Apartheid and Economics in Anglo-Saxon England' so I think they were just following that terminology. But peaceful and harmonious transitions where new comers are welcomed with open arms is a political construct and suggestions that it was not always so do not fit in well with the messages the media want to tell us.

best

Harry A

quote:

But peaceful and harmonious transitions where new comers are welcomed with open arms is a political construct and suggestions that it was not always so do not fit in well with the messages the media want to tell us.

It's not just the media Harry. Let's acknowledge our biases. We want to feel good about ourselves. We cringe at the idea that our ancestors committed genocide, imposed apartheid, ran amok with axes, raped, pillaged and the like. No, no - they were all peaceful farmers wandering into empty countryside to build new homes for their families and daisy-chains for their children's hair.

Scandinavian historians have made strenuous efforts to redress the bad press those poor Vikings have had. Now we are painting a pretty picture of the Anglo-Saxons. Mind you it's worth noting that the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tends to focus on murder and mayhem, just like today's news. Settlers had to get the harvest in and milk the cows, but that's not news. There's a whole lot of day-to-day life that archaeology picks up better than chronicles.

Jean, your anxiety about the emotive language we use to talk about the past must be balanced with communicating ideas to a wider audience or it will remain esoteric & academic. "Asymetric marriage" conveys little meaning to me perhaps "aparthied" to much. Thankfully this is long enough ago that we don't have much personal bitterness about it (aside perhaps from romantic affiliations to our favourite group) In New Zealand I have seen the consequences of the Anglo Saxon occupation reducing people to tears. Maori men live 10 years less than Europeans. Their disenfranchisment means ongoing chaos in some communities. There you have to be very careful how one uses language. A knowledge of the history made me try all the harder, perhaps driven by guilt, to make small amends, to learn some language and try and understand Maori culture.

The more I think about this the more it looks like a continuous Anglo Saxon Empire with Britain a mere stepping stone! The same tactics of genetic subjugation (emotive+++) being employed right up to today as Australia, NZ and Cananda actively seek Anglo Saxon migrants and the US fears being overwhelmed by Latinos???

Seabeggar - Careful now! Many immigrants to America, Australia and Canada came from Scotland and Ireland, and some from Wales. I don't know enough about the history of NZ to even guess the proportion of English incomers to other denizens of the UK.

But the whole question being debated on this thread is just how much Anglo-Saxon blood there is in the English. We make think of ourselves as Anglo-Saxon, but we are a mongrel breed.

quote:

There seems to be an implication that Britons were a homogenous group by this time? How diverse might they have been and in which case how diverse their responses?

Just returning to the thread and a couple more of your outstanding questions ... this is a rather contentious issue. Geneticists have tended to treat the answer to this question as yes, or at least as far as the anglo saxon transition is concerned.

Linguistically however, we have the P Celtic or Brythonic, Q Celtic or Goidellic and the Pictish languages. We don't know much at all about the latter though, many think it is a form of Brythonic. Additionally, we have some evidence of an earlier language which is neither Brythonic nor Goidellic and which doesn't even appear to be Indo-European at all.

What these languages say about the DNA make up of Britain however is not clear at all. The argument is about whether language spreads by the movement of people or whether it can move culturally.

However, timing is also a problem not easily solved by DNA evidence alone. Molecular clocks move on evolutionary timescales, not very helpful when one wants to know what happened in a period of a mere 5000 years or so. Take for example Ireland.

Ireland has a yDNA marker known as R1b in earlier terminology at frequencies over 80%. R1b is widespread in europe and considered by some as evidence of a marker which spread out of Iberia at the end of the ice age. The claim is that it entered Britain and Ireland and hence the bulk of the population is descended from these original R1b carriers. But, when did they enter the Britain and Ireland? Perhaps they had a 6000 year stop off somewhere en route?

Ireland shows no signs of habitation during the paleolithic and only scant signs during the mesolithic. Sites such as Mount Sandel look as if they were permanently settled but are tiny, around 15 people only, moreover they show signs of being abandoned towards the end of the mesolithic. We see much more in the way of evidence of habitation from the neolithic onwards. So how do we interpret this?

Firstly, we could say that this shows that the population of Ireland is indeed made up from this handful of mesolithic settlers. It would explain why the predominant haplogroup is R1b. It was a highly successful settlement that grew and thrived. This is a view held by some geneticists.

However, there is not much evidence to show a link between the mesolithic and neolithic in Ireland. We may have had a situation where population replacement occurred. The original mesolithic irish may show up as one of the low frequency haplogroups who were simply overun by a neolithic migration of peoples carrying the 'new' haplogroup R1b. Alternatively, the original mesolithic irish may have abandoned Ireland altogether as the climate deteriorated and thus there is no record of them in the DNA at all. The cultural versus demic diffusion models for the neolithic are very hotly debated.

It is simply not an easy question to answer on the basis of DNA alone. Why do the irish speak an Indo European Celtic language which does not date back to the mesolithic? Why does their autosomal DNA look much more north west european than southern european? Why do their megaliths have much more in common with their northern european neighbours rather than their supposed southern european forebearers?

Some people of course argue that these things can all be spread by small numbers of highly influential people whilst others say they cannot. That is the current state of the debate.

best

Harry A

quote:

Originally posted by Seabeggar:
What a fascinating thread. The more I know the less likely I feel we will ever really understand what happened and maybe that defunct old phrase the "Dark Ages" should be shown a little more respect. The theories and speculation read like interesting plots for good historical fictions, but not good science. Perhaps the genetic evidence will eventually reach a level to swing the debate onto a firm scientific basis, but maybe it will just confound? In the meantime I will enjoy the speculation and be moved by sad daydreams of a lost world and those who watched, suffered and tried to make sense of the upheaval in which they were caught up.

I am however tempted to join in with my amatuer unscientific speculations/questions...... There seems to be an implication that Britons were a homogenous group by this time? How diverse might they have been and in which case how diverse their responses?
Presumbaly there was still a sizeable slave class ? They would have had a different response to the social changes, opportuninties and risks than wealthier land owners?
Would remaining artisans with portable wealth and skills have tended to head west or seek patronage among the newcomers ? You could speculate that young male Britons would have felt vulnerable and disenfranchised by the new arrivals (like some today!) and would have headed west where I guess military employment may have been a way out of subserviance (as it still for some today)

With regard to language whats the evidence that Britons spoke ONE celtic language at this time? Whats the evidence that Roman occupation had caused a coalescing of pre conquest languages/dialects? Presumably if preconquest tribal areas retained discrete languages then what would have been the obvious lingua franca if not the language of the newcomers.

In terms of fertility of the 2 communities its not difficult to see the vulnerability of the Britons. Take the example of New Zealand Maori. In 1830 there were 200,000 Maori and 2000 mostly male Europeans. The Europeans usually took several Maori wives and had large families. European Y-DNA within a generation is 10000 , 5% of total pop if they all had 5 sons surviving into adulthood. Take it another generation and its 25% if |Maori fertility is static. By 1896 census there were only 42000 Maori(not clear how many of those were not part European). A combination of marginalisation to poor land by Europeans, disease (exacerbated by worsening nutrition) intertribal war ( due to economic stress) had led many to believe Maori would cease to exist. As it is there are no genetically pure Maori today. Lots of Anglo Saxon y-DNA I guess.

Is it unreasonable to speculate Anglo Saxons males taking British wives (particularly the first generations when there may have been a shortage of A-S females?) , but for the reverse to be less likely. A low class male Briton would be less able to take an A-S wife given the accepted social order. Easy to see how the Britons population would have quickly suffered the same fate as the Maori. Interesting how history might be seen to repeat itself with the descendants of the Anglo Saxons overwhelming New Zealand.

Good analogy New Zealand, one that I hadn't seen used before. Sounds similar to the Apatheid idea that Mark Thomas cam, up with.

You could make a parallel with the experiences of the first colonies in New England.

There was a hostile undertone, but also agreement and cooperation.

Additionally, looking at how tribal rivalries benefitted the establishment of the colonies in the new wotld you could make a parallel, or at least appreciate that inter tribal dynmanics could well have been in place with the Britons.

We tend to think of the Britons as one mass which is probably a mistake. A Sitting Bull/Crazy Horse equivalent would have been your King Arthur character.

Just adding a footnote to cultural versus demic diffusion.

The BBC recently ran a radio broadcast about the Great Orm copper mine in North Wales. Francis Pryor was one of the contributors and, as a bronze age specialist, commented on the swift adoption of bronze age tools throughout Britain. He also stated "we know people were moving around, and objects moved around with them" which surprised me given that he normally argues for continuity.

Several years ago, the Weale study of anglo saxon yDNA included an odd result for Abergele in North Wales. It was in a completely different part of the plot than the other welsh centre sampled, Llangefni. This was due to the high frequency of a marker, then known as Hg21, more recently known as Eb3. Weale's study showed this at 40% whereas in most parts of Britain, Friesland and North Germany/Denmark, it exists in frequencies between 2% and 5%.

Mining is often associated with the movement of peoples who have the necessary skills. Capelli's study too had an odd result for wales, around 54% anglo saxon yDNA for Llanidloes. This was apparantly due to miners from Derbyshire moving to wales to work in the mines in more recent times. We have too lead miners from Wales in Yorkshire. It seems to be one of those jobs where one gets people who know how to do it, rather than learning how to do it oneself. It would be the sort of thing necessary to explain the rapid adoption of bronze tools.

If the high frequencies of Eb3 in Abergele are associated with with the copper mining industry of the bronze age, it would be interesting to know where they came from and also very interesting to know who invited them.

best

harry A

Very interesting analysis on Irish genetics, Harry.

The problem is that geneticists have been influenced in their thinking by the current continuity orthodoxy in British archaeology. If there is "no evidence" of mass immigration after the mesolithic, then the bulk of us "must be" descended from mesolithic incomers. Genetic findings are interpreted in that light. Then these interpretations are used to bolster the continuity standpoint.

Reminds me of that sick joke:
"Mummy, mummy, why am I running round in circles?"
"Shut up or I'll nail your other foot to the floor."

quote:

If there is "no evidence" of mass immigration after the mesolithic, then the bulk of us "must be" descended from mesolithic incomers.

It's why I wrote that some evidence of continuity between the mesolithic and neolithic needs to be shown. Mesolithic sites appear to show abandonment. If the current population in Ireland is descended from the mesolithic, we have to find signs of continuity.

Writing about Mount Sandel, a mesolithic site, Michael Kimball refers to a lack red deer in the mesolithic:

""Recent research (1997) suggests that red deer may not have been present in Ireland until the Neolithic (earliest solid evidence dates to around 4000 bp). This is significant because it implies that the largest terrestrial mammal available for exploitation during Ireland's Mesolithic may have been the wild pig. This is a very different resource pattern than that which characterizes most of Mesolithic Europe, including Ireland's next door neighbor, Britain."

We know domesticated cattle were imported to Ireland for farming after the start of the neolithic and it may be that red deer were imported too. Conceptually, red deer and cattle are linked in ancient irish texts, red deer being referred to as ag allaid, which translates to wild bovine for example and a stag as dam allaid (wild ox) and a fawn as l´oeg allaid.

Julian Richards writes that activity in mesolithic Ireland is almost entirely focused on riverine, lacustrine and shoreline resources and that a lack of large animals to hunt, including red deer, elk, row deer and aurochs is one of the reasons.

Were these animals accompanied by people skilled in animal husbandry?

best
Harry A

Sorry, above should be Julian Thomas not Julian Richards.

HA

This subject just gets more and more interesting, is it called archeogenetics or what? Is there a good up to date mainstream book or articles focusing on the British Isles for the non academic? Its all the more interesting in that it looks set to provide more and more fascinating insights and fresh questions each year. Why is there not much work on mDNA in the UK? Harry & co how do you find yourselves so immersed in the subject? Surely as knowledge deepens it must start to cross fertilise with medical genetics with certain genotypes being prone to particualr ailments?

People on forums tend to post links to papers when asked. For example, the Thomas paper on the mesolithic-neolithic transition is at:

http://arheologija.ff.uni-lj.si/documenta/pdf31/31thomas.pdf

That paper will have many references to other papers and the names of authors. Over time, you get to know some of them and you can make searches on their works. Those who work at universities for example often have a 'staff' page where they list what they have published.

Most papers are subscription, you have to buy them. Others make them available free of charge.



The Wellcome Trust are doing a major study of DNA at the moment. They have a project called Peoples of the British Isles. The main project is medical but the POBI is more for general interest. It will include mtDNA as well as yDNA and aDNA. aDNA is all the other DNA, ir most of your DNA, which is mixed. If you have green eyes, curly dark hair and olive skin, the reason is in that lot, somewhere :-)

They intend to publish in 2009, so you'll hear a lot then.

History requires some reading of books and these are mostly expensive. Academic books which have all the details that you will like are only published on short print runs. Oxbowbooks is a good source and they have various special offers.

Apart from medical issues, the other main driving force behind genetics is forensic. Some of the papers cited here are more concerned with sampling and statistical methods rather than the actual results in anthropological terms.

Many genetic studies are on animals and crops. These too are interesting. Currently, the research suggests that domesticated cattle are descended from the asiatic aurochs and not the european aurochs. Domestication appears to have occured in the near east from where it was introduced into western europe during the neolithic. It also appears that this is how pig farmin started too, with pigs introduced from the near east. However, unlike cattle, farmers experimented with cross breeding with european wild pigs and so we find some of their DNA in domestic breeds. The same must have been attempted with cattle but, as Caesar wrote, 'the Uri, (european aurochs) is impossible to tame, even when captured quite young'.



good luck

Harry A

quote:

Harry & co how do you find yourselves so immersed in the subject?

I've been interested in genetics from teenage years, but now the genetic code is being cracked, it is a really exciting time in genetics. It offers the potential for better targeted medical responses to disease, and for better understanding of the human body and psychology, as well as past population movement. I only wish that I could give more time to following developments, but I've been heavily occupied in my own field (building history) lately. Harry tends to be much better informed!

We are entering the era in which individuals can have their own genetic code read by companies such as https://www.23andme.com/ and gain a significant amount of information thereby, though it is but a fraction of what is to come.

quote:

We are entering the era in which individuals can have their own genetic code read by companies such as https://www.23andme.com/ and gain a significant amount of information thereby, though it is but a fraction of what is to come.

The very short history of genetic testing is interesting in itself.

Brian Sykes was one of the early entrepreneurs in this field. His company, Oxford Ancestors (not Oxford Ancestry which is a different company) followed his books such as The Seven Daughters of Eve. This was testing for deeper ancestry.

Other companies were testing for genetic genealogy. The idea was to build up huge databases so you could find relatives in the modern population who had certain matches. This was supposed to be useful when your paper trail came to a dead end. Get in touch with some relative you didn't know you had and compare your paper notes.

However, deep ancestry is not that interesting to many people. Knowing you are descended from one of Syke's clans, say Xenia who lived 25,000 years ago didn't satisfy the curiosity. What happened since?

The genealogy tests simply can't get enough people on the databases for the original idea to work.

We then got a third generation idea which was taken from people's interest in history. Most testing companies today mirror the work of genetic anthropologists. That is, they attempt give you genetic information which you can use when reading professional studies such as those cited in this thread. It makes for a 'better story'. Jim Wilson for example is one of the co-founders of Ethnoancestry.

Oppenheimer then came out with a novelle idea. Write a book about the settlement history of Britain by creating new haplotype clusters and giving them clan names, presumably an idea he borrowed from Sykes. If you liked the book, you can then go to a company like Ethnoancestry and take the Oppenheimer test. Knowing which of Oppenheimer's clans you belong to allows you to re-read the book and follow the history of your ancestors.

Belonging to an Oppenheimer clan however is a different test from the other tests that Ethnoancestry do. Most of their tests are for groups or clusters which appear in the peer science papers. Maybe you need two tests?

As you can see, it's all very commercial and, as Jean points out, very fast moving. And then there are the test upgrades. Part with more cash and gain more information. Picking a reputable company