Picts origins, genetically found out

[ScandinavianCelt]

https://www.medievalists.net/2024/01...edieval-picts/

[Nurzat]

cannot see the website because of adblock.

so, tell, us, was Anglo-Saxon scholar/monk Bede/Bēda (lived 672 to 735 AD) right when he said that the Picts migrated from Scythia (around today's Romania and Ukraine) to northern Britain?

[Beowulf]

I can't see it either 'cause the ad block

[Jingle Bell]

"The new findings support current archaeological theories that Picts descended from Iron Age people in Britain."

Ye not rly a surprise, i wonder if they had any Hallsttat/Continel Celt input

[Nurzat]

"The new findings support current archaeological theories that Picts descended from Iron Age people in Britain."

Ye not rly a surprise, i wonder if they had any Hallsttat/Continel Celt input

someone from ~ 441-641 CE, north of Inverness, looks like a contemporary Scot:

Distance to: Scotland_BlackIsle_IA.SG:KD001.SG
0.02645672 Orcadian
0.02654636 Irish
0.02841651 Scottish
0.02888650 Icelandic
0.02933147 Norwegian
0.03143575 Danish
0.03201158 Welsh
0.03231917 English
0.03349921 Dutch
0.03417559 Shetlandic
0.03428516 English_Cornwall
0.03611876 French_Brittany
0.03699399 Swedish


and a person from nearby, from ~1000-800 BCE, looks Scot as well:

Distance to: Scotland_LBA:I2860
0.01750126 Orcadian
0.01855647 Irish
0.01873220 Scottish
0.01991654 Icelandic
0.02111631 Norwegian
0.02198475 English
0.02260150 Danish
0.02292538 Welsh
0.02294214 Shetlandic
0.02387141 English_Cornwall
0.02539374 Dutch
0.02774372 French_Brittany
0.03046274 Swedish
0.03155957 German_Hamburg
0.03450981 German
0.03455381 BelgianA


Scots are Picts? and been there for a long long time?

[ScandinavianCelt]

Here's a copy of article:

The Picts, a people who inhabited Scotland during the Middle Ages, have always had a sense of mystery to them. A new study using DNA has revealed new details about their origins.

Historical sources first mention the Picts in the late 3rd century AD. They resisted the Romans and ruled over a large territory in northern Britain. However, around the 9th and 10th centuries the Pictish culture would decline and those lands would form into what would be the medieval kingdom of Scotland. There are different theories to the origins – were the Picts native to Britain or did they migrate from other parts of Europe?

A new study, published in PLoS Genetics, attempts to solve this question by examining Pictish burials to extract genomes to explore how the Picts are related to other cultural groups in Britain. They sequenced DNA from two individuals from central and northern Scotland that dated from the fifth to the seventh century AD. They compared the resulting high-quality genomes to more than 8,300 previously published ancient and modern genomes.

Sampling location and the regions under ancient Brittonic, Irish and Anglo-Saxon control around the 7th century – image courtesy the authors and PLoS ONE.
Adeline Morez of Liverpool John Moores University, who led the study, explains “I always have been fascinated by human evolution overall: where are we from? How did we manage to settle worldwide and adapt to the wide diversity of environments? I chose to focus on paleogenetics, the study of ancient DNA, as it is a formidable opportunity to gain direct knowledge of an individual ancestry or a population’s genetic diversity, free from inference based on modern genomes. And now, we actually see that the migrations and population mixtures are more numerous and complex than previously hypothesised.”

The analysis revealed that Picts descended from local Iron Age populations, who lived across Britain before the arrival of mainland Europeans. Additionally, the researchers found genetic similarities between the Picts and present-day people living in western Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Northumbria. Medieval traditions, including from the time of the Picts themselves, had ascribed exotic origins to the Picts including them coming from Thrace (north of the Aegean Sea), Scythia (eastern Europe), or isles north of Britain, but the new research suggests much less sensational origins.

A further analysis of DNA sequenced from seven individuals interred in a Pictish cemetery showed that the individuals did not share a common ancestor on their mother’s side. This finding suggests that females may have married outside their own social group and runs counter to older speculation, such as that mentioned by the great English scholar Bede, that the Picts were matrilineal; that they had had a society based on kinship through the mother’s lineage.

Bearded Pictish warrior from the Bullion Stone, Angus, now in the National Museum of Scotland. Photo by Kim Traynor / Wikimedia Commons
The new findings support current archaeological theories that Picts descended from Iron Age people in Britain. The study also provides novel insights into the genetic relationships that existed amongst Pictish individuals buried in cemeteries together and between ancient Picts and present-day groups in the United Kingdom.

“The two Picts studied here showed a greater affinity (by haplotype sharing) with present-day populations from western Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Northumbria compared to the populations from southern England, which is important for understanding how present-day diversity formed in the UK,” Morez notes.

“Thanks to comparison with previously published genomes from Pictish people living in the Orkney islands, we could also show that individuals living in the Orkney and in mainland Scotland, likely gathered under the same cultural unit, were slightly divergent likely because of limited gene flow between the two regions and small population size in Orkney, which is known to speed up genetic divergence.”

Future research will provide new information on the Pictish lifestyle, thanks to archaeologists and co-authors of the study. This will include reassessing and excavating new Pictish sites, investigating dietary habits and mobility using stable isotopes, and further research on Pictish DNA. This ongoing project will provide an excellent tool to facilitate interdisciplinary research to connect archaeology, archaeological science, history, and human population genetics.

The article, “Imputed genomes and haplotype-based analyses of the Picts of early medieval Scotland reveal fine-scale relatedness between Iron Age, early medieval and the modern people of the UK,” by Adeline Morez, Kate Britton, Gordon Noble, Torsten Günther, Anders Götherström, Ricardo Rodríguez-Varela, Natalija Kashuba, Rui Martiniano, Sahra Talamo, Nicholas J. Evans, Joel D. Irish, Christina Donald, and Linus Girdland-Flink, appears in PLoS Genetics. Click here to read it: https://journals.plos.org/plosgeneti...l.pgen.1010360

[Nurzat]

going further back:

someone from ~ 1442-1273 BCE from the Isle of Lewis (largest island of the Outer Hebrides), looks pretty similar to those 400 years later and 1400 years later:

Distance to: Scotland_MBA:I2655
0.02301121 Scottish
0.02347919 Orcadian
0.02362997 Dutch
0.02411991 Irish
0.02426962 Welsh
0.02461802 Norwegian
0.02469463 Danish
0.02648497 English
0.02683029 Icelandic
0.02748276 Shetlandic
0.02805587 English_Cornwall
0.02874745 French_Brittany
0.03044328 Afrikaner
0.03060139 German_Hamburg
0.03223063 Swedish
0.03270373 German
0.03542050 BelgianA


this makes for at least 3500 years of continuity in Scotland? in spite of the Viking influence later on? or the Vikings maybe got a pretty similar genetic profile to the Picts

[~Elizabeth~]

I am happy about this awesome news!

Family lore is that I am part Pict on my maternal grandfather's side. That side descends from Picts, Jutes (English), Welsh, and Germans.

[ScandinavianCelt]

going further back:

someone from ~ 1442-1273 BCE from the Isle of Lewis (largest island of the Outer Hebrides), looks pretty similar to those 400 years later and 1400 years later:

Distance to: Scotland_MBA:I2655
0.02301121 Scottish
0.02347919 Orcadian
0.02362997 Dutch
0.02411991 Irish
0.02426962 Welsh
0.02461802 Norwegian
0.02469463 Danish
0.02648497 English
0.02683029 Icelandic
0.02748276 Shetlandic
0.02805587 English_Cornwall
0.02874745 French_Brittany
0.03044328 Afrikaner
0.03060139 German_Hamburg
0.03223063 Swedish
0.03270373 German
0.03542050 BelgianA


this makes for at least 2500 years of continuity in Scotland? in spite of the Viking influence later on? or the Vikings maybe got a pretty similar genetic profile to the Picts

Funny, but my top 3 Anc Pop averages (all VK) land in Pictish top 5 distances (Hofst., Skara, and Dorset)


Distance to: Scotland_Pictish_EMA:KD001
0.02455821 Iceland_Hofstadir:VK102
0.02620152 Sweden_Skara:VK35
0.02777233 Faroes_Faroes:VK238
0.02811772 UK_Dorset_England:VK449
0.02920700 Norway_Nor_South:VK386
0.02929462 Iceland_Hofstadir:VK101
0.02934034 Faroes_Faroes:VK236
0.02993871 Sweden_Skara:VK40
0.03008632 SWE_Viking_Age_Sigtuna:vik_grt035
0.03023667 Iceland_Hringsdalur:VK128
0.03035786 Sweden_Gotland:VK456
0.03083191 Sweden_Gotland:VK429
0.03100929 England_IA:I0156
0.03146902 Sweden_Skara:VK42
0.03167153 ISL_Viking_Age_Pre_Christian:VDP-A-6
0.03198250 Norway_Nor_South:VK415
0.03224182 IsleOfMan_IsleOfMan:VK170
0.03241945 UK_Oxford_England:VK172
0.03295735 Sweden_Skara:VK402
0.03296867 Denmark_Jutland:VK324
0.03301045 Faroes_Faroes:VK240
0.03316847 UK_Orkney_Scotland:VK202
0.03319295 Sweden_Skara:VK308
0.03329730 Iceland_Hofstadir:VK225
0.03352833 Denmark_Langeland:VK320

[Nurzat]

Funny, but my top 3 Anc Pop averages (all VK) land in Pictish top 5 distances (Hofst., Skara, and Dorset)

I corrected it to 3500 years (1500 BCE to present) of continuity in Scotland - people 1500 BCE are similar enough in their ancestral genetic mix to people nowadays. that's pretty cool

so the Eastern Euro / Baltic mix people that came to Scotland to displace a bit the previously Neolithic population that was similar to Sardinians - they stayed eversince