The People of the British Isle's

[Barreldriver]

Starting this thread for the purposes of discussing the People of the British Isle's study.

Here is the link to the main page: http://www.peopleofthebritishisles.org/

Under the media tab there's a PDF for the June 2012 newsletter #5. http://www.peopleofthebritishisles.org/press/nl5.pdf

The map included was hard to read (low resolution so very pixelated) but it looks like there's a mass of that orangeish red spanning the greatest bulk of England includin' areas as Norfolk, Suffolk, Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Kent and nearby areas.

Farther West it gets more green, blue, purple, brown, gold, and yellow.

Northumberland seems to be most like Cumbria and South Wales in the gold color while Durham shares some green with Devon.

It's a bit early but I'd guess that the greatest bulk of England shares a common origin, perhaps Anglian because it's different in color from Wales, Cornwall and Ireland?

[Graham]

Think this was the same project.



http://www.savecornwall.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/SundayTimes17.6.12.jpg
Jonathan Leake, Science Editor Published: 17 June 2012

NATIVE Welsh people could lay claim to be the most ancient of Britons, according to scientists who have drawn up a genetic map of the British Isles. They studied variations in DNA taken from thousands of people living in rural areas. The aim was to work out where the ancestors of people in different regions came from — and how much they have intermingled over the centuries.

The results showed that the Welsh, followed by the Cornish, remain among the most genetically distinct of all the groups on mainland Britain. They carry more DNA that could date back to the tribes that colonised Britain after the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago.

“The people of Wales and Cornwall are different from the rest of southern and central England,” said Peter Donnelly, professor of statistical science at Oxford University and director of the Wellcome Trust centre for human genetics.

Donnelly and his colleagues, who will be describing their work at the Royal Society’s summer science exhibition, to be held in London on July 3-8, say there is some uncertainty about why the Cornish and Welsh have retained such a distinct profile, similar to that found in the peoples of Ireland and France. One possibility is that they are “relic” populations, tracing their ancestry back to the tribes that first moved into Europe and Britain as the ice receded.

Elsewhere, such peoples would since have been displaced or diluted by migrants.

Another is that the western parts of Britain were populated by migrants from the Atlantic coasts of France and Spain.

They are not, however, the most genetically distinctive of all British people tested. That claim lay with the people of the Orkneys, whose genes show them to be Scandinavian — as might be expected for islands that were controlled by Vikings from AD875 to 1472.

In the study Donnelly and his colleagues analysed the differences at 500,000 points in the DNA of 2,000 people. Only rural dwellers were included, and all had to have had all four grandparents born in the same area. The researchers also compared the genetic profiles of British populations with those of European groups, to get an idea of where the ancestors of modern Britons hailed from.

The Cornish and Welsh are likely to be delighted to have their identities confirmed — but the study could undermine similar claims by other regions.

The people of Norfolk, for example, have long claimed descent from the Iceni, the ancient tribe of which Boadicea is said to have been the warrior queen. However, Donnelly and the study leader, Professor Walter Bodmer, a leading Oxford geneticist, found that the people of East Anglia are genetically little different from those found across the south as far west as Dorset. Similarly, the DNA taken from Scots showed they had strong genetic similarities to the northern English.

Donnelly said people in southeast and central England had some DNA from the pre-Roman population of England but with additions from subsequent Anglo-Saxon and Danish Viking settlers. “The people of this region are a real genetic cocktail.”

Article in THE SUNDAY TIMES 17TH June 2012

----------------------------------

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/files/2012/07/map1.jpg

[Graham]

http://i55.photobucket.com/albums/g156/irnbru293/samples.png

[mvbeleg]

Would have been nice for the Irish to be included.

[Pretan]

The people of Norfolk, for example, have long claimed descent from the Iceni, the ancient tribe of which Boadicea is said to have been the warrior queen. However, Donnelly and the study leader, Professor Walter Bodmer, a leading Oxford geneticist, found that the people of East Anglia are genetically little different from those found across the south as far west as Dorset. Similarly, the DNA taken from Scots showed they had strong genetic similarities to the northern English.



Hardly suprising, it really annoys me when some people cling onto the myth that there's some sort of noticeable East-West difference in England. People here on the East coast are very similar to the people over on the West coast.

[Barreldriver]

Hardly suprising, it really annoys me when some people cling onto the myth that there's some sort of noticeable East-West difference in England. People here on the East coast are very similar to the people over on the West coast.

I think the map shows more that the bulk of England is an isolate separate from the far West as we see the red accounting for most of the English samples . Then there's a distinction within that English with the lighter green shade that shows a similarity between the Northeast and Northwest then the Northeast and Northwest also share some of that gold color with South Wales distinct from the magenta of North Wales (which I found odd as I would have thought N. Wales to be the more similar because of geographic location).

My main attention was on South Yorkshire (a bit of a bias as that's the root of my own family) and South Yorkshire seems to have more red like the rest of England while it's farther East and a bit North that we find the lighter green in common with the rest of Northern England with little of the gold color that is shared with South Wales.

I'm inclined to think this could be, stress could be as it's still early yet, a sign that the bulk of Yorkshire remained Anglo similar to East Anglia, Kent, Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, etc. while the Danes (perhaps represented with the light green?) and remaining Britons (obvious the gold in common with S. Wales) made up a smaller chunk of the population.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/files/2012/07/map1.jpg

[Barreldriver]

Would have been nice for the Irish to be included.

I think the samples that were taken were based on the boundaries of the UK, perhaps there's a legal issue that prevented the gathering of samples from the rest of Ireland.

[R1b-L371]

There is a very significant correlation between R1b-L371 Y-DNA males and the Autosomal DNA results represented by the Pink icons in the NW of Wales which have been categorized by the POBI Team as "distinct AIM clusters" from others in the British Isles.

This significant finding resulted from more than 10 R1b-L371 Citizen Scientists analyzing and clustering their Autosomal DNA AIM SNP results from FTDNA in order to isolate unique Autosomal AIMs associated with their Welsh Heritage.

In other words, we beat the Million Dollar Wellcome Trust funded team of POBI academics and scientists to the punch on this.
:thumb001:

POBI Wales Map (Pink icons): http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/files/2012/07/map1.jpg
(http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/files/2012/07/map1.jpg)
R1b-L371 Information: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/RL371/

POBI Comments: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-18489735

"Professor Peter Donnelly, of Oxford University, said the Welsh carry DNA which could be traced back to the last Ice Age, 10,000 years ago."

"Prof Donnelly said: "People from Wales are genetically relatively distinct, they look different genetically from much of the rest of mainland Britain, and actually people in north Wales look relatively distinct from people in south Wales."

"The geography of Wales made it more likely that ancient DNA would be retained."

"In north Wales, there has been relative isolation because people moved less because of geographical barriers," Prof Donnelly said.